2. ENERGY COSTS, ENERGY SUBSIDIES, AND ETHANOL

3. ENVIRONMENTAL IDEOLOGY CAUSES ECONOMIC LOSSES AND DEATHS

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2A. State subsidies for solar energy

Emerging policies by states (aka subsidies) have resulted in more favorable economics for residential customer-sited photovoltaic (CSPV). Prof Howard Hayden, author of "Solar Fraud" and publisher of The Energy Advocate, has identified the breakeven turnkey cost (BTC) on a state-by-state basis. The results are astounding:
http://www.EnergyAdvocate.com

The BTC is the dollar figure per installed watt at which a householder would break even in producing his or her own electric power from photovoltaic cells. For Kentucky, the state with the lowest subsidy, he would break even if the installed cost were $1.2 per watt. (A pipedream!). For New York, the figure is $13.6.

These figures rise dramatically when one considers the low capacity factors of solar photovoltaic and uses average watts instead of peak watts: $7 for KY and $75 for NY! (Already included is an effective federal subsidy of 28% up front if the investment is financed with a home-equity loan.)

Between 1996 and 1999, the market expanded from five to 15 states with a BTC above the market breakpoint, optimistically estimated at $4. Now, the United States Treasury Department has asked what effect would a 15% residential tax credit have on the CSPV market?

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2B. Access to Energy (July 2002) carries a report from the Nuclear Energy Institute:

In 2002, the cost (in cents per kWh) of electric generation from nuclear energy was lower (1.76 cents) than coal (1.79), oil (5.28). Or gas (5.69). These costs include fuel, operation, and maintenance, but not capital costs.

The capital cost for electric power plants is in the neighborhood of $1000 per installed kilowatt. It is somewhat lower for gas-fired turbines and often much higher for some nuclear plants (where construction delays and post facto safety regulations have raised costs considerably). These capital costs will have been largely amortized for nuclear plants whose license to operate is being extended.

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2C. And finally, what's wrong with the government's ethanol policy

Ethanol won't solve anything. (based on Letters to the WSJ of May 24, 2002)

Yet the government mandates that ethanol be added to gasoline to provide an oxygenate to reduce the emission of carbon monoxide. Not subject to tax, it carries a huge subsidy that adds to the subsidies received by corn producers and by refiners (and esp. ADM Corp., the major producer of ethanol).

1. The energy penalty is considerable. It takes nearly 2 BTU to produce 1 BTU of ethanol. Prof. David Pimentel has documented the negative energy balance by several studies over the past 30 years. And for those who fear global warming, this penalty translates not only into dollars but also into emission of CO2.

2. The economics is poor even in Brazil where sugar cane and its wastes are a better source than corn and where labor is cheaper. Which is why they abandoned their attempt to replace gasoline with ethanol.

3. Oxygenators are no longer needed since carburetors went out and fuel-injection, which provides the required amount of oxygen, became standard equipment. Eric Stork, head of EPA's Mobile Source Air Pollution Control Program in the 1970s, explained that oxygenating gas once was a brilliant idea "but in cars built in 1983 and later, oxygenates are obsolete and useless."

4. If corn is diverted into a fuel, what will happen to the price of meat? What will be the consequence of the more intensive use of farmland and of marginal land?

5. And finally, what if there is a crop failure because of drought, cold, or too much rain?

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3. Environmental ideology causes economic losses and deaths

3A. Access to Energy (July 2002) carries a report about the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept 11 as due to inadequate insulation on the steel columns. as reported in the Wash Post , June 25, 2002, p.A04. "Enviro-instigated regulations prevented the planned use of asbestos to protect the steel columns."

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3B. Dale Bosworth, chief of the US Forest Service blames the destructive wildfires on misguided environmental policies - especially the no-logging rules that have filled the forests with dangerously dense loads of flammable material (James Taylor in Environment and Climate News, August 2002)

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3C. Access to Energy (June 2002) reminds that "Fraud in Science in the United States" by Prof. J. Gordon Edwards is available from the author at San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192. Prof Edwards is the foremost American scientist who has struggled to reverse the EPA ban on DDT egordon@email.sjsu.edu -- a policy that has killed more then 50 million children from DDT-preventable malaria.