Hot air fuels energy plan

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: July 18, 2008

Mark Warner is either disturbingly facile, an easy mark for a group that can’t hit one, or he thinks you are. His plan to combat the surge in fuel costs is to heave money at renewable energy in hopes that something sticks. This idea is like the Treaty of Versailles, new math and Prohibition, all of which seemed good at the time to someone.
Following coronation in the fall, the former governor and U.S. Senate candidate expects to assemble a coalition of like-minded politicos to nudge his energy plan to fruition. Warner says this group will be composed of “radical centrists.” If he succeeds, the appellation will be accurate in the adjectival sense. More on the noun later.
The thrust of Warner’s vision for affordable energy, so much as he has disclosed it, requires more spending, naturally. He wants to increase money for research into renewable sources, from $2 billion to $10 billion annually. This would lead to “the greatest job creation of the next 25 years,” he said during a campaign stop Thursday in Staunton. Well, how about creating affordable energy? Let us answer for him in pop vernacular: not so much.
Consider options Warner favors or knows he should lest environmentalists’ stranglehold on his vitals tighten:
Solar energy costs nothing and is plentiful, so long as the sun shines (cuddling is an option in Seattle and London). OK, scratch the first part. True, we don’t have to pay for the sun. To access energy from its rays, however, would cost slightly more than using dreaded fossil fuels, about four times more, to be precise.
To produce a single megawatt of electricity would require 17 acres of solar panels, according to the Foundation for Economic Education. Fossil fuels need 1/25, or 4 percent, of an acre. U.S. power plants generate more than 600,000 megawatts of electricity annually. To match that with solar power would require a meager 10.2 million acres or 15,937 square miles. Perhaps Massachusetts and Connecticut (combined, 16,098 square miles) are available.
Well, what about wind? This is another reliable source of renewable energy, reliable, that is, so long as the wind blows. And, of course, there’s the thing about land. A wind farm requires 85 times the area needed by a gas-fired power plant. Wyoming might be available, too. Wind towers, in addition to their eye appeal, would lead to a bird holocaust. Meeting “Wind Energy Initiative” requirements backed by environmentalists would require 132,000 towers, placing millions of birds in peril.
Of course, this won’t do. After all, drilling is prohibited in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, beneath a small portion of which oil flows. Polar bears reside there, and we dare not disrupt them. So kill the wind towers and save the birds.
All right, how about bio-fuels? The whole ethanol concept has worked wonders, though of a different sort than some people imagined. After touting this idea for years, environmentalists have arrived at the grudging recognition that turning corn into fuel reduces the quantity of corn available for human consumption and leaves the world with the discomforting scenario of SUVs feasting while people starve. Oh, and then there’s the niggling issue of land: biofuels, wouldn’t you know, depend on plants, which need land, lots of it, to grow. Is Kansas in play?
Warner appears on track to an easy victory in the U.S. Senate race, that condition being the product of, among other things, a monumental lead in fundraising and the unappealing candidacy of Republican opponent Jim Gilmore and his lack of broad GOP support. Warner’s positions on energy are unremarkable, except for the possibility that any might find them credible. His environmental constituency surely is pleased. As for us, and others familiar with principles of logic, we are unconvinced and unimpressed.