DV Journal

Imagine if a solar-driven car was launched tomorrow, cheaper to run than a gas vehicle. It would be incredibly alluring until you realize that—due to limitations in battery storage—the car won’t run at night or when it’s overcast. If you bought the car, you would still need a gas vehicle as backup. You would have to pay for two cars.

That is exactly the situation we face with renewable energy. Wind and solar energy only produce power when the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing. All the rest of the time, their electricity is infinitely expensive and a backup system is needed. This is the reason that two-thirds of our global electricity needs are met by fossil fuels. And it’s the reason why we remain 100 years away from eliminating fossil fuels from electricity generation.

We are in the bizarre situation where politicians and the green energy industry constantly repeat the refrain that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity. Yet governments are spending $1.8 trillion every year on the green transition—and the real cost of forcing people to use renewable energy over fossil fuels is even higher.

The modern world needs power around the clock. Unreliable and intermittent wind and solar bring large, often hidden costs. This is a relatively small problem for wealthy countries that already have fossil power plants they can use as backup—although it makes electricity more expensive, as intermittent renewables make everything else intermittent, too.

But in the poorest, electricity-starved countries, there is little fossil fuel energy infrastructure to begin with. Hypocritical wealthy countries are refusing to fund sorely needed fossil fuel energy in the developing world. Instead, they insist that people cope with unreliable green energy supplies that can’t power pumps or agricultural machinery to lift populations out of poverty.

For the world’s large, emerging industrial nations–like China, India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia– reliance on coal is an inescapable fact of life. Last year, China got more additional power from coal than it did from wind and solar. India got three times as much, whereas Bangladesh got 13 times more coal electricity than it did from green energy sources, and Indonesia an astonishing 90 times more. They’re not dragging their feet just to be difficult. Reliability matters—especially when you’re focused on growing your economy and helping millions of people to escape from poverty.

The mistruth about the cost of wind and solar is possible because typically, the price that is quoted is the price when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. On that basis, they are indeed comparatively cheap. But once you include the cost of reliability, the price tag explodes—one peer-reviewed study shows an increase somewhere between 11 and 42 times, which makes solar by far the most expensive source of electricity, followed by wind.

Storage technology remains woefully inadequate. Recently, scientists looked at the United States and found that to achieve reliable, 100 percent solar or wind electricity, we’d need the ability to store nearly three months’ worth of annual electricity. The U.S. only has seven minutes of battery storage. Closing the storage gap would cost five times the entire U.S. GDP, and the storage would need to be replaced every 15 years.

And we need to remember that wind and solar technology itself needs replacing at a fairly alarming rate. Already, one small town in Texas is overflowing with thousands of enormous wind turbine blades that cannot be recycled. In poor countries across Africa, solar panels and their batteries are being dumped. One study shows that when we factor in the cost of recycling and safe disposal, this alone doubles the true cost of solar.

If wind and solar energy really were cheaper than fossil fuels, there wouldn’t be a need for billions of dollars in taxpayer spending. This claim is incessantly repeated because it is convenient and because it supports a political narrative.

But the truth is that if we want to fix climate change, we instead must invest a lot more in low-CO₂ energy research and development. Only a significant boost in R&D can bring about the technological breakthroughs that are needed—in reducing trash, in improving battery storage and efficiency, but also in other technologies like modular nuclear—that will make low-CO₂ energy sources truly cheaper than fossil fuels.

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The energy landscape in Pennsylvania is rich.  We’ve taken advantage of our huge coal and natural gas resources for more than a century.  More recently, prolific gas production has ensured low heating and power generation costs in Pennsylvania for years.  But the transition to a ‘green’ economy could stop this progress with clean coal and gas-fired generation, and could mean giving up our natural gas appliances too.

The energy industry in Pennsylvania has served us well.  Pennsylvania homes and businesses enjoy energy low prices and good energy jobs.  But now this is being threatened with bad science and misguided politicians.

First, some facts –

• Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer after Texas, producing more than 7½ trillion cubic feet each year.
• Pennsylvania is the third-largest coal-producing state, and it’s the second-largest coal exporter to foreign markets.
• Pennsylvania ranked second after Illinois in electricity generation from nuclear power. And since 2019, natural gas has surpassed nuclear energy as the largest source of in-state electricity generation.
• Over half of Pennsylvania households use natural gas as heating fuel; and the state’s 49 gas storage sites — the most for any state – help meet winter demand for the Mid-Atlantic and New England.
• Pennsylvania is the second-largest net supplier, after Texas, of total energy to other states.

Pennsylvania’s fossil fuel industry has been important to our nation – in the past, now, and in our nation’s future.

Today, we also demand that we are better stewards of the environment.  Industry has delivered with improved manufacturing methods and more efficient infrastructure.  The EPA reports that, since 1980, carbon monoxide emissions are down by more than 74%.  Nitrogen dioxide emissions have been reduced by more than 70%.  Sulfur dioxide emissions are off 93%.  And carbon dioxide emissions – CO2 – for all vehicles during the same period – have fallen by 31% – and still trending down .

President Biden is pushing a transition to a green economy.  But the EPA says we are getting greener without borrowing trillions of dollars.  I was always taught If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Don’t force Electric Vehicles on us.  Let us choose what works best now, while we improve on technology for the future.

