The ENVIRONMENT
It's a given that everyone wants clean air, water, and energy. But how do we best accomplish that? An ideology that is not based on empirically-driven data will not lead to environmental and economic health. In fact, some question the belief that climate change is primarily a political problem to be solved by political force. Is it possible that factors affecting climate change are more of a scientific problem to be solved by cooperation among scientists to discover cheap and effective sources of clean energy?
FORESTS
All Oregonians love trees! But you wouldn't know it by looking at our forests.
Troubling Concern: Forests that suffer from disease, insects, and neglect that cause wildfires hurt our economy and air quality.
Positive Change: Manage our forests better because healthy trees
- increase our air quality;
- eat up carbon dioxide (!);
- renew themselves as a resource.
So, why not manage our forests better? Why have we destroyed the economic base in rural Oregon? This issue begs for better legislative ideas and guidance.
ENERGY
Have you seen Michael Moore's 2019 film, Planet of the Humans? You can see the entire documentary for free at Planet of the Humans. He raises troubling concerns about what many in the green movement have believed to be true.
Troubling Concern:
- Oregon may soon be experiencing brownouts and blackouts as some other states have because we have based our thinking on ideology rather than reality.
- Energy is the "lifeblood" of every economy. Sadly, the cost of energy continues to climb—unnecessarily!—increasing the stress on lower- and middle-income families.
- Solar panels and windmills are extremely costly to build and maintain. They damage the natural beauty of Oregon, waste natural resources, are nonrecyclable and inefficient, and need other back-up sources of energy.
Positive Change:
- Clear thinking, based on reason and science. Following are some cogent excerpts from "The Grid Is Not a Tinker Toy."
One of the intriguing characteristics of the grid is that electricity must be consumed at the same time it is generated. It cannot be stockpiled the way water can be stored in a tank. As a consumer, you can't go next door and borrow a cup of kilowatts. Supply and demand on the grid must be in equilibrium at all times, to avoid blackouts. This makes power generation tricky. Utilities need electricity sources they can count on—known as "baseload" power. They typically use coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric generators for this purpose. Those sources with the most operating flexibility—typically gas and hydro—are also used as "peakers", to alter the power supply so it matches hourly changes in consumer demand.
The Oregon legislature declared war on reliable sources in 2007, when the first "Renewable Portfolio Standard" (RPS) law was passed. The RPS mandated that large utilities procure at least 25% of their power from politically-designated "renewable energy" sources by 2025. The most notable feature of this law was that it disallowed hydro dams built prior to 1995 to count as "renewable" energy—creating the legal fiction that the Columbia River hydropower system did not exist as a clean energy source. The point of this definition was to force utilities to switch to wind and solar.
Legislators doubled the RPS mandate to 50% (by 2040) in 2016. This was referred to by advocates as the "coal to clean" bill. They falsely promoted it as a means to eliminate coal-fired electricity. But the grid doesn't work that way. Oregon is part of a multi-state network, in which thousands of power sources are being used at any given time. Once on the grid, electricity flows at the speed of light throughout the distribution system, powering millions of toasters, microwaves, and HVAC systems. Coal power is not physically isolated from solar or hydro.
In response to these political mandates, electric utilities are gradually shutting down coal plants in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Unfortunately, they are proceeding without a clear plan for replacing baseload power. Wind and solar won't cut it; as "intermittent" sources they fail to produce electricity about 70% of the time.
PGE does not have a precise plan to replace Boardman [Oregon's only coal-fired plant that was recently shut down]. The utility expects to sign hydro contracts as a transition strategy. But any weather-related power source can disappear quickly, as happened in 2001 when the region experienced a low-water year. The result was a shortage of electricity, and the painful shutdown of the aluminum industry. Some 5,000 jobs in the Northwest disappeared.
PGE also expects to build or buy more wind and solar, coupled with battery storage. But the best utility-scale storage facility in the country can only deliver power for four hours.
We are on the brink of a blackout crisis. Instead of addressing a problem they created—the RPS law—state legislators have wasted the 2020 short session trying to prevent "global climate change" by placing limits on fossil fuel use in Oregon. Even if enacted, this would have no measurable effect on climate, so it is a waste of time and money.
- Business leaders and civic groups should demand an end to this insanity. Here's a short agenda:
- consider having the legislature refer out a referendum to re-legalize nuclear power. Some of the most cutting-edge research on smaller-scale nuclear energy is being done here in Oregon, but any commercialization will have to take place elsewhere. It's time for a new conversation on this subject.
- repeal the RPS statute. Operating the grid is complicated enough; mandating the types of power sources utilities can use is only making things worse.
