Wind Power Fail

Measuring the Environmental Benefits of Wind Power

Joseph Cullen
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, forthcoming

Abstract: Production subsidies for renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, are rationalized due to their perceived environmental benefits. Subsidizing these projects allows clean, renewable technologies to produce electricity that otherwise would have been produced by dirtier, fossil-fuel power plants. In this paper, I quantify the emissions offset by wind power for a large electricity grid in Texas using the randomness inherent in wind power availability. The results indicate that one MWh of wind power offsets negligible quantities of SO2, less than one lb of NOx, and less than half a ton of CO2.  Only for high estimates of the social costs of pollution do I find that the value of emissions offset by wind power are greater than the renewable energy subsidies used to induce investment in wind farms.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Regulation is AlwaysTurned into Cartelization

"[The California Environmental Quality Act] passed in 1970 has also been increasingly abused, opening the door to lawsuits — sometimes brought by business competitors or for reasons unrelated to the environment — that, regardless of their merit, can delay even green development projects for years or sometimes kill them completely...In San Francisco, the city’s plan to paint bicycle lanes, one of the main goals of environmentalists, was delayed for four years by a lawsuit filed by a local resident who claimed that the lanes could cause pollution. And it is not only big projects that are litigation targets. In San Jose, a gas station has been indefinitely prevented from adding another pump because of a lawsuit filed by the owner of a competing gas station across the street...But in the 42 years since Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Environmental Quality Act into law, attacks against the measure have largely failed" [NYT article]

Nod to Kevin Lewis

I don't think you are TRYING hard enough

Fuel companies fined for their petty refusal to an additive in gasoline.

Look, the law says they have to do it. Stop fooling around, guys.

Of course, their lame excuse is that the additive does not actually exist.

The answer is that if your government is smart enough to imagine what it wants, the least you can do is actually make the stuff.

(Nod to Anonyman)

Okay, NOW You Can Kill Eagles (But Not Bats), To Show You Love Gaia

So, if all you are doing is building a factory that will create hundreds of jobs, and produce something people want to buy, you will be blocked by the Endangered Species Act. In fact, you may even have to close an existing golf course, because the nice froggies might not like it.

But if you want to build a "wind farm," which actually is a net loss of energy (counting the costs of construction and decommissioning), and produces almost zero jobs, then the feds will happily WAIVE the ESA. Kill all the eagles you want! (But not bats, apparently. Interesting.)

Now, in my view, the ESA is a death sentence, a stupid law that kills more creatures than it saves, by far. But still, if you believe the ESA works, why suspend it for such a marginal "industry" as wind?

Unless of course the whole thing is fake and all you really care about is the costly signal of worshipping Gaia, the Earth Mother? In that case, building an idiotic temple of wind and sacrificing eagles to Gaia actually count twice. We worship you, Gaia! And higher costs mean we love you more! Abraham was only willing to sacrifice his son. WE are willing to sacrifice eagles!

(Nod to the Blonde)

End of Abundance

KPC friend and water economics uber-mensch David Zetland has a newversion of his book out. Very cool and refreshing, if you can get it. Like clean water, actually.

Why Lie?

As Mr. Overwater aptly asks, in a comment on a different post, "Why lie?"

My question, specifically, is "Why would Al Gore tell an obvious, easily disconfirmed lie about the number of people who watched his public masturbation on the environment?" Because he did lie, egregiously. The only way you can get to Al's numbers is if you count people who watched for five seconds, and then replicate them so that each five seconds counts as a new viewer, over the whole period. If you don't do that, you get this.

The answer, I'm afraid, is not very complicated. Al Gore has become the Jimmy Swaggart, the Pat Robertson, and the Billy Sunday of the Enviro Movement. Of course, quite a few people in the Enviro movement are too smart to fall for this Al A-Gorey.

"Oh, HELP me, Jeebus! Send money right away, to save the world from global warming! Send money! We accept all major credit cards. And I accept $100,000* per speaking engagement so I can maintain my 20,000** square foot home with gaslight lanterns on the driveway! Carbon offsets for you, massive hypocrisy for me!"

For video fans: A feast for the eyes...24 hours of ManBearPig.

