The ever-increasing complexity of renewable energy as it develops and expands will make it less and less likely to ever replace fossil fuels as the world’s main power source.
Economist Karr Ingham, Advanced Power Alliance Texas Vice President Judd Messer and Panhandle Producers & Royalty Owners President Judy Stark say the picture is many hued.
“These are complex markets and complex systems and supply chains and supplanting fossil fuels with wind and solar comes with a number of significant challenges,” Ingham said from Amarillo. “This is especially true with forcing the transition to renewables in a compressed period of time through government action.”
Ingham said renewables presently account for just under 20 percent of total electric power generation.
“Of that 19.8 percent, 9.2 percent is from wind and only 2.8 percent from solar,” he said. “Hydropower is about six percent. And make no mistake, that mix would be nowhere near 20 percent absent the extraordinary incentives and subsidies at the taxpayers’ expense at the state and federal levels.”
Ingham said nuclear power supplies 20 percent and fossil fuels 60.
“Fewer than one percent of all the cars, SUVs and light duty trucks on the road in America are electric,” he said. “EVs do make up 10 percent of new vehicle sales and that share is climbing each year, but EV sales as a percent of the total wouldn’t be as high were it not for incentives from government for consumers to make those purchases, of which a great many are by people who don’t contemplate longer trips.”
Ingham said the forced, rapid shift to renewables for power generation and transportation comes with significant drawbacks. “For power generation, the trade-offs consist in the loss of reliability, an increasing lack of abundance and rising costs for electricity to households and businesses,” he said
“Others are land use, environmental degradation by mining for massively higher volumes of rare earth minerals and unanswered questions about the disposal of wind and solar equipment as it is retired or changed out.”
In transportation, Ingham said, the trade-offs entail a loss of convenience due to long charging times and the relatively short distances that can be traveled on a charge, a lack of EV charging infrastructure to power a much higher volume of EVs on the road, significantly higher costs for the vehicles “and additional strain on the grid from increases in electric power.
“In both cases, consumers are denied the choices they would otherwise make in a pure market environment,” Ingham said. “It may well be that even absent the subsidies and incentives, renewables and electric vehicles would ultimately make up a sizable and growing share of the total. But that should only be the case if markets take us there, which would mean a naturally occurring shift over decades and beyond rather than a forced transition over a relatively short period of time.
“No one knows the full scale of these complexities or whether there is a ceiling on the use of renewables. Over a long period, markets would solve those problems in ways we cannot begin to imagine.”
Ingham said the federal government’s ability to address the issues “is vastly overestimated.
“First we need abundant, reliable, affordable energy to shield ourselves from the outside world whether that world is changing or not,” he said. “The availability of such energy is what has caused deaths from climate, weather and other natural disasters to plummet over the last 100 years.
“Further, the role of innovation cannot be overlooked in solving our future problems and challenges, including the climate. Innovation is stifled when governments run economies or parts of the economy, meaning that the future with the heavy hand of government tipping the scales is likely to be less green, not more.”
Messer said advancements in technology and growth “are continuing to deliver cleaner, more affordable power to the grid and when coupled with the state’s abundant supply of natural gas, all of Texas benefits from the diverse supply mix.
“This leveraging encourages competition, spurs innovation and provides Texas consumers with a reliable grid that delivers tremendous environmental yields and economic benefits to ratepayers,” he said.
“Wind and solar power use no water, emit no greenhouse gases and allow landowners to continue using their property for other purposes.
“Though detractors point to carbon emitted during the manufacturing of components, one study notes that in just seven months a wind turbine produces enough clean electricity to make up for the carbon pollution generated during manufacturing.
“This emission-free generation continues for 30 years.”
Messer said from Austin that renewables cut wholesale electricity prices and have an even greater impact when fuel prices for traditional generation go up.
“An analysis from last fall reported that renewables were on track to reduce wholesale electricity costs by greater than $11 billion in 2022 alone,” he said. “Existing and planned utility-scale wind, solar and energy storage projects will pay between $11.8 billion and $21.7 billion in taxes over their lifetimes with 60 percent of this impact in rural Texas.
“Because renewable energy is complementary to other sources, these benefits translate when renewables are leveraged. For example, renewables are increasingly selected by oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin to electrify their operations.”
Messer said the Basin’s oil and gas industry expects electric demand to grow tenfold in eight years. “By using renewable energy, they pay lower costs for power, reduce their carbon emissions and make their products more attractive,” he said.
Messer said Texas urgently needs more high voltage transmission lines. “When power is moving most efficiently, the grid is more reliable and resilient and consumers get the lowest cost power,” he said.
“This is especially critical now that so many people are moving Texas and it has become more difficult to build any form of generation close to urban demand centers.
“The state should reconsider its strategy of building lines primarily for reliability concerns. Instead, policymakers should plan for transmission like they do the highway system — with an eye toward future needs.”
Stark said the best response to environmental concerns would be to keep increasing the capture of carbon and methane instead of banning hydraulic fracturing, fighting new pipelines and requiring new buildings and homes to be all electric.
“Forcing the building and operation of more wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, transmission lines and charging stations with the taxpayers’ money is futile and will produce diminishing returns,” she said from Amarillo. “The current administration believes that forcing public charging stations to be built at the taxpayers’ expense will cause Americans to buy more electric vehicles.
“The government is spending money on EV charging stations that many states will never use, especially states that have more cold weather than warm like Wyoming, North and South Dakota and Alaska.
“Wyoming was granted $27 million from the $7.5-billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That worked out to $52,000 for each one of 510 EVs in Wyoming, which is turning down the funds because they don’t want to be responsible for maintaining a system of charging stations 50 miles apart.
“Wyoming asked for the stations to be located only on smaller highways in the tourist areas close to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, but the federal government refused.”
Noting that only 35 percent of global car sales in 2040 are expected to be EVs, Stark said, “It’ll take decades to build out the infrastructure to sustain them, not to mention the cost and supply chain issues required for the rare earth minerals from China that are needed for battery production.”
Calling on the Biden administration “to face reality,” she said America is the world’s No. 1 oil producer at 18.6 million barrels per day and its oil will continue to be the main source of energy for Europe.
“The U.S. was the world’s largest producer of natural gas with an output of nearly 80 billion cubic feet per day at the end of 2022,” Stark said. “Our liquefied natural gas exports quadrupled over the past year.
“The need for fossil fuels will never end and LNG exports will grow rather than deplete.”
