As Ken Salazar remembers it, he once told George W. Bush that “this whole question of energy had the potential to unify the country.” The Interior secretary is surely correct — so long as the words “whole” and “unify” are struck from that sentiment.
Salazar recalled his advice to Bush for a Denver Post story about his pursuit of “an energy moonshot” — an appealing plan to speed development of renewable energy on public lands by fast-tracking permits for wind and solar projects and power lines. But notice that his moonshot focuses on a tiny slice of the nation’s energy portfolio, not “this whole question of energy.” Notice, too, that while most Americans are indeed united in a desire to expand green energy’s market share, their genial agreement ends on the question of how.
Start with where solar plants should go. Last year at Yale University, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared, “If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put (them).” It so happens, however, that many environmentalists would rather not put them in the Mojave. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., recently announced that she will sponsor legislation to bar all such development in the Mojave — and that particular desert is just one of many flashpoints in the coming wars over green energy.
Some environmentalists oppose solar power plants on any public lands. As one such naysayer put it in a letter to this newspaper, “energy policy must promote the harvest of urban solar energy” — panels on every rooftop, you see — “before developing public land for renewable energy.”
Even those who support large- scale solar plants begin to snipe at one another over other aspects of “this whole question of energy.” I think it’s great, for example, that Westminster’s Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association just announced plans for one of the largest solar plants in the world — perhaps the second-largest if it were operating right now, a Tri-State official told me. But as huge as the northeastern New Mexico facility will be — 500,000 panels! — its 30 megawatts of power pale beside the 700 megawatts that Tri-State planned to tap from a state-of-the-art new coal plant that was vetoed two years ago by regulators in Kansas.
Since the sun doesn’t shine all day, Tri-State’s solar facility will provide enough electricity for 8,000 to 9,000 homes compared to 540,000 for the coal plant. (And if you’re wondering about the comparative price of energy, forget it: The solar plant figures are confidential.)
Ironically, the advent of large solar facilities, given their limitations, highlights the continuing need for traditional power sources, too. We’re deluding ourselves if we bank solely on solar, wind and conservation to meet future energy demand — unless we relish grossly higher prices and brownouts. Tri-State knows it: Just last year it opted for an additional 225 megawatts of power from natural gas.
And shouldn’t nuclear power be part of “this whole question of energy”? Although Energy Secretary Steven Chu says nuclear must be “a central part of our energy mix,” President Obama keeps sending mixed signals: His budget would slash funds, for example, for the waste site at Yucca Mountain.
Even Newsweek’s Project Green admits that “despite all the inspiring talk about windmills and solar panels, it’s difficult to see how Obama will reach that goal (to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by mid-century) without relying, in large part, on nuclear power.”
Unify the country over energy policy? Only in our dreams.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
