Offshore Wind Neg
Offshore Wind Neg .................................................................................................................................................................. 1
***Solvency ................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Wind Power fails ................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Intermittency ................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Cost ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Blackouts ........................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Onshore > Offshore ..................................................................................................................................................... 10
Obamaaaaa!!................................................................................................................................................................... 12
PTC Fails ............................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Doesn’t incentivize ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
Short-term Crises ......................................................................................................................................................... 16
Nat gas prices................................................................................................................................................................. 17
AT Hurricanes Add-On............................................................................................................................................... 19
***Warming Adv .................................................................................................................................................................... 21
US not key ............................................................................................................................................................................ 22
Leadership not k........................................................................................................................................................... 23
Warming =/= Conflict ................................................................................................................................................ 24
Warming Not Real ....................................................................................................................................................... 25
Alt Causes ............................................................................................................................................................................. 26
China.................................................................................................................................................................................. 27
Farming ............................................................................................................................................................................ 29
Deforestation ................................................................................................................................................................. 30
No solvency ......................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Wind Power not enough ........................................................................................................................................... 32
Wind Increases Co2 .................................................................................................................................................... 34
Warming Inevitable .................................................................................................................................................... 35
Biodiversity Turn.............................................................................................................................................................. 37
Wind Power Hurts Bio-D .......................................................................................................................................... 38
Invasive Species............................................................................................................................................................ 41
Bio-D Impact .................................................................................................................................................................. 43
***Econ Adv ............................................................................................................................................................................. 47
Uniqueness .......................................................................................................................................................................... 48
US leads now .................................................................................................................................................................. 49
US Competitiveness Rising....................................................................................................................................... 53
Manufacturing High .................................................................................................................................................... 54
Wind Power not key ........................................................................................................................................................ 57
Doesn’t create jobs ...................................................................................................................................................... 58
Manufacturing in China ............................................................................................................................................. 59
Trades off with oil jobs .............................................................................................................................................. 62
Alt Cause ............................................................................................................................................................................... 64
Trade Deficit................................................................................................................................................................... 65
Laundry List ................................................................................................................................................................... 66
A2: Heg impact ................................................................................................................................................................... 67
No internal link ............................................................................................................................................................. 68
Competition not key ................................................................................................................................................... 69
No impact ........................................................................................................................................................................ 70
Heg Bad ............................................................................................................................................................................ 71
***Spending Links ............................................................................................................................................................ 80
***Solvency
Wind Power fails
Intermittency
Wind power does not meet electricity demand – intermittency.
Tupi 2012, Bradley S., Wind Energy is Not the Answer (March 8,). Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2018417 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2018417
A coal-fired power plant will generate electricity 24/7/365. A nuclear generating station will run for
two years without interruption. Even a hydroelectric plant will put out consistent, uninterrupted
energy unless the flow of water stops. As a result, whenever we want to turn on a light, cool off a room, or boot up a
computer, electric power is at our fingertips. Wind power is not like that. Wind is an unreliable source of
energy for the obvious reason that the wind does not always blow. Sometimes it does not blow at all.
Sometimes it blows at a speed too low to turn the blades of a wind turbine. And sometimes it blows too
fast. High wind velocities can damage wind turbines, so turbines are set to shut off at wind speeds
over 56 miles per hour.7 The operational wind speed range of a wind turbine is between 7 mph (the “cut-in speed”) and 56 mph
(the “shut-down limit”). Within this operational range, small variations in wind speed have large effects on
electricity output.8 This is because a doubling of wind speed yields eight times the energy.9 So even
when the wind is blowing within the turbine’s operational range, the power output is unpredictable.
Wind velocity often changes dramatically from hour to hour or from night to morning. As a result, wind power
output can swing wildly over the course of a single day.10 From month to month the swings can be
striking, too. In Spain, on Aug. 27, 2009, wind supplied less than 1% of the country’s electric power. On the morning of Nov. 8, 2009,
wind power peaked, briefly providing 53.7% of the country’s electricity.11 Another problem of wind power has to do
with matching power production with consumer demand. High winds after dark do not satisfy the
electricity demands of a hot, sultry afternoon. Wind performs worst during the summer months, when
power demand peaks.12 According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, wind turbines only deliver 8.7% of
capacity during peak summer hours.13 Similarly, the windiest places do not match the places with
highest energy demand. In the United States, the areas with the best wind resources are in the Midwest
and West.14 The areas with the highest electricity demand are in the East.15 Since we cannot generate
electricity in North Dakota, put it in a box and ship it to Manhattan, it is difficult to match wind
energy supply with demand. We need energy to be available on demand. Because it is intermittent,
wind energy cannot meet this basic requirement.
