Power Hungry (4 page)

Despite Obama's statement, and despite the ongoing political push for more low- or no-carbon forms of energy, environmental activists remain adamantly opposed to nuclear power generation. In 2005, some three hundred environmental groups—including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and Public Citizen—signed a manifesto that said, “We flatly reject the argument that increased investment in nuclear capacity is an acceptable or necessary solution.... Nuclear power should not be a part of any solution to address global warming.”
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That position ignores nuclear power's many benefits. Nuclear power not only has zero carbon-dioxide emissions, it also produces very small amounts of waste, requires little real estate, and provides large quantities of always-on power. It does, however, come with two significant drawbacks: Nuclear power plants are expensive, and they take years to build and put into operation. Thus, achieving a substantial increase in nuclear power production in the United States will take decades. In the meantime, natural gas provides the most attractive option.

Together, natural gas and nuclear are essential to the ongoing decarbonization of the world's primary energy use, a trend that has been ongoing for about two hundred years. Decarbonization, the trend favoring fuels with lower carbon content, is occurring because energy consumers are always seeking cleaner, denser forms of energy that allow them to do work cleaner, faster, and more precisely. Embracing N2N offers a no-regrets energy policy that will lead to further decarbonization while providing multiple benefits to the United States and the rest of the world.

The structure of this book follows the basic outline contained in the title. In Part 1, I discuss our hunger for power, how much we use, where it comes from, and why our desire for power of all kinds continues to increase. I show that the deluge of criticism about how Americans “use too much energy” is off base, and I describe the sheer scale of our power consumption, explain why we use hydrocarbons such as coal, oil, and natural gas, and show why we'll keep using them for a long time to come.

In Part 2, I debunk many of the myths that people believe about “green” energy by showing that renewables are not the solution to our environmental problems. I demonstrate that wind power is the electricity sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam. Like ethanol, wind power is a subsidy-dependant juggernaut that is the antithesis of “green.” I show that wind power has not and likely will not make substantial cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, and I take a hard look at a country that—in theory, at least—is supposed to provide a model for the United States and other nations embarking on wind power: Denmark. I have some fun at the expense of T. Boone Pickens by exposing the false claims contained in “Pickens Plan,” and I show why the hype over ideas such as carbon capture and sequestration, cellulosic ethanol, and electric cars is just that—hype.

In Part 3, I demonstrate why N2N makes so much sense. I look at the megatrends that favor natural gas and nuclear, provide a brief history of the U.S. gas business, and explain how the U.S. natural gas industry has unlocked galaxies of methane from rocks that were once thought to be impossible to tap. I also explore the technologies that could enable us to address the problem of nuclear waste and those that could help us to revive the U.S. nuclear sector.

That's the outline. But before going further, let me add one other important point about my perspective in this book: There's no political agenda at work here. I am neither Republican nor Democrat. I'm a charter member of the Disgusted Party, a raging centrist, and a recovering liberal. My energy policy is simple: I'm in favor of air conditioning and cold beer. My motivation for writing this book comes from a desire to break through the energy happy-talk so that the United States can have a serious discussion about its future. Energy realities are not dictated by the ideologies of the Left or the Right. They are determined by the laws of physics and the brutal realities of big numbers.

In one of the best-selling business books of all time,
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't
, author Jim Collins explained the factors that separate great companies from the also-rans. Among the most essential was that companies that do well confront the brutal facts.
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In a section called “Facts Are Better Than Dreams,” Collins said that successful organizations had a rigorous process of disciplined thought. While making strategic decisions, smart companies “infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality.”
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We must confront the brutal facts about energy. But as we do so, there's plenty of reason for optimism. If we are smart, we face a bright future; that future need not be one of energy shortages and energy crises, but instead can be one of energy abundance. The key words in that last sentence are “if we are smart.” And that's the challenge. Over the past few years, American voters have been bombarded with nonsense about energy, and much of that nonsense has been embraced. One reason the American public has believed the nonsense is that many of us are woefully ignorant about science and math. Add in a dollop of guilt and a few drams of fear, and it becomes apparent why the United States is in such a quandary.

But first things first. Before we can debunk the nonsense, we must understand the difference between energy and power.

Power Tripping 101

W
E DON'T GIVE A DAMN about energy. What we want is power.

Differentiating between the two is essential. Here's the simplest way to do so: Energy is the ability to do work; power is the rate at which work gets done.
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The more power we have, the quicker the work gets done. And in our speed-obsessed world, we are constantly finding ways to use more power—from a handful of electrons racing through the thinnerthan-a-human-hair circuits of a microprocessor to the vast quantities of thrust developed by the jet turbines on a Paris-bound 767.

We don't care what energy
is
. We want what energy
does
. We would gladly fill our fuel tanks with jelly beans, marbles, or Hostess Twinkies if they could deliver the power needed to propel our Camrys and Suburbans to places like Wasilla or Waxahachie. We aren't after energy, we are after what energy provides. And what energy provides is power. We use energy to make power. We convert energy—measured in barrels of oil, tons of coal, and cubic feet of gas—into power, which we tabulate in watts or horsepower.

