Longmont Leader received the following letter from Gary Hodges about Longmont's renewable energy goal:
In August 2022 Longmont City Council passed a resolution opposing nuclear weapons, and more recently the council has been approached by advocates urging a vote on the Israel-Palestine conflict. We cannot solve the world’s problems, but this hasn’t prevented the city from trying. As further evidence, slowing global warming is baked into Longmont’s goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030.
Wind and solar (W&S) energy sources are neither green nor renewable, and they aren’t clean in the way this term has come to mean. The inescapable truths of mineral extraction and refining cannot be ignored when totaling the CO2 emission budget in our quest for “carbon-free” energy. To produce one unit of energy using W&S requires vastly more infrastructure, e.g. steel, glass, concrete, and copper, than one unit from hydrocarbon combustion. So much more, in fact, it’s easy to grasp that any CO2 emission benefit W&S holds over combustion very likely disappears once the complete supply chain is considered, or at the very least is substantially negated. Chasing this dream is also wildly expensive.
Since 2000 the world has spent between $5T - $10T attempting to supplant electricity produced by hydrocarbon combustion with that from W&S. Even with this massive push, during the same period 3 Saudi-equivalents of hydrocarbon fuels (at the low end of the estimate) were added to the global energy system. What else has been gained from that spending tsunami? Today W&S account for less than 4% of global primary energy consumed, while burning wood is nearly 10%. The assertion that the world is undergoing an energy transition is simply not true, and instead, W&S are only additions to the total energy mix. This supplantation effort is an obscene misallocation of capital extending down through every layer of society.
What does it mean for Longmont?
Without exception, in every city, state, and country where W&S are being added to the generation portfolio, electricity costs have substantially increased. Wind and solar are not carbon-free, and they are also not cheaper due to the fundamental realities involved with integrating them into the grid. Continuing with the 100% renewable goal will result in dramatically more expensive electricity. It is admirable the city is transparent about ramping up rates by 6.8% in both 2024 and 2025, with about 75% of these increases attributed to the renewable energy goal (Times-Call, Aug 30, 2023; Longmont Leader, Aug 29, 2023). That said, against the backdrop of the ever-present affordable housing discussion, barreling down a path guaranteed to drive up the cost of living makes little sense. Especially since these actions will disproportionately harm those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
While there is a sincere desire to accomplish the city’s stated goal, achieving a carbon-free energy future is not possible. When it comes to electricity generation, public policy can only change where and when CO2 is emitted, it cannot keep it from being emitted. In the U.S. there is a long history of offloading our negative externalities onto other societies, and then patting ourselves on the back for being such good environmentalists. This is the approach now being taken with W&S, which at its core is nothing more than a CO2 shell game. To be clear, I am not celebrating any of this, but only want to bring the reality of this public policy pursuit into focus so that moving forward rational decisions can be made.
The truth is we all want plentiful energy while minimizing negative impacts, but there will always be trade-offs. Longmont’s goal of achieving 100% renewable energy was conceived with noble intentions, but now it is only selling false hope to the public. Sadly, it will make living in our great city more expensive without altering the trajectory of global warming. Our focus should instead be on issues we actually have some influence over. To this end, we would be wise to abandon the unattainable goal of 100% renewable energy by 2030, and replace it with one focused on minimizing electricity costs while also being good stewards of our local environment.
Longmont cannot solve the world’s problems.
Gary Hodges
Senior Associate Scientist with CU working at NOAA