Their evidence inflates energy production numbers – intermittency decreases wind
power’s actual output.
Tupi 2012, Bradley S., Wind Energy is Not the Answer (March 8,). Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2018417 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2018417
When wind energy companies promote their output, they do so in misleading ways. They use
“nameplate capacity” figures instead of actual energy output, which will be only a fraction of the
turbine’s nameplate rating.16 For example, General Electric is offering a wind turbine “rated” at 2.5
megawatts (MW) capacity.17 Actual output, however, is reduced by the intermittency of wind itself. So the
actual electricity output of a wind energy facility may only be 20% of the advertised capacity.18 Another
way to look at wind energy’s paltry output is to compare wind energy facilities to conventional
power plants. A typical coal-fired power plant will deliver approximately 2,000 MW. A wind energy facility
would need 800 2.5 MW turbines operating at full capacity to deliver a comparable amount of
power. At a more likely 30% rate of production, more than 2,600 turbines would be required.
Pennsylvania’s summer electricity-generating capacity as of 2008 was 45,130 MW.19 It would take more than 60,000 turbines at 30%
production to generate this much electricity. It
would take hundreds of thousands of wind turbines to make a
substantial contribution to America’s energy needs
Wind power fails – intermittency and high cost.
Bell 3/8/11, Larry (contributor to Forbes). “Wind energy’s overblown prospects.” Forbes
Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/03/08/wind-energys-overblownprospects/
Unfortunately, wind doesn’t afford
the benefits marketers promise. It isn’t an abundant, reliable power
fossil dependence or CO2 emissions; isn’t free, or even cheap; doesn’t
produce net job gains; nor does it cool brows of feverish environmental critics. Many green energy
advocates have exaggerated the capacity of wind power to make a significant impact on U.S. electrical needs. Any
source; doesn’t appreciably reduce
euphoric fantasy that an unlimited, free and clean alternative to carbon-cursed fossil-fuel sources is blowing by with scant notice is
exceedingly naïve and misguided. A major
point of public confusion in this regard lies in a failure to differentiate
maximum total capacities, typically presented in megawatts (MW), with actual predicted kilowatt hours
(kWh), which are determined by annual average wind conditions at a particular site. Wind is
intermittent, and velocities constantly change. It often isn’t available when needed most — such as during
hot summer days when demands for air-conditioning are highest. According to a 2009 Energy Information Agency Report on Electricity
Generation, wind power provided only 70 billion kWh of the total U.S. 3,953 kWh supply (1.79% of generated power). Yet in May
2008, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it is feasible to increase wind capacity to supply
20% of this nation’s electricity and enough to displace 50 % of natural gas consumption and 18% of
coal use by 2030. The report, drawn up by its national laboratories said that meeting this target presumed some important
assumptions. It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in
the pace of wind turbine installations. What exactly does
that mean in terms of real, available kWh generating
output? Actually, it means very little if merely a minor percentage of that technical feasibility provides
electricity when needed. To be extremely optimistic, let’s assume that actual average output would be
25% of that projected installed capacity. In that case, the real output would be less than 5% of the country’s electricity,
and more realistically, about half of even that amount under optimistic circumstances. Output volatility due to wind’s intermittency
varies greatly according to location and time of year, typically ranging from 0% to about 50%. Texas, one of the most promising wind
energy states, averages about 16.8% of installed capacity, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas assigns a value of 10% due to
unpredictability. Only about 20%
of that capacity is generally available during peak demand periods (about
average generation during off-peak time averages about 40% of capacity. Electricity
must be instantaneously available day and night to meet “base load” requirements. When peak
loads exceed supplies bad things quickly happen. Electrical frequencies and voltages drop as power
line currents increase, necessitating automatic or manual interruption of loads (blackouts) to protect
grids. But unlike such workhorse power generators as coal-fired and nuclear plants designed to constantly run at peak load capacities,
wind (and solar) power requires incorporation of “spinning reserve” backup systems to provide
continuity. These are typically gas-fired turbines, much like those used for jet aircraft engines that are
connected to generators. That’s where it gets particularly expensive.
