"Blackouts" Today, "Greenouts" Tomorrow: America Needs a Pro-Production Energy Policy

Townhall.com ^ | Aug. 15, 2003 | Amy Ridenour

[FairOpinion]

Tens of millions Americans got a wakeup call Thursday: cheap, accessible energy isn't something to take for granted.

Unfortunately, many of America's most powerful environmental organizations do take energy for granted, and they are trying to set America on a course that, if unchecked, could make the future very dark indeed.

These environmentalist groups hate energy. They don't put it so starkly, but a review of their policies can lead to no other conclusion.

Leading environmental organizations, for example, make it very, very difficult to build new power plants and oil refineries. No major oil refineries have been built in the U.S. since 1976, although the number of vehicles in use has doubled and refineries are running at capacity.

A regulatory change made during the Clinton Administration to a program called New Source Review has, as the EPA puts it, "impeded or resulted in the cancellation of projects that would maintain or improve reliability, efficiency or safety of existing power plants and refineries."

Yet when the EPA announced that it would alter the changes to remove impediments that are harmful to energy production but unnecessary for environmental protection, environmentalists screamed bloody murder. This although the EPA was otherwise continuing the New Source Review program as devised by Congress -- back in 1977, when Congress was controlled by Democrats.

Environmentalists famously oppose domestic oil drilling, advocating alternatives such as hydrogen. But, as William Tucker noted in the Weekly Standard, replacing oil with hydrogen ignores a critical fact: "...there is no source of free hydrogen in the world. Supplies will come from either 1) the electrolysis of water, which requires electricity, or 2) stripping hydrogen from natural gas."

But environmentalists oppose natural gas drilling and most of the methods used to generate electricity, too.

Although the U.S. has vast reserves of natural gas, much of it is off limits to drilling. Through the expansion of wilderness areas and national monuments in gas-rich regions of the West, millions of acres now are closed to oil and gas exploration. All is ardently supported by environmentalists. Now approximately 40 percent of known U.S. natural gas reserves are inaccessible because of environmental regulations on federal lands.

Not coincidentally, the price of natural gas in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the past year. Storage levels of natural gas are at their lowest point in 30 years.

Using electricity for any reason poses problems for environmentalists. They oppose coal mining, so coal-generated electricity is out, and detest nuclear power plants, although nuclear energy ought to be the energy of choice for anyone who actually believes human beings are causing global warming.

Environmentalists even oppose generating electricity by harnessing the natural power of rivers through clean hydroelectric dams. In fact, leading environmentalists lobby to have the dams torn down. They cite the dams' impact on fish, but in fact they oppose, on general principle, the notion of toying with nature.

Some environmentalists, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Walter Cronkite even oppose wind farms. (Kennedy apparently thinks they are okay if he can't see them.) Cronkite, made a commercial against wind farms in Nantucket Sounds, says "massive wind turbines could disrupt the natural habitat for wildlife."

From a power-generation perspective, this is not such a big deal: it would take over 30,000 large windmill facilities, each containing many windmills, to generate enough electricity just for our needs. Even the wind energy industry claims only that wind energy could account for six percent of U.S. energy needs by 2020, and that's optimistic. However, you'd think that if any energy source could pass environmentalist muster, it would be technology based on something back in the Middle Ages.

Yet, energy has to come from somewhere, and as America's environmentalists oppose oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, burning coal and even, when thought unsightly, wind farms, they really ought to tell the American people how they intend to keep the future from looking an awful lot like the Great Blackout of August 2003.

Though I suppose by then we'll call them "Greenouts."

Of course, it would be wrong to be completely critical of our environmentalist brethren. Huge energy blackouts aren't all bad. If what happened during past blackouts -- such as 1965's "The Night the Lights Went Out" in New York -- is any indication, nine months from now many families in blackout areas will happily greet bundles of joy.

Too bad environmentalists hate population growth, too.

Amy Ridenour is president of The National Center for Public Policy Research, a Townhall.com member group. Readers may write her at NCPPR, 777 N. Capitol St. NE, Suite 803, Washington, DC 20002 or by e-mail at aridenour@nationalcenter.org.

[FairOpinion]

How true!

