Obama made note about new power sources again in his address, along with the elimination of old ones. The short answer is that if he gets all he wants, some aspects of the American energy economy will actually be in better shape. The key problem is that the very core of the energy economy will be hollowed out and destroyed.

Electricity comes in two principle forms: constant and variable. Variable comes in two forms – on demand and natural.  On demand means you can turn it on at will, whereas natural means you are at the mercy of the power source. On demand usually comes from natural gas “peak plants”, which take up the slack when power demands spike, such as for air conditioning on hot days. 

Our energy grid as of 2006 includes the following sources:

Coal – 49 percent – Constant

Natural Gas – 20.6 percent – Constant or on demand

Nuclear – 19.4 percent – Constant  

Hydroelectric – 7.3 percent – Constant or natural variable

Other Renewable – 2.4 percent – Constant or natural variable

Oil – 1.6 percent – Constant or on demand

Constant Power

Constant power is the backbone of the electrical grid. If power levels vary outside of certain parameters, equipment will either be overloaded into failure or, as counterintuitive as this sounds, under-loaded into failure. Most electrical and electronic devices have certain power parameters within which they are designed to function. This is not only true of your computer or whatever on your end, but the grid itself and its substations.

Coal is the backbone of American power. You simply can’t replace it tomorrow unless you go with more nuclear power plants. The vast majority of your power must be constant in order for the grid to function at all. 

Coal is under attack from environmentalists, and new advertisements indicate that even clean coal is under attack. A TV ad tartly gives a tour of a non-existent clean coal plant. I would love to teach high school mass media, show the advertisement, and ask the class if any facts are given to back up the assertion, or if it’s simply building on the strength of its bite rather than the substance of its argument. At any rate, there are a LOT of “clean coal” technologies, not just one. Some are cleaner than others, and there are different definitions of “clean”. For the liberal, a pure CO2 plume with not a trace of smog or acid rain may as well be pure plutonium. Even so, carbon sequestering technologies also exist for coal plants.

Nuclear provides constant power, which is necessary for the grid to function.  Unfortunately, while the reaction is very efficient, our use of the fuel source is not. This results in waste that liberals are unwilling to recycle the fuel because other nations may follow our example, which makes them more likely and able to make weapons.  Since we already have weapons and since France already recycles, this should be a moot point. There is nothing in any Obama speech or policy statement that gives any indication that more nuclear power plants will be constructed. There are plenty of indications that coal plants will be made to go bankrupt. He said exactly that during the election, and his appointment of a “climate change czar” who supports shrinking the US economy to reduce our power demands – who is also a strong enemy of coal, indicates that the situation is worse than we thought.

You know what they call it when an economy shrinks, don’t you? Of course – it’s called Recession. Unless of course you shrink it quickly and dramatically, then it’s a Depression. 

Hydroelectric is maxed out – about everywhere that can be dammed for power has been dammed for power. If anything, it may diminish as the dams become silted up or are removed by environmentalist groups.

All other sources, both renewable and fossil, are generally confined to variable sources. The renewable sources of solar and wind are entirely limited by the weather. Even with energy storage media, no more than 48 hours of power can be stored. To store 48 hours worth of power in a system dramatically drops its efficiency as a whole because you are making power purely to hold it in some medium and sustain that medium. 

Similarly, wind power is only useful during windy conditions, and the most windy conditions are in areas that are relatively unpopulated. Power lines to run this to the populated areas will loose more than half of the power generated in transferring it to a populated area (more than half our power NOW is lost as heat in the grid, without the added burden of getting something from Nebraska to New York). So this means for every 2-3 wind generators built, only one will actually send power that arrives at the customer, and that assumes the wind is blowing. Ironically, the Kennedy family has lobbied in congress to make it harder to build wind generators, since they would be visually unappealing from their yachts off Martha’s Vineyard. So now wind generators being proposed for Bloomington Illinois are stalled for over a year because of the Kennedys. 

If enough solar panels and wind turbines magically appear in the country tomorrow, guess what? The grid cannot handle the intense variations in power output that these systems would induce. Yes, they could in theory be used sparingly as peak power and could save fuel at coal plants on days when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. However, coal plants cannot simply stop and start efficiently, and neither can nuclear. There is a lot of thermodynamic heating that basically means that they only work efficiently if they stay close to an optimum temperature. 

So once again, Obama’s energy policies would not pass muster at a high school science fair. Unfortunately, he has the power to try, and a trillion dollars in debt later, when our great-grandchildren look at the towers of still wind turbines that they are still paying taxes for building, they will look back on this moment and say, “what the heck were those people thinking?!?!?”.