5:00pm), while
Wind intermittency increases costs
Tverberg, 14
Tverberg, Gail. Gail Tverberg is a writer and speaker about energy issues "The Ten Reasons Why
Intermittency Is a Problem for Renewable Energy." The Ten Reasons Why Intermittency Is a Problem
for Renewable Energy. N.p., 30 Jan. 2014. Web. 18 July 2014. <http://oilprice.com/AlternativeEnergy/Renewable-Energy/The-Ten-Reasons-Why-Intermittency-is-a-Problem-for-RenewableEnergy.html>.
The exercise becomes one of trying to guess how much carbon emissions are saved by looking at tops of icebergs, given that the whole
rest of the system is needed to support the new additions. The thing that makes the problem more difficult is the fact that
intermittent renewables have more energy-related costs that are not easy to measure than
fossil fuel powered energy does. For example, there may be land rental costs, salaries of consultants, and (higher)
financing costs because of the front-ended nature of the investment. There are also costs for mitigating
intermittency and extra long-distance grid connections. Many intermittent renewables costs
seem to be left out of CO2 analyses under the theory that, say, land rental doesn’t really use
energy. But the payment for land rental means that the owner can now go and buy more “stuff,” so it acts to raise fossil fuel energy
consumption.
Cost
Wind power fails – intermittency and high cost.
Bell 3/8/11, Larry (contributor to Forbes). “Wind energy’s overblown prospects.” Forbes
Magazine. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/03/08/wind-energys-overblownprospects/
Unfortunately, wind doesn’t afford
the benefits marketers promise. It isn’t an abundant, reliable power
fossil dependence or CO2 emissions; isn’t free, or even cheap; doesn’t
produce net job gains; nor does it cool brows of feverish environmental critics. Many green energy
advocates have exaggerated the capacity of wind power to make a significant impact on U.S. electrical needs. Any
source; doesn’t appreciably reduce
euphoric fantasy that an unlimited, free and clean alternative to carbon-cursed fossil-fuel sources is blowing by with scant notice is
exceedingly naïve and misguided. A major
point of public confusion in this regard lies in a failure to differentiate
maximum total capacities, typically presented in megawatts (MW), with actual predicted kilowatt hours
(kWh), which are determined by annual average wind conditions at a particular site. Wind is
intermittent, and velocities constantly change. It often isn’t available when needed most — such as during
hot summer days when demands for air-conditioning are highest. According to a 2009 Energy Information Agency Report on Electricity
Generation, wind power provided only 70 billion kWh of the total U.S. 3,953 kWh supply (1.79% of generated power). Yet in May
2008, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it is feasible to increase wind capacity to supply
20% of this nation’s electricity and enough to displace 50 % of natural gas consumption and 18% of
coal use by 2030. The report, drawn up by its national laboratories said that meeting this target presumed some important
assumptions. It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in
the pace of wind turbine installations. What exactly does
that mean in terms of real, available kWh generating
output? Actually, it means very little if merely a minor percentage of that technical feasibility provides
electricity when needed. To be extremely optimistic, let’s assume that actual average output would be
25% of that projected installed capacity. In that case, the real output would be less than 5% of the country’s electricity,
and more realistically, about half of even that amount under optimistic circumstances. Output volatility due to wind’s intermittency
varies greatly according to location and time of year, typically ranging from 0% to about 50%. Texas, one of the most promising wind
energy states, averages about 16.8% of installed capacity, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas assigns a value of 10% due to
unpredictability. Only about 20%
of that capacity is generally available during peak demand periods (about
average generation during off-peak time averages about 40% of capacity. Electricity
must be instantaneously available day and night to meet “base load” requirements. When peak
loads exceed supplies bad things quickly happen. Electrical frequencies and voltages drop as power
line currents increase, necessitating automatic or manual interruption of loads (blackouts) to protect
grids. But unlike such workhorse power generators as coal-fired and nuclear plants designed to constantly run at peak load capacities,
wind (and solar) power requires incorporation of “spinning reserve” backup systems to provide
continuity. These are typically gas-fired turbines, much like those used for jet aircraft engines that are
connected to generators. That’s where it gets particularly expensive.
