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Why Cheap Oil Isn’t Bad For The Environment

Why Cheap Oil Isn’t Bad For The Environment

It stood to reason that collapsing prices for oil would make clean energy relatively more expensive. That would dampen the public’s craving to install solar panels and build wind turbines.
Well, let’s try to reason again. A lot of opposing forces are shaking the old assumptions. In the jaws of bargain oil, the U.S. Department of Energy expects Americans to increase their use of renewable power this year by almost 10 percent. Why is this time different?

Consider solar power. Over the past 18 months, the price of oil has fallen by 75 percent, yet the installation of solar panels proceeds apace. The advocacy group Solar Foundation reports that jobs in solar energy increased last year by more than 20 percent. Most of them were for installers.

As for wind power, Denmark-based Vestas, one of the big three wind-turbine companies, says that business continues to boom in North America, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Its stock price doubled last year.

What’s going on? For starters, while the price of oil has fallen, so have the costs of green energy technologies. For another, strangling air pollution in China and India has fed a desire for clean energy greater than the urge to find the cheapest source.

And international alarm over carbon’s role in global warming has taken root in concrete ways. It appears that vows to cut fossil-fuel use at the Paris climate-change summit are being taken seriously.

In this country, Congress recently extended tax credits for new wind and solar projects. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, meanwhile, is requiring states to cut power-plant emissions.
Sharply lower oil and gas prices have translated into enormous savings for consumers. Some developing countries have used their newfound cash to cut subsidies for gasoline. Countries dependent on imported oil are using the savings to invest in wind power, according to Vestas.

Drops in oil prices act like tax cuts, and American consumers may be spending some of their bounty on SUVs and trucks. That’s not great environmental news. On the other hand, SUVs and trucks are now so much more fuel-efficient than in the past.

Within the fossil-fuel world, a sharp drop in oil prices has rearranged the economics with environmental benefits. As The Economist magazine explained, “Cheap oil has a green lining, as it drags down the global prices of natural gas, which crowds out coal, a dirtier fuel.”

Another green lining is that it makes drilling in hard-to-reach places, such as the Arctic, less economically feasible. This offered good timing for Obama’s proposal to extend “wilderness” designation to millions of the acres in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling and mining are off-limits in wilderness-designated areas. ANWR has long been a battleground between environmentalists and oil companies.

Some economists worry that the oil-price “tax cut” isn’t doing much for the American economy because consumers seem to mostly be saving the money instead of spending. Cheer up. Saving should be regarded as deferred spending, and in any case, it’s about time Americans amassed an economic cushion.

Of course, the drop in energy prices has hurt oil-and-gas-producing parts of this country, Alaska in particular. Happily, the economies of oil-producing Texas and North Dakota have become considerably diversified. Energy is not the only game. Certainly, oil and gas are not. Texas has become America’s biggest producer of wind-powered electricity.

Renewable energy is not the environmental plaything mocked years ago by the drilling interests and their politicians. Two months ago, in the midst of an oil-price tumble, Goldman Sachs said it was quadrupling its bet in alternative energy to $150 billion. Hard numbers have clearly taken over the debate, and clean energy is winning.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

Photo: A pump jack stands idle in Dewitt County, Texas January 13, 2016. REUTERS/Anna Driver

Slightly Weaker Hurricane Irene Assaults East Coast

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. (AP) — Hurricane Irene opened its assault on the Eastern Seaboard on Saturday by lashing the North Carolina coast with wind as strong as 115 mph and pounding shoreline homes with waves. Farther north, authorities readied a massive shutdown of trains and airports, with 2 million people ordered out of the way.

The center of the storm passed over North Carolina’s Outer Banks for its official landfall just after 7:30 a.m. EDT. The hurricane’s vast reach traced the East Coast from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to just below Cape Cod. Tropical storm conditions battered Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, with the worst to come.

Irene weakened slightly, with sustained winds down to 85 mph from about 100 a day earlier, making it a Category 1, the least threatening on the scale. The National Hurricane Center reported gusts of 115 mph and storm-surge waves as high as 7 feet.

The first death from the storm was reported in Nash County, N.C., outside Raleigh, where emergency officials said a man was crushed by a large limb that blew off a tree.

Hurricane-force winds arrived near Jacksonville, N.C., at first light, and wind-whipped rain lashed the resort town of Nags Head. Tall waves covered the beach, and the surf pushed as high as the backs of some of the houses and hotels fronting the strand.

