Paul Driessen
Mar 03, 2020
Largely with party-line, urban-vs-rural votes, Virginia’s legislature
is poised to enact a Clean Economy Act that would eliminate coal-based
electricity generation, prevent construction of new gas-fired power
plants – and replace reliable, affordable fossil energy with wind, solar
and battery-backup power. The bills offer important cautionary lessons
for voters, workers and consumers in Virginia and the United States.
Senate
Majority Leader Dick Saslaw has said Virginia has “a climate problem,
and you can’t fix it for free.” However, the climate crisis is mostly
exaggerated, imaginary or based on
faulty computer models. Worse, the “fix” will be anything but free, and it won’t make an iota of difference to the global climate.
The USA has actually had
fewer violent (F3-5) tornadoes the past 35 years than during the previous 35, and not one in 2018.
Hurricane frequency and intensity
has barely changed since 1850 – except that the USA enjoyed a record
12-year absence of Category 3-5 hurricanes, 2005-2017. After rising some
400 feet since the last Ice Age, seas have been rising at just 7-12
inches per century for over 150 years, and a lot of apparent sea level
rise is actually
land subsidence, including around the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area.
Water, ice and water vapor have vastly greater influences on
Earth’s temperatures, climate and weather than do carbon dioxide and all
the other atmospheric gases combined, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick
Moore notes. The oceans have 1,000 times more heat than the atmosphere.
Clouds both trap heat and reflect incoming solar energy. And scientists
still cannot separate human from natural factors in all this.
But Virginia Democrats insist there is a climate crisis, and are determined to end fossil fuels to prevent it.
Virginia’s
“carbon-free” bills would shut down some 6,200 megawatts of coal-based
electricity and ban construction of new gas-fired units. Meanwhile,
China already has 900,000 MW of coal-fired power plants, has another
200,000 MW under construction, is planning an additional 150,000 MW (all
in China),
Greenpeace reports,
and is building or financing numerous coal and gas power plants in
Africa and Asia. India already has hundreds of coal-fired units and is
planning nearly 400 more.
China and
India are building or planning to build hundreds of new airports, and to put millions more cars on their roads.
So even if CO2 does play more than a minor role in
climate change, Virginia’s actions might reduce future warming by an
undetectable 0.001 to 0.01 degree. The bill’s details are revealing, and
troubling.
The nearly enacted law would close America’s newest and
cleanest coal-fired power plant,
unless it can slash CO2 emissions 83% by 2030, using still unproven
“carbon capture and storage” technology. But even if it worked, that
technology would cost millions per year to operate – and require
a third of the power plant’s electricity output to operate. Talk about not being free, especially for local residents.
To replace all the eradicated electricity, Virginia energy companies would install
5,200 MW of offshore wind turbines – apparently GE 12 MW
Haliade-X turbines
manufactured in a new factory in Guangdong Province, due south of
Wuhan. That would require 433 of these behemoths, each one rising 850
feet above the waves some 27 miles off the Norfolk-Virginia Beach
coastline, in 50-70 feet of water.
Constant saltwater and frequent storms will corrode the
turbines, causing them to perform worse every year. Actually getting
5,200 MW of electricity would require that the 433 turbines operate at
100% of rated capacity 24/7/365. If they work only half the time,
Virginia would need 866 monster turbines.
Climate activists and Big Wind developers expect up to 30,000 MW of offshore wind along the East Coast by 2030. That could mean
2,500 gargantuan Heliade-X turbines! The impacts on
radar, aviation, submarines,
surface shipping and fishing would be enormous. Turbine blades would
kill countless birds. Vibration noises and infrasound would impair whale
and dolphin sonar navigation systems for miles.
Since these turbines would be in federal waters, the Interior
Department, National Marine Fisheries Service and other federal agencies
must fully and carefully evaluate their cumulative impacts on all these
human activities and environmental values. They must also address the
cumulative impacts of all the global mining, processing, manufacturing
and other operations required to build and install the turbines.
These
monster windmills will require millions of tons of concrete, steel,
copper, rare earth elements, carbon-fiberglass composites and other raw
materials. Obtaining them will require removing billions of tons of ore
and associated rock, in new or expanded mines all around the world, but
probably
not in the United States.
Wind (and solar) energy would be almost totally dependent on foreign
materials, components and finished products – mostly Chinese.
Pollution, workplace conditions, land and habitat destruction,
child labor and human rights violations, cancers and other terminal diseases among workers and local communities, would be rampant, and abhorrent to most Americans.
Right
now, there are few or no derrick barges capable of installing 12-MW
turbines. Imagine how long it will take to install 400 to 2,500 of them
along the East Coast – and repair or replace them as they age, or after a
huge storm like the
Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 wipes out offshore electricity generation.
The
Clean Economy Act states that another 16,100 MW of fossil fuel
replacement power would come from photovoltaic solar panels. Based on
data for a 400-500 MW
Spotsylvania County, Virginia, solar operation, those panels would completely blanket a land area 3 to 3.5 times larger than Washington, DC.
Arizona
conditions don’t exist in Virginia. Clouds, nighttime, and sub-optimal
sunshine during much of the day and year make it likely that these
millions of panels will actually generate little more than 3,200
megawatts – unpredictably and unreliably. To get the full, legislated
16,100 MW of electricity, Virginia would have to cover up to 18 times
the land area of Washington, DC with panels: some 700,000 acres.
The Virginia legislation (
HB1526 has passed both chambers)
also requires that utility companies construct or acquire 3,100
megawatts of energy storage capacity, presumably batteries. This is
confusing, since batteries don’t generate electricity (megawatts); they
simply store power generated by coal, gas, nuclear, wind or solar
sources (megawatt-hours, MWh). If the legislators mean 3,100 MWh,
Virginia would need 36,500 half-ton Tesla 85-kilowatt-hour battery
packs, requiring still more
lithium and
cobalt sourced from places with terrible environmental and human rights records.
Will
Virginia require that all of its wind, solar and battery materials and
components be responsibly sourced? Will it require independently
verified certifications that none of them involved child labor, and all
were produced in compliance with US and Virginia laws, regulations and
ethical codes for workplace safety, fair wages, air and water pollution,
wildlife preservation and mined lands reclamation?
Getting power
from offshore wind and eastern region solar facilities to communities on
the western side of the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail will require
many new transmission lines across the trail. Environmentalists have
adamantly
opposed gas pipelines that would pass 700 feet
beneath the trail. How will they respond to multiple transmission lines and towers crossing the trail and impairing scenic views?
Wind,
solar, battery and biofuel alternatives are simply not clean, green,
renewable or sustainable. The Clean Economy Act represents greenwashing,
virtue-signaling and government control at their worst. It replaces
reliable, affordable electricity with expensive, unreliable power.
Simply declaring, as this legislation repeatedly does, that all these
actions are “in the public interest” does not make it so.
Eliminating
fossil fuel electricity means lighting, heating, air conditioning,
refrigeration, computing and other costs will soar – for families,
hospitals, schools, churches, businesses, factories and government
agencies. Local, state, US and global environmental impacts will
skyrocket, with no climate benefits.
In Virginia and across
America, liberal cities and counties have provided “sanctuary” status
for illegal immigrants, including repeat criminals. Numerous Virginia
communities have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries.
Perhaps it is time for them to resist the onslaught of climate alarmism
and pseudo-renewable energy craziness – by declaring themselves fossil
fuel sanctuaries, as well.
