Reading List: ‘Power Hungry’

on June 02, 2011 at 2:45 PM

With the publication of Power Hungry, Robert Bryce continues in his established tradition of in-depth research and bluntly presented findings. He’s not known around the Internet, or in policy circles, as weak-kneed, or easily swayed. On the policy front, Bryce doesn’t tend to mince words. He is an equal opportunity critic, pointing out the mistakes of concepts and practices on all sides of the political spectrum.

Review of: Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future
By: Robert Bryce, Managing Editor, Energy Tribune
Public Affairs, 2010, 394 pages

He’s also an experienced researcher, with volumes of background material to back up his unique views. It’s therefore difficult to miss Bryce’s extensive preparation and the sizable references section in Power Hungry. It’s also easy to enjoy his generally even-handed approach, admitting problems, as well as recognizing the positive aspects of energy sources – even those that did not make the cut into his N2N (natural gas to nuclear) energy policy for the future. I was encouraged to see a book that takes a serious look at the costs of renewable energy sources. However, I was disappointed by Bryce’s willingness to overlook or omit basic facts related to coal use and the many technologies available to address coal-related environmental concerns.

Throughout the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find an author who is willing to take energy resources to task where they have real flaws, but who will also rationally assess risks and support their use when the benefits outweigh the costs. Many authors and policy wonks have fallen under the spell of the politically correct, ‘if it’s labeled green, it’s gotta be good’ mindset – they can’t muster the courage to openly admit that all energy resources, even renewables, have environmental, social, and economic costs associated with their use. That’s not Bryce; he lays bare the skeletons in the green energy closet, openly detailing the costs and environmental impacts of moving to a renewables-based energy supply. Amusingly, he even has the chutzpah to unseat the Danes as THE example the world should follow when it comes to the use of renewable energy. He exposes the well kept secret that, despite all their new wind-based electricity production, Danish coal consumption has not decreased over the past three decades.

Throughout the book, Bryce is an outspoken proponent of the continued use of hydrocarbon-based fuels, primarily because those fuels – unlike renewable options, and other so-called green fuels – meet his four-part test of power density, energy density, cost and scale.

Bryce demonstrates how renewable energy sources fail to meet both the power and energy density test. With regard to power density, renewables harness a limited amount of energy per given unit of volume, energy, or mass. Translated into English, they require a lot of space or volume to produce the energy found in much smaller units of fossil fuels. That’s why wind farms and solar installations must be spread across large tracts of land, or why replacing just 10 percent of coal-fueled energy generation in America with wood would more than double overall U.S. wood consumption. With regard to energy density, renewables store far less energy per unit of volume than hydrocarbon-based fuels. His example is the available energy stored in a 5 gallon bucket of dried leaves is far less than that stored in the same bucket, full of gasoline. That comparison remains true if one switches out the leaves for corn ethanol, gasoline for anthracite, etc.

To his credit, Bryce also fails to swallow the other politically correct energy canard that gets regularly tossed around the planet; namely the notion that the United States is the environmental boogeyman of energy use. Rather than apologizing for high per capita rates of energy use in America, Bryce champions that use as the basis for our “incredible economic success.” He recognizes that our social, economic, and environmental well-being – something the vast majority of the world strives to emulate – is the outcome of our ability to produce high-quality, affordable and clean energy. He also presents little known facts like, “the United States produces about 74% of the primary energy it consumes.” Bryce also forcefully defends the fact that the U.S. has a world-leading track record of advancing energy efficiency, increasing power density, and reducing costs.

But Bryce isn’t only focused on renewables, he also considers primary energy sources, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear. Given that he has proposed natural gas to nuclear as his preferred energy future, his critiques of gas and nuclear are somewhat less pointed and, therefore, a little less balanced. For example, in one questionable statement Bryce opines that “There’s no question that other sources of energy-particularly nuclear and natural gas-can provide large amounts of electric power without putting pollutants in the atmosphere.” We recognize that natural gas is a relatively clean burning fuel, but combustion of gas does still produce NOX and carbon monoxide. Additionally, this assertion ignores the reality of fugitive emissions from pipelines, equipment leaks, venting and flaring, and evaporative losses, as well as those emissions associated with exploration and mining.

