Climate and energy

More questions that have emerged from the hearings – and hey, BTW, I don’t come up with all of these answers by myself. Awesome volunteers and blog readers help me out immensely. Thank you, team.

Q: What are greenhouse gases and why do they matter? Is water vapor one of them?

I am taking most of this straight from the CEP main website’s FAQ section, and the following links are to our Glossary.

Greenhouse gases are gases in the earth’s atmosphere that trap solar radiation and keep it from reflecting back into space. Greenhouse gases are important because when they build up in the atmosphere, they trap heat and warm up the earth, a process known as global warming. Global warming leads to climate change. There are many different kinds of greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, various fluorinated gases, water vapor, etc. Many greenhouse gases also occur naturally. However, recent human activities have shifted their balance in the atmosphere. During the past two hundred years or so since industrialization, humans have generated and circulated far vaster quantities of GHGs than normally existed in natural processes like the carbon cycle. In particular, these gases result from the burning of fossil fuels.

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. It is accounted for in all climate models. According to the EPA Climate Change Glossary‘s definition of water vapor: “The most abundant greenhouse gas, it is the water present in the atmosphere in gaseous form. Water vapor is an important part of the natural greenhouse effect. While humans are not significantly increasing its concentration, it contributes to the enhanced greenhouse effect because the warming influence of greenhouse gases leads to a positive water vapor feedback. In addition to its role as a natural greenhouse gas, water vapor plays an important role in regulating the temperature of the planet because clouds form when excess water vapor in the atmosphere condenses to form ice and water droplets and precipitation.”

Q: How do you compare the jobs from the coal plants to jobs gained from developing renewable energy, like wind?

A: We can borrow a great example from Representative Tom Sloan, that he used in the hearings on Wednesday. He asked how much wind power it would take to replace the Holcomb plants. (He used the figure of 1,500 MW, instead of the 1,400 MW of the proposed Holcomb plants, so we are going with 1,500 as well). He calculated that to create 1,500 MW of wind power, presuming a 40% capacity factor, that would mean about 2,500 turbines of the 1.5 MW size each.

That’s a lot of turbines. That’s also a lot of jobs – more than the 110 permanent jobs to be created by Holcomb. Taking Rep. Sloan’s numbers, and applying them to NREL’s wind economic development numbers, this is how it works: Every 100 MW wind farm creates a minimum of six full-time operations and maintenance jobs – good-paying jobs – so that is 150 permanent jobs. Wind farm construction jobs run anywhere from 100-200 jobs per 100 MW (although CEP expects that contractors would emerge who would cover most of those jobs, just like steel workers). Landowners also receive between $2,000-$4,000 in lease payments per turbine. The county also receives ongoing payments in lieu of taxes.

Also, 2,500 turbines would be spread over possibly as many as ten counties. That spreads out a lot of economic development. The coal plants would be located in one county. In addition, President Bush has set a goal of the country generating 20% of its electricity from wind by 2030. Kansas’s share of this total would come to around 7,100 MW. That’s a huge amount of permanent jobs.

According to a press release from EERE’s Windpowering America, developing wind has already contributed greatly to rural economic development. In the words of Allen Rider, a member of 25x ’25:

“This is one of the few times that I’ve seen the opportunity for more jobs, good paying jobs, in rural America. We had a study done by the University of Tennessee for an economical analysis, and they’re talking about in the neighborhood of five-million jobs associated with the development and the production of renewable energy. Typically we’ve been talking about bigger farms, less people, less job opportunity. So as a consequence, this is a big deal in rural America.”

In fact, from the rural development standpoint, Rider says this is one of the most exciting things he’s seen for the agriculture industry in his entire lifetime.

“For many years, one of the biggest problems in the agricultural and forestry industry is rural development, where people can have jobs and work in rural communities. Renewable energy generation, whether it be wind or one of the other types, does employ people and it provides an opportunity to have a strong, robust economic environment in a rural community, which in the past has not been there. So it can be a real boost for a rural economy, particularly in small farmer communities where there have not been opportunities for people to get jobs and stay in the area.”

Q: What is the connection between developing ethanol plants and building more coal-fired power plants?

The argument is that if ethanol plants do not have access to cheap, coal-fire generated electricity, then they will not locate in Kansas. The concern is that without cheap electric power, there will be no economic development. This is absolutely an important concern. Encouraging economic development is a complicated recipe with lots of ingredients, and messing up one could indeed risk spoiling the whole dinner.

However, the national statistics do not bear out the idea that economic development and cheap power are necessarily linked. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), California has some of the highest energy prices in the nation (almost double those of Kansas). However, it also has one of the largest economies in the world.

This issue of cheap power and economic development is also bigger than ethanol. All businesses face a similar challenge: under federal carbon regulation, the price of all fossil fuels burned for electrical generation will increase. Businesses are meeting this challenge in a variety of ways. Some are implementing aggressive programs of energy efficiency. Others are adding renewable energy generating facilities to their operations, to help wean their dependence from the grid and high-carbon fossil fuels.

— Maril Hazlett

Want to know more about climate and energy in the Midwest? Check out www.climateandenergy.org.