Anyone who has visited southern Minnesota and Iowa recently will be aware of the huge wind resources that are in or close to our state. Iowa, 31st in population, is second in production of electricity by wind. Minnesota is 22nd in population, and eighth in wind electricity. These are very hopeful signs, but only if we can find a way to move that electricity to large population centers.
A July MinnPost article (“Projects to expand the power grid will make room for more renewable energy and less coal” by Mohamed Ibrahim) highlights the importance of adding transmission lines. Unfortunately, permitting requirements can delay such projects for a decade or more.
For those who primarily think of permitting as a way to slow down or stop fossil fuel projects, please keep in mind that it also has a negative effect on our ability to transition to clean energy. According to a Lawrence Berkeley National Lab report, more than 92% of energy generating projects currently in queue are wind and solar. Over 930 GW of zero-carbon generating capacity is currently seeking transmission access. Solar (676 GW) accounts for the largest share of generation capacity in the queues. Substantial wind (247 GW) capacity is also seeking interconnection.
Opponents of clean energy often highlight that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. One forceful answer to this would be the rapid approval of energy storage projects. Again, from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab report: 286 GW of solar hybrids (primarily solar+battery) and 19 GW of wind hybrids are currently active in the queues.
So markets are forcefully pushing the clean energy transition, while, going forward, the slow pace of permitting will slow it down.
This is not a minor issue. According to the Princeton REPEAT Project, the current rate of expansion of electric transmission (about 1% per year) is insufficient if we wish to achieve our main 2030 climate goal: reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 50% of 2005 levels. In fact, to accomplish even a 40% reduction, we will need to triple electric transmission by 2030, and this is not consistent with a 1% per year increase. In a nutshell, we can build lots of green energy production, but, without the ability to transmit it from rural building sites (with available land), this expansion of production cannot be used to retire fossil fuel power plants near urban centers.
[image_caption]Scot Adams[/image_caption]
Finally, permitting reform does NOT mean permitting abolition. We must safeguard our communities from the environmental impacts of all sorts of construction projects. The goal is to streamline the process, something too complicated to detail here. For readers who would like to see an example of a serious permitting reform bill, it’s easy to search on “Manchin’s permitting reform bill text”. The text is about setting deadlines, avoiding duplication of efforts, resolving disputes, etc.
How far we should go is, of course, open to discussion. I only argue that, in the face of particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the greater good is achieved by seeking reasonable efficiencies in the permitting process.
Scot Adams is a mathematics professor, member of Citizens’ Climate Lobby and resident of Eden Prairie.
Manchin is a conservative, meaning that whatever it is he’s proposed, it’s true purpose is enriching himself and other wealthy people at the expense of communities and the regular people that live in them. Is permitting reform needed? Maybe. Should any conservative of any party flavor be allowed to craft it? Absolutely not. No conservative proposal of any kind deserves to see the light of day, much less serious consideration.
With that being said, what proposals are being made by liberals to address the need to increase the transmission capacity?
Major infrastructure projects in the US are hindered by inflexibility on both sides. The result is nobody wants to pay for projects that nobody wants to be see or be inconvenienced by.
Its called “Investment in our Nations infrastructure” And it has already passed, but, suspect the right wingers would like to take all that transmission money out and give it to the uber-rich in the form of tax breaks instead.
“According to the Department of Energy, power outages cost the U.S. economy up to $70 billion annually. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s more than $65 billion investment includes the largest investment in clean energy transmission and grid in American history. It will upgrade our power infrastructure, by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewables and clean energy, while lowering costs. And it will fund new programs to support the development, demonstration, and deployment of cutting-edge clean energy technologies to accelerate our transition to a zero-emission economy. “
I think you are mistaken on your assumption.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/climate-bill-targets-transmission-to-unjam-clean-energy-backlog
Senate Democrats’ climate bill includes $3 billion in loans and grants for electric transmission projects—money that, in addition to tax incentives for electricity generators, would break down a significant barrier to a large-scale clean energy rollout, advocates said.
The Inflation Reduction Act (H.R. 5376) that senators passed Sunday would authorize the Energy Department to issue $2 billion in loans to support new and upgraded electric transmission lines that are deemed part of national corridors. The department would have $760 million in grants to siting authorities—namely state governments—to aid developers in navigating the review and approval processes. An additional $100 million is dedicated to offshore wind transmission.
Despite republicans resistance, the Democrates come through with legislation to increase transmission levels.
Because with one party rule you get a near failed state like California….
Anyone want to talk about how many birds are killed by wind towers?
How about heating the average house in Minnesota with electricity would cost in excess of $1000 a month?
How about the hideous ecological ramifications of battery use at the kind of scale we are talking about?
How about the limitations of battery use in moving food and materials across the world and America?