5:00pm), while
Blackouts
Wind power causes blackouts - Transmission lines and proximity
(Kassakia et al 11)
(JOHN G. KASSAKIAN Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT Former Director, MIT Laboratory for
Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems "Future of The Electric Grid" http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/electricgrid-2011/Electric_Grid_Full_Report.pdf)
Second, many of the most promising sites
for wind and solar generators are located far from major load
centers. As Figure 1.8 indicates, the most attractive wind resources are in the “wind belt” that stretches north from
Texas through the Dakotas to the Canadian border. The U.S. also has significant offshore wind potentials
on both the East and West Coasts. While these offshore resources are closer to major load centers, the costs of offshore
wind installations are generally considerably greater than onshore facilities in good locations. Similarly, the
prime locations for solar power are in the nearly cloud-free and sparsely populated desert
Southwest, as shown in Figure 1.9. iv Exploiting these variable energy resources will require building more
transmission than if fossil-fueled or nuclear generating plants built relatively close to load centers
were driving system expansion. The use of very long transmission lines can cause technical problems
and compromise system stability. In addition, as Chapter 4 explains, existing transmission planning tools are
inadequate for wide-area planning, and current cost-allocation methods need improvement. Cost
allocation and siting have been particularly contentious for transmission facilities that cross state borders or the 30%
of U.S. land managed by federal agencies. The Federal Power Act of 1935 made siting of all transmission lines a matter for the states
rather than FERC, and lines that cross land managed by federal agencies need the approval of those agencies. v Consequently, the
construction of interstate transmission facilities requires the consent of multiple state regulators
and, sometimes, one or more federal agencies. In some regions of the country, this process is facilitated by the historic
cooperation of states within an ISO’s territory. But as a general matter, the special difficulties of siting boundarycrossing transmission facilities will pose an obstacle to the efficient integration of renewable
generation. 31
Wind power can’t overcome blackouts – delivery systems fail
(Washington Post 12)
8/1("Aging power grid on overload as U.S. demands more electricity"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/aging-power-grid-on-overload-as-us-demands-moreelectricity/2012/08/01/gJQAB5LDQX_story_2.html)
India’s blackout was a power generation problem: It is saddled with aging coal power plants and facing resistance to new nuclear plants.
This week, several plants closed suddenly and the lights went out. Although
the United States will need more power
plants to meet the demands of a growing population, the most immediate threat is that the delivery system
will continue to fail. The huge steel towers whose power cables crisscross the country — and the
transmission stations they feed — are the pipes of that system. It’s not easy to store electricity for very
long, and most of it is used within a second of being produced. At the push of a button, the grid routes power where
it’s needed, from state to state or region to region. It is supposed to sidestep bottlenecks or hiccups that might
slow the flow.
Onshore > Offshore
Offshore wind is a bad economic investment, but onshore costs less.
Institute for Energy Research in 2013 (The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit
organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and
government regulation of global energy markets. http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/nj-offshore-wind-project-reveals-true-cost-to-taxpayer/)
As noted previously by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), offshore wind is a terrible
investment economically. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), offshore
wind is 2.6 times more expensive than onshore wind power and is 3.4 times more expensive
than power produced by a combined cycle natural gas plant. On a kilowatt hour basis, offshore
wind power is estimated to cost 22.15 cents per kilowatt hour, while onshore wind is 8.66 cents per
kilowatt hour, and natural gas combined cycle is only 6.56 per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, EIA
predicts offshore wind farms cost about $6,230 per kilowatt, while those costs for an
onshore wind farm are estimated to be $2,213 per kilowatt and only $1,023 per kilowatt for
combined cycle natural gas. The offshore wind credits are another interesting part of the
equation. Despite the OWEDA being passed in 2010, New Jersey is yet to finalize how to handle
offshore wind credit transacti ons and even how to price them. The offshore wind installation
promoters provided a glimpse at just how costly developers feel offshore wind credits have
to be in order to make their projects economical. The original offshore wind installation
proposal had the energy credits priced at over $250 per MWh credit. To put that in
perspective, New Jersey solar renewable energy credits sold for $125 per MWh in September
2013[iv] and general compliance renewable credits top out at just $60 per MWh. Ignoring
the argument of whether there should be ANY renewable energy credit programs, it is
obvious that moving to offshore wind is one of the most costly ways to “go green”.
