Alex Mills
By Alex Mills
Texas has had record rain during May. Thunderstorms have swept across the state flooding rivers and lakes. Some of the storms knocked out electric power. Even though the power was off for only a few hours in most cases, it reminded us what life would be like without electricity 24/7/365.
At home, lights would not come on at the touch of a switch. No electric appliances, such as the coffee maker, refrigerator, stove, or microwave. How would we cook our meals? No problem, just drive up to the nearest McDonald’s for a Big Mac, except they can’t cook either. They can’t even open the cash register without electricity.
At the office, no computers, no air conditioning, you can’t even recharge your iPhone.
Without electricity, we would be in economic collapse and back in the stone age.
Many believe that the reliability of electric generation would be severely damaged if rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are adopted and become final. These rules would reduce the ozone limitations to levels that are unreasonable and cannot be achieved.
EPA’s rules would put half of America’s coal-fired power plants out of business. Some believe that natural gas could take up some of the lost capacity, but EPA wants to put natural gas drilling out of business, too, through tougher drilling and completion requirements that include further restrictions on flaring.
Nuclear energy could pick up the slack, but it takes years to get a permit just to build a plant and even longer to get it operational and delivering electricity to consumers. Environmental groups do not like nuclear, because of the waste issue.
So, that pretty much leaves wind and solar to meet the growing needs of consumers in Texas and the U.S.
Can wind and solar rise to the occasion? Even though both have increased their electric generation abilities, they both face huge obstacles.
Renewable energy accounted for 9.8% of total domestic energy consumption in 2014. This marks the highest renewable energy share since the 1930s, when wood was a much larger contributor to domestic energy supply.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) reports that solar PV (utility-scale) costs are down to $2 per watt from $5 in 2010. However, solar, like wind, has serious reliability and storage problems. When the sun doesn’t shine, electric generation from solar doesn’t happen. When the wind doesn’t blow, electric generation from wind doesn’t happen. Commerce cannot stop. It must work around the clock throughout the year.
Texas is blessed in many ways. The sun does shine most of the time and the wind does blow especially in West Texas. However, solar and wind power require large areas for panels and turbines to generate less than 10 percent of the state’s electricity. Imagine the area required to generate 50 percent.
Natural gas, on the other hand, already has the infrastructure in place to get from the fields to the electric plants. It’s cheap, clean, and it pays production taxes to the state of Texas.
Wind and solar are the darlings of the environmental groups, but natural gas is the most reliable, which makes it the “energy of the future.”
Alex Mills is President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. The opinions expressed are solely of the author.
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