Much, if not all, of human history can be seen as the pursuit of increasing amounts of power. Whether it's the Egyptians and the Mesoamericans coordinating and harnessing hordes of human muscle to build the pyramids, the use of horses in warfare, Hannibal's use of elephants to cross the Alps in 218 B.C., the first use of steam to drive a piston, the gallop of General George Patton's tanks across France in the summer of 1944, or the Saturn V rockets (which produced 160 million
horsepower, or 120 gigawatts) that catapulted American astronauts to the Moon, there has been a consistent, millennia-long effort to find and utilize more power.
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Power allows us to do things that make us happy, wealthy, and comfortable. Power gets us up in the air and down the road. Power fetches the e-mail, makes the coffee, and bakes the cake. Power allows us to cut the grass, roast the turkey, cool the beer, fly to Rome, and, of course, keep the lights on. While those facts may seem self-evident, here's the essential truth about our power-driven world: The overwhelming majority of the power we use comes from hydrocarbons because they can provide us with the reliable and abundant power that we desire.

Today, 90 percent of the horsepower we use (or, if you prefer, 9 out of every 10 watts) comes from the burning of oil, natural gas, and coal.
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And the key attribute of hydrocarbons is their reliability. Renewable energy is dandy, but it simply cannot provide the gargantuan quantities of always-available power that we demand at prices we can afford. The production of electricity from the wind and the sun will continue growing rapidly in the years ahead. But those sources are incurably intermittent. As Stewart Brand, the environmental activist and creator of the
Whole Earth Catalog
, put it during a lecture in mid-2009, “wind and solar can't help because we don't have a way to store that energy.”
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Given our inability to store the energy that comes from wind and solar, those sources will remain bit players in our overall energy mix for the foreseeable future.

After two decades of studying the energy business, I believe those points about energy and power are self-evident. They are not based on ideology; instead, they are grounded in basic physics and basic math. I'm not opposed to environmental protection. Far from it: I'm a birdwatcher and a beekeeper. But now that I've reached middle age, I've finally learned how to use a calculator. Using that device—as well as a bunch of Excel spreadsheets and basic textbooks on physics—has forced me to become a realist on energy issues. And therein lies my frustration: As I've become more pragmatic, our public discourse about energy and energy policy has gone the other way. Discussions about energy matters—which are usually accompanied by arguments about climate change—have devolved into a vitriolic, divisive mess where facts and reasoned argument are largely ignored. In their place we hear vituperative
attacks on the “deniers,” adolescent arguments about whose fault it is or isn't that the climate is changing, and outlandish claims about the speed with which the United States can (or should) transform its multitrillion-dollar energy and power delivery systems into “greener” ones. Scientists, journalists, and analysts who dare question the apocalyptic predictions of the global warming alarmists are likely to feel the electronic wrath of bloggers such as Joe Romm, the self-appointed Savonarola of the Al Gore acolytes.
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Since September 11, 2001, the United States and the rest of the Western world has been inundated with claims that we should radically change our energy (and power) diet, and do so immediately. We're told that we should abandon our existing systems for something new, something that's low-carbon, solar-powered, wind-powered, or, better yet, powered by the energy sector's single most desired element: unobtanium.

It doesn't seem to matter where the new power will come from as much as it does that we all agree that moving to something else—anything else—is a really good idea. We must, we're told, make a hurried energy transition, because:

These claims seem plausible, and in some cases, they are being put forward by credible people. But they are largely based on faulty assumptions. The promoters of these arguments have gained traction in recent years because the overwhelming majority of the American public simply isn't equipped with the facts. The arguments are often designed as flag-waving, emotional appeals that are accompanied by a big dose of fear, and as a consequence the U.S. public has been primed to believe that an overhaul of our energy system is not only essential, it's patriotic and spiritually righteous, it's good business, and it will once and for all cure the problems of halitosis and premature baldness.

Here's the reality: Whether the issue is oil imports, carbon dioxide emissions, or a peak in global petroleum production, we live in an increasingly interdependent world.
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With regard to oil and imports, the promoters of energy autarky ignore a myriad of inconvenient truths. Among them: During the first six months of 2009, the United States exported—yes, exported—an average of 1.9 million barrels of oil per day.
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At that level, U.S. oil exports are on par with countries such as Angola and Venezuela.
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Of course, the vast majority of those exports are refined products, not crude. Why has the United States become a major player in the international oil market for refined products? Because U.S. refineries are among the best in the world, and they can produce the types of fuels the global market demands. Thus, the United States, the world's biggest importer of oil, is also one of its biggest exporters, and it has been a major exporter for years. So here's a tip: The next time you hear somebody promoting “energy independence,” grab your wallet. Whatever they are proposing to achieve that delusional goal will surely cost you money.