Onshore wind is significantly cheaper than offshore wind.
Edward Rivis in 2013 (Edward Rivis is one of the owners and people who run Boythorpe Wind
Energy, http://www.boythorpewindenergy.co.uk/wind-turbine-advice/onshore-vs-offshore-windenergy/)
Offshore wind energy sources are currently one of the most expensive energy technologies.
Offshore wind farms are 90 per cent more expensive than fossil fuel generators and 50 per
cent more expensive than nuclear, according to The Telegraph. This high expense is a result of the
technical difficulties of offshore turbine construction and connection to the National Grid.
Extra construction and materials are needed to set up turbines in the sea and investment in
new offshore technologies that may not work is also attributed to this cost. Onshore wind
energy, on the other hand, is the most cost-effective renewable energy source around. According to Friends of
the Earth, energy from onshore wind turbines is two times cheaper than offshore wind. Wind
farms on land are almost as monetarily cheap as fossil fuels. But, if environmental damage
was included, the price of coal would be three times that of onshore wind energy, according to
Friends of the Earth. Over time, offshore wind energy costs should come down, just as onshore has. This would allow Britain to bring in
even more powerful and reliable wind power. But, it’s unlikely for offshore
wind energy to become as cheap
as fossil fuel prices for at least 18 years, according to Dr Robert Gross, co-director at the UK Energy Research Centre
(UKERC). Onshore
wind farms are the most economically competitive renewable energy source
around right now, and are one of the cheapest energy sources in general. Payback time can
be as short as two years with Boythorpe.
Offshore wind technologies are too new to be put to good use, onshore is much more
developed.
Edward Rivis in 2013 (Edward Rivis is one of the owners and people who run Boythorpe Wind
Energy, http://www.boythorpewindenergy.co.uk/wind-turbine-advice/onshore-vs-offshore-windenergy/)
There are many developmental hurdles for offshore wind farms because the industry is
relatively new. Offshore wind farms have had lots of issues with development, including
limited locations, new consents procedures and objections from the Ministry of Defence, according to Friends of the
Earth. These constraints greatly increase the time of the farms’ developments and payback. If
rebuilding is required as a result of the constraints or objections, more carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases will be released into the air. When developing wind farms offshore,
fishing, boat navigation, ocean habitat and species, marine conservation zone and visual
effect issues must be taken into consideration. Although a few of these same issues must be looked
at during onshore wind farm developments, onshore technology approval processes are much
more developed and practiced. Because the changing climate is such an urgent issue and fossil
fuels are depleting, both onshore and offshore wind must be used to reduce carbon emissions and
replace finite energy sources and their escalating costs. The offshore wind resource is huge, and
should be taken advantage of. But right now, onshore wind power is a much more proven
and cost-effective investment than offshore wind power. To find out how you can start producing renewable
energy from one of the best technologies around, click
Obamaaaaa!!
Obama is passing executive orders to stop offshore energy developmentPacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument proves.
Bastasch 6/17 (Michael, 2014,”Obama Unilaterally Puts Huge Swaths Of Pacific Ocean OffLimits To Development”, http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/17/obama-unilaterally-puts-hugeswaths-of-pacific-ocean-off-limits-to-development/#ixzz37rr1MjcC)
President Barack Obama announced new executive orders Tuesday to make huge swaths of the
Pacific Ocean off limits to fishing, energy exploration and other economic activities. The move
would create the world’s largest marine sanctuary, and is part of a broader push to tackle global
warming and halt offshore energy development. This effort will be led by Secretary of State John
Kerry and White House adviser John Podesta. Obama’s new executive orders would expand the
Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from 87,000 square miles to 782,000 square
miles. All the waters being put off-limits would are located near U.S.-controlled islands and atolls,
and the designation includes waters up to 200 nautical miles within U.S. holdings
PTC Fails
Doesn’t incentivize
Studies show PTC is not statistically significant in incentivizing wind energy
development – market factors and state wind potential.
