We’re educated. We’re conscientious. We believe we can incite change. So when our fellow students knock on our doors and tell us we can improve the environment with the stroke of a pen, we jump at the chance without even thinking. Maybe we should.
When over 700 Vanderbilt students recently signed a petition to raise student fees to purchase renewable energy through Tennessee Valley Authority’s Green Power Switch, they thought they were casting votes for clean air and healthy living. In truth, Vanderbilt students were pledging 36,000 dollars each year to fuel an expensive, inefficient project that is ill-suited to the realities of Tennessee’s environment. Promising in theory but poor in practice, Green Power Switch only produces negligible change and perpetuates the myth of renewable energy as a panacea for our environmental ills.
“I know that our students are very concerned and trying to do the right thing,” said Mark Petty, director of plant operations. “But what I think is really happening is that someone is trying to sell them something—and it’s not green power.”
First and foremost, it’s important to realize that the skies aren’t as gray to as environmentalists lead us to believe. As Robert L. Bradley Jr., president of the Institute for Energy Research has observed, in the past thirty years national total emissions have decreased by one-third, even though population has increased by one-third and GDP and vehicle miles traveled have more than doubled. Bradley credits the change to dramatic improvements in vehicles and power plants.
For the past two decades, new coal plants (including Vanderbilt’s) have been required to install scrubbers that remove sulfur, an element that contributes to respiratory illness and acid rain, from coal’s combustion gases before they leave the smokestacks. H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, noted that scrubbers have eliminated 95 percent of plants’ sulfur dioxide emissions. Moreover, Burnett points to new clean coal technology as a way to further reduce emissions. Instead of being directly burned, coal can be converted to gas and then combusted in a combined-cycle gas turbine, reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by 98 percent and nitrogen oxides by 90 percent. Additionally, sulfur and other chemicals removed from the gas can be recycled in other industrial processes, increasing efficiency by 40 percent.
Yet despite advances in technology that have made fossil fuel an inexpensive, environmentally friendly option, environmentalists still contend that alternative methods are necessary. They claim that if green power is cultivated and given time to bloom, it can grow into a major energy source.
But as Bradley explains, renewable energy is far from a novel concept. As fossil-fuel prices rose in the 1970s, some pushed solar power as a cleaner, cheaper alternative. By the mid-70s over 100 companies were trying to perfect solar energy, and in 1980 the head of Royal Dutch Shell’s solar project boldly predicted that “the solar electric market could explode.” Instead, it imploded. Solar power never spread beyond niche markets, and the wind power movement that blew in a few years later met a similar fate—for good reason.
In the past 20 years, taxpayers and voluntary contributors have burned between 30 and 40 billion trying to spark conservation and alternative energy plans, according to Bradley. Subsidies and tax breaks, not renewable energy’s merits, have fueled what little growth the industry has seen. The truth remains that renewable energy is more expensive to produce and maintain than traditional energy forms. Geography severely limits where it can be used, and even when it is possible to set up renewable energy sources, they seldom operate at capacity. The sun does not shine and the wind does not blow at our convenience.
As for Green Power Switch, it produces power using 15 solar sites throughout the TVA service area, one wind park in East Tennessee and methane gas at the Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis. All of these sites combined only generate one-hundredth of a percent of TVA’s total energy output. According to Lucha Ramey, TVA spokesperson, methane gas produces energy 60 percent of the time, wind turbines 30 percent, and solar panels only 20 percent. By her own admission, the Tennessee Valley isn’t well-suited for wind or solar technology. Why we are funding it then is anyone’s guess.
Finally, even renewable energy sources touted as cure-alls result in negative environmental impacts. As Bradley notes, biomass can in some cases produce more carbon dioxide than coal in addition to nitrogen oxide and particulates. The production of photovoltaic solar panels creates toxic chemicals like arsenic, gallium, and cadmium. Sierra Club representatives have dubbed wind turbines “Cuisinarts of the air” because their blades kill area birds. (Despite this, The Vanderbilt Sierra Club sponsors the green power initiative.) Large areas of land are needed to support solar panels and towering wind turbines—meaning trees are cut down and habitats are destroyed. Combine current methods of production with the pollution created by green power, and you get a net negative impact. In the battle against traditional energy, environmentalists win only a pyrrhic victory.
Proponents of the plan argue that the statement Vanderbilt makes by purchasing green power is as important as the effects of the plan.
“This is a way for Vanderbilt to show that we are a community oriented-organization, that we don’t just care about ourselves and our own health, but that we care about the health of the people of Tennessee,” said Jennifer Carlisle, co-chair of Vanderbilt Sierra Club.
Carlisle is right. Vanderbilt should care about people’s health. Vanderbilt should make a statement. But supporting an ineffective solution to Tennessee’s pollution problem is not the statement we should make.
“We get to put our name on a list with other people like Duke and Emory. But it’s never been my position that just because Duke does it means we have to do it, too,” said Petty. “I’m a believer in environmentalism, but I think we’re paying for a marketing campaign for TVA. We can better spend our money and still make our voices heard, and TVA can become a greener power.” Petty advocates more research into fossil fuel technology and above all, more conservation.
“What I have seen since I’ve been in this business is that we want it both ways,” said Petty. “We want to be able to live our lifestyles as we want to, but make someone else responsible for the environment. I have yet to hear anybody embrace the idea of us being more conservative. We at Vanderbilt need to set an example of conservation.”
Propping up unpromising technology instead of exploring other solutions or improving traditional energy production does not make us healthier, cleaner, or safer. If individual students believe in Green Power Switch, they can mail in their own green to TVA. But the entire student body should not be compelled to pay for more for an unproven, inferior service.
Having good intentions is one thing; transforming one’s desires into coherent policy is another. Vanderbilt students mean well. But next time they should read the fine print.
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