We need to point this out, when Hillary is trying to blame the blackout on Bush.

[Ronin]

It would be foolish to expect otherwise. Hillary knows that the Clinton years are nothing but one long series of failure and feel-good poli-licking. (yes I misspelled that on purpose). And, she knows that the best defense is attack.

She needs to get people talking about the nasty Republicans before peoples start asking embarrassing questions.

[thegreatbeast]

I was thinking of this yesterday. The scuttlebutt about nuclear energy used to be that it would be so cheap to produce that it almost wouldn't have been worth throwing meters on to measure consumption.
Now, thanks to the econazis and the greenies, nuclear power is prohibitively expensive.
Way to go, arseholes!

[FairOpinion]

"Clinton years are nothing but one long series of failure and feel-good poli-licking"

---

I think they were licking a lot more than just "poli". ;)

[FairOpinion]

Even socialistic France derives 80% of their power from nuclear power plants, why can't we?

[FairOpinion]

Even socialistic France derives 80% of their power from nuclear power plants, why can't we?

[FairOpinion]

Even socialistic France derives 80% of their power from nuclear power plants, why can't we?

[FairOpinion]

Sorry for the triplicate.

[FlyVet]

But environmentalists oppose natural gas drilling and most of the methods used to generate electricity, too.

When we fall far enough, the average person will tell the Greenies to stick it. Natural gas should be for home heating, not firing power plants. Clean coal technology and modern nuke plants can easily fix any energy problems we have. NIMBY? Well I don't want a plant right next door, but 20 miles away wouldn't bother me a bit. Here in AZ, there are endless miles of uninhabited land, plenty of states have the same. Then they will whine about high-tension towers disturbing the pristine land.

Crap. Want power? Want an economy? Build power plants. Sooner or later these idiots are going to get stomped on, I hope.

[nathanbedford]

I hate population growth too. Every immigrant flushes the toilet several times daily, wants to drive, and takes up highway space during rush hour. He demands electricty, water sewage, petroleum and living space. The shear numbers of people walking out of Manhattan ought to have evey one of us re-think our population attitudes.

When I was born there were about 140M Americans, now we compete for space and energy and water with 280M. Most newcomers, mostly eager to work, nevertheless do not share my conservative political or cultural values. They vote. I now feel as though I must get my visa stamped to enter New York City because of the strange languages, cultures, politics, and attitudes which now predominate there. As my values are swept aside, I must celebrate their loss as the price of "diversity" or be labelled as a nativist.

If the increase in population came only from internal growth, I could complain without being labelled a racist - and I would complain, although for the reasons expressed in the first paragraph. But most of the population explosion is coming from immigration and those who oppose it have virtually no voice because of the bogeyman of racism.

Finally, I do not believe the environmentalists are very vociferous about immigration or population growth as the author suggests because it would offend their leftist allies.

[FairOpinion]

Environmentalists pride themselves in not being logical. They are against population growth, in fact some of them said they would really rather if all the people died out. That of course doesn't stop the liberals for also wanting the "poor immigrants" to inundate the US.

[Ronin]

You would think the the Liberals who are against population growth would do the world a favor and "off" themselves -- but nooooo... it is not people they are against -- it's people unlike THEM.

[this_ol_patriot]

We do need plants BUT we also need infrastructure, new high-capacity transmission lines are needed. You can't just throw more and more power into existing lines without problems. All the power plants in the world won't do a dimes worth of good if they can't deliver the power to where it needs to go. Greenies are against power lines too.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

The shortage of electricity is a political problem. If the people of New York are using more electricity than the state produces, they will have to have electricity rationed to them. For example, no new houses could be built with more than a 200 ampere electrical service. Monthly kilowatt hours per household could be restricted to "X."

There are consequences to this political battle preventing the construction of power plants. If people don't want new power plants or lines constructed, they will have to live with LESS ELECTRICITY available to them.

Those states who are net IMPORTERS of electricity should be the ones living with the most restricted use of the resource.

[meyer]

Good article. But the environazis are only half of the problem. The deregulation scheme (which is hardly de-regulation, but more correctly called re-regulation) is a major contributing factor in this event as well.

