5 minute read
Director's Corner
By Dustin Buckingham, CCD, BLC, DGC, District 7 Director
On a family trip this summer, I had the opportunity to visit the Grand Coulee, Chief Joseph and Libby hydroelectric dams. These massive structures electrify millions of homes and provide a stable electric supply for much of the Northwest. The hydroelectric dams were America’s original clean power generation. The Grand Coulee Dam alone produces 6,809 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent power necessary for 4.2 million households. The dam contains 12 million cubic yards of concrete, enough to put a four foot wide and four inch thick sidewalk around the world twice.
Today’s renewables are much less reliable than the old hydroelectric dams. Wind farms and solar fields are intermittent power sources that require nature to cooperate. Solar energy production drops from 40 percent to 60 percent in the winter versus peak production in the summer. Since Ohio is ranked twenty third on the sun index and thirtieth for average wind speed in the United States, neither technology can be used at its optimum production. Wind and solar can play a larger part in our power grid by shaving peak demand and slowing the need for new electric generation. However, you can understand the concern with replacing large amounts of our baseload coal, natural gas and nuclear generation with intermittent power generation from renewables like wind and solar.
Places like Texas have already made large capital investments in renewables. According to Governor Greg Abbott in 2018, Texas led the U.S. in wind generation and was second for installed solar capacity. Yet, they experienced catastrophic results last winter as Texas power generation failed to meet demand. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, this caused 111 deaths, bankruptcies and $80 – $130 billion in direct and indirect economic loss. When Texas needed more power generation, renewables did not produce. According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), wind constitutes 8.4 percent of our electric generation and solar adds 2.3 percent. EIA charts show that 76 percent of new electric generation is coming from these two intermittent power sources. EIA also projects new generation capacity will be dominated by solar.
My concerns are three-fold. First, the mining and manufacturing process used to make solar panels is not green. The process creates toxic bi-products and currently uses much carbon-based energy in the production of the panels. Second, disposal is problematic because of the lead and cadmium each panel contains. The Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) recommends not disposing of solar panels in a regular landfill. Third, China manufactures 80 percent of all solar panels. They also mine and refine 64 percent of the world’s silicon, a key component.
Buckeye Power has built 23 solar arrays across the state that are rated for 2.1 megawatts of energy. Data shows the solar arrays system peaks at about 1.6 megawatts or enough electricity for 1,295 homes. Members can buy a portion of their power from these fields if they choose. The fields diversify Ohio cooperative’s energy portfolio and give the co-ops sound data to make informed decisions about future renewable investments. Over the last 20 years, Buckeye Power has invested over $1 billion in adopting technologies to clean emissions from our 1800-megawatt coal-fired electric plants. These plants produce enough electricity for 1.1 million homes.
Coal-fired power plants and other electric generation from carbon-based fuels are under attack across the country regardless of emission investments.
Currently, many investment groups are considering non-financial factors like environment, social and governance (ESG) in their investment decisions. One of the intended consequences is to drive capital investment away from carbon-based electric generation.
Additionally, nuclear electric generators have added only one reactor in the last 25 years. Nuclear power is shrinking as new reactors are not keeping pace with the retirement of old reactors. The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "Nuclear Power is the Best Climate Change Solution by Far". The co-authors, Andrew Fillat and Henry Miller, explain how greenhouse gas emissions for the complete life cycle of manufacturing, operation and decommissioning of nuclear are a fourth of solar and requires one-four-hundreth as much land. One person’s lifetime use of nuclear energy would be about half an ounce of waste. Nuclear waste is more difficult to dispose of, but its volume is one-ten- thousandth of solar and one-five-hundreth of wind when considering abandoned infrastructure that ends up in landfills.
Americans need reliable, clean, affordable and self-reliant electricity. This can only be accomplished by a balanced approach to electric generation. The U.S. electric grid will be placed under greater stress than ever before as the automotive industry switches to electric vehicles (EV). This will reduce our need for petroleum but will stress our nation’s electric generation and distribution as the grid absorbs the EV impact. Disproportionate investment in intermittent power sources while defunding stable power generation from coal, natural gas and nuclear generation will cause future electric reliability issues.