Maguire 2010, Karen (PhD Candidate at the Department of Economics of the University of
Colorado at Boulder). “What’s Powering Wind? The Role of Prices and Policies in Determining the
Amount of Wind Energy Development in the United States (1994-2008).” November 2010. Institute
of Behavioral Science. http://www.colorado.edu/IBS/pubs/eb/es2010-0002.pdf
Based on the theoretical framework, the
empirical analysis is focused on measuring the influence of
renewable energy policies on the growth in cumulative wind capacity after controlling for market
factors and state wind potential. The 25-state sample covers the time period from 1994 through
2008. 45,46 This panel allows for the identification of impacts from the policy variables, that change at most annually at the state level.
Given the distribution of the dependent variable a random effects Tobit model was used.47,48,49 Yit is censored at zero with
approximately 40 percent of the observations at zero. (See Figure 3 for a depiction of the dependent variable over time by state.) The
specification of the model is: The main regression results are presented in Tables 8-10, which vary based on the regulatory variables that
are included. Tables 8 and 8a present results for the sum index, Table 9 includes findings for the indicator index, and Table 10 provides
results for the years from index. Overall, the findings
in Tables 8 through 10 indicate that the regulatory
influence of RPS, GPP, and MGPP on wind capacity is consistently positive and statistically
significant.50 In addition, the coefficients on Optional RPS and the PTC were consistently not significant .
This results is not unexpected in terms of Optional RPS, but it was anticipated that the PTC would have a positive
and significant influence on cumulative wind capacity. This finding is discussed in more detail below along with the
remaining policy indicators that demonstrated some statistical significance. In terms of electricity market factors, there was some
evidence of significance of several measures, however, there is some variability the individual results. The market factors will be
discussed in more detail below as well. 51 To begin the discussion of the regression results, I focus on two of the most widely known and
discussed renewable regulations, RPS and the PTC. The AWEA has consistently advocated for RPS as an important regulatory mechanism
for supporting the growth of wind energy. The literature has generally supported the supposition that RPS lead to additional renewable
energy development. (Langniss and Wiser, 2003; Wiser, Porter, and Grace, 2004; Wiser and Barbose, 2008; Menz and Vachon, 2006).
Counter to the largely descriptive literature on renewable energy development, Carley (2009) finds that in terms of renewable electricity
generation, RPS are not statistically significant predictors. The results in this paper support the work that argues for RPS in positively
influencing renewable energy development, in this case wind development.52 The results in Tables 8a and 9 demonstrate that the
probability of wind development occurring increases by between approximately 26 and 30 percent after the implementation of an RPS.
In addition, given that wind development has occurred, the expected megawatts of wind capacity per megawatt of wind potential
increased by approximately two percentage points. Table 10 demonstrates that these results are unexpectedly diminishing over time.
These findings are in contrast with those of Carley (2009) who found that the there was no initial effect of an RPS on renewable
electricity generation generally, but that its influence was increasing over time. Given that the binding constraints for the implementation
of each RPS are outside of the time period of analysis, I expected that the effectiveness of the RPS would increase rather than decrease in
the years subsequent to its implementation. In fact, the influence of the RPS is significantly diminished in the years after its
implementation. The magnitude of the negative influence in each year after implementation is approximately equivalent to the positive
magnitude of the influence of the initiation of an RPS. This indicates that long term role of the RPS in influencing continued wind
development after its initial year of implementation is debatable. The total long term influence cannot be determined until after the
mandatory renewable energy requirements of the RPS become binding. The information in Table 1 show that generally this will occur in
the next five to ten years. While the initially positive influence of the RPS is strongly demonstrated in these results, the fact that this
influences diminishes in the 52 The years after implementation make it difficult to conclude whether the long term role of the RPS will be
positive or not. The final conclusions hinge on the long term influence of the RPS as they become binding constraints. Federal Production
Tax Credit The
AWEA often argues for the importance of the PTC in influencing wind development
(AWEA, EoWE; GWEMR 1999). The literature has generally supported this viewpoint, arguing that the lapses in the PTC
lead to decreases in wind development. (Bird et al, 2005; Harper, Karcher, and Bolinger, 2007). Evidence of correlation
between the total amount of wind capacity that is added in the United States and an active PTC are
clear from Figure 2. This figure also demonstrates, however, that the influence on U.S. cumulative wind
capacity is less pronounced. The findings in this paper do not support the supposition of the AWEA and
others regarding the significance of the PTC in influencing cumulative wind capacity. The coefficient
on the PTC is consistently positive, but not statistically significant. Several factors account for this
finding. First, the analysis focuses on cumulative wind capacity rather than added capacity.53 Also, in
this paper, I am analyzing the role of the PTC in the context of other market and regulatory factors . The
exclusion of other relevant variables leads to omitted variable bias and potentially to an
overstatement of the role of the PTC.
