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Posted on 02/19/2009 7:56:57 AM PST by CedarDave
Plan Could “Chase Away” Tens of Billion Of Dollars In High-Tech Investment From Western States
Denver, CO (Feb. 18, 2009)—A new study says that a climate action plan promoted by several Western governors could prolong the economic recession, weaken already overburdened Western power grids and will deliver a temperature “benefit” of only one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius even after a century of operation. The study, commissioned by the Western Business Roundtable, found that the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade plan could “chase away tens of billions of dollars in high technology investment from the West to other regions” and would “further stress the West’s already strained electricity grid, increasing the threat of potentially catastrophic power outages.”
“The key to creating new jobs while reducing emissions is not to throttle back our economic engine, but to turbo-charge it with new technologies that allow it to run faster, cleaner and more efficiently,” said Jim Sims, President and CEO of the Western Business Roundtable. “The analysis we commissioned predicts that the WCI would disadvantage the West by limiting energy resources and discouraging deployment of new technologies that can help us grow to a more low-carbon economy,” Sims said. “On the contrary, the West needs all the resources we can develop in order to power our way out of this recession and create millions of new high-paying jobs. We need a climate action plan that helps our economy grow while we continue to reduce emissions through cutting-edge, 21st century technologies.”
The analysis of the WCI plan was conducted by Management Information Services, Inc., a highly regarded economic analysis firm that conducts studies for both renewable and fossil energy organizations. The WCI’s proposed regional cap-and-trade plan was unveiled last September by the governors of California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Details on that plan can be seen here.
The study unveiled three findings that Sims said were “a bit shocking.” The first was the WCI plan’s assumption that virtually no baseload power plants would be deployed in the West through the year 2020 fueled by either hydropower, natural gas, coal or nuclear energy, even though nearly all experts predict that the West will experience significant growth in energy demand and will need more baseload power plants to maintain reliability. The second finding was that the WCI recommends that virtually all growth in the West’s electricity demand should be met by mostly intermittent power generation, such as solar and wind farms, and demand reduction. Most experts believe that such a rapid and large deployment of highly variable power sources onto the region’s electrical grid would greatly increase the risk of system failure.
“If the WCI is in fact recommending that we deploy virtually no new baseload power plants, that we and rely solely on renewables and demand destruction, this is a proposal that would weaken the West’s already over-burdened high-voltage transmission grid and could easily deepen or lengthen our economic recession,” Sims said. “President Obama understands the need to aggressively and rapidly build next-generation baseload power plants, including those that capture and sequester GHGs. He knows, as do policymakers across the West, that economic growth is closely tied to availability of affordable energy and a stable and reliable energy infrastructure and that carbon management policies must balance environmental goals with the demands of economic recovery and job creation.”
The third finding is that “the very climate science now driving climate policy in Congress, that of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, predicts that the WCI plan would result in a virtually immeasurable reduction of future global temperatures over the next century of one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius.” “We were frankly a bit shocked by this last finding, but the numbers come straight from the IPCC science and they pretty much speak for themselves,” Sims said. “If the IPCC’s own scientific assumptions and climate change formulas predict such a meager temperature benefit from scenarios that range from the WCI plan all the way to shutting down all fossil fuel power plants in America 100 years, it casts a long shadow on those who say we must take extreme action now without thinking through the entire cost-benefit equation.
The analysis also warned that the WCI plan could result in the following: The WCI plan could increase energy costs and disproportionately harm low-income and minority families, particularly minority families who are among the most vulnerable to price shocks. The WCI’s plan to establish and monitor emissions caps would require the establishment of a large and powerful new government bureaucracy. This could trigger the type of influence-peddling and system “gaming” that has plagued European experiments with such regulatory approaches.
The laws, regulations, mandates and bureaucracy the WCI is proposing go so far as to give WCI climate officials authority even over private companies’ organization and reorganization functions. The Roundtable analyzed the WCI plan according to how it addressed four basic objectives: Would it contribute to increased reliability of the region’s energy production and delivery infrastructure - would it help “keep the lights on” as the West works to create new jobs and pull itself out of economic recession? Would it stimulate new technology investment across the region, especially on carbon capture and sequestration technologies, so that the West can participate in, and benefit from, the deployment of these technologies? Would it deliver measurable and recognizable environmental benefits - measured in terms of reduced future global temperature - to consumers who will pay the costs of these programs and who often view the efficacy of government mandates through the lens of costs versus benefits? Does it strengthen the West’s bargaining position in the upcoming federal policy debates over national GHG mitigation measures?
