Energy Consumption to Triple : Environmentalists Stop New Construction

Environmentalists see the future of the this country differently than the rest of us - to them it about a philosophy that centers on themselves and their friends that think like they do - it doesn't anything to do with saving the planet for all man kind. Like the politicians, it's about power and control.

Obama, and many other politicians, buy into this idea as it is a nice fit with their own agendas - a politician's main force is getting elected, and staying elected, and they will do anything to make that happen. So it's a power grab for both parities.

Control of the environment that the population must have to survive and grow as a nations works nicely for the environmentalist because they get to control the politician which in turn can control the population and stay in power. See this as the fraud of global warming and follow this with the carbon credits and now the "cap and trade" on all power generation from natural resources.

Keep the faith - but ask this question - what do they gain by crippling the country with higher taxes and a declining national growth curve?


The Left’s Energy Efficiency Gamble
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/12/29/the-lefts-energy-efficiency-gamble/

* Posted December 29th, 2008 at 3.09pm in Energy and Environment
http://blog.heritage.org/category/energy-and-environment/.

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Glenn English and
Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Association of Electric Cooperative CEO
Jackson Reasor write in the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122500662.html:

In the past five years, utility bills have risen 30 percent, largely
because of the rising cost of fuel, mainly coal and natural gas. The
country’s leading consumer organizations, including the Consumer
Federation of America and Consumers Union, recently wrote to
President-elect Barack Obama, calling on him "to devote as much
attention to the affordability of electricity as has been devoted to
gasoline."

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that by 2030,
demand for electricity will be 30 percent higher, the equivalent of
adding four Californias to the power grid.

In some regions, demand will soon outstrip supply. The North America
Electric Reliability Corp., which oversees the reliability of the U.S.
electric power grid, projects that the desert Southwest will be at risk
for blackouts in 2010 because of a shortage of power generation
capacity. An Agriculture Department report this year on rural electric
power generation found that "brownouts are probable unless investment in
transmission is increased and simultaneously, energy efficiency efforts
and demand side management must be intensified."

These warnings echo what we’ve reported before from the North American
Electric Reliability Corporation. According to NERC, over the next
decade 135 gigawatts of new capacity will be needed to meet the growth
in consumption. But right now plants producing a total of 57 gigawatts
are planned. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0630/038_print.html

Renewable sources of power will not be able to make up the difference.
Despite decades of subsidies, alternative energies such as wind and
solar power contribute only 1% of our nation’s energy needs
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0103.html.

And states that have set renewable energy goals are failing to meet them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/business/05power.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&ref=earth&adxnnlx=1228676604-3SSY9d4jzC5nllrG0H9jHA

But the left has its own solution: energy efficiency. The Center for
American Progress’ Joe Romm writes
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/print.html:

While a few states have energy-efficiency strategies, none matches what
California has done. In the past three decades, electricity consumption
per capita grew 60 percent in the rest of the nation, while it stayed
flat in high-tech, fast-growing California. If all Americans had the
same per capita electricity demand as Californians currently do, we
would cut electricity consumption 40 percent. If the entire nation had
California’s much cleaner electric grid, we would cut total U.S.
global-warming pollution by more than a quarter without raising American
electric bills. And if all of America adopted the same energy-efficiency
policies that California is now putting in place, the country would
never have to build another polluting power plant.

But Romm pretends that all this energy efficiency has been cost free …
even economically stimulating. He’s dead wrong. http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html

The Manhattan Institute’s Max Schultz reports dirty secret about California’s energy economy is that it imports lots of energy from neighboring states to make up for the shortfall caused by
having too few power plants. Up to 20 percent of the state’s power comes
from coal-burning plants in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and
Montana, and another significant portion comes from large-scale
hydropower in Oregon, Washington State, and the Hoover Dam near Las
Vegas.

"California practices a sort of energy colonialism," says James
Lucier of Capital Alpha Partners, a Washington, D.C.–area investment group.

Another secret: California’s proud claim to have kept per-capita energy
consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it
seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the
country—nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study
found—largely because of regulations and government mandates to use
expensive renewable sources of power.

As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could
count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one,
and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to
aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those
manufacturing industries—driving cars built in the Midwest and the
South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced
elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett,
Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy
consumption, but it has just displaced it.

Even before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the United States
has been forced to follow the left’s energy efficiency gamble. A network
of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the Natural
Resources Defense Council have coordinated to stop construction on 65
coal plants and 13 natural gas plants nationwide.

Obama is going to have a compliant Congress to implement all the energy
efficiency measures he wants. If the blackouts still come in 2010 we
will know exactly who to blame.