Short-term Crises
Short-term economic shocks prevent the use of production tax credits
Barradale 2008, Merrill Jones, Impact of Policy Uncertainty on Renewable Energy Investment: Wind Power and PTC
(December 30, 2008). USAEE Working Paper No. 08-003. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1085063 or
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1085063
Multi-party contract negotiations are difficult, sometimes even impossible, in an atmosphere of policy
uncertainty; they are also likely to remain prevalent in the wind industry. A solution to the cyclical problem
of investment volatility thus requires addressing the issue of uncertainty. Stability – the antidote to uncertainty – is
therefore an important criterion for evaluating the effectiveness of policy incentives. As already noted, the wind
energy industry recognizes the need for stable policy with a long-term horizon. Prior to 2008, most of
the industry, including AWEA,20 focused its efforts on encouraging Congress to pass a longer-term PTC
lasting three to five years or even longer. Wiser et al. (2007a) found that a five- to 10-year PTC would
yield significant benefits for the industry, including: (1) encourage growth in domestic wind turbine manufacturing and
(2) reduce installed costs through higher efficiencies in capital and labor deployment, enhanced R&D, reduced exchange rate risk, and
transportation savings. Despite a
history of bipartisan support for the wind PTC, however, Congress has
repeatedly renewed the incentive for only one or two years at a time. Some attribute this to the way Congress
calculates its budget: the cost of multi-year programs is reported when legislation is enacted, and legislators dislike being associated with
big spending programs. Among those who saw the PTC as an inherently short-term policy instrument was Mike O’Sullivan of FPL Energy,
a leading wind IPP in the US: “I don’t think a 10-year extension will happen. The politics in Washington calls for the PTC to stay as a twoyear deal due to the way the federal budget is scored.” (Anderson, 2006) Another prominent project developer and equity investor
considered a longer-term PTC to be sufficiently unrealistic that the continual emphasis on the cyclical PTC extension prevented the
industry from achieving long-term stability. Reflecting this trade-off, he referred to the PTC as the “heroin” of the wind industry
(Armistead, 2006). Also indicative of this perception of the PTC as a short-term policy instrument is the fact that most industry
participants did not expect extensions to continue forever. The majority (58%) of Wind Industry Survey
respondents in 2006 expected the PTC program to come to an end within five years (see Fig. 3). In short, although a longer-term PTC
would improve stability, it is unlikely to evolve beyond a short-term policy instrument. The
PTC has various other
shortcomings, especially the adverse effects of tax policy in restricting ownership and financing
structures (see for example Kahn, 1996). These include lack of support for community-owned wind farms
as well as higher financing costs due to the complexity of financing structures used to get around
ownership restrictions. Since the 2008 financial crisis, another significant disadvantage of tax credits as a
policy instrument has become clear. During economic downturns, tax credits are not useful to
anyone, especially during a financial crisis when the finance sector in particular is in the red (Bailey
and Broehl, 2008).
Nat gas prices
Natural gas prices affect wind energy development – clearing prices.
Brown 2012, Phillip (specialist in Energy Policy). “US Renewable Electricity: how does the production tax credit impact wind
markets?” Congressional Research Service. June 20, 2012. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42576.pdf
The price of natural gas also has an impact on the U.S. wind market. Generally, lower natural gas prices can
reduce the economic competitiveness of wind power, while higher natural gas prices can create
opportunities for wind to compete on economics alone, in some cases without subsidies. Since wind power
economics vary depending on project location, there is no single natural gas price level at which all wind
projects can compete either on an unsubsidized basis or with the availability of PTC incentives.
