Pipelines and Energy Production

One of Trump’s many executive orders this week was to begin the process to allow the Keystone and Dakota oil pipelines to resume construction. These will bring oil from Canada into the United States. Liberals of course are in a tizzy over this order, but it is in fact a very wise move.

Advantages of Pipelines

There are many advantages to resuming construction on the pipelines.

First, according the companies responsible for the construction, it will create 28,000 jobs. Of course, the left is disputing that number. But whatever the exact number is, it will be greater than zero. And every person who gets a well-paying job will be thankful.

Second, the pipelines will reduce greenhouse emissions. Yes, reduce. By having a pipeline, oil will not have to be transported from Canada into the United States via rail or truck. Those trains and trucks emit a lot of carbon emissions, but pipelines emit none.

Third, as far as a possible catastrophe, yes, a pipeline could leak or break, if there is a rare earthquake or other natural disaster or a terrorist attack. But in that case, I assume there will be shut off valves throughout the pipeline that could be turned off as soon as a problem is detected, limiting the amount of spilled oil. And that is why they are being buried, so as to reduce any environmental damage.

But if a train derails, the damage will potentially be even greater. Not only would you have no way to stop the oil spillage, but it would all be above ground, and there would also be the very likelihood of heat from the engine igniting the oil. And that fire, depending on where it happens, could end up into a major disaster. Trucks can get into wrecks, with the same potential problems, except on a smaller scale. But their greater number makes accidents more likely.

The State Department estimated that as of January 2014, 180,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil per day is being transported by freight trains. If no pipeline is built, that number will rise. Using trains to transport oil to refineries in the U.S. poses a safety concern because explosions can occur, killing people and damaging habitats nearby.

The Dakota Access pipeline project was meant to address the growing amount of oil being shipped out of North Dakota by freight trains. It’s cheaper to move oil through pipelines and reduces the likelihood that explosions will happen, according to Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline project’s builder (National Geographic. 4 Key).

Wind and Solar Problems

But what the celebrities who are instigating the protest over the pipelines really want is for all usage of oil to stop. Fine, if that is what they want, then stop flying around in your private jets, stop being chaffered in limousines, stop living in your mansions. Move into a log cabin, chop wood for heat and fuel, and stop using your hot tubs, saunas, cell phones, refrigerators, stoves, TVs, computers, the Internet, and everything else that uses electricity. Ride a bike or a horse to get wherever you want to be.

Of course, leftist celebrities won’t do that, nor will any of the protestors against the oil pipelines. They claim we could get all of our fuel from wind and solar power. But to provide all of our energy needs via wind and solar would require massive amounts of land devoted to wind and solar farms. The left already complains about birds being killed by wind farms, and that is with just 1% of our energy being derived from them. What would happen if 50% came from wind? There would need to be wind mills everywhere, and those poor little birds wouldn’t stand a chance.

Leftist even protest about wind farms not looking nice. This came up when a wind farm was proposed for offshore from Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts a while back. That is where all the rich leftists stay for vacations. They didn’t want their view of the ocean blocked, so they tried to block the idea. “The most notable opponent was the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose family compound would have a view of the wind farm” (CNN). But if wind farms were to power our entire country, we would need those farms everywhere, and the liberal elite wouldn’t be able to get away from them and only stick them where us poor folks would have to see them.

Moreover, there is a lot of steel in wind mills. How do they think that steel will be made? The iron must be dug up. There must be energy for the steel mills. And all of that mining and land use for wind farms would have to have some environmental impact.

But solar farms are even worse. The amount of land that be needed for all of those solar panels would be astronomical. And all of that heat being absorbed by panels, not making it to the ground, would again, have to have some kind of environmental impact.

And again, there would be the energy and materials (including hazardous materials) needed to make all of those solar panels. Think about it. To power the entire United States via wind and solar would millions if not billions of solar panels. That is a lot of raw materials and energy needed for production. And that has an environmental impact:

Fabricating the panels requires caustic chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrofluoric acid, and the process uses water as well as electricity, the production of which emits greenhouse gases. It also creates waste. These problems could undercut solar’s ability to fight climate change and reduce environmental toxics (National Geographic).

And those things do not last forever. Will we fill up massive amounts of landfills with spent wind mills and solar panels? Right now, recycling is not feasible, despite claims that they are up to 97% recyclable. It night be in the future, but it will require much regulation and compliance by the manufacturing companies, and that is not guaranteed.

Right now, solar panel recycling suffers from a chicken-or-egg problem: There aren’t enough places to recycle old solar panels, and there aren’t enough defunct solar panels to make recycling them economically attractive (National Geographic).

Can Wind and Solar Replace Oil?

The goal of environmentalists is to provide all of the energy needs for the United States through renewable energies by 2050. But that is not feasible.

Of 53,535 gigawatts (GW) of new electrical energy generation sources to be built, onshore and offshore wind turbines would supply 19,000 GW (35.4%), solar photovoltaic (PV) plants would supply 17,100 GW (32%) and Concentrated Solar Power plants (CSP) would supply 14,700 GW (27.5%). This would cost $100 trillion, or $3,571 for every household on the planet….

The financial costs of building the 100% renewable energy world are enormous, but the land area needed to accommodate such diffuse sources of energy supply is just as daunting. Accommodating the 46,480 solar PV plants envisioned for the U.S. in the WWS vision would take up 650,720 square miles, almost 20% of the lower 48 states. This is close in size to the combined areas of Texas, California, Arizona, and Nevada.

A 1000-megawatt (MV) wind farm would use up to 360 square miles of land to produce the same amount of energy as a 1000-MV nuclear plant….

To replace the 440 MW of U.S. generation expected to be retired over the next 25 years, it would take 29.3 billion solar PV panels and 4.4 million battery modules. The area covered by these panels would be equal to that of the state of New Jersey. To produce this many panels, it would take 929 years, assuming they could be built at the pace of one per second (Friends).

Conclusion

I am all for solar and wind power. In fact, back in the 1970s during the oil crisis, I just assumed that by now there would be solar panels on the roofs of every house in America, and we’d all be driving electric cars, powered by those solar panels. But unfortunately, that vision is not even close to being realized.

As it is, renewal energy sources can provide some of the energy needs of the USA on our way to energy independence. But by no means will they be able to provide even a significant minority of our energy in the near future, let alone a majority of it. And they will not be able to provide all of our energy needs for a long time to come. Thus unless you are willing to live like it is the 1700s, then stop the hypocrisy and get behind efforts to improve our energy situation in the most economically and environmentally efficient manner.

Yes, that includes increasing our usage of solar and wind power, but pipelines also fit that bill. And I would rather get energy from friendly Canada than no-so friendly Middle Eastern countries.

References:

CNN. Nine-year wind farm fight splits Cape Cod.

Friends of Science. Why Renewable Energies Cannot Replace Fissile Fuels by 2050.

National Geographic. 4 Key Impacts of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.

National Geographic. How Green Are Those Solar Panels, Really?

Renewable Energy Focus. End-of-life PV: then what? - Recycling solar PV panels.

Statista. Total electricity end use in the U.S. from 1975 to 2015 (in billion kilowatt hours).

Union of Concerned Scientist. Environmental Impacts of Solar Power.

Union of Concerned Scientist. Environmental Impacts of Wind Power.

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The above article was posted on this website January 28, 2017.

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