Waldo Proffitt our friend and columnist for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune writes an interesting article on the high price of gasoline titled, "Will desperation bring change?".

Waldo is hoping, "The high price of filling up the fuel tanks of cars or trucks just might motivate millions of voters to demand elected officials "do something" or get out of the way for those who will."

The time to do something has long passed. In 1995 President Bill Clinton vetoed an energy bill that passed both houses of Congress to drill in ANWR in Alaska. Had he signed that bill we would be pumping at least 1,000,000 barrels of American oil into our economy.

Anyway, let's look at the specific proposals of Waldo and present our view on each of them.

Waldo's Proposal 1:

Waldo states, "The first thing we can do is conserve energy, including electricity, because much of our oil and natural gas is used to generate electricity. Kilowatt hours saved are barrels of oil saved."

Actually this is not true. The issue is not conservation, it is where we get our power from. Fifty percent of all of America's electricity comes from coal. If we really want to save oil and natural gas, which is much more expensive than coal, we would build more coal plants like they are planning to do in Europe. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have billions of tons of coal. Enough to last us at least 200 years.

If you are worried about increased pollution by using coal don't be. In fact the energy industry as a whole has done a fantastic job reducing pollutants according to the James Madison Institute.

According to America's Power Florida only gets 29.2% of our power from coal. We get 16.9% from petroleum, 38% from natural gas and 0.1% from hydroelectric. If we went full tilt to coal we would dramatically reduce our costs and save oil and natural gas. Because of our heavy use of oil and natural gas Florida is the 13th most expensive state for power generation.

For example, our neighbors in Georgia, who are ranked 25th in cost of electricity, pay 7.63 cents per KWH of electricity, while we pay 10.45 cents per KWH. The difference? Georgia gets 62.7% of its energy from coal, 23.2% from nuclear, o.6% from petroleum and 9.4% from natural gas. Get the picture?

Waldo's Proposal 2.

Waldo wants to reduce our dependence on oil by a combination of conservation and efficiency. He says, "for starters we could raise mandated auto fuel efficiency by, say, 40 percent. Of course, increased production of hybrids would make it easier to reach that goal quickly."

The problem is conservation and greater efficiency are not the answers. According to the Manhattan Institute, "The history of the twentieth century is one of gigantic increases in efficiency—and even larger increases in consumption. The American economy has experienced massive efficiency gains: for each unit of energy, we produce more than twice as much GDP today than we did in 1950. Yet during that period of time, our national total energy consumption has tripled. Paradoxically, when it comes to energy, the more we save, the more we consume."

“Efficiency fails to curb demand because it lets more people do more, and do it faster—and more/more/faster invariably swamps all the efficiency gains,” Peter Huber and Mark Mills state in The Bottomless Well. Or, as Huber characterized this “efficiency paradox” in a 2001 Forbes column: “More efficient jet engines … cheaper tickets … more passengers … more jets in the air.” The same holds true for cars, lightbulbs, power plants, and everything else that uses energy.

Waldo Proposal 3:

Waldo wants, "Solar. Great strides are being made in the conversion of sunlight to heat to steam to electricity -- the most significant being ways to store solar energy. One of the most promising is to use the sun to heat molten salt to high temperatures and then use the molten salt to make steam to drive turbines at night or on cloudy days."

Here are some cons of solar energy from PowerPedia:

• Limited areal power density: For electrical generation with photovoltaics, the average irradiation power density is approximately 1 kW/m² usable by 8-15% efficient solar panels.
• Intermittency: It is not available at night and is reduced when there is cloud cover, decreasing the reliability of peak output performance or requiring a means of energy storage. For power grids to stay functional at all times, the addition of substantial amounts of solar generated electricity would require one or more of the following;
  • energy storage facilities, such as Pumped-storage hydroelectric facilities, are needed to 'gapfill' low points in solar generation
  • other renewable energy sources (i.e., wind, geothermal, tidal, wave, ocean power, etc) would need to be active, or
  • backup conventional powerplants would be needed. There is an energy cost to keep coal-burning power plants 'hot', which includes the burning of coal to keep boilers at temperature. Natural gas power plants can quickly come up to full load without requiring significant standby idling. Without changes in the energy supply and control system (such as a shift to using current hydropower as nighttime/backup across wider regions or the incorporation of more renewable power), few coal power plants could be displaced, according to critics.
• Locations at high latitudes or with frequent substantial cloud cover offer reduced potential for solar power use.
• Solar cells produce DC which must be converted to AC when used in currently existing distribution grids. This incurs an energy penalty of 5-10%.

