Europe wood. Wood you?

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

From The Economist, “Wood, The fuel of the future“:

WHICH source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union? Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.) Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither. By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood.

In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts for about half of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption. In some countries, such as Poland and Finland, wood meets more than 80% of renewable-energy demand. Even in Germany, home of the Energiewende (energy transformation) which has poured huge subsidies into wind and solar power, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption comes from the stuff. After years in which European governments have boasted about their high-tech, low-carbon energy revolution, the main beneficiary seems to be the favoured fuel of pre-industrial societies.

Also note, “because wood can be used in coal-fired power stations that might otherwise have been shut down under new environmental standards, it is extremely popular with power companies.”

And:

But if subsidising biomass energy were an efficient way to cut carbon emissions, perhaps this collateral damage might be written off as an unfortunate consequence of a policy that was beneficial overall. So is it efficient? No.

Wood produces carbon twice over: once in the power station, once in the supply chain. The process of making pellets out of wood involves grinding it up, turning it into a dough and putting it under pressure. That, plus the shipping, requires energy and produces carbon: 200kg of CO2 for the amount of wood needed to provide 1MWh of electricity.

This decreases the amount of carbon saved by switching to wood, thus increasing the price of the savings. Given the subsidy of £45 per MWh, says Mr Vetter, it costs £225 to save one tonne of CO2 by switching from gas to wood. And that assumes the rest of the process (in the power station) is carbon neutral. It probably isn’t.

And there’s more, so read the whole thing, but you get the idea. A real case study in unintended consequences.

Two foreign policy initiatives contrasted

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

Two foreign policy initiatives, both began in mid-March, one a year old and the other started ten years ago, have had dramatically different effects on the world. Eric Shierman celebrates the wiser of the two efforts:

I have considered writing about the Iraq War on the tenth anniversary of our collective, bi-partisan decision to make one of the greatest strategic mistakes in American military history, but it’s just too depressing to put words into sentences describing the cost in lives and treasure we paid….

Thus the most encouraging anniversary to reflect on is not our invasion of Iraq ten years ago this week, but the wise implementation of our free trade agreement with South Korea one year ago. … From that body of peer reviewed literature [on foreign relations] there has emerged little empirical evidence of a correlation between peace and the pursuit of ever greater military strength among states, but there is overwhelming evidence that the single most powerful pacific force in foreign policy is trade….

The empirical evidence is just overwhelming, … the more exposed people are to complex trading economies with a higher degree of specialization and division of labor, the more empathy they employ in their decision making and the more rational they are in seeking their own selfish ends through the voluntary cooperation of others. It’s not enough to know what you want; successful exchange requires a focus on what others’ want as well. This paradigm spills over into other aspects of our lives even when we are not aware of it.

Of course this is not the primary goal of free trade agreements, economic growth is. The pacifying effects of trade are merely a positive externality….

Worth reading the full thing.

You are not entitled to a profitable business model

Posted on by

Lynne Kiesling

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing highlights the Supreme Court’s copyright decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Briefly, Wiley wanted the court to enforce copyright in a way that restricts the flow of book purchases across geographic regions (i.e., limiting the ability to buy cheaper versions elsewhere online).

Clearly Wiley was attempting second-degree price discrimination, and the Internet makes arbitrage prevention nearly impossible, so this case is a good illustration of how price discrimination can fall apart.

But I’m more interested in the fact that the defense was attempting to use a “but … but we can’t make money if they can buy cheaper versions from other regions!” argument to get the court to expand the copyright breadth. The ruling’s smack-down of that line of argument is beautiful:

Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights.

You may enter an industry and build up your business, but you are not entitled to having that business remain profitable ad infinitum. You have to work harder to avoid becoming the destruction in creative destruction. And if you do that, and consumers benefit from it, you’ll profit too. Funny how that works.

Farm subsidies and entrenched wealth

Posted on by

Lynne Kiesling

Veronique de Rugy has a great argument for ending farm subsidies in the April issue of Reason (and yes, do read the whole thing, well worth your time). Farm subsidies are the canonical example of the dynamics of Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action — concentrated benefits and dispersed costs lead to the persistence of inefficient government policies. So canonical, in fact, that I used them just last week in my micro principles class to teach my students about public choice theory and applying economic tools and reasoning to studying decisions we make collectively through political processes.

One feature of Vero’s argument that distinguishes it from others is that it follows this process to its logical, disturbing conclusion for income distribution. Farm subsidies have existed for 80 years, and while their initial intent was to assist struggling farmers during the Depression, their success at doing so has created an entrenched group of land-owning farmers who are now wealthy, but fight against attempts to reduce their subsidies.

