Today, coal produces more than half the electricity consumed in America. Natural gas, nuclear and conventional hydroelectric make up another 45% meaning that combined, geothermal, wind and solar along with all the other alternative forms of power comprise a mere 5% of the total production into the US power grid.
This statistic points out one simple truth. All the best efforts of the environmentalists, those who lead by example and those who vocally attempt to intrude in everyone else’s life through legislation, have accomplished little except for driving up the price of oil by restricting exploration.
The reason for this reality are as simple to understand as they are fundamental. America is a consumer driven society and, until the cost of producing electricity by alternate means can compete effectively with the cost of coal fired power, they will not assume the status of preferred provider. Simply put, no electric utility is going to willingly pay $.30 for a kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity when it can generate it for $.07 – $.10 from a coal fired plant. If they did, the consumers would raise holy heck when their electric bills tripled.
Let’s face it, most Americans are ecologically minded until it inconveniences them or hits them in the pocketbook. Still, despite this somewhat gloomy analysis of the current alternative energy situation, there is good news on the horizon. Coal fired electricity is getting more expensive while the cost of generating electricity through alternative energies is getting cheaper.
The cost of coal has doubled since the first of the year, driving up the per kWh price of electricity to record levels and, while the coal industry has advanced their technologies to reduce the cost of both extraction and electric generation, they haven’t been able to even begin to match the progress being made every day by the alternative energy industries.
With the renewed focus on alternative energies, which always means renewed investments toward advancing the technologies, the per kWh costs of generating alternative energies will soon match, then fall below the equivalent cost of coal. When this occurs, alternative energy will rightly assume the role of preferred provider and the transition of an industry dependent upon coal to the more environmentally friendly energy sources will begin in earnest.
At $.05-$.08 per kWh, geothermal energy had already equaled and now surpasses the cost effectiveness of coal and, as drilling and harnessing technologies continue to improve, we expect to see geothermal generation plants sprouting up more and more, first in Nevada then where ever the heat is within our reach.
Other alternative energies are not far behind. According to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation the cost of producing electricity via concentrated solar power (CSP), the science of using parabolic mirrors to concentrate the heat of the sun onto a generating tower, could fall to between $.08and $.10 per kWh when the capacity exceeds 3,000 megawatts.
While photovoltaic generation on a commercial scale would still cost between $.15 and $.22 per kWh in a prime location like Phoenix, Arizona, it is estimated that by 2015 PV generated electricity should achieve “grid parity” and no longer require financial incentives or subsidies. In places like Hawaii and Italy, PV electricity is already cheaper than conventional electricity.
Wind power has already proven its cost effectiveness and has achieved significant use in Europe. Since the power source, wind, is free, the cost of generating electricity by wind, solar and geothermal is computed considering the cost of constructing the generating unit over its effective lifetime. By any measure, wind turbines produce the cheapest but least reliable power source and it is only the concerns of environmentalists supported by rich politicians like Ted Kennedy who don’t want their view from their Cape Cod or Florida ocean front mansions altered by a few wind turbines many miles offshore that keep wind from taking its rightful place as a prime supplier to America’s electric grid.
Irrational voices are also raised by animal rights activists claiming wind turbines are harmful to birds. While it’s true that wind turbines kill about 70,000 birds every year, this hardly compares to the 57 million birds killed each year by cars or the 97.5 million birds who die trying to fly through plate glass windows. Unless we are willing to park our cars and remove the glass from our windows to prevent further aviary mayhem, we perhaps should consider that birds who are ignorant enough to fly in the path of a speeding vehicle or through a plate glass window, or a into a wind turbine blade won’t be breeding nearly as much as those who have figured it out and eventually the species will evolve to a greater state of awareness.
The simple fact is that petroleum is a diminishing resource. Coal, although sufficiently abundant to provide for America’s electrical needs for generations to come, continues to rise in price and carries a heavy environmental toll. Then consider geothermal, solar and wind energy. Each individually possesses sufficient available and renewable energy to meet the the entire world’s energy needs far into the foreseeable future as we care to look without pollution and, for now at least, at declining costs. Still, in the end, it’s consumerism and not governmental intervention that is driving America toward alternative energy and independence from fossil fuels and it’s this American ingenuity that will, in the end, cause our shift in replacing first gas, then coal as the primary sources to America’s power grid.
