Reply #9: The real reason is the same reason these things happen anywhere. [View All]

[NNadir]

A politician can always get a bye for promising stuff that will

1) Cost nothing.

2) Sound good.

3) Do little.

4) Give rich donors a tax break.

5) Make promises about and requirements for people to follow decades off, people who will not vote for you and will not even remember who you were if you're a legislator. (Yes all politicians like to "sock it to" our kids.)

I live in New Jersey, and have done so for more than a decade. It's not like this is a solar energy heaven. Two years ago there were zero solar homes in my town - which is by the way, a wealthy town. Now there are three such houses, all owned by people who are well off.

I'm sure there are a few somewhere, but I have never seen a windmill in this state.

Note that New Jersey requires the state to produce 2% of its energy by "solar" means by 2020.

I can imagine that a proposal to build windmills off our coast (which by the way I would actively support) will probably go the way of Cape Wind.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=9922

Much of the "renewable" requirement for the other 20% will probably be that old New Jersey standby trash burning which is classified, for some reason, as a renewable resource by the Department of Energy.

In any case, producing 20% of New Jersey's energy by renewable means - marketing scams aside - means that 80% of the energy will come by other means. What are those other means?

We are very fortunate in New Jersey to have 4 operating nuclear power plants, Salem units 1 and 2, Oyster Creek, and Hope Creek. In 2005 these plants produced 0.11 exajoules of energy, more than the entire solar energy output of the United States as a whole, including California.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreact05.xls

These plants produced 48% of our electricity in 2004 and 53% in 2003. If we were able to actually produce 20% of our electricity from renewable means (and no one would object to renewable energy actually doing - for once - what its advocates promise) that would leave 30% of our energy as coming from fossil fuels. This is unacceptable - given the tragedy of fossil fuels - a tragedy the magnitude of which is only now just being understood fully.

It is only acceptable to plan for the elimination as quickly as possible, of fossil fuels. This is why New Jersey must plan on building several more nuclear stations, joining the international rush to expand this capacity.

The renewable industry - even if it does as promised - cannot even begin to grasp a problem of this magnitude.

As it stands now 4% of New Jersey's electrical energy was demonstrated by "other" means. The amount of renewable energy produced in New Jersey in January 2005 (all of it by independent producers by the way - none by utilities) was 0.00038 exajoules, which if you time weight to give an annual amount (based on January), is 0.004 exajoules or 0.1% of what we produced by nuclear means.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile1_14_a.xls#_ftnref4

Again, this includes our garbage incinerators. Probably the case is not much different than it was in 2002, if one speaks of relative proportions of "renewable" energy.

In 2002 our "renewable" portfolio was as follows: We produced 1,326,617 thousand kilowatt-hours (0.048 exajoules) of "renewable" energy in that year. Of this 1,314,587 thousand kilowatt-hours was landfill gas and municipal trash burning. This means that 99.0% of the renewable energy in the state of New Jersey in that year was from garbage.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/trends.pdf

(The data is in table 15.)

Only a portion of our garbage is truly "renewable," in the sense that it is derived from non-fossil fuel sources. Much of it is plastic, largely derived from the unacceptable fossil fuels, petroleum and natural gas.