Waldo's proposal 4:

According to Waldo, "Wind. With rotors nearing 500 feet in diameter, windmills are among the more efficient sources of non-fossil power. Some people consider them unsightly, onshore or offshore. I would think their visual impression no worse than that of an open-pit coal mine. They are getting pretty close to being competitive in price to oil."

Let us give you a real example of using wind power. Shorty after Governor Crist signed three Executive Orders last year capping carbon emissions the plans to build five coal plants in Florida by 2012 were canceled. These plants combined would have produced 4,150 MW of much needed power for our state. To make up this deficit using wind power we did some rough calculations on what it would take to make up for the 4,150 MW of power.

Here is what we learned:

1. The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas remains the largest wind farm in the world with a total capacity of 735 megawatts (MW) spread across approximately 47,000 acres in Taylor and Nolan counties near Abilene in west central Texas. The wind plant consists of 291 1.5-MW wind turbines from General Electric and 130 2.3-MW wind turbines from Siemens.

2. We used the bigger 2.3-MW wind turbines (which are 370+ feet tall) from Siemens to meet our current power deficit of 4,150 MW. That means we would need 1,805 wind turbines. We know from the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center that they needed 47,000 acres for their 421 wind turbines. So we in Florida would need 4.29 times the acres of the Texas wind farm or approximately 201,508 acres.

Bottom line we would need approximately 201,508 acres of land to simply replace the capacity of the cancelled plants. Of course, Florida can put the wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico and bypass the need to use massive amounts of land. Either way the solution of using wind power is difficult at best to meet the current deficit, let alone any future energy needs due to growth.

Waldo's Proposal 5:

Waldo demands, "Ethanol. No, not ethanol made from corn. That has proven to be a mistake, driving up the price of corn for human and animal consumption beyond any acceptable level. Rather ethanol from sugar, biomass, agricultural wastes, and non-food crops."

Clearly the use of ethanol from corn, which the environmentalists and folks like Waldo raved about is bad. Fertilizer runoff from Mid West corn fields used to produce ethanol has caused the "dead zone" in the gulf to grow, food prices to go up and food riots to occur in many parts of the world. So what is so great about ethanol from sugar, biomass, agricultural wastes and non-food crops? Nothing.

A dark cloud looming over biofuels is whether producing them actually requires more energy than they can generate. After factoring in the energy needed to grow crops and then convert them into biofuels, Cornell University researcher David Pimental concludes that the numbers just don’t add up. His 2005 study found that producing ethanol from corn required 29 percent more energy than the end product itself is capable of generating. He found similarly troubling numbers in making biodiesel from soybeans.

“There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel,” Pimentel says.

Waldo's Proposal 6:

Waldo states, "I have not mentioned coal or nuclear. More reliance on coal, of which we have a gracious plenty, is not an option unless we can burn it in a way which does not add to the threat of global warming. As of now, we do not have a proven technology to do it. Nuclear is fine with me, but lots of people find it scary, and it may not be politically feasible."

Actually there is a great technology called "clean coal". The federal government said yesterday [May 7, 2008] that it will spend $61.1 million for a clean-coal project in Ohio, a major step in deciding whether it is commercially feasible to burn Midwest coal without emitting the carbon dioxide thought to cause global warming.

The money will be funneled to a demonstration project in the Mount Simon Sandstone formation in Darke County in western Ohio.

About 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from an ethanol facility will be injected 3,000 feet into the sandstone formation.

Proponents contend that the process, known as carbon sequestration, is crucial for the future of Ohio coal. If electric utility plants can burn coal without causing global warming, it would provide a major boost to Ohio's coal industry.

We have written many times about the hoax that the primary cause of global climate change is human caused. Finally, we are big proponents of nuclear power. It is clean, cheap, safe and renewable. We are big fans, as is Dr. Meg Lowman from New College, in both fusion and fission nuclear power.

What is the real problem with higher gas prices? Supply.

We have shown above that altering demand (conservation or greater efficiency) does not cause use to go down. Rather use increases with conservation and efficiency.

Prices do go down when you increase supply. The best way to lower energy prices, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, is to accelerate production of all forms of domestic energy.

We have taken off the table drilling for more fossil fuels in Alaska, the East and West coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. We have not built a new gas refinery in over 30 years. We have not built a new nuclear power plant in over 40 years.

It is time, as Waldo says, to ""do something" or get out of the way for those who will". We agree. Waldo get out of the way.