“There’s nothing you can do now but wait. You can hear the wind and it’s scary,” said Leon Reasor, who rode out the storm in the Outer Banks town of Buxton. “Things are banging against the house. I hope it doesn’t get worse, but I know it will. I just hate hurricanes.”

At least two piers on the Outer Banks were wiped out, the roof of a car dealership was ripped away, and a hospital in Morehead City that was running on generators. In all, more than 400,000 people were without power on the East Coast.

Susan Kinchen, who showed up at a shelter at a North Carolina high school with her daughter and 5-month-old granddaughter, said she felt unsafe in their trailer. Kinchen, from Louisiana, said she was reminded of how Hurricane Katrina peeled the roof of her trailer there almost exactly six years ago, on Aug. 29, 2005.

“I’m not taking any chances,” she said.

In the Northeast, unaccustomed to tropical weather of any strength, authorities made plans to bring the basic structures of travel grinding to a halt. The New York City subway, the largest in the United States, was making its last runs at noon, and all five area airports were accepting only a few final hours’ worth of flights.

The New York transit system carries 5 million people on weekdays, fewer on weekends, and has never been shut for weather. Transit systems in New Jersey and Philadelphia also announced plans to shut down. Washington declared a state of emergency, days after it had evacuated for an earthquake.

New York City ordered 300,000 people to leave low-lying areas, including the Battery Park City neighborhood at the southern tip of Manhattan, the beachfront Rockaways in Queens and Coney Island in Brooklyn. But it was not clear how many people would get out, or how they would do it.

“How can I get out of Coney Island?” said Abe Feinstein, 82, who has lived for half a century on the eighth floor of a building overlooking the boardwalk. “What am I going to do? Run with this walker?”

Authorities in New York said they would not arrest people who chose to stay, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned on Friday: “If you don’t follow this, people may die.”

Streets and subway cars were much emptier than on a typical Saturday morning. On Wall Street, sandbags were placed around subway grates nearest the East River, which is expected to surge as the worst hits New York.

The city’s largest power company said it could cut power to some neighborhoods if the storm causes serious flooding. Salt water can damage power lines, and cutting power would speed repairs.

In all, evacuation orders covered about 2.3 million people, including 1 million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia and 100,000 in Delaware. Authorities and experts said it was probably the most people ever threatened by a single storm in the United States.

Airlines said 8,300 flights were canceled, including 3,000 on Saturday. Greyhound suspended bus service between Richmond, Va., and Boston. Amtrak canceled trains in the Northeast for Sunday.

Forecasters said the core of Irene would roll up the mid-Atlantic coast Saturday night and over southern New England on Sunday. Late Saturday morning, Irene was centered about 120 miles south of Norfolk, Va. It was moving north-northeast at 15 mph. Maximum sustained winds remained around 85 mph.

North of the Outer Banks, the storm pounded the Hampton Roads region of southeast Virginia, a jagged network of inlets and rivers that floods easily. Emergency officials there were less worried about the wind and more about storm surge, the high waves that accompany a hurricane. Gas stations there were low on fuel, and grocery stores scrambled to keep water and bread on the shelves.

In Delaware, Gov. Jack Markell ordered an evacuation of coastal areas on the peninsula that the state shares with Maryland and Virginia. In Atlantic City, N.J., all 11 casinos announced they would shut down for only the third time since gambling became legal there 33 years ago.

In Baltimore’s Fells Point, one of the city’s oldest waterfront neighborhoods, people filled sandbags and placed them at building entrances. A few miles away at the Port of Baltimore, vehicles and cranes continued to unload huge cargo ships that were rushing to offload and get away from the storm.

A steady rain fell on the boardwalk at Ocean City, Md., where a small amusement park was shut down and darkened — including a ride called the Hurricane. Businesses were boarded up, many painted with messages like “Irene don’t be mean!”

Charlie Koetzle, 55, who has lived in Ocean City for a decade, came to the boardwalk in swim trunks and flip-flops to look at the sea. While his neighbors and most everyone else had evacuated, Koetzle said he told authorities he wasn’t leaving. To ride out the storm, he had stocked up with soda, roast beef, peanut butter, tuna, nine packs of cigarettes and a detective novel.

Of the storm, he said: “I always wanted to see one.”

Jennifer Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writers contributing to this report were Tim Reynolds and Christine Armario in Miami; Bruce Shipkowski in Surf City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, N.J.; Eric Tucker in Washington; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, N.C.; Mitch Weiss in Nags Head, N.C.; Alex Dominguez in Baltimore; Brock Vergakis in Virginia Beach, Va.; Jonathan Fahey in New York; and Seth Borenstein in Washington.