“This analysis concludes that the WCI plan does not meet any of these objectives,” Sims concluded.
Read and carefully and understand how our current reliable electric grid can become like those in third world countries with very little benefit for world climate change (i.e. it will deliver a temperature “benefit” of only one ten-thousandth of a degree Celsius even after a century of operation!).
For your PING! lists.
““The key to creating new jobs while reducing emissions is not to throttle back our economic engine,”
What needs to be throttled is Al Gore.
Let’s see: The plan was concocted by:
1) Politicians, few of which are intellectually qualified to do anything beyond spelling the word “science” -and aided by
2) Scientists whose prime source of income are govt grants. (Remember, science paid for by those dastardly corporations is BAD, whilst science paid for by our wonderful govt - see point - is GOOD).
Now, do we really need to hypothesize how it’s going to work? Interesting game: Count the parasites in the Obamaloon cabinet who have had real jobs producing or creating something. Betcha don’t run out of fingers.
—so far , Nevada has not joined this idiocy, although with our newly Demotraitor controlled legislature , when they get the financial “crisis” under control, I suspect that it will happen-—
Well, if the end comes I will just stoke my steam generator with dismembered environmentalists and leftists.
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I noticed that and left off Nevada on the list of topics. Feel free to add it if you wish.
These people can’t even predict the weather for the next ten days, let alone ten years. The West will loose its tech base because of three reasons. Illegal immigrants, growing ghettos, lack of good, basic education. Because of these three things, states like California will raise its tax base, causing companies to move out and will have to tax others at high rates to continue to keep its welfare programs, pay for bad education and keep the ghettos growing. Fix these three problems and they will be on their way to recovery.
Yup. Between pure stupidity, utopianism, and abysmal engineering ignorance they are going to plunge this country into an energy crisis. They have these fantasies about "green power" that are completely impractical--and I say that as a person who has a real interest in photovoltaics and solar power. If they start pushing coal & nuclear off the table and then multiply the demands on the grid with things like electric cars, there will be chaos.
Having some independence from the grid or at least a backup in place at this point would probably be a good idea for all of us. You don't need big expensive systems. Start small--with a few rechargeable batteries and a $20 solar charger. Buy a generator while they are still legal.
Despite rulings to the contrary, carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant, and attempts to picture the substance as being so, are either displaying willful ignorance, or knowingly propagating a falsehood. Carbon dioxide is so bound up in our very life processes, it cannot ever be disentangled. We are a carbon-based life form, for cat’s sake, and plants NEED carbon dioxide to even exist. Carbon dioxide is an essential part of the life cycle of all humanity, the entire animal kingdom, the entire plant kingdom and a great many inorganic reactions that take place in the earth’s crust, oceans, atmosphere, and the interior of the planet, and MUST be preserved at all costs.
Know this and know it for a certainty: Carbon dioxide is plant food. Without it, plants wither and die. It is our OBLIGATION to increase carbon dioxide to the degree we are able, to aid our plant life on this planet to grow and extend to its maximum potential.
The Minority Report calls for the removal of petroleum as a source of stored energy to power our civilization. Sorry, can’t do it in ten years. Or twenty. Or a century.
Petroleum is a very compact and easily transformed energy storage medium. We have built most of the infrastructure over the past century on the easy access to coal, petroleum and their derivatives, and to claim now that there is no way we can continue to use that really very plentiful and reliable source, is to say that we should retreat to the caves and trees, decimating our numbers in an endless struggle for declining access to the means to sustain ourselves.
We are not all self-abnegating ascetics and austerity freaks. Some of like to enjoy life just a little, and for an entirely different reason, pick up our messes after ourselves without endless nagging by self-appointed “morality” police. And really ignorant ones at that.
Suggested source of new revenue: Tariffs on ALL imported crude oil, from whatever source, that maintain the price of the imported oil at least $100 per barrel, As the world price drops, the tariff RISES, and as the prices rise above $100, the tariff is lifted completely. Then remove the disincentives for US producers to produce domestic crude oil.
WA Ping
Lurching towards third-world electric power grid reliability.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2189138/posts
Ah, but there's the rub.
Assuming that Obama actually DOES “understand” this inconvenient fact, it doesn't matter.
Our Socialist-in-Chief does not WANT growth, economic recovery, job creation, or affordable energy. In the West, the South, or any other section of the country except the liberal urban downtowns.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
Quick link: WA State Board
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
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If the temps go down, that would mean there is no problem!
How can the government 'help' people if there isn't a problem?
Those in gov't will always find problems. Cuz they ony wanna he'p you!
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