Editor’s note: Keith Rattie, Chairman, President and CEO of  Questar Corporation, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, gave this speech at Utah Valley University on April 2, 2009. The full version is on Questar’s website. Subtitles have been added.

Energy Myths and Realities

There may be no greater challenge facing mankind today – and your generation in particular – than figuring out how we’re going to meet the energy needs of a planet that may have 9 billion people living on it by the middle of this century. The magnitude of that challenge becomes even more daunting when you consider that of the 6.5 billion people on the planet today, nearly two billion people don’t even have electricity – never flipped a light switch.

False 1970s Consensus

Now, the “consensus” back in the mid-1970s was that America and the world were running out of oil.…

Last month, our friends over at the Heartland Institute published a front-page lead story in the April, 2009 edition of Environment & Climate News. Alyssia Carducci’s “Palin Energy Plan Receives High Praise” begins:

“Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has announced an ambitious plan to produce half of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Palin’s plan, which empowers local municipalities to identify and develop the most cost-efficient renewable power sources available to them, won immediate praise from environmental groups, consumer groups, and industry.”

This article is yet more evidence that the inexplicable conservative love affair with Sarah Palin remains unrequited—at least, when it comes to economic policy in general and energy policy in particular. But Republicans, as the kids might say, “She’s just not that into you.” Let’s examine the litany of problems with Plain’s approach to energy.…

[Ed. note: Occasionally a comment is important enough to deserve its own post, rather than a reply in the comment section. This is in response to Comment #1 of “A Texas Sized Energy Problem” here.]

The Energy Information Administration, an independent agency within the Department of Energy, in its 2008 report, Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007, compares subsidies related to electricity production, the sector where wind is used. In table ES5, they show that the traditional fuel sources (coal, natural gas, and petroleum liquids) received $1,081 million in Federal subsidies for electricity production in 2007, while wind received $724 million, a ratio of 1.49. However, in that year, the traditional fossil sources generated 2,865 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), while wind generated 31 billion kWh.…

“When an abundant natural fall of water is at hand, nothing can be cheaper or better than water power. But everything depends upon local circumstances. The occasional mountain torrent is simply destructive. Many streams and rivers only contain sufficient water half the year round and costly reservoirs alone could keep up the summer supply. In flat countries no engineering art could procure any considerable supply of natural water power, and in very few places do we find water power free from occasional failure by drought.”

– W. S. Jevons, The Coal Question (London: Macmillan and Co., 1865), p. 129.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times has presented Costa Rica as a model for the energy world, noting its reliance on renewable energy (hydro) to generate electricity. In response, we posted last week about how such dependence had left it vulnerable to the vagaries of rainfall, and (to a much lesser degree) wind.…