McCain v. Gore on Energy: Who Wins?
by David Sassoon - Sep 9th, 2008
Al Gore has called for sourcing 100% of US electric power from clean energy by 2018. John McCain has called for offshore oil drilling and 45 new nuclear power plants to solve America's energy problem. Which is the more helpful and realistic plan?
We've already done an in-depth analysis of Gore's plan and what it would take accomplish called The Gore Challenge Starts Here. David McClellan's analysis showed, for example, that just to replace 20% of fossil-fuel generated power, we'd have to build 1250 solar energy farms, each the size of the biggest one now under construction. Gulp.
Read his entire piece and you'll see the challenges facing a clean energy future -- not only building enough farms to harvest the sun and wind, but also modernizing the grid, extending transmission lines, and accelerating the development of energy storage technology.
Now what about the lynchpins of the McCain plan -- offshore oil and nuclear energy?
Graphs and calculations recently published by Architecture 2030 provide revealing perspective on McCain's solutions. They would solve nothing.
The detail from Architecture 2030's graph shown here illustrates the official US government estimate of the contribution offshore oil can make to US oil supply in the next 20 years. It's the small part in yellow -- a single wave on an ocean of oil. To see the whole graph, click on the attachment at the end of the post. It's a graph that ought to be in every American's mailbox -- from the North Slope to the Florida keys.
As for nuclear plants, the magic number is 12,964. That's how many the world would need to build to replace current fossil-fuel based energy, according to Architecture 2030.
At $6 billion per plant (a conservative figure), 12,954 plants would cost $77.72 trillion - more than the total Gross World Product (GWP) of $65.95 trillion!
But what about the proposal to build 45 nuclear power plants by 2030 in the US?
By 2030, the US is projected to need 84 QBtu of delivered energy. So, how much energy will these 45 plants supply? About 1 QBtu. This is just 1.2% of our energy needs in 2030 - another 'drop in the bucket'. At a total construction cost of $270 billion (not including land, waste storage, etc.), this plan is incredibly expensive, translating to "no relief in consumer utility bills".
When Gore unveiled his plan, his critics laughed and mocked. Impossible! Perhaps so. But what if we got half way to his proposed goal. Would be be better off with 50% of our energy from clean sources in 10 years, or 100% in 20 years?
Now, what if we got halfway to the McCain goal. Would we be better off, or in even worse shape than now?
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Energy!
It's too hard! That would cost money!
/sarcasm
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