(John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon's free market public policy research center. A version of this article appeared in the February 2020 edition of The Oregon Transformation Newsletter.)
Our Democrat governor and Democrat legislators are continuing down their chosen path. Here's an update, again from the Cascade Policy Institute, in an article, "Fossil Fuels Are Not Going Anywhere", March 23, 2022.
Many Oregon politicians have convinced themselves that we can have a high quality of life without the use of oil, coal or natural gas. If you ask them how we can do this, they have a two-word response: "electrify everything."
It's a seductive idea. Governor Kate Brown was an early adopter when she signed an executive order in 2017, establishing a non-binding goal of 50,000 registered and operating electric vehicles in Oregon by 2020. However, this goal was not met; the actual number on February 1 of 2021 was 31,977, out of 4.2 million total Oregon vehicles. Since Oregon auto standards are actually set by California – because Oregon opted to piggyback on California standards a decade ago – all Oregon light-duty vehicles sold after 2035 will need to be electric.
In April 2021, Multnomah County Commissioners put their own spin on the concept by prohibiting the use of fossil fuels in new or remodeled Multnomah County buildings.
Later in the year, the city councils of Eugene, Salem and Milwaukie all took steps towards banning new natural gas hookups in their respective cities. More recently, the Portland School Board adopted a policy prohibiting the installation of fossil fuel infrastructure in new buildings and phasing out such infrastructure in existing buildings by 2050.
In all of these cases, politicians implicitly assumed that fossil fuel infrastructure does not include electricity. That assumption is wrong.
Unless you've actually disconnected from the commercial grid (or were never on it), you are part of a vast, interstate electrical distribution system powered by thousands of generators. Most electricity is provided by coal and natural gas plants, with hydropower a dominant source in the Pacific Northwest. Once on the grid, electricity is an open-access resource; it is shared by everyone, regardless of fuel source.
The state legislatures in California, Oregon and Washington have all adopted stringent policies mandating various levels of carbon-free electricity within the next few decades, but those policies can't actually be implemented. There are many reasons for this, but the most obvious is that the power sources preferred by liberal politicians – wind and solar – don't provide electricity most of the time. Since the physics of the grid require that electricity supply and demand be in equilibrium at all times, intermittent sources such as wind and solar are always backed up by fast-response generators that can be dispatched on command.
In most parts of the world, the back-up is natural gas. In the Pacific Northwest, it is more likely the Columbia River hydropower system. But since hydro has both physical and political limits, any policy of mass electrification powered by wind and solar will necessarily require more natural gas in the future.
In fact, it's already happening. The Oregon Department of Energy maintains a useful web page showing where Oregon's electricity comes from. The dataset covers the years 2012-2019.
Major fuel sources for generating electricity used in Oregon
2012-2019
| Hydro | Coal | Natural Gas | Wind | Nuclear | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 46.00% | 32.57% | 12.17% | 5.39% | 3.11% |
| 2013 | 41.17% | 35.07% | 14.16% | 5.61% | 3.19% |
| 2014 | 41.40% | 34.05% | 14.76% | 5.58% | 3.27% |
| 2015 | 39.11% | 33.53% | 16.58% | 6.57% | 3.03% |
| 2016 | 41.03% | 28.21% | 18.45% | 7.34% | 3.47% |
| 2017 | 44.81% | 26.09% | 19.31% | 4.98% | 3.02% |
| 2018 | 43.28% | 24.81% | 21.05% | 4.69% | 3.78% |
| 2019 | 37.23% | 27.45% | 24.80% | 4.86% | 3.50% |
| Percent change | -19.00% | -15.72% | 103.78% | -9.83% | 12.54% |
Hydro remains the dominant power source, but has dropped by 19%. Coal consumption has dropped by 16%, but natural gas use has more than doubled, going from 12% to 25%. The combined market share of gas and coal has also increased, from 45% to 52%, despite political mandates to the contrary. Wind was small to start with in 2012 and dropped by 10%. Solar is essentially irrelevant.
When politicians want to fool the public, they enact policies that have implementation deadlines far in the future – such as 2035 or 2050. That way, when the policies fail – as they usually do – no one will be held accountable.
This is what's going on with the "electrify everything" movement. Fossil fuels run the global economy, and they will for a long time. When politicians claim otherwise, they reveal their own ignorance.
(John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon's free market public policy research organization. A version of this article was published in the Portland Tribune on March 22, 2022.)
For the latest available information on Oregon's energy use, see the Oregon Department of Energy's 2022 Biennial Energy Report submitted to the Oregon Legislature. Solar and Wind combined are less than 9% of Oregon's 2020 total energy consumption—at a great cost to consumers and to our environment.
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