Editorial comment

	Vol. 228 No.10
PERRY A. FISCHER, EDITOR

Bogus energy arguments. There are more false, misleading, bogus, but well-sounding arguments that apply to the energy industry than to any other endeavor. Most of these specious arguments serve to preserve the status quo. I’ve attended conferences in our industry where “alternative energy” meant natural gas from shale instead of sandstone, or heavy oil instead of light oil. Real alternatives to oil and gas often become the object of ridicule and bogus scientific reasoning. Here are some of the techniques of energy propaganda.

First, always use older data for comparison. With emerging technologies, the situation “on the ground” is changing so rapidly that data becomes old rather quickly. Of course, that’s the way it should be, but this rapid change also allows the use of outdated data. For example, wind resource assessment was estimated surprisingly low throughout the 1980s and ’90s, relative to what is known today. New assessments measure the wind speed much higher off the ground than previously, resulting in a dramatically higher resource base. This makes sense, given that today’s windmills are often of 2-MW capacity and the size of football fields, with even bigger 5-MW behemoths on the horizon, reaching hundreds of feet into the sky.

(And by the way, despite the phony press of the anti-winders, condors and other birds are not piling up at the bases of windmills. Some of the earliest windmill experiments in California’s valleys were jokes compared with today’s technology. They relied on small blades to achieve high RPM, while the structure was built of lightweight steel “webbing”-perfect for bird perches. To add to the fowl-eating machinery, they were placed in a bird migratory and happy-hunting pathway. Modern windmill construction and siting avoids these mistakes. People learn.)

A second propaganda technique is to cite the pathetic niche that the alternative energy, regardless of type, now occupies, and then imply that it will always be that way. Repeatedly state that, “The simple fact is, nothing can replace [the way things are today].” Which isn’t even slightly a fact, but if repeated often enough, it sounds authoritative, and is comforting to those who fear the future.

Perhaps the most common, most bogus technique results from the mindset of the naysayer. In that sense, those who use this technique might be sincere in the speciousness of their arguments; they are just bereft of optimism, choosing to dislike, and be skeptical of, any future that is different from the present. They never cite the results of the latest research. They do not look forward. For example, consider the following:

“For years, it was felt that to make electricity from the sun required at best one photon (a particle of light) of sunlight to create one electron of electrical power. Conversion efficiencies in the 10-20% range were the result. But a recent breakthrough shows that one photon can create two or three electrons; so it should allow the efficiencies to double or triple. There are no prototypes yet, but it is likely that this breakthrough will eventually make it into the marketplace.”

Compare that with “Solar energy accounts for less than 0.1% of world energy supply. It’s not likely to ever amount to much more than a pimple on the world’s butt.”

Or how about, “It will take 300 of the latest, most advanced, 5-MW windmills now being built in Germany to replace the two coal-fired plants that supply our city with all the electricity that it needs. And CAES (compressed air electricity storage) in underground reservoirs will provide a two-week buffer, in case the wind doesn’t blow for that long, which has never happened here so far as we know.”

Compare that with, “ ‘It would take 30,000 of the windmills that typically operate on federal lands just to power our fair city. And what would we do when the wind doesn’t blow? Freeze in the dark? This is a goofy idea, promoted by goofballs,’ said the Matewan Coal Co. president.”

Net energy arguments are virtually always bogus. I once wrote that, “Of all the things that matter, what matters most is utility.” It really doesn’t matter whether there’s a net energy loss in any process. Take the conversion of coal to diesel; Hitler found it useful during WWII, and South Africa has found it useful since the early 1950s. Diesel is useful-you can’t power you car with coal.

These net energy arguments never compare apples with apples. If they did, they would virtually always arrive at the conclusion that the process always provides net “apples” energy. People find it useful; thus, it makes money. If it took more electricity to build and operate a nuclear power plant than the nuclear plant generates, they simply would not be built, since they would lose money. If it takes more oil to drill for oil than the oil well will ever produce, then the well will never get drilled. However, when government monies get involved, it becomes possible to have an apple-to-apple comparison that has a net energy loss yet makes money. I know of no examples of this, but ethanol comes the closest.

Ethanol has been in the press a lot. Those of you who are regular readers know that I’m not a big fan of food-based ethanol. Regardless, I’m sure that ethanol production makes more liquid hydrocarbon fuel than it consumes. But government subsidies are hefty enough that even if the process lost fuel, you could still squeak out a profit.

Cornell University professor David Pimentel has been an outspoken critic of ethanol and, among other things, uses a negative net energy argument against ethanol. His energy inputs are numerous and include sunlight and human labor. Using his methods, it’s easy to show that most energy processes produce negative net energy. The problem is, where do you stop? Do you include the energy that went into making the mining equipment that mined the ore that made the smelter that made the steel that made the combine that harvested the corn that made the ethanol? There are academic rules that govern net energy arguments, and Pimentel does not follow them. In fact, using his methods, making gasoline produces negative net energy. So, if you hear or read a net energy argument, realize that it’s almost certain to be bogus.

And beware of the naysayers of the future; their nearly morose “analysis” of emerging and future technologies never account for what is state-of the-art, let alone what is emerging from the labs. They either have an agenda or are an uncommonly pessimistic lot. Learn to ignore them-the future of energy is extremely bright.