Renewable Energy, The Wall St. Journal, Faux News

George Gilder, writing in the Wall Street Journal, 11/18/10, in California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby complained of the defeat of the repeal of the “Global Warming Solutions Act.”

“Economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2—and, no, I’m not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races. … This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state’s economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That’s a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new energy cap dooms the state to bankruptcy.”

Gilder also wrote: “California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016.” That’s $120 Billion over the next 6 years. This is a state of 37 million people (US Census). It should be able to borrow that money at 4% or 5% – which is $3083 per capita. Borrowed at 5% interest over 20 years, it’s $20.35 per person per month – which does not seem to be enough to push someone into bankruptcy.

Carbon Nation, by Peter Byck

Gilder calls for exploitation of natural gas and then says ‘All the so-called “renewables” programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land that feeds the world.’ I would urge Gilder to see Carbon Nation, a film by Peter Byck, Gasland, a film by Josh Fox, and read Vapor Trails, a novel by Bob Siegel and Roger Saillant.

Gilder should understand that:

Rooftop solar is built on rooftops, which are not arable land.
Big solar thermal projects are built in deserts, which are also not arable land.
Gilder complains that “so-called ‘renewables’ programs waste and desecrate the precious resource of arable land’ and he calls for exploitation of natural gas – has he seen what “fracking” does to land? (CBS / NY Times ).
Gilder really doesn’t seem to understand wind, solar, geothermal, other renewable or sustainable energy systems, or energy efficiency.

Vapor Trails

Gilder describes Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers as “Al Gore’s investment affiliate.” I’m not sure when KPCB was founded, but characterizing it as “Gore’s investment affiliate seems to be misleading at best. Gore might be a client, but with a net worth estimated to about $100 Million, (Celebrity Net Worth) he can’t be a significant client for the venture capital company the New York Times called “One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms ” (here). John Doerr – characterized by Gilder as one of Gore’s investment buddies, joined KPCB in 1980 – when Gore represented Tennessee in the U. S. Congress (and, according to PBS, Gore co-sponsored the first Congressional hearings on the implications of global warming.)

According to the Kliener Perkins web site, Doerr backed

Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt at Google,
Jeff Bezos at Amazon,
Scott Cook, Bill Campbell at Intuit,
Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla at Sun,
And the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec.

Altho Sun was recently aquired by Oracle and Compaq was aquired by HP, these were started in the 1980s, when then-Representative Gore was in Tennessee. Macromedia was started in 1992, when then-Senator Gore ran for Vice President.

Gilder concludes that a transformation of the energy economy will take $45 Trillion. I don’t know where he gets that figure. NJ has 8 million people and needs 7 GW of electric generating capacity. Extrapolating that to the US 300 million people, and we can conclude that the US needs about 260 gigawatts, gw, of electric generating capacity. Let’s suppose that’s half of the energy we need – so we need the equivalent of 520 gw.

If we used wind and solar we could implement 300 gw of wind and 220 gw of solar. Wind is $2.0 Billion to $3.0 Billion per gigawatt. Let’s say $3.0 Billion. Solar is $5.75 to $6.25 Billion per gw; let’s say $6.25 Billion per gw. (Please note that I’m ignoring efficiency, geothermal, marine hydro, algae based and other biofuels for the purposes of keeping this model simple.)