President Joe Biden has a lot of problems on his plate. You know them: (1) Putin and the war in Ukraine; (2) Inflation and the possibility of recession; (3) The midterm and the 2024 elections; (4) Taiwan and China; (5) climate change and energy; and (6) If Republicans win, they will likely impeach him. There are others, of course, but this Jack’s Journal article is about energy — actually, Biden and energy.
When it comes to energy, Biden just doesn’t get it. For example, he keeps talking about how he is “lowering energy costs for families.” Indeed, there is an ad touting the Inflation Reduction Act which says that it “reduces energy costs for families by $1800 per year.” That Act doesn’t have anything to do with energy (or inflation), and energy costs (electricity, heating oil and gas, gasoline) have gone up a great deal under Biden.
Biden has just released 14 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is to reduce gasoline prices at the pump. Really? 14 million barrels is just about one day’s consumption of oil. And never mind that we may need that oil in the event of a battle with Russia or somebody else. (In case you are wondering, the Strategic Reserve contains about a two year supply.)
To his credit, Biden is subsidizing the manufacture of solar panel parts in America. Good idea; better than letting China make them all. However, if he would just look around at the houses where the real people live (that would not be in his rich-beyond-words neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware) he would see that most homes can’t accommodate solar panels. That would be the case in Wilmington as well as in Scranton, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Gary, Chicago, Des Moines, Kansas City, and so on. Small towns, too.
Why doesn’t Biden get it about energy? Several reasons. First, Biden is a consummate politician (with the usual law degree) and has been a politician his entire adult life. At the age of 27, he was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970, and became a U.S Senator from Delaware (for 36 years) in 1972. As a Senator, he focused on foreign relations, drug policy, criminal justice, and of course, what all politicians focus mostly on: getting reelected. He has never in all these years shown any interest in or knowledge of energy or energy policy. So he has no knowledge of or experience with the subject.
Second, Biden’s real interest is in climate change; he wants to be the climate change hero. However, since energy is so critical to climate change, he is forced into thinking about energy. But his thinking about energy is influenced by Progressives who only want to get rid of fossil fuels, and do it immediately. Trouble is, there’s nothing available to replace the fossil fuels. it’s just not time yet.
Biden’s knowledge about energy appears to be superficial, limited to thinking everyone should have an electric car and heat their home with solar. The trouble is, electric cars don’t help the climate much, and, as noted above, most homes aren’t designed or located for solar.
Let’s consider the climate and electric cars first. One problem is the manufacture of the lithium-ion batteries. Nearly 80% are manufactured in China using coal, and their manufacture requires a lot of energy which produces a lot of carbon emissions. Getting accurate data about this is difficult because there are so many battery sizes, places of manufacture, and car models. However, here’s an example: one Tesla uses an 80 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. CO2 emissions for manufacturing that battery would range between about 2.5 metric tons and 16 metric tons, depending on where it is made and with what fossil fuel. I’ll use 10 metric tons as an average to get a rough comparison. (10 metric tons is 10000 kilograms or 22000 pounds.) A typical gasoline powered passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons (that’s about 1000 pounds) of carbon dioxide per year. So you’ll have to run the gasoline car about two plus years before there are any savings at all in greenhouse emissions.
These numbers are very approximate. It could be one to four years depending on the vehicle’s size and where the battery was made.
The battery is one issue with electric cars. A bigger one is that most electricity in the U.S. is produced by coal or natural gas – about 80%. So the electric vehicle moves the bad emissions from the vehicle to the power plant, but the earth’s atmosphere still gets more or less the same amount of CO2. This circumstance will be the case as long as the U.S. produces most electricity by fossil fuels; that is, until the U.S. produces almost all its electricity by solar, wind, nuclear, or hydroelectric. President Biden doesn’t get it.
Individual electric car owners can solve this problem for their cars, however; they can charge their cars with solar energy instead of with dirty electricity from the power plant. Equipment for this purpose is available, but expensive. As a general estimate, it could take in the neighborhood of eight to 14 solar panels to charge an electric car. It depends on how much you drive, the efficiency of the vehicle, the sunshine in the area, and the type of panels installed. The cost would likely be $20,000 to $30,000 before the government incentives for the rich.
If you are willing and able to buy such a solar home charging station, you can cut the carbon emissions from your car to near zero. If not, then electric cars don’t reduce global emissions much. Certainly not enough to justify the huge rebates being given to the rich folks who can afford them. But Biden loves them.
Solar collectors don’t have the same problem. It is estimated (by those who claim to know) that a solar collector will save the emissions created during its manufacture in about three years. If the collectors lasts 30 years, that’s pretty good. However, China, using coal, produces half the world’s solar panels and they produce twice as much carbon per panel as Western companies. Hence, real good idea that we start making solar panels.
The main problem solar collectors have is that most real houses of real people aren’t located or designed for solar collectors. Of course, some are, and others can be adapted. But drive through the streets of most towns and cities where ordinary people live, and you’ll see what I’m writing about. Most people who need to heat their homes do so with oil, natural gas, or propane. If you aren’t lucky enough to be able to convert to solar, and most can’t, you will require electricity before you can get along without oil or natural gas for heating.
Thus, both for electric cars and for home heating, plentiful, available, inexpensive electricity from solar and wind is needed. But that is not yet a priority for Biden and the climate folks. They’re working on it. But not nearly hard or fast enough.
They are, however, working on the nation’s electric grid problem; at least they are making plans to work on that sticky problem. Our nation’s three electric grids (East, West, and Texas) need a lot of work partly because they are old and partly because solar and wind are intermittent sources of energy so storage must be designed and managed. The U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) has a $10.5 billion program to make a smart grid. Money is allocated for three projects: – $2.5 billion for grid resilience, $3 billion for smart grids, and $5 billion for grid innovation. So far as I can determine, these programs are in the planning stages, but this is the right thing to be doing. We need the electricity in order to replace fossil fuels, and we can’t quit fossil fuels until the electricity is readily available. Too bad Biden and the Progressives don’t understand that.
Just Sayin’.
John R. Dixon 