That’s green ideology in a nutshell. Total intransigence, and dissregard of reality.
As I said before: no new power plants means blackouts coming soon. Balckouts means people buying home generators, and pollution rising 3 fold.

Great post, although I disagree with you on one point. The government’s highest priority should be policies that capture all available cost-effective energy efficiency options and to do R&D on effeiciency so that envelope continues to exapnd.

ACEEE is conducting state-by-state analyses of the capacity for efficiency, on-site generation and load managment techniques to displace the need for new generation. The results for Texas and Florida are in and they show that efficiency — or negawatts — can displace the need for new generation for the next 15 years or more at a lower cost than new generation. And that’s before one factors in externatilities, or rapid price rises in fuel.

Other state studies are on the way and are expected to show similar results. My point is not that we don’t need renewables, but rather that we need to extract all poosibl efficiency gains from the system and continue to do research on ways of making the system more efficient as a first priority. The only way renewables can supplant fossil fuels at scale is to have a vastly more efficient system. The energy density of fossil fuels has allowed for profligate use — a “luxury” a renewable-based system can’t afford - nor can our economy.

Which leads to an econobabble explanation for putting efficiency first — investing in a more expensive option (renewables) before the less expensive one (efficiency) is a supotimal allocation of resources which, economists tell me is not only bad public policy, but some kind of moral failling as well.

Bottom line, loan guarantees, performance contracts, codes and standards, smart zoning, mileage standards, tax credits, preferred amortization schedules, better underwriting in insurance decisions, better bonding criteria, etc. are tools the federal, state, and local governments could aply to our energy system — and they would put the wind in the sales of efficiency and renewables.

But if we don’t move forward aggressively with efficiency at the same time we do with renewables, we’re just buildng capacity we don’t need at prces we can’t afford.

It is not surprising that ACEEE finds Texas could power itself without a single new plant for years. Consider that Texans gulped 14,602 kWh per capita in 2003 when Californians sipped only 6,732 kWh per capita in the same year. Yes, Texans used almost 2.2 times as much electricity person! If Texas had California’s policies, and its usage fell to California’s over the next 30 years, think of what could be saved!

Bottom line: with a full court press on efficiency, judiscious use of renewables and on-site generation, we can go 20 years without needing a single new large base-load generating plant. In the intervening years we could research ways to make our economy even more efficient, while improving renewable energy and energy storage technologies to the point they could provide any new power generation needed.

As for the economy? Well efficiency measures create jobs and retain capital within communities where it has the greatest multiplier effect. And when it comes to renewables, the companies and countries that corner the market on clean energy will prosper, and those that don’t will import their hardware from them.

It sems to me the second law of thermodynamics has something to say about the folly of using coal in a carbon constrained world. How can it make any sense — technologically or economically — to dig up high carbon coal, burn it, then capture the carbon and burry it?

Tom Toles, the Post’s poltical cartoonist, captured this folly in a recent cartoon. He pictured a series of rock strata. Above the picture the caption read: “Is there a reliable way to sequester carbon?” Below the picture the caption read, “Yes. Leave the coal in the ground.”

Doesn’t that say it all?

I completely agree with John that energy efficiency is Job 1, and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Although energy efficiency in the U.S. economy has been improving, there is ample untapped potential for improve it further and that should be our first strategy to ensure that electric power (as well as other forms of power ) remains sufficient and reliable.

There are other strategies, too, of course, including greatly expanded use of distributed generation to reduce strain on the grid, and the deployment of renewables.

There is another very important strategy that few seem to have the courage to talk about because it invades hallowed ground. I remember years ago visiting a web site developed by one of the “educational” organizations for the coal industry. The introduction on the home page made the statement that “cheap energy is an American birthright.” It’s not, of course, and neither is unbridled use of natural resources.

Dealing effectively with climate change (as well as with peak oil and the general insecurity of depending upon finite resources) will require not only new technologies, but new behaviors, driven by new values, driven by a more realistic understanding of ecosystems and our utter interdependence with them.

Smart technologies can accomodate stupid behavior, but only to a point. We in the United States seem to have the notion of limitless resources and unbridled freedom written into our national DNA, and that is in many ways what has made us so successful and innovative a society. But where real limits exist and we slam up against them, we need to learn to recognize reality and work with them. Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are one such case.

At some point — and I think we’ve reached it — our appetites as consumers will have to take second place to our obligations as a species to other species, as a people to other people, and as a generation to other generations.

That, to me, is the new reality. And those who do not adjust to new realities — be they individuals, communities, companies, societies or species — are doomed to darwinian decline. If that’s green ideology, I’ll take it. It’s far better than the alternative.