Climate Climate & Energy

Can words describe how bad corn ethanol is?

Well, maybe my words can't describe how bad corn ethanol is, or Mayor Bloomberg's, or those of top scientists, but I think I have found someone's words that do: Opus's from Bloom Country.

First, however, the lastest grim news from Fortune: "The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike." Yes, "plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months." Why?

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it's become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

If you can't make money with oil at $100 a barrel, you are not much of an alternative fuel.

But I know what you're thinking -- if corn ethanol is so bad, what's wrong with plants being scrapped? Well, the corn ethanol business is here to stay. The corn ethanol mandate from the most recent energy bill requires doubling supply from current levels. Fortune explains what that means:

Oh hell yes

More here.

Power plants’ costs doubled since 2000

According to a new index by Cambridge Energy Research Associates:

The cost of building a U.S. power plant has risen 130 percent since 2000, and 27 percent in the 12 months to October 2007 alone.

CERA's Candida Scott explains most of the implications:

Even more numbers to illuminate the vast ocean

Perhaps because it was released the same week as Ben Halpern and colleagues' excellent human impacts map, the new U.N. report "In Dead Water" has been met with little fanfare. It's too bad, because the report is a natural complement to the scientists' graphic illustration of the intersection between humans and the seas.

"In Dead Water" takes a big-picture look at the five primary threats facing the oceans: pollution, climate change, overfishing, invasive species, and habitat loss. You can download the report here (PDF); I plucked out some of its major findings in an oceanic ode to the Harper's Index. With apologies to Lewis Lapham:

Climate skeptic tries to throw cold water on global warming, gets all wet

From an article titled "Cold Water on 'Global Warming'" (paraphrased):

My climate change prediction is that no one outside of our own inner circle of discredited charlatans and industry shills will want to sit around and watch The Great Global Warming Swindle reruns for three straight days, even if it is at the Times Square Marriott. Once my prediction comes true, I can blame it all on the liberal media.

Daylight saving time wastes energy, study says

I have been asked this question about daylight saving time many times. I have long believed it was not an energy saver -- even though that is how it is typically justified. Turns out there is quantitative proof.

For those who are interested in this relatively obscure issue -- I doubt Congress would change DST on the basis of this or any other study -- you can read a very good article in the Wall Street Journal. "Springing forward," as we will do March 9, "may actually waste energy":

Wind power gets a bad rap after the Texas blackouts

The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Iain Murray warns of the dangers of renewables:

While we're on the subject of renewables: here's further proof that wind power is no panacaea for the nation's looming electricity crisis. The wind dropped in Texas, and caused blackouts.

Indeed, an unexpected demand spike not met by coal-fired power plants wind power caused irreparable harm by unfairly favoring the unwashed masses over "large industrial customers who are paid to reduce power use when emergencies occur" on Tuesday. Tuesday was the very day nuclear, natural gas, and coal power demonstrated their unfailing reliability to 3 million Floridians. More Murray:

Meanwhile, in Denmark, wind turbines are exploding. Dramatic video (provenance uncertain, so may not be genuine) here. This follows the fatal collapse of a wind tower in Oregon last summer. They also come with environmental costs of their own.

Now, of course, all energy production comes with risks, but wind power has such a positive image that people think of it as completely safe, environmentally-friendly and reliable. That's not the case.

I, for one, would take mountaintop removal, mercury emissions, and global warming over dangerous wind power any day!

Notable quotable

“Oh, yeah? That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.” — President George W. Bush, upon hearing that numerous analysts are predicting $4/gallon gasoline

A celebration of hot air on Broadway

No, you couldn't make this one up.

It's a meeting, starting Sunday, of hundreds of "scientists" and propagandists, convening to denounce the proposition that global warming is real.

It's like a gathering of the Flat Earth Society. Or, since this meeting literally is taking place on Broadway, it recalls the great Preston Jones play, The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, which did run briefly on Broadway.

Carl Pope talks market failures with energy execs at Houston energy conference

Today's second panel -- Carl's, on "conservation and the environment" -- opened with remarks from Houston Mayor Bill White. Despite my earlier comments about the road-crazy Bayou City, Mayor White laid out some items from what appears to be a truly progressive energy agenda for Houston, including making it an international leader in green buildings.

Some of his more interesting comments came when White told the story of being one of the staffers that helped write the Energy Policy & Conservation Act of 1975, the original fuel economy law. He spoke of the doubling in fuel economy occasioned by the law, but then -- in a story I'd never heard -- spoke of trying to incorporate pickups and the forebears of today's gas-guzzling SUVs into the law. Unfortunately, this provision was "hijacked," as he put it, and became an exemption for so-called "work trucks," even when they did nothing more than ferry suburban hausfraus around. Thankfully last year's energy bill finally closed this disastrous SUV loophole.

White noted that he himself drives a car that gets 49 miles per gallon and while he's happy about the big boost in CAFE, we "can do, shoulda done, and will do better." He agreed that doubling our current fuel economy is "not a stretch" and could be done with technology that exists today. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he's switched over the vast majority of the city's fleet of passenger vehicles and public buses to hybrids and is now looking to the other vehicles like garbage trucks.