Spending for green jobs can provide fast-acting relief for the economy. Energy-efficiency measures can provide an intermediate-term cure. But electricity demand is going to grow beyond these measures.
Spending now to incentivize big new-world infrastructure investments would be ''tantamount to transplant surgery -- last-resort, high-cost, high-risk interventions'' with "long lead times and many pitfalls." This according to one of the witnesses at Senator Jeff Bingaman's hearing on economic stimulus ideas.
It might be best to make incremental gains now, energy analyst Kevin Book told Bingaman's Energy and Natural Resources Committee Wednesday. Book, senior vice president at FBR Capital Markets, suggested US spending on "hybrid" measures that improve the energy/environment picture although they do not ''transform'' it.
Hybrid cars are an example. It would be too expensive to give buyers enough of a subsidy now to buy a plug-in vehicle, but not to buy a hybrid car, Book said in his prepared testimony. Likewise, a hybrid generating plant -- coal-fired power paired with wind or solar facilities -- might be something to consider encouraging, he said. The benefits: improving greenhouse gas emissions on a per-megawatt-hour basis while minimizing cost increases, plus matching baseload coal and intermittent wind resources.
It happens that Lawrence Berkeley National Lab released a study this week of a hypothetical advanced coal-wind hybrid plant, or ACWH, that it places in Wyoming to serve California, Arizona and Nevada. Under the study's base case assumptions, the plant's cost is competitive with other technologies. There are lots of variables that would affect the economics, but LBNL said a more detailed study might be worthwhile.
Those are very poor suggestions made to the committee. Done right, nothing can be cleaner or cheaper in power generation than wind energy. It's the future main source of electricity, and it has no upper limit. For example, high-voltage DC can transmit wind generated electricity 1000+ miles with only a 5% loss, supplying numerous loads switched on or off along the way. This energy would be charging electric cars, heating water or powering any number of variable industrial processes like making ammonia for fertilizer, or smelting operations. And wind can be predicted 24 hours in advance for load planning. So while clean wind energy is not yet considered a dispatchable power source now, it has the potential to be when the grid super highway is combined with smart grids. This is America's new vision for renewable energy and freedom from polluting coal and risky nuclear energy, and new low-cost wind power done offshore has unbeatable economics, and is out of sight and earshot. We need leaders in energy who want to grow this vision, including affordable electric cars (no engines please) for commuters. What can be simpler than wind?