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Where the oil industry meets alternative energy
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TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: The ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico goes back to federal court today in New Orleans. Many, many people in the Gulf Coast depend on oil drilling to make a living. So where does that leaves alternative energy in those states? Over the next two days, Marketplace's Krissy Clark introduces us to two people who can help us understand whether oil and alternatives can ever mix.
Krissy Clark: I first met Nolan Hart through his website, EnergyIndustryPhotos.com, where, surprise, he posts photos of oil derricks and pump jacks. Stuff he's worked on during his 25 years in the Texas oil patch.
Nolan Hart: There is kind of a beauty to the equipment and against the sunsets.
He loves working in the oil industry. It's earned him a good living and an appreciation for where energy comes from.
Hart: A lot of people refuse to acknowledge that oil and natural gas are what gives us the lifestyle that we enjoy. Even when you go to make a daiquiri and turn your blender on.
Which is why I wasn't prepared when Hart mentioned in passing where the electricity for his daquiris comes from.
Hart: About half of it, or more, comes from solar panels.
Clark: What? But you worked in the oil and gas industry for 25 years.
But there they were on his house: solar panels.
Hart: You can just kind of see the edge of them. That's a 2-kilowatt photovoltaic system on the roof.
Going solar's actually something Hart's wanted to do for a long time, after he lived for a year on a sailboat and relied on wind and solar energy. So when his hometown of Austin set up solar tax rebates two years ago, he went for it. And the eyebrows went up in the oil field.
Hart: I get some kidding from my coworkers sometimes: "Solar panels. Why would you do something glike that?"
They told him turning away from oil and gas toward renewables seemed like biting the hand that feeds them. But that's not how Hart sees it.
Hart: We all need each other. For every wind turbine that's built, there's a smelter somewhere for aluminum, and it's oil and gas-based energy that is building renewable energy infrastructure.
And when his coworkers poke fun at his solar panels, he reminds them:
Hart: You might not want to laugh, because you'll probably have them on your roof, too, at some point. It all comes down to economics, and if something can be made cheaply enough and just sit up there on the roof and make free energy, why not use it?
Hart says between the worlds of black gold and green, there's a big gray area -- one that the country's going to be living in more and more in the future.
I'm Krissy Clark for Marketplace.
Thanks for all your comments. Picking up on one question that's been raised, petroleum is used in generating a small but significant part of electricity in the U.S. – just over 1%. You can find out more from the Department of Energy’s statistics, here:
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_t...
Electric plants that run on petroleum often use what’s called “residual fuel oil,†a product refined from crude oil.
As some of the comments on this series have mentioned, natural gas fuels a larger share of our electric plants in the U.S.—about 20%. Natural gas is obviously one of the key products extracted by the gulf oil and gas industry, a major backbone of the economy where Nolan Hart and Nick Gautreaux live. Despite that fact, Hart and Gautreaux are looking to shift to more renewable sources.
Your story was a terrific juxtaposition of 19th century and 21st century energy sources. When the oil worker refers to the profits of oil, he forgot the huge subsidies to oil companies by their failing to pay for the military's protection in Iraq and Afghanistan and the air pollution of burning gasoline evenly cleanly, including the 90's seizure of electric cars and the 20's outlawing of alcohol which had fueled early cars. www.thomhartmann.com estimates the true price of gasoline is $10/gallon not $3. Enforcing U.S. labor laws on oil rigs and making companies pay a market price for drilling oil on federal land would deflate record profits and political influence by BP and ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. This is why Robert Reich wanted a 2008 stimulus package to focus on mass transit when gasoline was $4/gallon and the potential payoff was highest. Make Sean Hannity's nightmare come true and save the Main Street economy: free mass transit, free VPK-20 education, free healthcare.
Once again, we are misled to think that renewables gets us off oil and gas. Most electricity is generated by coal. Solar panels (and other renewables for elect. generation) may reduce coal consumption but does nothing to reduce our dependence on oil. We need to stop misleading the public into thinking solar and wind will get us off foreign or domestic oil.
I listened to your segment this morning, "Where the oil industry meets alternative energy" and was particularly taken by the closing line, referring to the "grey area" between black gold and green. As an employee working in the nuclear industry, I think that the void can and should be bridged by "blue power" (my own catchphrase for nuclear). Have you given consideration for running a story about the new DoE initiatives for the expansion of the nuclear industry in the United States?
I also work in the oil business, and have recently installed solar panels. I don't see any conflict of interest, because I'm convinced that we will need the oil industry to produce plastics and petrochemicals long after renewable energy has become established. I haven't had any negative feedback, but the main questions I am asked are "have the panels paid for themselves yet?" and "won't there just be panels twice as cheap 10 years from now?" To this I respond that I'm not doing this as a get rich quick scheme, rather I believe that for the technology to take off as it should, someone has to be an early adopter. And I also point out that with the 30% federal incentive, and the cumulative %50 state incentive, I'm not so much spending my money, as taking the opportunity to tell the government how to spend ours. How often do you get to do that?
