In Part I of this two-part post, we presented our observations of a power generation industry that will likely become more dependent on natural gas as a source of fuel for new power plants constructed in the coming years. Other fuel-based technologies (principally nuclear and coal) don’t seem to have the wherewithal to grab a larger piece of what should be a growing demand for electricity in the U.S. Both will be lucky to maintain their market share in the future. Renewables, with high levels of production tax credits, coupled with legislative mandates, will continue to grow in installed capacity but will contribute little to peak demand reduction. And should politically correct renewables (not hydropower) lose part or all of its government support, say as part of a deficit reduction program, then market share will actually be lost.…

A recent NYT article discussed a proposal by economist Ross McKitrick to tie CO2 taxes to global temperature increases. McKitrick’s overall aim is to offer a compromise that, he argues, should satisfy those who think the government needs to take drastic action and those who think carbon emissions pose no serious long-term threat. Although McKitrick’s idea is clever, it has theoretical difficulties and (in my opinion) would certainly not work in practice.

McKitrick’s Proposal to Tie CO2 Taxes to Temperature

The NYT story does a good job summarizing the idea:

[McKitrick] suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. The penalties could start off small enough to be politically palatable to skeptical voters.

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear.

Around the world, China is investing in oil and gas resources to fuel its booming manufacturing industries and transportation sector to continue its sky-rocketing economic growth. China is not endowed with very much oil and gas resources of its own. Thus, it needs to partner with countries around the world to ensure availability of future supplies of oil and natural gas that it will need to keep up its current pace of economic growth.

The U.S., which does have oil and gas resources, is not following China’s lead in investing in these resources. Instead, the U.S. is looking toward wind and solar technologies to fuel its economy. However, wind and solar power are generating technologies and will not help where oil is needed in the transportation and industrial sectors.

Further, wind and solar power have capacity factors that cannot compete with those of fossil fuel generating technologies, and they can create instability issues with the electrical grid.…

With thousands of politicians and environmentalists meeting in Copenhagen to discuss ways to achieve major cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions, one might assume that the need for drastic increases in nuclear power capacity would be an obvious solution – a path forward upon which factions on both the Left and the Right could agree.

Alas, that is not happening. Instead, the Green/Left in the US continues its decades-long opposition to nuclear, all the while insisting that the only way forward is through greater use of alternative energy sources like solar and wind.

Los Angeles Times: Now and Way Back Then

Consider the unsigned editorial published by the Los Angeles Times on November 28. The piece, titled “No new nukes – plants, that is,”[1] declares that nuclear energy “is not a reasonable solution because plants take too long to build and cost far too much.”…