"Drilling" For Common Sense On Energy In Bucks

I haven’t had much to say about Bucks County Courier Times columnist J.D. Mullane for some time because he’s largely confined his wingnuttery to his blog, which is something I don’t care to discuss at this moment because I’m eating my lunch.

However, in his column today, he takes note of Patrick Murphy’s appearance at the Lower Makefield, PA Farmer’s Market last Thursday, in which Patrick judged the “Great Zucchini Race”…

Just before the zucchinis zoomed down a 12-foot plywood track, a half-dozen protesters closed in on Murphy, holding signs that criticized him and his Democratic Party on oil, drilling and energy.

Murphy, with his 150-watt smile, largely ignored them. Afterward, glancing at the sign-holders, he said with a shrug, “That's politics.”

And by the way, it should be noted that, since they disagreed with the Democrats, these were “good” protestors as far as J.D. is concerned, not “hippies” opposing the Iraq war who should be tear gassed, as Mullane called for here.

And where exactly does Patrick come down on the matter of energy?

“Let's make this clear,” Murphy told one man, who drilled the congressman on oil drilling, “I am for drilling. I'm a Blue Dog Democrat. I just want to make sure it's responsible drilling.”

Which means, Murphy told me, he opposes expanding drilling off the U.S. coasts. Tourism and environmental protection are his concerns. He's OK with drilling in Alaska, though not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR.

Drilling, he said, must be balanced with wind and solar energy.

“There's a reason we're creating a green energy hub here in Bucks County,” he said.

Well said, though Mullane tells us the following…

Renewable energy is fine, but even if we tripled wind power tomorrow, it would provide only 10 percent of our energy needs. Where do we get the other 90 percent?

Solar power, an engineer explained to me, is decades from rivaling the efficiency of fossil fuels. And when home-based solar energy arrives, those lovely old shade trees in your yard will have to go.

I guess we’ll have to pry that pump of petrol “from your cold, dead hands,” huh J.D.? And what an idiotic claim to make, namely, that we’ll automatically have to dig out the chainsaws and hack down our forests to make solar work.

Well, in that case, I would like to point out once again that that “liberal, tree hugging Democrat” Governor Ahh-nold of the state of Caa-Lee-Four-Nee-Aah (who, apparently, is on the mark concerning global warming and energy issues but dead wrong on everything else) pointed out recently that, after former President Jimmy Carter gave his February 1977 speech on energy (for which he was roundly chastised by conservatives, of course), we took some halting steps towards developing a solar power industry, though all of that was derailed by The Sainted Ronnie R, Mullane’s hero of course (with Reagan tearing down the solar panels Carter had installed on the White House after he took over in 1981).

However, as Ahh-nold reminded us, Germany took those steps also at the same time, though they continued to the present day. And as a result (as noted here)…

Germany, the world leader in (solar photovoltaics (PV), which convert sunlight into electrical power) thanks to its "feed-in tariff" support, installed 1.1 gigawatts of capacity last year - the equivalent of a large power station. It now has nearly half a million houses fitted with PV panels. The feed-in tariff pays people with solar panels above-market rates for selling power back to the grid.

"High oil prices have boosted demand even more. The market will probably expand another 40% this year," said Carsten Körnig, of the German solar industry association, referring to both PV and solar thermal systems, which produce hot water. He said his previous assumption - that grid parity would be reached in Germany in five to seven years - now looked very conservative since it allowed for only a 3% rise in electricity prices each year. In many countries increases of 20% a year are becoming the norm.

…

Demand is particularly high in Spain, Germany and Greece but Britain's PV market remains non-existent in the absence of a feed-in tariff. The industry has very high hopes for the American market, though, as fears of energy dependence grow. Suntech's marketing director, Jeffrey Schubert, said:

"Things will get much better after the [US] election. Oil prices have accelerated the change and our intention is to no longer rely on government subsidies as an industry."

I hope that assumption about our election is right; if by some awful development John W. McBush gets in (God help us), all bets are off as far as I’m concerned.

So Germany leads the world in solar; guess who gets the nod for wind power?

Well, as Little Tommy Friedman tells us here (I hate to give him credit on energy because of his vile Iraq war cheerleading, but unfortunately I have to)…

There is little whining here about Denmark having $10-a-gallon gasoline because of high energy taxes. The shaping of the market with high energy standards and taxes on fossil fuels by the Danish government has actually had “a positive impact on job creation,” added Hedegaard. “For example, the wind industry — it was nothing in the 1970s. Today, one-third of all terrestrial wind turbines in the world come from Denmark.” In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. Energy technology exports rose 8 percent in 2007 to more than $10.5 billion in 2006, compared with a 2 percent rise in 2007 for Danish exports as a whole.

“It is one of our fastest-growing export areas,” said Hedegaard. It is one reason that unemployment in Denmark today is 1.6 percent. In 1973, said Hedegaard, “we got 99 percent of our energy from the Middle East. Today it is zero.”

Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.

…

Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas — Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company — told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.

Why should you care?

“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”

So please keep in mind that, while there’s nothing “rotten in the state of Denmark” if you will, on energy generated from turbines, development of “clean” energy in this country has been forestalled in large part by Mullane and his conservative fellow travelers, spouting a wholly other, inadvertent source of wind power from nothing but hot air.