Battle lines drawn over clean energy

On one side of the argument, the group ClearPath, headed by conservative activist Jay Faison, doesn’t want solar and wind to dominate the policy landscape, especially when there are so many other paths to low-emission energy, including natural gas.

But the Obama administration has placed a premium on renewable energy from solar panels and wind turbines to transition the nation off of fossil fuels as part of the president’s climate change agenda.

Faison says the White House vision is a “pipe dream.” Any plan that relies solely on wind and solar will only raise energy costs and make the electric grid less reliable.

“Clean energy is about more than windmills and sunshine,” Faison told the Washington Examiner. “It’s about a diverse, affordable and reliable set of existing power sources that includes nuclear, hydropower, natural gas and yes, clean coal.

“Nuclear and hydro alone now produce nearly 80 percent of our clean energy, and we can’t strangle them with overly burdensome regulation while deeply subsidizing an unrealistic pipe dream of an all-renewable power sector by mid-century,” he added.

Environmental campaigns across the country are pushing the idea of a 100 percent renewable electric grid by 2050, over which observers and energy watchdogs have voiced skepticism. Critics of the goal say it ignores the fact that it will take substantial amounts of natural gas-fired power plants to fill in the gaps when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

Hydro-electric power plants will also be needed, but improving the siting requirements for these more conventional renewable energy power plants have been virtually ignored by the administration, which favors the distributed power resources of rooftop solar panels and wind farms.

Wind and solar have been ramping up faster than other resources in the last year or so, but they still occupy a small sliver of the nation’s power supply when compared to nuclear, gas and coal.

“We’re dealing with reality,” Faison said. “But it’s also about ensuring the necessary public and private efforts to foster innovation that will create the next generation of clean energy power, including capturing and storing carbon emissions from burning coal,” also known as carbon capture and storage.

Funding for advanced clean coal projects have suffered budget cuts by the administration, even though the resource is considered part of the president’s all-of-the-above energy strategy.

Faison says his group is focused on “rallying conservative support around making both the existing and future segments of our energy sector clean, without increasing costs.” He is working with the Republican National Committee on including a clean energy plank in the GOP platform ahead of this month’s convention in Cleveland.

“We have been discussing including clean energy language as part of the official Republican national platform,” he said. “We are hopeful in that the RNC has been receptive to the idea of including language stressing one of our core principles of less regulation and more innovation in modernizing the energy landscape.”

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said last month that “there are things that we could be doing with clean technology that’s just good for business.” He said they could support that without the “need to debate the science piece of it,” alluding to the debate over man-made climate change.

But the wind industry has a different plan in mind. The industry last week launched its first national advocacy group that would endorse congressional candidates who are supportive of the jobs, increased tax revenue and lower energy prices that wind offers both “blue” and “red” states.

The group, American Wind Action, launched June 28 with the expressed purpose of being a “bipartisan” voice for wind energy. A top adviser to the group says the industry is aware of what Faison is doing, and isn’t necessarily opposed to it.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem likely that the two clean energy advocacy efforts will ever align.

Sam Enfield, co-chair for the new wind group, says the industry has been slow to respond to opposition, especially in Republican states where wind energy is being produced.

“Most wind generation capacity is in red states,” Enfield said. But it’s been a “failing of ours” by not bringing them the message of “what we provide to GOP states.”

It is a “shame” that wind is being challenged by the GOP, he said. But his group hopes to change that by building on the support it does have.

“There are certainly Republicans that support wind energy,” he said. “There is a lot there for Republican office holders to respond to … and we want to help them in any way for them to do that.

“I think progress is being made among Republicans on this issue,” Enfield added. “To be honest, President Obama has been extremely supportive … [which] sometimes makes it difficult for Republicans to be supportive of wind.”

He said it will “be interesting to see if that continues when he is no longer in office.”

Enfield’s group is not getting involved in the presidential race. He said the group’s “seven-figure” budget will be primarily focused on educating voters under its 501(c)(4) tax designation, with 60 percent of its activities devoted to education and 40 percent toward congressional and state election campaigns.

The wind group was launched ahead of the pledge Obama made with his counterparts from Mexico and Canada last week to make clean energy 50 percent of all electricity production by 2025.

That would include many of the resources that Faison is promoting in his advocacy push, such as hydro-power, nuclear and coal with carbon capture and storage. But White House officials say the goal will be to transition the grid to primarily wind and solar in line with climate change goals. ClearPath is not commenting on Obama’s clean energy pledge.

Brian Deese, senior adviser to the president, says nuclear power represents about 19 percent of the current electric production mix, but anticipates that number to come down with new plant closures being announced, he told reporters on a call explaining the new clean energy target.

“So the expansion in the United States, in terms of the move to clean energy, is principally driven by the expansion of renewables and by energy efficiency,” he said. That will be driven by last year’s landmark five-year extension of solar and wind tax credits by Congress.

“And with respect to the renewable tax credits, it’s important to remember that the tax credits were extended through the early 2020s,” Deese said.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, the focus on clean energy has recently come back to subsidies in the tax committees. Bills have been introduced to extend expired tax breaks that Congress didn’t consider when passing last year’s wind and solar package.

Proponents of the tax credits say Congress should not be in the business of picking winners and losers by choosing wind and solar over other technologies.

The credits would support hydropower, but also technologies that make more efficient use of natural gas to produce electricity, like fuel cells, which emit water vapor.

Other technologies supported by the proposed tax legislation would include “microturbines” and “combined heat and power” systems that can use natural gas or waste gas to produce power.

Interesting enough, two bills recently introduced in the House to extend the credits were sponsored by Republicans.

Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., says extending the tax credits is a “win-win” for energy security. Patrick Meehan, R-Pa., has a similar bill.

“Encouraging this kind of development creates the quality, family-sustaining jobs that families throughout our country deserve and helps meet the energy demands of today and tomorrow,” Reed said.