‘Clean energy” is the political darling of the moment.
President Obama has made the promotion of clean energy one of the centerpieces
of his administration and his reelection effort. The Democratic National
Committee claims that “clean energy” investments are “helping pave the way to a
more sustainable future, creating new jobs and entire industries here in
America.” Last month, the Center for American Progress, a leftist think tank,
released a report that touted the need to build a clean-energy economy.
On Sunday, an editorial in the New York Times extolled
the benefits of renewable energy and declared that the “clean energy industry”
was “one of the few sectors to add jobs” during the recession.
It’s readily apparent that the left is rallying behind the
notion of “clean energy.” But what, exactly, is it? Ah, now there’s the rub.
In March, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D, N.M.) introduced the
Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, which identifies natural gas and nuclear —
along with renewable energy sources — as being “clean.” If that definition
holds, then groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and lots of others will
be in the rather uncomfortable position of having to oppose Bingaman’s measure
even though those very same groups regularly tout the need for more clean
energy.
Proving why this is so takes only a modicum of research.
The Sierra Club claims that the “gas industry is dirty, dangerous, and running
amok.” It continues, saying, “The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it
appears. . . . If we can’t protect our health and treasured landscapes from the
damages caused by the natural gas industry, then we should not drill for
natural gas.”
That’s a remarkable set of statements from the Sierra
Club, particularly given that the group received nearly $26 million in
donations from the gas industry between 2007 and 2010, most of it from
Chesapeake Energy’s now-embattled CEO, Aubrey McClendon. During many of those
years, the Sierra Club supported natural gas because, as Michael Brune, the
group’s executive director, put it, the group’s leaders believed at the time
that this fuel could “play a necessary role in helping us reach the clean
energy future our children deserve.” But in February of this year, the Sierra
Club changed its direction on natural gas and Brune declared that the “only
safe, smart, and responsible” way to address America’s energy needs is to look
beyond coal, oil, and natural gas and to focus on “sources such as wind, solar,
and geothermal.”
As for nuclear, forget it. Since 1974, the club has
opposed “the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors
utilizing the fission process.” The group says that it will continue its
opposition, pending “development of adequate national and global policies to
curb energy over-use and unnecessary economic growth.”
Bill McKibben, perhaps the best-known environmental
activist in America, also dislikes natural gas. The founder of 350.org and a
leader of the movement to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, McKibben recently said
that natural gas is “just a rickety pier stretching further out into the fossil
fuel lake.”
A similar stance is evident at Greenpeace, which says
that natural gas is “a fossil fuel, with some of the same damning negatives as
coal and oil . . . The extraction of natural gas — especially via fracking — is
incredibly harmful to the environment and people’s health.” The group says it
is opposed to hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) because the process is
“wreaking havoc on communities all over the country, as well as on our
climate.”
Nuclear energy is “an unacceptable risk to the
environment and to humanity,” Greenpeace maintains. “The only solution is to
halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and [to force] the shutdown of
existing plants.” It also says, “There is no place for dangerous expensive
nuclear power in meeting future energy demand or in helping to avert
catastrophic climate change.”
Despite the fact that abundant supplies of low-cost
natural gas are helping the U.S. decarbonize more rapidly than the European
Union, Joe Romm, a leading blogger for the Center for American Progress, has
repeatedly slammed natural gas. On March 1, the same day that Senator Bingaman
introduced his bill, Romm wrote that natural gas was a “bridge fuel to
nowhere.” In January, Romm was even clearer about his antipathy toward the
fuel, writing, “We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like
solar and wind, which are going to be some of the biggest, sustainable job
creating industries of the century.”
Romm, like many others on the Left, is also reflexively
anti-nuclear. And given his belief in the dangers posed by carbon dioxide
emissions, that opposition is remarkable. After all, if you are anti–carbon
dioxide and anti-nuclear, you are pro-blackout. Nevertheless, the Center for
American Progress, in its recent report on “clean energy,” ignores nuclear
altogether.
What about coal? The mainstream environmental groups are
uniformly opposed to coal-fired electricity. For instance, the Sierra Club is
spearheading the “beyond coal” campaign, which seeks to shut down all
coal-fired power plants in the U.S. The aim is to stop all coal-fired
electricity production even though the newest plants coming on line are, by
traditional environmental measures, extremely “clean.”
The Prairie State Energy Campus, a $5 billion
state-of-the-art coal-fired plant located in southwestern Illinois, will soon
begin generating electricity. The 1,600-megawatt facility, the biggest
coal-fired power plant to be built in in the U.S. in many years, will produce
0.182 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 0.07 pounds of nitrogen oxide per
megawatt-hour. That’s about half the allowable levels of those pollutants under
the EPA’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which is scheduled to take effect in
2014.
But on March 27, the EPA proposed a rule that would
outlaw the construction of new plants like Prairie State because coal-fired
generation units produce lots of carbon dioxide. In its proposed rule, which
runs to 257 pages, the agency mentions “clean energy” six times. And that takes
us to the punch line: The promotion of “clean energy” is not really about
eliminating traditional pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and
ozone; it’s aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
“Clean energy” isn’t a specific thing — it’s a marketing
slogan. And the slogan is designed to obscure the green movement’s desire to
impose carbon taxes, set limits on carbon dioxide emissions, or both. Politico
reporters Erica Martinson and Jonathan Allen made that clear in their article
on March 21 of this year. Environmental groups admit that “they’ve lost ground
by tackling global warming head-on,” the two wrote. “Their best bet now lies in
a bit of a bait and switch.” The result is a campaign to demonize “dirty” hydrocarbons
by conflating carbon dioxide emissions with asthma.
Last year, Suedeen Kelly, a former member of the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission said that renewable-energy mandates are a
“back-end way to put a price on carbon.” Kelly’s point applies directly to
Bingaman’s bill and the ongoing push for “clean energy.” But rather than have
an open and honest debate about the merits of a carbon tax or the potential
benefits of limiting carbon dioxide emissions, the green movement is pushing a
“clean energy” stalking horse that will result in higher prices for consumers.
The bottom line is obvious: Be wary of “clean energy.”
The Sierra Club is.
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