The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

[Daveparts]

The Wind Corridor Authority
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com


We have on our hands a host of daunting problems; we have a collapsing economy that is exacerbated by ever-growing imports of fossil fuels. America has the largest known coal reserves in the world, which is both a blessing and a curse. We are like the alcoholic that wants to quit drinking but lives next door to a bar. Even worse, our brother-in-law is the bartender and gives us our drinks for half price.

Clean coal is possible but expensive, and our market-based economy won’t hear of paying more regardless of the good reasons for it. So clean coal remains a myth. Once clean the coal becomes more expensive than natural gas. Our automakers stake their survival on building clean, electric-powered cars, but where will this electricity come from? More coal or oil; doesn’t that defeat the purpose?

Like the riddle of the fox, the goose and the sack of corn, how can we get across the river, rebuild our economy, put people to work and clean up our environment? John McCain thought that the answer was in nuclear power. But one mistake, just one mistake, whose chances becomes multiplied by the number of nuclear plants you operate, and you risk losing not only the fox, the goose, and the bag of corn, but also even the stream.

Nuclear plants are expensive to build; they require vast amounts of capital and specialized equipment and workers. Then, once completed in five to ten years, they become a permanent, poisonous fixture on the landscape until Jesus returns or ten thousand or so years pass, whichever comes first. In the 1950’s nuclear power looked like the answer; we were all going to have atomic cars parked in our garages, but it just hasn’t panned out. Who can forget the yellow cake uranium debacle? No atoms, no atom bombs; no nuclear, no nuclear terrorism.

John McCain was quick to point at the French nuclear power program but slow to point out its many failures. Its leaks and exposures, or its shutdowns along with the same issue that we face in America, where to put the waste. The French farmers in the countryside resent having the waste from the bright lights of Paris buried in their back yard. The French reactors are starting to show their age; that will leave France in the next twenty years with a shining example of exactly what white elephants are forever.

T. Boone Pickens suggests that natural gas is the answer. Of course Mr. Pickens is in the oil business, so what else would he suggest? Adolph Coors would probably suggest that we run our cars on beer and the American Tobacco Institute would do a study on how many cigarettes per mile we could get if we converted our cars to run on tobacco. Vested interests always give the answers that best suit themselves. None of these solutions answer all of the questions. What good are electric cars if we’re using natural gas? Millions of fueling stations would need to be built or converted for natural gas at huge expense and dislocation.

Natural gas is cleaner than gasoline or diesel and it is way cleaner than coal, but it is still a fossil fuel that still emits greenhouse gasses. While there is room for natural gas as a motor fuel, it is inefficient and difficult to handle, especially by the average consumer. Natural gas won’t get us across the river; it won’t put people to work and doesn’t solve the problem of greenhouse gasses. It is our alcoholic switching from whiskey to light beer.

America has another natural resource in abundance; it is the wind. Drawing a line from western Montana down to west Texas, you'll see one of the most stable and dependable wind currents on planet Earth. We are the Saudi Arabia of wind energy. From the mountains of California through the Great Plains, to our long ocean coasts we are blessed with a clean and abundant source of cheap electricity. The technology exists today and all that is required to begin is a purchase order.

Our abundance of coal has created a powerful lobby in Congress, too powerful to be overcome by the hodgepodge of alternative energy and environmental lobbies. Yet we face a multi-faceted crisis that requires we overcome them. Cheap coal won’t get us across the river; it will make it impossible to get across the river. It is as antiquated as gaslight, wood stoves, and burning peat for heat.

In 1933 Congress passed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. Its purpose was to control flooding and to improve navigation on the Tennessee River, to bring electric power and reforestation, and to provide for the national defense. The TVA changed the face of America; most of the dams built were eventually sold to private power corporations. But it created tens of thousands of jobs in the region and it brought improved infrastructure to the area.

To build these dams roads needed to be built, surveys made and equipment purchased. Power lines and telephone lines strung, buildings built and foundations laid just to begin the construction of the dam. Private enterprise didn’t have the capital or the interest in a project whose benefits were so far down the road. So, as we stand today with failing markets and unemployment rising, a National Wind Corridor Authority screams to us to begin.

We could create tens of thousands of wind farms and build the associated electrical infrastructure needed to generate not only safe, clean electrical power, but also thousands of new jobs. General Electric offers wind turbine units but would be unable to keep up with the national wind corridor demand just as Boeing was unable to keep up with demand for B-17 bombers during World War Two. Production would be licensed to domestic companies to keep up with the demand.

A WPA-style program would do surveys of sites, build the camps and improve the roads. Construction companies would do site preparation and pour the concrete foundations. Then the construction crews would move in to assemble towers and turbines, followed by electricians and apprentices who would then depend on other crews building transmission towers and switching stations. One wind farm by itself of two hundred turbines takes from six to nine months to complete, compared with five to ten years for a nuclear plant.

A comprehensive, national program could revolutionize the way we think about electricity in America. The affects of global warming are the most pronounced in the western Untied States. These states suffer from falling amounts of fresh water available, due to smaller snow pack accumulation. They must either find new local sources of water or pipe water in, which will require electricity. So this is a program to be considered not just as a jobs program, but like the TVA, a program of national defense.

We will move to electric vehicles because it is the only viable alternative; it requires very little in the way of infrastructure modifications. Hydrogen is manufactured with electricity, as are bio-fuels. But millions of cars fueling at the electrical grid will require extra capacity and if we wait for private industry to build this extra capacity the process becomes expensive for the consumer. What choice of fuel will private industry choose other than the cheapest, being coal? Then they will turn to us and ask; “You want cheap electricity for your cars, don’t you?”

The National Wind Corridor would turn the tables on the situation as the capacity is there before the need. The producers will be forced to compete with non-profit government power plants; plants that require no fuel, have zero emissions and little maintenance while the only alternatives they can offer are coal and oil. Coal and oil will become too expensive to use as a fuel because of carbon trading and environmental regulations. Coal will be made no longer cost-effective as a fuel.

Oil accounts for 80% of the 2007 trade deficit, costing the American economy $578 billion. Money that is gone from us forever, or reinvested in the economy as the property of foreign nations. John Prine sang a song years ago; “There’s a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes.” Well, there’s a hole in your driveway where all the money goes. That number will only increase as American oil production falls and it should fall; it needs to fall, as 80% of all of our oil consumption is used to fuel motor vehicles.

Were it just a jobs program it would be viable enough, or just as an infrastructure program it would be viable. But it is a program that helps to solve our environmental crisis, our economic crisis and to finally eliminate our dependency on foreign oil, once and for all. The costs will begin to be reclaimed as soon as the plants start to go online. Private industry will seek to develop better, more efficient turbines and a maintenance industry will be created. People can be quickly put to work to revive this flagging economy and the wages that they earn will eventually stay in America as our debt to oil-producing nations is pared down.

We can begin again to build a sustainable economy, freed from the obsolete technologies of oil and coal and all we need to begin is a purchase order and faith in the future.