A stone marker in Rugby, N.D. identifies the town as the “Geographic Center of the North American Continent.” No marker identifies the state as one of America’s top two or three in wind-power potential. Yet North Dakota’s vast expanses and steady winds endow it with the capacity to generate more than half as much electricity as all 50 states currently produce from all sources combined, according to a recent Harvard study of U.S. wind energy potential.
Indeed, that potential, equivalent to 2.6 trillion kilowatt-hours annually, is almost 100 times greater than the current output of the state’s coal- and lignite-fired generators. And while tapping a goodly share of that capability would require a great many giant turbines—as many as one per several square miles across the state—each tower would only occupy a small footprint, leaving the land largely intact for agriculture and other complementary uses. Jobs erecting the towers and servicing the turbines would be another plus.
So how come wind power accounts for just 2 percent (XLS) of North Dakota’s electricity generation—barely matching wind’s national share? One obvious reason is lack of transmission capability to reach load centers. But another is the extraordinary cheapness of coal.
In 2007 (the last year for which we have data), the coal and lignite burned in North Dakota power plants cost just under a dollar per million Btu, on average. Picture 12 cent a gallon gasoline, and you get a sense of just how inexpensive that coal is, in equivalent-energy terms.
That’s why coal accounts for 93 percent of the state’s power production, and why North Dakota is able to export almost two kilowatt-hours of electricity for every one it consumes—mining, delivering, and burning the stuff is dirt cheap.
Transitioning from coal to wind-powered electricity is probably the biggest single step we can take to dial back our CO2 emissions, and North Dakota and other High Plains states are well-positioned to lead the charge. The best way forward is not to further subsidize wind farms—Washington already does this through the 2.1 cent/kWh production tax credit—but to level the playing field with coal by adding an emissions charge to fossil fuel prices.
You have to marvel, then, at the passivity of the state’s senators in the ongoing debate over climate legislation. As Bill Chameides of Duke’s Nicholas Center on the Environment reported recently, Sen. Kent Conrad has been far more focused on preserving jobs in the state’s oil, gas, and agricultural sectors than in helping wind energy compete with dirty coal. His fellow Democrat, Sen. Bryan Dorgan, has inveighed against the cap-and-trade architecture in the Kerry-Boxer bill, warning that “the Wall Street crowd can’t wait to sink their teeth into a new trillion-dollar trading market in which hedge funds and investment banks would trade and speculate on carbon credits and securities.” Yet Dorgan has offered no alternative means of putting a price on carbon emissions, without which development of wind farms and other clean energy will remain at a snail’s pace.
There is a path to a carbon price without Wall Street speculation, of course, and that’s a carbon tax that’s raised steadily and predictably over time. Distributing the revenues raised by the carbon tax to households on an equal, per capita basis, as Alaska has done for decades with its North Slope oil revenues, would protect families against the rise in energy prices and also ensure that “big government” gets no bigger—both major concerns in the Plains States as elsewhere.
A revenue-neutral carbon tax, or carbon fee-and-dividend as some prefer to call it, would seem to be just the ticket for Senators from wind-rich states who rightly fear climate change and market speculation. North and South Dakota both celebrated their 120th anniversary last week as members of the union. What better way to harken back to that independent pioneer spirit than to spit in the face of the special interests and help a revenue-neutral carbon tax win a place in the national climate policy debate?
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
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mantes Posted 1:11 pm
09 Nov 2009
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Ken Johnson Posted 4:28 pm
09 Nov 2009
You want to distribute the revenue to consumers? Give them their dividends in the form of low-cost, clean energy. Either that, or give them equity shares in renewable energy companies. Carbon tax dividends would disappear, whereas dividends from clean-energy equity shares would increase, as carbon is phased out.
[Or maybe you are more concerned about getting your hands on the money than phasing out carbon. No?]
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Max8806 Posted 10:22 am
11 Nov 2009
So attempting to reduce carbon primarily through subsidizing clean energy as opposed to pricing carbon inhibits what ought to be cost-effective efficiency and conservation.
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:40 pm
09 Nov 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 12:18 am
10 Nov 2009
There's another problem though. A land rush for wind power sites would allow speculation and related market manipulation to drive the price of wind electricty sky high. A national park on the prairie that doubles as a wind leasing area operated fairly by the government to insure renewable energy for US all would be helpful.
Theodore Roosevelt Prairie National Park (and national wind farm), we need a new national park (like the African wildlife parks where the herds roam) covering parts of each of the northern great plains states. Let's see bison thundering again.
Taxes? It's a political loser, cap and trade is a tax plus another venue for "derivative" trading. "Bundled climate default swaps"? No thanks.
Divert subsidies from coal to wind, make the coal industry clean up it's mess, including the mess they already made. Don't call it a tax, just use regulation to force the costs on big coal that they have avoided all these years. That'll put a price on carbon.
In general diverting subsidies from big fossil, nukes, and chemical ag (well over 100 billion per year) to reneweble energy and organic ag will be enough incentive to get this energy re-evolution going. And it's tax and revenue neutral, no new spending..no new taxing. That's a plan our poor democrats can run on.
When this healthcare "reform" turns out to be mandatory health insurance from the same old companies, with no cost controls, and no public option until 2013, and allows insurance monopolists to set prices so high for "pre-existing conditions" that only Saudi shieks can afford it, no amount of money or volunteers will get our democratic candidates re-elected.
Add in a new tax in the form of cap and trade or a tax and dividend, or whatever. And Cheney could beat Obama in 2012. What I'm saying is, we are in deep trouble politically. Rove is licking his chops as this mutation of "reform" is being crafted. He can't wait for cap and trade legislation.
We have all but failed on healthcare already, if we don't get this green jobs and manufacturing deal done, forget it. Back to the Reagan revolution, kiss the biosphere goodbye. The stakes are very high and the right knows they only need to morph anything that passes the way they did to this healthcare bill to win it all in the next few years.
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isaacschumann Posted 8:20 am
10 Nov 2009
im in favor of a carbon tax, or to "put a price on carbon" as you say.
biggest problem is you cant pass anything with the word "tax" in this country, sad. there are powerful forces trying to keep carbon cheap.
kudos for thinking of creative ways to make the coal industry pay the true cost of their industry tho!
great article,
cheers,
isaac
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:12 pm
10 Nov 2009
Look at Texas. Produces more wind power than any other state (or similar-sized region in the world). Sometimes close to 10% of the state's energy comes from wind (and that's not countin' the energy that's shipped from the wind farms across state lines to other areas).
That's the equivalent of entirely powering several of the New England states with 100% wind energy.
And they're still addin' more capacity (though at a slower rate due to the economy).
Only 10 years ago, in 1999, there was less than 200 MW of wind energy produced in Texas. Now, in barely a decade, it's over 8,000 MW. That's more than a 40-fold increase!
This despite the fact that Texas was (and still is) a mass consumer of coal.
The state offered incentives and tax breaks to wind energy, set renewable energy standards for the utilities, and, perhaps more importantly, offered to help in the building of billions of dollars of new transmission infrastructure to get the power from the wind farms into the cities.
National regulations help, but when they fall short, the states can help make up for it if they really want to.
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