In Monmouth County, NJ, the Marlboro Republican Club, and the Manalapan Republican Club, are hosting  a Green Awareness Event, “An Event to Educate and Benefit our Environment” Tuesday, December 9, 2008 @ 7:00 PM, Marlboro Recreation Building – 1996 Recreation Way, Marlboro Township.  This is the statement I planned on making. I did not get a chance to speak.

However, I did get a chance to Listen.

• Freeholder Barbara McMorrow, Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders, who told us what the Freeholders will be doing for Monmouth County.
• Mayor Fred R. Profeta, Jr, Deputy Mayor for Environment, Maplewood, NJ, who told us what people are doing in Maplewood.
• Madea Villere, NJ Sustainable State Institute, Rutgers University, who offered a clear, succinct definition of “Sustainability” – meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future – and told us what we can do in our communities.

I’d like to thank the Manalapan Republicans and the Marlboro Republicans for holding this event.

I’d am available to talk about Nuclear Power and Coal and then Solar and Wind.

When you think about e=mc2 – the energy in stuff is the product of the mass and the speed of light squared, and the speed of light is 3 times 1010 cm / second – you realize that there’s a tremendous amount of energy in stuff. Senator McCain spoke about building 50 new nuclear power plants in the next 30 years. Nuclear power can be operated more or less safely – the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was in the Soviet Union. The famous accidents here, Three Mile Island in 1979 and Browns Ferry in 1975 were not as bad. However, operating them safely renders it very expensive. Nuclear power plants are regulated, or some say “rubberstamped,” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – the industry has it’s own special government bureaucracy. That renders it even more expensive. According to the New York Times, the cost of new nuclear power plants would be $8.0 billion per gigawatt, and that’s without the cost of fuel, the NRC, and managing the wastes, the ties to the nuclear weapons, the special security challenges.

The cost of utility scale solar power is less. The Atlantic County Municipal Authority paid $3.25 million for a 500 KW installation – that’s $6.5 billion per GW. And there’s no “Solar Regulatory Authority,” no waste, and no fuel. If terrorists bomb the solar energy installation we’re out $3.25 million and we lose some generating capacity – but it’s no big deal. If terrorists were to bomb Oyster Creek we’d have some severe problems.

Saddam wanted nuclear power – and Israel destroyed the Iraqui nuclear “research facility” at Osirak in 1981. Our “good friends” in Iran want nuclear power. They don’t want solar power. You can’t make nuclear bombs out of solar panels. You can make nuclear bombs out of nuclear fuel rods.

Coal – there was a lot of talk about clean coal in the Presidential election cycle. Senator McCain and President-Elect Obama both spoke about “Clean Coal.” The truth of the matter is that “Clean Coal” is Madison Ave. hype. Here’s why.

Mining coal is a very messy process. Coal, oil, and natural gas are hydrocabons, chemical compounds composed mostly of carbon and hydrogen, with mercury, nitrogen, and sulphur thrown in. We take the stuff out of the ground and burn it, releasing energy, and converting the stuff into oxides – carbon dioxide, water, sulphur dioxide, oxides of mercury and nitrogen. This is basically high school chemistry, when you take coal or oil out of the ground and you burn it, you’re moving the carbon from underground into the atmosphere. What “clean coal” would do, is capture all the carbon dioxide and store it underground. But we can’t do that without doing two things –

1. figuring out how to do it
2. spending money – a lot of money.

Solar is expensive – up front. Less expensive than nuclear; more expensive than wind. T. Boone Pickens forecasts $2.0 billion per gw for the wind farms he wants to build in W. Texas. The wind farm Garden State Wind Offshore Energy will be building off the shore are forecast at $2.86 billion per gw.

Two final points – we have to move from fossil fuels and nuclear to clean, renewable, sustainable energy. It’s the law. The Supreme Court ruled, on April 2, 2007, that the EPA MUST regulate carbon from coal plants. And after whining for 18 months, the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board ruled, on November 13, that it would regulate carbon emissions.

And it’s a good idea. When you have solar panels on a school and a disaster strikes, like Katrina, September 11, or the 2003 power failure that resulted from an accident, you have hardened the grid. You have made it more resistant to accident and act of war. You have shelters with power, at least during the day, in the event that the rest of the grid is down.