In considering coal’s role in our energy supply, Bryce’s take is that coal is so massive a player and so inexpensive (compared to other options) that it cannot help but remain a key energy source well into the future. His focus on an N2N policy future, however, encourages him to engage coal in the same manner as he engaged renewables. Not surprisingly, he pulls no punches. Coal ash, GHG, heavy metals, and mountain top mining are addressed with the same biting intensity.

It was in the review of coal-based energy, however, that some key faults became evident in Power Hungry. Bryce did admit that few energy resources can approach coal’s low costs and that the provision of high-quality, low-cost electricity is a primary reason for our well-being and comfortable lifestyle. Unfortunately, he did not appear willing to ferret out other positive aspects to the use of coal, as he had done with both gas and nuclear. I waited in vain for his research to uncover information on the value of domestic energy production providing hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs, or coal’s rapidly improving environmental record.

He did admit that, despite the bad press aimed at coal, we have continued to build more and more coal-fueled generation. In fact, he notes that since 1995, we have expanded coal-based generation by over 280 million megawatt-hours; almost six times more than wind and over 800 times more than solar in the same time period.

However, Bryce then used the sheer size of the coal industry to attack it, meticulously documenting the details of coal’s environmental challenges. He even allowed questionable sources such as Goodell’s Big Coal to inform his research on coal emissions. But he did not take time to recognize the multitude of clean coal technologies that are in use and reducing emissions and improving efficiencies today.

While he documented annual mercury emissions down to the pound, he did not report the fact that the coal industry has invested more than $90 billion over the past three decades in technologies and processes that reduce emissions and improve efficiency, and that these investments have paid off. He did not document the use of activated carbon injection to reduce mercury emissions. He did not note that while coal use has increased by almost 300% since 1970, EPA data shows that over the same period, emissions per unit of electricity generated fell by over 77 percent – SO2 by 37%, NOX by 12.9%, and particulate matter (PM) by 88.5%.

When considering coal ash, Bryce gave in to the headline-grabbing technique of claiming coal ash is “contaminated with heavy metals,” but ignored the research that shows coal ash is not toxic and is, in fact, made up of essentially the same levels and types of material found in normal backyard soil (see American Coal Issue 1, 2009)

It was also disappointing to see Bryce dip his toes into the “peak oil” and “peak coal” hysteria. While he worked in a following chapter to demonstrate how new technologies have helped to diminish concerns over waning domestic gas supplies, he was comfortable accepting the notion that coal production could peak by 2011. One is forced to wonder why the technical capabilities and innovative spirit that drove the advancement of unconventional and now booming shale gas production would be abandoned when it came to coal production and use.

While there are some clear deficiencies in Power Hungry when it considers coal-fueled energy, the work that the coal industry is doing to reduce emissions and improve efficiency, and clean coal technologies, the book is still a valuable addition to the discussion on energy. Overall, it has a great deal of good information for the student of energy generation and energy policy, and Bryce’s take no prisoners style of reporting makes for an engaging read. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Power Hungry, however, is that it represents a new movement in policy circles and the energy industry to admit that there are environmental, social, and economic costs associated with renewable energy. That admission is a necessary move to help ensure fact- and science-based energy policy.

For too long policy makers have ignored costs, choosing to rely on feel good emotionalism and talking points when seeking to promote their ideas and plans on energy. It is long past time when we engage in an open and honest review of the potential of various energy options to affordably meet our growing energy needs. Bryce jumps into that discussion with both feet, and in that regard, Power Hungry is a worthwhile addition to anyone’s reading list.

Jason Hayes is Communications Director of the American Coal Council. He writes the Coalblog at www.coalblog.org