While the number of farms is down 70 percent since the 1930s—only 2 percent of Americans are directly engaged in farming—farmers aren’t necessarily struggling anymore. In 2010, the average farm household earned $84,400, up 9.4 percent from 2009 and about 25 percent more than the average household income nationwide.

What’s more, a handful of farmers reap most of the benefits from the subsidies: Wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton have always taken the lion’s share of the feds’ largesse. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) reports that “since 1995, just 10 percent of subsidized farms—the largest and wealthiest operations—have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments. 62 percent of farms in the United States did not collect subsidy payments.”

And those 62 percent have to compete with the subsidized farms for resources, particularly land. Farm subsidies get capitalized into land values, raising land prices and erecting entry barriers for young farmers who want to be independent farmers and purchase land to do so. Farm subsidies are a means of benefiting wealthy farmers at the expense of younger, poorer ones (as well as at the expense of agricultural product consumers).

In addition to being inefficient, farm subsidies to the entrenched wealthy farmers who receive them widen income gaps in agriculture. They distort resource allocations and income distributions, and if the silver lining in our current budget fiasco is the elimination of farm subsidies, that’s one big silver lining.

Should governments raise the cost of water used in fracking?

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

In dry Texas, water use has been one of the bigger of the policy complaints tossed into the policy whirlwind surrounding hydraulic fracturing. A number of water quantity related bills are currently circulating in the Texas legislature and the Texas Railroad Commission (which regulated oil and gas drilling in the state) has considered a number of water related issues. At least a few of the bills aim at limiting disposal options for wastewater or promoting the use of wastewater recycling.  In effect, most of the bills would raise the cost of freshwater used in oil and gas drilling.

A general theme is much of Texas is still suffering the lingering effects of a drought, so we need to conserve freshwater. But if this is true, why focus so much attention on such a small slice of water use? Less than one percent of water in the state goes into oil and gas drilling. Recycling may be able to squeeze that one percent down a little, or at least keep usage under one percent as the number of wells drilled increases, at an estimated 50 percent increase in water costs.

Policies that selectively increase resource costs for some users and not others are almost certainly creating inefficiencies. Perhaps, to use an obvious example, irrigation could be reduced by 1.5 percent. Or maybe more cities should detect and repair leaks in their municipal supply systems. Or maybe more homeowners should xeroscape their yards. Or powerplants could buy water reclaimed and recycled from oil and gas drilling instead of requiring drillers to reuse it. I don’t know what the most efficient allocation of water uses is going to be, but I’m also sure that policymakers don’t know either.

So why not pursue policies that creates the wide-range of incentives and information needed to promote many low-cost conservation adjustments instead of policies that impose much higher costs on one particular kind of water use?

NOTE: The above prompted in part by Kate Galbraith’s article, “In Texas, Recycling Oilfield Water Has Far to Go,” part of a series on water and fracking in The Texas Tribune.

Free solar power tomorrow!

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

Well, not free-free, but subsidy-free. Maybe.

When I read a headline promising “Solar Power to Hit Cost Parity Next Year,” it reminds me of the sign above the bar promising “Free Beer Tomorrow.” Like tomorrow, “next year” is always approaching and never here.

RP Siegel begins his Triple Pundit article, “Solar Power to Hit Cost Parity Next Year,” in full solar triumph mode:

They said it couldn’t be done. They tried to tell us that renewable energy could only survive if it were propped up with government subsidies. Never mind that our whole system of economic development, beginning with the patent office, is predicated on the idea that fledgling, underfunded industries need special protection for a limited time until they are strong enough to go it alone. Never mind that the fossil fuel industry, which can hardly be considered fledgling or underfunded, is still receiving billions in taxpayer subsidies.

But like the little engine that could, or the middle aged rock star that, after twenty years of struggling in sleazy dives has suddenly become an overnight sensation, solar power, having now surpassed the 100 GW threshold, has finally arrived and is good to go, in many places, without subsidies.

Great, so can we now pull the plug on solar power subsidies? And, by all means, yank the fossil fuel subsidies too.

(I’m passing over the wildly off-the-mark claim about “our whole system of economic development.” Not credible enough to take seriously. As it turns out, neither is the “grid parity” claim credible yet. But let’s at least explore the triumphant claims of success.)