Biden says green industries can deliver jobs.  But running gas-fired power plants and refineries requires many workers.  How many jobs would Pennsylvania lose under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which, by the way has only increased inflation?  Biden’s plan hopes to create more than 200,000 jobs over the next ten years in Pennsylvania.  What Biden doesn’t tell you is that the good jobs in natural gas and coal go away, to be replaced with taxpayer-subsidized energy justice jobs and environmental justice jobs, whatever that means.

President Biden visited the Philadelphia shipyard to talk about energy jobs, and one particular ship’s components will be built by nine unions across the country.  How do temporary jobs in Philadelphia help develop energy jobs across Pennsylvania?  Biden hopes that workers who lose their jobs in the transition will find a place in the green economy.  But the EV industry, as an example, is a net job loser for us, and a net job gainer for China.

Can Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act produce as many jobs as those we’ll lose?  If your job that is connected with natural gas or coal, or if your job depends on Pennsylvania minerals for manufacturing, then you can understand the damage that will be done if Mr. Biden phases out gas and coal.  You see, after the equipment is built and installed, solar and wind almost runs itself.  Job losses naturally follow.

According to the DoE, energy jobs in the U.S. grew by 3.8 percent in 2022, half of them being green energy jobs.  But remember – once it’s installed, most of the work goes away.  The green economy can’t replace job losses from refineries and power plants that require 24-hour, 365-day staffing.  And it cannot deliver the same reliable energy!  The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun isn’t always shining.

Thousands of Pennsylvania families have, for generations, made a living in oil and gas and coal.  Now Joe Biden wants to end these jobs and tell workers to find jobs elsewhere.  This delivers serious headwinds to energy with the green transition.  American companies cannot compete with cheap labor in China, which dominates the solar panel business.

I said in the beginning that I would tell you what we need to best develop energy here in Pennsylvania.  We need Donald Trump.  Donald Trump understands energy and real job creation.  He understands competition, and American ingenuity that produces energy from all sources – in a cleaner, and less expensive way.

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In 2004, Pennsylvania implemented one of the most aggressive mandates to adopt wind and solar energy. At the time, less than 1 percent of net energy generation came from these sources. In 2023, after nearly $1.5 billion in subsidies, wind and solar generated less than 2 percent.

So, what’s the point?

That’s the question Gov. Josh Shapiro must answer before any expansion to Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS). Instead, he is doubling down on uneconomical fuels and technologies, resulting in higher electricity bills and a less reliable infrastructure.

AEPS requires Pennsylvania suppliers to provide 18 percent of retail electricity sales from more than a dozen alternative energy sources.

One measurable benefit of AEPS has been burning waste coal for electricity generation, cleaning up millions of tons of refuse from nearly 800 waste piles left by centuries-old mining practices. Analysis from the Appalachian Region Independent Power Producers Association (ARIPPA) shows this industry has reclaimed more than 1,200 miles of polluted streams and 7,200 acres of land.

However, restructuring AEPS threatens to defund this worthwhile effort. Perversely, five of 15 waste-coal plants have closed because of environmental regulations and market forces hostile to coal.

“This is a huge concern for us,” said Jaret Gibbons, ARIPPA’s executive director.

Shapiro’s latest proposal, the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS), mandates that 35 percent of electricity come from politically favored sources, such as wind, solar, and small modular nuclear, by 2035. PRESS also calls for another 10 percent from hydropower and batteries and 5 percent from low-emission sources, like certain kinds of natural gas generation.

The governor lauds the importance of this proposal to reduce carbon dioxide.

Yet, Pennsylvania has cut emissions annually, including a 10.8 percent reduction from 2022 to 2023—thanks to the expansion of natural gas. If emission reduction is the goal, the governor should pursue policies that bolster natural gas and nuclear, which can back up solar and wind when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

AEPS sales totaled about 25 million megawatt-hours in the 2021–22 reporting year. That’s enough to power 2.4 million homes. Less than one-third of those megawatt-hours came from wind and solar.

In under six months, the Homer City coal-fired power plant could produce energy equal to a year’s worth of AEPS-subsidized wind and solar power. Homer City, however, closed last year due to burdensome regulations.

AEPS touts the state’s 606 megawatts of solar capacity as enough to power more than 79,000 homes, or just about 1 percent of Pennsylvania’s 5.7 million housing units.

In 2007, AEPS predicted the commonwealth would install nearly 6,000 megawatts of wind capacity by 2013. However, as of May 2022, we’ve seen less than one-quarter of that amount. Even if AEPS met this target, the value would hinge, like solar, on wind’s dependence on nature’s vagaries.

The AEPS report claims the program created thousands of Pennsylvania jobs. Whatever jobs were “created,” it is impossible to produce net benefits by forcing more expensive, less reliable energy sources into an economy. Studies by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University and the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity have concluded that such efforts result in economic losses, including fewer jobs and higher prices.

Industry leaders are growing wary of this transition to less reliable energy. David Taylor, head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, called Shapiro’s vision of an expanded AEPS “an environmental disaster, a threat to public safety, a danger to American national security, a disgrace on labor and human rights, and an abuse of Pennsylvania ratepayers.”

Costing taxpayers billions of dollars is bad enough, but the most immediate concern is the effect of more “green” mandates on power grid reliability. Industry and government officials have repeatedly warned of power shortages caused by an overreliance on wind and solar.

As Shapiro says, we don’t have to choose between jobs and our environment. But his proposal is bad for both. Pennsylvania’s energy policy must reward reliability and affordability and develop proven sources, like fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Twenty years after AEPS’s enactment, wind and solar still require subsidies while contributing meager amounts of unreliable energy. Will doing more of the same with PRESS produce anything different?

Again, what’s the point?

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