How about the ramifications of depending on wind and solar infrastructure that has about a 20year or less shelf life?
Obviously the age of fossil energy is coming to an end. But that is because there simply isn’t the fossil energy remaining to maintain the life we have grown accustomed to, for very much longer. But the renewable utopia is just that, a fanciful dream not based in physics or science generally. There is no great climate catastrophe coming, but there is the tragedy/catastrophe of the collapse of modern civilization well on it’s way, largely because hardly anyone left or right is being honest about energy.
How about you support 1 of your accusations with a piece of relative scientific data?
I will agree with Dennis’s call for facts beyond the blowing shade.
However as usual, I guess I’ll be hearing crickets.
How about putting nuclear power back in the conversation? Highest energy generation per unit area by 1000’s of times. Doesn’t need batteries or storage. But Democrats rely on emotions not science.
They also rely on economics. Nuclear has been and continues to be the most expensive way to generate electricity.
Amazingly most Lefties just say “ok, we will use green energy and save the world”, not taking into consideration that green energy is not capable of running metropolitan areas. No Lefties talk real world issues with green energy like where are the rare earth minerals needed to make batteries and solar panels coming from? How are you going to recycle all those used batteries and panels? What process is available to improve capturing solar/wind energy and store it for immediate, as needed usage? What is the backup plan for extremely cold, calm cloudy days?
Unfortunately Lefties just say “let’s do it”, Government money will pay for it. Note to Lefties, Government money is Taxpayer money.
Who, exactly, is a “leftie”? I really would like to know, given how often you throw around that label, in nearly every post. Everyone to the left of you? Is it anyone who disagrees with you? Isn’t that almost everyone? Is it a description or a pejorative? Do you denigrate everyone who does not share your viewpoint? Isn’t it possible that your position is, at least occasionally, incorrect, as you are a human as opposed to a god or overlord? Then a “leftie” would be a “rightie” or a “correctie” and you would be a “wrongie”? Your labels are tiring.
I don’t think people understand the issue (I know the politicians do not). There is only so much capital. In today’s world the state of Minnesota has say $1 trillion dollars worth of generation and transmission that support our electrical needs (hypothetical). We have an excess capacity of say 50% to account for outages, storms, disruptions, load variation etc. If we go to 100% renewables, now we need say 500% of the capacity (all new), so now we need to build by an additional $5 trillion dollars. Its not if we can do it, we can once technology catches up a bit, but it is a huge, huge undertaking. The government isn’t going to fund this, why should they? The electrical costs to consumers are going to go up by magnitudes. Who can afford a $1,000 electrical bill? Charging your electric, car, good luck what is cheaper than gasoline today, will be much higher than gasoline. Renewable are not nearly as energy dense, so therefore they take a much bigger footprint to accomplish the same thing.
Then the bigger question becomes, can we even compete on a world scale with these astronomical electrical prices here? China and India aren’t making these same commitments, they are actually building out coal plants into the foreseeable future.
Thank heaven that for the challenges the author lists, We The People, voted to put adults in charge of all three principles of government in our most recent election here in Minnesota.
If we listed to conservatives like some of the commenters above, we would still be living in caves.
It a shame that Iowa invested more in Wind Power than MN
Walz’s new ambition goal of 100% carbon free ELECTRICITY generation by 2040 (pushed up from 2050 goal) is for electricity. The government is not coming for your NG boiler for home heating!
It is for electricity generation, not all fuel sources. 2/3 of NG use is for heating, industrial and not for electricity generation. NG is going away. No one will be expected to heat their homes via electricity (although heat pumps and solar water heating can be very good solutions in conjunction with NG heating).
I keep seeing this “$1000/mo to heat your home with electricity meme” that is the outrage du jour in the RW media bubbles apparently. Also, this is a goal. Perhaps and overly ambitious one, but this is how we make progress.
* TYPO CORRECTION: I mean to say NG is NOT going away (even if the 100% renewable goal to not use NG for generating electricity is reached)
So you say.
I couldn’t disagree with Scot more. “Streamlining approval” has always been short hand for let’s get bad proposals approved before the public is aware of it. THERE ARE MANY BAD PROPOSALS BEING PUT FORWARD TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE!
Ethanol production expansion and carbon capture pipelines for ethanol plants are some of the worst proposals. There was a lot of financial incentive in the IRA for this. Same thing with tax credits for hummers. The worst thing, in my opinion, is the construction of literally thousands of new high voltage transmission lines. This is going to result in unbelievable costs. There will be, and rightly so tremendous public opposition. We should be focusing much more on distributive generation, rooftop solar instead of utility scale solar and wind farms. There is a huge public relations con game going on by corporate world and special interest groups and we need to sort it out.
I agree, the more local we can make electricity generation, the better – for many reasons.