[SouthCarolinaKit]

And at the same time the econonazi's are accumulating bundles of money to buy their Senator's filibuster against getting gas from Alaska! Don't expect this story to be on the mainstream media anytime soon. They'd rather take the easy way out and quote only Hitlery.

[ckilmer]

I read an amazing article about the latest upgrade in biomass conversion. This is dull stuff except that the newest generation technology brings the cost of converting sewage, municipal garbage, industrial and agricultural waste -- to oil down to $15@barrel. They do it by imitating and accelerating the process in the earth that by heat and pressure breaks down carbon compounds and converts any carbon based substance to oil. They say with some tweaking and economies of scale--they can do it for $8-12@barrel. According to the article, agriculture wastes alone would produce 4 billion barrels of oil annually. The US imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil in 2001. Put these biomass converters around every city in the US and then use the oil make electricity and voilla--you have a distributed power generation network.

Sound too good to be true? Read the article and look at the people and agencies in the government, business and scientific establishment who have put their names behind it.
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/940151.asp?0sl=-42
Here's a couple more articles on the same subject
http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/030717/energy_garbage_1.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/Burn-Turkey-Waste-Energy16may03.htm
This is the company website
http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm
Here's a press release from the website:
West Hempstead, NY, April 8, 2003 – Changing World Technologies, Inc. announces the first commercially successful application of thermal technology to convert organic waste into clean energy. Building on scientific research dating to the 1920s and human history extending from the Stone Age, CWT has patented, tested and deployed a technological process that has been awarded $12 million in grants from the US government and produced a joint venture with ConAgra Foods, Inc.

Utilizing low-value waste by-products such as tires, plastics, municipal sewage sludge, paper, animal and agricultural refuse as feedstocks, CWT's thermal technology provides a commercially viable solution for some of the earth’s gravest environmental challenges, including arresting global warming by reducing the use of fossil fuels, and reforming organic waste into a high-value resource. In addition, it has the potential to substantially reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

“If the process works as well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems become history, so would imported oil,” says Discover magazine, which features a full-length article on CWT's thermal process in the May 2003 issue.

“From the point of view of pollution and the point of view of energy production, this is a remarkable story. This technology offers all of us an opportunity someday to have a more peaceful and a freer world, a world that is not dependent on turbulence and chaos,” said R. James Woolsey, former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency and a senior advisor to CWT.

Cornerstone Technology
Where earlier attempts at thermal conversion failed, CWT’s thermal process succeeds in breaking down long chains of organic polymers into their smallest units and reforming them into new combinations to produce clean solid, liquid and gaseous alternative fuels and specialty chemicals.

The conversion process emulates the earth’s natural geothermal activity, whereby organic material is converted into fossil fuel under conditions of extreme heat and pressure over millions of years. The cornerstone technology, called Thermal Depolymerization Process or TDP, mimics the earth’s system by using pipes and controlling temperature and pressure to reduce the bio-remediation process from millions of years to mere hours.

The process entails five steps:
(1) Pulping and slurrying the organic feed with water.
(2) Heating the slurry under pressure to the desired temperature.
(3) Flashing the slurry to a lower pressure to separate the mixture.
(4) Heating the slurry again (coking) to drive off water and produce light hydrocarbons.
(5) Separating the end products.

TDP is 85% energy efficient. The process has very low Btu requirements, due to the short residence times of materials at each stage and to the holding of water under pressure.
In addition, it generates its own energy, utilizes recycled water throughout, and uses the steam naturally created by the process to heat incoming feedstock, thereby recapturing expended energy. In addition, TDP produces no uncontrollable emissions and no secondary hazardous waste streams.

"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," said Alf Andreassen, a principal of Paladin Capital Group and former Technical Advisor for Naval Warfare and Science Advisor to President George Bush. "In Europe, there are mountains of bones piling up" due to new

regulations for handling bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, he says. "When recycling waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything."

Plant Commercialization
To test and refine the technology, CWT established a Research & Development plant at the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Naval Yard in partnership with the Gas Research Institute, which opened in December 1999. There the company successfully applied its thermal conversion process to a range of feedstocks, including animal waste, tires, mixed plastics and paper.

