Bowing under the pressures of the US government, international investors, and customer requests, the gas and oil industry has been performing a massive transition from fuel-based energy to renewable energy. In pursuance of this plan, several coal, oil, lignite, and natural gas power plants are being closed within the upcoming decade.
Many people believe that reducing the global carbon emissions is necessary to sustain life as we know it; that a continuation of the current carbon emissions is, and will, continue to create such a greenhouse effect on the earth that our globe will warm the poles, creating melting ice caps, tsunamis, and utter chaos.
While this possibility sounds viable on the surface, a deeper dive into the specifics of the issues reveals a different narrative.
Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained that renewable energy still comes with a price tag in both environmental and monetary values. Mills said that a 100 megawatt (MW) wind farm providing power to 75,000 homes, requires roughly 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics.
A solar farm requires roughly 150 times these amounts of materials to provide the same amount of power.
Mining also must be increased by 200 to 2,000 percent in order to accommodate the rising demand for rare earth minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and dysprosium in order to build the batteries and infrastructure to operate these facilities.
“With current plans, the International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that by 2050, the disposal of worn-out solar panels will constitute over double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste,” Mills explained.
Environmentally, renewable energy will cost the US roughly 25 percent of total land mass for wind and solar farms, and billions of gallons of water to clean the mirrors and generate the power on the solar farms.
“When push comes to shove, water could become the real throttle on renewable energy,” said Michael Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
When compared to oil, a wind turbine provides roughly one-tenth of the energy for the same cost of construction, and costs $200 in batteries to store the same amount of energy compared to less than a dollar for an equal amount of storage in oil or natural gas.
Many agriculturists, however, in renting their land to private entities who utilize them for renewable energy production, have found this to be profitable. It allows the farmer or rancher to gain a passive income on his property without having to pay for the infrastructure or manage the operation.
Large corporations such as Wal-Mart tend to look for renewable energy credits when selecting the site for a new facility. If such credits are not available, they will often move to a more convenient location for this tax break.
Thus, by controlling the information released to the public, basing much of the so-called facts on fear, and offering an enticing bait in the form of monetary credits, the federal government has pushed the energy sector towards an unsustainable future, largely through pressure provided by the consumers of that energy who are unaware of all the real facts of the case.
The Energy Independent Coalition, as a part of Convention of States, supports the truth, unbiased by political party or money. While oil and gas will certainly not last forever, basing all actions upon models that are incomplete at best and faulty at worst is not a wise decision.
Convention of States supports individual and states’ rights and responsibilities. A convention of the several states could propose an amendment requiring fiscal responsibly from the federal government on the issue of renewable energy, as well as restricting their power over the energy sector in general.
If you would like to learn more about Convention of States, please click here to be redirected to the website.