Curiously, the article follows the “has finally arrived and is good to go … without subsidies” declaration with accounts of subsidized success. Apparently one-third of the 100 GW of world solar power capacity has been installed in Germany because of its generous feed-in tariff policies. Installations in China are growing fast. India and then Spain are mentioned. Spain built a lot of solar with subsidies, but recently stopped the subsidies. I’ll come back to India, but let’s look closer at the claim for Spain. Let the fisking begin!

Spain, the article declares, has achieved “grid parity,” backing the claim with only a link to a post at Forbes.com last December. The Forbes.com blog by Peter Kelly-Detwiler, “Solar Grid Parity Comes to Spain,” builds off a report from Bloomberg titled “First Large Solar Plants Without Subsidy Sought in Spain.” The Bloomberg article reports that many large-scale solar projects have applied to connect to the power grid, and the head of solar energy analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance is quoted as saying, “Spain is probably set to have Europe’s first utility- scale solar parks without subsidies.” So following the chain of links we have gone from gleeful declarations of “grid parity” to mere grid-connection paperwork that “probably” will yield “solar parks without subsidies” according to a solar energy analyst.

But read a little more and you get the views of the solar power lobbyist in Spain who reports that while many companies are anxious to develop solar power projects…

The biggest hurdle they face is to get the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to restart the planning process for new solar generation, said Eduardo Collado, director of operations at lobby group Union Espanola Fotovoltaica. Rajoy ordered the end of subsidies for new projects 10 months ago.

“None will go ahead until that changes, even though there are a few plants definitely needed at points in the system where the network operator wants them,” Collado said in an interview.

So, none of the subsidy-free projects will go forward until the policy that ended subsidies is changed?

Still, just a bit later in the article, a solar power developer said it would be able to build without subsidies. Maybe, at long last, this report justifies the triumphant claim that Spain has reached “grid parity”?

Not exactly. In June 2012 the developer said it expected to be able to build without subsidies in the last half of 2013, because ”we think the cost of photovoltaic will have dropped enough by then and, given the irradiation in Spain, will be totally competitive.” So once again we have hopes of grid parity “next year,” which through the magic of sloppy reporting become triumphant claims that “Spain has … achieved grid parity.”

So what about India? As the Triple Pundit post reports, Deutsche Bank anticipates solar power transitioning “from subsidized to sustainable markets in 2014″ based on the emergence of “large unsubsidized markets in places like India, where sunshine is plentiful and the alternatives are expensive.” Okay, so once again we have analysts claiming that solar power could live subsidy free soon, just not yet, and no doubt one day such predictions will come true.

But in parts of India, as with many other places around the world, where centralized grid power is expensive or unreliable or unavailable altogether, solar power is already an economical option. Solar power is a product with a few successful market niches, and these market niches will likely continue to grow as (and if) costs continue to fall.

Without extensive policy interventions, a sustainable solar power industry would tend its market niches and prepare to exploit other niches as it became more competitive.

And, by the way, please do yank fossil fuel subsidies and address externalities with appropriate policies, and let fossil fuels shrink to their market-justified size as well.

Get policy right and let the market sort ‘em out.

Promoting cooperation instead of conflict on public lands

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

A few days ago Shawn Regan and I had an op-ed that appeared in the Denver Post‘s Idea Log online section, “Promoting cooperation instead of conflict on public lands.” We begin:

Energy and the environment are often at odds. As America’s energy production reaches record levels, controversies over the environmental impacts of energy development dominate the headlines. More often than not, the result is costly litigation and lengthy political battles.

The debate is particularly intense on Colorado’s public lands. In the past five years, nine of every 10 acres proposed for oil and gas leasing in the state have been formally challenged. Plans to sell leases in the North Fork Valley and the Dinosaur area of Western Colorado provoked waves of protest this month. In response, the Bureau of Land Management deferred the sale of the controversial leases.

Although some conservationists celebrated the delay, many remain wary. During his State of the Union address last week, President Obama proposed to accelerate oil and gas permitting on federal lands. It’s clear that battles over energy development and environmental protection are not going away any time soon.

Recent agreements between energy developers and environmental groups suggest that it doesn’t have to be this way. Competing groups are increasingly working together to avoid costly litigation and reach compromises over energy and environmental values.

We continue with a few examples from Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. We take these examples as indicating interest in alternatives to litigation and conflict, but the ad hoc nature of these actions are less than ideal ways of implementing policy. Shawn and I are working on a project to provide a more consistent policy foundation for such efforts.

Shawn Regan is an economist with the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, MT, where this op-ed has been reproduced.