“This project and the work that Changing World Technologies is doing in Philadelphia will revolutionize the way we deal with waste products on a broad commercial scale, the production of energy, and the reduction or elimination of waste by-products which enhances economic development… improving air quality, our quality of life as well as our environment,” says Denise Chamberlain, former Deputy Secretary for Air, Recycling & Radiation Protection for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

"The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even consider us waste handlers. We are permitted as manufacturers. Our process has undergone the scrutiny of an Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and received a Finding of No Significant Impact, or FONSI,” said Brian Appel, CWT Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."

ConAgra Foods was one of the first enterprises to express early interest in the commercial application of CWT's thermal process. A joint venture between the companies was entered into in December 2000 for the first commercial application of the technology for the conversion of poultry offal at one of ConAgra's large Butterball Turkey plants. When it is commissioned later this month, the $20 million facility in Carthage, Missouri -- funded in part by a $5 million
grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency -- will process 200 tons per day of fats, bones, feathers, grease and oils.

“If the technology is successful, it could offer enormous opportunities to address farm waste problems in the Midwest. It could be applied to all sorts of other wastes. This looks extremely positive,” said William Rice, EPA Acting Regional Administrator.

According to Howard Buffett, who represents ConAgra's investment, "We've got a lot of confidence in this… We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success."

“This is a remarkable opportunity to use new technology to turn a troublesome liability – waste – into a valuable asset – renewable energy,” said Senator Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri, when construction of the Carthage plant first began.

About CWT
Mr. Appel, formerly a principal of Atlantis International and Ticket World USA, has assembled a team of high level scientists, technologists and former government officials to lead the commercialization of CWT’s thermal process and related technologies. They include Alan L. Libshutz, President & Chief Operating Officer, a former Managing Director of the energy and finance groups at Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns; Franklin D. Kramer, Executive Vice President, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; Terry N. Adams, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, a specialist in heat transfer, fluid flow and combustion and a former Technical Advisor to Weyerhaeuser R&D; James H. Freiss, PE, Vice President of Engineering, an agricultural engineer who was previously Director of Environmental Affairs for ContiGroup Companies, Inc.; and William Lange, Director of Engineering, an accomplished electromechanical, mechanical, electronics circuitry, and electromagnetic design specialist.


CWT is a holding company dedicated to identifying emerging technologies that address specific energy and environmental needs, and then developing them into viable business opportunities. It is currently commercializing its patented thermal technology, which converts hydrocarbons and organic materials into clean fuels and specialty chemicals. Founded in 1997, CWT’s subsidiaries and affiliated companies include Resource Recovery Corporation, Inc.; Thermo- Depolymerization Process, LLC; and Renewable Environmental Solutions, LLC, a joint venture with ConAgra Foods, Inc. established as the exclusive vehicle to apply CWT’s processes in the global agricultural sector.

For more information, visit CWT at www.changingworldtech.com or call (516) 486-0100.

Contact:
Julie Gross Gelfand
CWT Press Office
(516) 536-7258
jgelfand@hldcreative.com

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

This is what believing in the false message of enviromentalists has brought us.It is time to start using what these people have done against them and if the republicans were smart they would in wholesale fashion,blame the power failure on the environmental movement.Discredit them in every way possible.

[jmaroneps37]

This blackout will turn out to be the stake in the heart of the rats. They will NOT be able to resist calling for investigations. They will get them, alright only WE will be running them. I can see it now. In the interest of fairness Delay calls a bunch of dirty hippies up to represent the enviromentalists' side. These poor hideous creatures will not know what hit them. At the end of the hearings, the Republican controlled Congress will vote for EVERYTHING in W's energy package. We could even see drilling in ANWAR rammed up the rats' ashes. Hee hee hee.
The smartest woman in the world hildebeast has already started to try to blame W. People won't buy it and; it will be seen as more braying from the evil donkey. Lots of good times ahead.

[CyberAnt]

Bwwwaaaaaaa! The outage is blamed on Ohio - NOT NY. Hitlery wasted her tantrum. The woman is pitiful!

What I want the media to focus on - SHE WAS IN THE SENATE WHICH WOULD NOT PASS BUSH'S ENERGY PLAN - 2 YEARS AGO!!!

Now .. whose fault is this mess - Hitlery's!!!