NOTES: *--not an exaggeration. **--an exaggeration, or a "lie" if you will. This whole post is a satire, not a documentary. I don't think Al Gore says "Jeebus;" he says "Gaia," the Earth Mother. Oh, and I should note that Al Gore never claimed to invent the internet. He also didn't invent the religious scam. But he used the internet to make money off his enviro-religion scam very effectively.

(Nod to the Blonde)

NYT and Bubbles

I was pleased to see that the NYT actually had reverted, if briefly, to being a newspaper instead of a hack mouthpiece for the Obama regime.

They had this very plausible story about the "green energy bubble." And it's true: many of the companies that were recently photo ops for some grinning Obama regime rep (including Mr. Obama himself) have gone belly up. They only were created to suck down subsidies from idiots. A classic bubble. The Green she go boom. Pop go a bunch of weasels.

But then I looked more closely. Far from focusing on the actual bubble, the one in green energy, the one that has already burst, the Green Lady of News is actually forecasting a bubble in...natural gas. The discovery of enormous new reserves of cheap, clean-burning fuel is very annoying to the Green Energy Gods, the apparatchiks of the regime who want to use public money to pay off their pals. And for the "peak idiocy" bunch....fugeddaboudit. Natural gas is a disaster for the authoritarians who want us all to return to sad stone age lives perched in caves and contemplating the sins of "late" capitalism.

Amazing. Just when you think the NYTimes can't sink any lower, they submerge into the muck.

(Nod to the Blonde)

Office or Policy?

Are Politicians Office or Policy Motivated? The Case of U.S. Governors’
Environmental Policies

Per Fredriksson, Le Wang & Khawaja Mamun
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, forthcoming

Abstract: Are elected politicians primarily motivated by holding office, thus choosing environmental policies accordingly? Or are they motivated by the chance to implement their preferred environmental policies? Do governors have character, in the sense that they promise and implement environmental policies consistent with their own preferences? To answer these questions, we study the differences in environmental spending across both re-electable and lame duck governors from the two main political parties. In our empirical analysis, we make use of parametric and non-parametric regression-discontinuity approaches. While re-electable governors do not set significantly different policies, lame duck governors do. We argue that in
the area of environmental policy governors appear to be primarily office motivated and lack character.

I love the last sentence. In other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and water is wet.

(nod to Kevin Lewis)

Let the Sun Shine

Or, not. It looked like a dark day for the pigs in the solar-industrial complex, but then the bright (though artificial) electric spotlight of the feds shone on them.

Solar advocates mounted a last-minute push Monday to prevent sweeping cuts to a federal loan guarantee program for clean energy development in a Republican budget plan. The cuts would have essentially closed the program, which is popular with solar power developers, and rescinded billion of dollars in loan commitments for dozens of projects.

"Popular"? I bet. The oil depletion allowance is popular with the oil pigs, too. That doesn't make it right.

Look, for a big enough subsidy we could take used toilet paper and make dental floss. And that subsidy would be popular with industry. That doesn't mean taxpayers should be forced to pay for it. The very fact that such a large subsidy is required implies there is no sound economic justification for doing it, in terms of saving resources. (Yes, I have talked about solar subsidies before...)

ATSRTWT

(Nod to Anonyman)

Monday's Child is Full of Links: Information

Fed dumps data on bailout. (Nod to Anonyman)

Very tough love. In fact, idiotic. (Nod to Angry Alex)

One third of women admit they would give up a year of life for perfect body; other two thirds of all women are lying. (Nod to L. Smith)

This idiot thinks people can do time series regressions in their heads. (Nod to Kevin Lewis)

Environmentalists are BAD for the Environment

John Tierney: The Man

“Efficiency advocates try to distract attention from the rebound effect by saying that nobody will vacuum more because their vacuum cleaner is more efficient,” Mr. Shellenberger said. “But this misses the picture at the macro and global level, particularly when you consider all the energy that is used in manufacturing products and producing usable energy like electricity and gasoline from coal and oil. When you increase the efficiency of a steel plant in China, you’ll likely see more steel production and thus more energy consumption.”

