Commentary by James Shott
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, built by Bechtel, is a joint
effort of NRG, Google, and BrightSource Energy, and is said to be the largest
state-of-the-art renewable energy production project of its kind.
Ivanpah is a $2.2 billion solar project in the California
desert consisting of
three solar thermal power plants on a 4,000-acre tract of public land near the Mojave
Desert and the California-Nevada border. The facility was financed in part by
$1.5 billion in federal loans,
utilizes more than 170,000 mirrors mounted to the ground that reflect
sunlight up to three 450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat water to
create steam, which in turn is used to generate electricity.
The green energy and climate change lobbies are, of course,
excited about from this dream-come-true example of how the U.S., and eventually
the world, can survive and thrive without pollution-causing coal-burning and
natural gas-burning electricity production facilities.
But their hopes have exceeded reality, as is so often the
case with these idealistic dreams. The project has three major problems, one of
which has produced a huge rift between the left’s internal factions. While
green energy folks are ecstatic over the huge solar plant, other
environmentalists are outraged that the plant has killed thousands of birds,
many of which are fried to death.
The second problem is that the so-called green energy plant
is not as green as you might expect: It burns fossil fuels and produces
pollution. Ivanpah burns natural gas each morning for start-up, up to 525 million cubic feet of
natural gas annually, and reportedly burned 867,740 million BTU of natural gas, which is enough
to power the annual needs of 20,660 Southern California homes, and it emitted
46,084 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014.
Furthermore, it has so far failed to produce the expected
power it is
contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp. As a result, the solar
plant may be forced to shut down unless the California Public Utilities
Commission gives permission for PG&E to overlook the shortfall and give
Ivanpah another year to sort out its problems.
The Wall Street
Journal reported that spokesmen for Ivanpah’s operator, BrightSource, and
NRG declined to comment on its future, but NRG said it has taken more than a
year to adjust equipment and learn how to best run it. The Journal also reported that the Energy Department supports
giving the plant, which started operating in early 2014, more time.
Advocates also paint an over-positive picture of solar
energy job creation. The Solar Energy Industries Association touts spectacular
job growth in the solar industry, boasting “the solar industry continues to
support robust job growth, creating 35,052 new jobs in 2015, a growth rate of
approximately twelve times greater than that of the overall economy.”
The overall job creation rate was a pitiful 1.74 percent,
and 12 times that figure means roughly 21 percent for the solar industry. That
sounds pretty good, but fast job growth during new industry “booms” is not
unusual. Touting such growth is good PR, even when it exaggerates reality.
But when you analyze this project, it quickly becomes clear
that government has more to do with this increase than does the actual market
demand for workers in solar energy. You, the taxpayer, heavily subsidized this
industry, and when taxpayer money pays the bills, an industry can and does
create jobs without a real demand for them.
Under President Barack Obama, the federal government has
wasted billions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money on green energy
efforts that failed, or under-performed, even as it enacted policies that
punished Americans working in the coal industry and related businesses with
substantial unemployment, created income problems in the economies of coal
producing states, and burdened all Americans with higher energy prices. The
administration’s tunnel vision on reducing the non-existent or miniscule
effects on the environment of fossil fuel energy production that have powered
the U.S. and most of the world for decades, has caused untold misery.
The heralded Solyndra debacle put 1,100 people out of work
when it closed down, and wasted $535 million in government loans. And, the Abound Solar plant, which
got $400 million in federal loan guarantees in 2010, when the Obama
administration sought to use stimulus funds to promote green energy, filed for
bankruptcy two years later. That facility sits unoccupied, is littered with
hazardous waste, broken glass and contaminated water, and will require an
estimated $3.7 million to clean and repair the building for use.
None of this pain and suffering was needed; the normal
progress of technological advancement would eventually have gradually replaced
fossil fuels as the primary source of electricity, when those less polluting
methods were up to the task, like the automobile replaced the horse and buggy.
Once the left gets an idea, however, it dives in head first,
eyes closed, with a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” approach that
generally produces more harm than good.
Barack Obama lets nothing get in the way of his ideological
fantasies, least of all reality. Any harm and destruction that occurs is
regarded as necessary collateral damage on the way to his socialist Utopia.
Cross-posted from Observations
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