Environmental groups overplay the role of wind and solar

Fuel Fix:
Kinder Morgan CEO Steven Kean has a message for government officials and electrical grid operators: Don’t let environmental groups and the media overplay the capabilities of wind farms and solar energy in powering the country.

Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, Kean urged policymakers to better communicate the role natural gas will need to play if the United States is to continue reducing the greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change.
...
Wind turbines and solar panels rely on the weather to generate electricity, coming on and off the power grid depending on cloud cover, time of day and an approaching storm. That is already causing problems for grid operators in areas like California and Hawaii with high renewable penetration.

Echoing comments made by many energy executives and analysts, Kean said natural gas was needed to not only back up renewable sources but to provide a steady flow of power as more and more coal plants close — supplanted by cheaper and cleaner burning natural gas.

“When it comes to fighting global warming, we need more natural gas, not less,” Kean said. “In the power sector we are back to 1993 levels on [greenhouse gas emissions]. We’ve increased our generation by 25 percent while keeping that emissions level flat.”

As the largest pipeline company in North America, Houston-based Kinder has plenty to gain by seeing the continued expansion of natural gas within the power industry.
...
Environmental groups seem incapable of comprehending the limitations of their favored power sources.  Wind and solar power sources are difficult to modulate,  It si hard to add more when demand is high and it is hard to reduce output when it is low.  They still have not solved the problem of energy storage.

Natural gas is also a necessary component of the petrochemical business and the environmentalists have no alternative for that industry.  It is vital for producing things made from plastic as well as fertilizer for crops.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more