Consider what’s happened with lighting over the past three centuries. As people have switched from candles to oil-powered lamps to incandescent bulbs and beyond, the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of light has plummeted. Yet people have found so many new places to light that today we spend the same proportion of our income on light as our much poorer ancestors did in 1700, according to an analysis published last year in The Journal of Physics by researchers led by Jeff Tsao of Sandia National Laboratories.

“The implications of this research are important for those who care about global warming,” said Harry Saunders, a co-author of the article. “Many have come to believe that new, highly-efficient solid-state lighting — generally LED technology, like that used on the displays of stereo consoles, microwaves and digital clocks — will result in reduced energy consumption. We find the opposite is true.”

These new lights, though, produce lots of other benefits, just as many other improvements in energy efficiency contribute to overall welfare by lowering costs and spurring economic growth. In the long run, that economic growth may spur innovative new technologies for reducing greenhouse emissions and lowering levels of carbon dioxide.

But if your immediate goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions, then it seems risky to count on reaching it by improving energy efficiency. To economists worried about rebound effects, it makes more sense to look for new carbon-free sources of energy, or to impose a direct penalty for emissions, like a tax on energy generated from fossil fuels. Whereas people respond to more fuel-efficient cars by driving more and buying other products, they respond to a gasoline tax simply by driving less.

A visible tax, of course, is not popular, which is one reason that politicians prefer to stress energy efficiency. The costs and other trade-offs of energy efficiency are often conveniently hidden from view, and the prospect of using less energy appeals to the thrifty instincts of consumers as well as to the moral sensibilities of environmentalists.

(Nod to Anonyman and his candy-ass Prius)

Some Visionaries Fail, But Not All Failures are Visionaries

Had a conversation in Germany once, with a quite sensible man. We discussed the large number of solar panels on nearby homes. Germany, as I have written, has a climate where the sun is visible for about 90 minutes, some time in late July. That's it for the year.

I said it was not rational to force people to invest in solar panels.

He crowed, triumphantly, that it WAS rational, because of the enormous subsidies from the EU and the German government.

I stared at him, and tried (gently) to point out that he was ASSUMING it was rational. The fact that an activity is subsidized just means that the state takes your money at gunpoint, and agrees to give part of it back if you agree to do something you otherwise would not do.

In this case, only an idiot would put solar panels on houses in dark, snowy, cold Germany. Unless "the government" pays you to do it. But the government is bribing you with your own money, to do something that no sensible person would do. Yes, subsidies change the incentives. So does slavery.

My friend actually laughed, and said, "You economists. You never want to take anything on faith!" As if faith and religion were a big part of the lives of the German people. Or as if faith meant that installing solar panels at a cost per kw/hr that is triple the generation costs of other available technologies actually made sense, instead of being a boondoggle for the "Green Industry" pirates who run the EU like a whipped dog.

Anyway, a great story (shared by the Blonde) about faith-based energy policy in California. Just so many excellent little nuggets in this story. Glad to see that Californians can be just as ridiculously faithful as Germans can.

Grand Game: Government Investment Edition

It's been a while, for the Grand Game. That's where I put up a link, and you bright and good-looking KPC readers look for unintentional hilarity. Today's edition: Government investment in science!

I'll go first! My favorite part is where the government shill "proves" that these are worthwhile investments....

Success is probably 10 to 20 years away, said Arun Mujamdar, director of the program, which is called the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.

But the private investment is “a good sign, an endorsement of some sort,” he said. “The best thing the government can do is to catalyze investment.”

While 31 projects have not yet attracted outside help, all are continuing, according to the department. Josh Lerner, a professor at the Harvard Business School and an expert on venture capital, said he would have been surprised if most of the projects had attracted private financing quickly.

If all the projects had quickly drawn private money, it would have suggested that the projects would have happened without government intervention, Mr. Lerner said.

With a track record of six of 37 being picked up, “it’s hard not to feel it’s a reasonable indicator that they’re doing something right,” he said.

So, to cut to the chase, there are three possible outcomes:

1. These are silly wasteful boondoggles. Nonetheless, private capital might be attracted because the research is backed up with huge artificial subsidies, as is the case with ethanol. The only reason ethanol is a fuel additive is that we spend $1.50 per gallon in subsidies. Still, it's true you can "profit" in this industry, because govt policy is distorting price.

2. These are good projects, but would have been invested in by private capital, precisely because they are good projects.

3. These are good projects, but because of imperfect capital markets or basic public goods problems in research no private firm would have invested in them.

I say they are mostly #1. Sure, by dumb luck some of them would have been useful anyway, but then they are category #2.

Note the genius move of the description in the article: We know that some are not #1, because a few have attracted some private investment. And we know that the rest are not #2 because...MOST OF THEM HAVE NO PRIVATE INVESTEMENT!

He actually claims "If all the projects had quickly drawn private money, it would have suggested that the projects would have happened without government intervention."

Brilliant. The lack of private investment PROVES that the public investment is justified, and in fact foresighted and even visionary. Unfortunately, nowhere is it explained why the fact that there is no private investment doesn't imply that these are blue sky bullshit pork projects.

Now, your turn, folks!

(nod to Anonyman)

Green Non-jobs

Wow. Either we have different definitions of "success," or our Prez just doesn't even care about actual facts. Check this:

WASHINGTON – In this week’s address, President Obama called Orion Energy Systems in Manitowoc, Wisconsin an example of how America can win the future by being the best place on Earth to do business. Orion was able to open with the help of small business loans and incentives that are creating demand for clean energy technologies. By sparking innovation and spurring new products and technologies, America will unleash the talent and ingenuity of American workers and businesses, which will lead to new, good jobs.

As Doug North would say, "BUHH-uht..." (he says it with two syllables, really he does). The "but" in this case is more like a "but, but, but, but...wtf?...but..."

Orion Energy is well on its way to bankruptcy. It produces no products that anyone wants to buy. It's a boondoggle. Here's a 4 year stock price chart on AMEX for you: The Obama Admin has a two part test for "succes":

1. Are you receiving money taken at gunpoint from taxpayers, and using it for some purpose that makes lefties happy? Most important, is this something that has no actual market, in the market?

2. Did you spend the money? All of it?

If you can answer "yes" to both sets of questions...you are a SUCCESS! So we'll give you more money.

Archimides is reported to have said, "Give me a large enough lever, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the whole world!"

Obama says, "Give me enough deficit-financed subsidies, and a second term, and I will employ the whole world in failing to produce products that no one wanted to buy in the first place."

Nod to the Blonde

I Told You So, I Did

Now even the NYT admits that the idea of subsidizing "green jobs" isn't working, and can't work.

I did say this, myself.

(To be fair, that's not the NYT, really. That's Ed Glaeser. He's really really smart. Not sure how the NYT made the mistake of letting him write for them.)

(Nod to Anonyman, who has a green thumb)

Grand Game: Climate Edition

You know what to do. Here is the meat...

(Nod to Pelsmin)

Piling On: Leave the Beast Alone

This is unfair. I am happy to enjoy making fun of President Obama for doing stupid s**t, but how can we blame him for taking security seriously? The tone of this story is just out of line. The "symbol" of riding around in little roller skate cars is not the point of the summit. The press is wrong, here. (And I say this as an experienced limo driver myself...)

However, it does reflect that President Obama has become our new Jimmy Carter. Just a joke, a clown. Not entirely his fault, by any means. Even Charles Krauthammer is saying that the press is "silly and vindictive," for heaven's sake.

Can you believe that just a year ago the slobbering Euro-weenies were giving this guy the Nobel Peace Prize? Now they hate him because he doesn't ride in SmartCar. Oh, you fickle Euro-weenies!

Just Kill Yourself

Newsweek has advice about how to save the Earth.

Boiled down: Kill yourself, or at least live in a way that makes you wish you COULD kill yourself. Problem is those greenhouse gases when you fire that bullet into the roof of your mouth: bad for the environment.

(Nod to the Blonde)

Oil Rig Explodes off Louisiana Coast

Damn. Another oil rig explodes.

Developing....

BP Spills Coffee

BP tries to handle coffee spill.

I like how the only woman is the only one who tries to do anything.

(Nod to G. Mankiw, via MJE)