Furthermore, natural gas prices can affect wind power in different ways depending on the state or
region in which a wind project operates. U.S. electricity markets are complex, and a comprehensive analysis of
electricity markets is beyond the scope of this report.27 Generally, however, there are two distinct types of markets in the
United States: (1) competitive markets: power generators are subject to price competition when selling power into wholesale
markets, and (2) cost-of-service markets: power generators earn a regulated rate of return established by a public utilities
commission.28 According to one estimate, approximately two-thirds of electricity consumed in the United States is
within competitive markets.29 Furthermore, there are several regional power markets in the United States, each with a unique
market structure, fuel mix, and set of rules that govern market operations. Depending on the respective market
characteristics, natural gas prices can impact wind projects in different ways. The following sections provide
two simplified examples of how natural gas prices might impact the economics, and development, of U.S.
wind power projects. Example 1: Markets Coordinated by a Regional Transmission Organization Competitive electricity markets
are typically managed by a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) or an Independent System Operator (ISO), a third-party operator
of the electricity transmission system for a defined geographical area. In essence, the RTO provides a market making function and is a
critical interface between electricity purchasers and suppliers. RTO coordinated markets can generally be described as markets where
wholesale electricity rates are frequently established (typically on an hourly basis) through a bidding process. Power generators provide
bids, usually based on the variable cost for each respective generator, to supply a certain amount of electricity. The RTO will organize the
bids from the lowest to the highest. The bid offer price that matches the level of electricity supply necessary to meet power demand sets
what is known as the “clearing price.” Figure 6 provides a simplified example of how the clearing price might be established for
wholesale electric power within an RTO-coordinated market. All generators that supply electricity at or below the clearing price are paid
for their electricity supply at the clearing price level. However, many power generators may establish power purchase agreements
(PPAs) directly with utility companies to provide long-term revenue certainty. In these instances financial transactions between
generators and power purchasers will often occur exclusive of the RTO clearing price mechanism in order to satisfy PPA terms and
conditions. In certain electricity markets, during different times of year, and during certain times throughout a day, especially during
daytime hours when electricity demand peaks, natural gas power generation sets the clearing price. Since
natural gas fuel costs
are the largest contributor to natural gas power generation costs, there will be some degree of
correlation between the price of natural gas and the wholesale electricity clearing price within
certain markets. Generally, as natural gas prices rise, so does the clearing price during certain times
throughout the day. However, total electricity demand within a market can also impact wholesale
electricity prices. For wind projects that participate in this type of market without a PPA, also
known as “merchant wind,” the clearing price will usually determine the revenue received for
electricity sold into the market. Although, in certain instances, wind projects can supplement their electric power revenue by
selling renewable energy certificates (RECs) to entities required to comply with state RPS policies.30 Nevertheless, higher natural
gas prices and the resulting higher electricity clearing prices can increase revenues for wind
projects thereby making them attractive investment and development opportunities. Conversely, lower
natural gas prices and lower clearing prices can decrease wind project revenues to a point where
projects are not economically viable. Wind projects in RTO-coordinated markets can mitigate wholesale market price risk
by entering into long term PPAs with utility companies. In this case, utility companies absorb the risks associated with
low wholesale clearing prices. Utilities may be motivated to enter into PPAs with wind projects as a
means of complying with state RPS policies or as a way to hedge against rising natural gas and
wholesale electricity prices. However, many state RPS policies include an alternative compliance payment (ACP) design
element whereby utilities can opt to make payments to an ACP fund instead of generating or purchasing a required amount of renewable
electricity. Low natural gas prices can lower electricity prices and result in making ACPs more economical than either building or paying
for renewable generation. Thus, the
short- and longterm price of natural gas, along with any ACP policy, can
impact a utility company’s decision to enter into PPAs with renewable electricity generators. Example
2: California RPS Cost Containment Approach The state of California currently has one of the most aggressive RPS policies.31 However,
as part of the policy design, the California RPS includes a cost containment design element, which is directly linked to the price of natural
gas. California has used a Market Price Referent (MPR) as a benchmark for determining the price premium required to support certain
sources of renewable electricity. If contract prices for renewable electricity exceed MPR levels, then formal approval by the California
Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) of the contract must be obtained and above market funds (AMFs) must be available to compensate
for the additional cost associated with purchasing the renewable power.32 AMFs establish cost limits for California electric utility
companies required to comply with the state’s RPS policy.33 Benchmark MPR prices are set based on the levelized price of electricity
from a 500 MW natural gas-fired combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT).34 Consequently, natural gas prices can significantly influence MPR
benchmark price levels. This approach is designed to contain costs associated with RPS implementation since “the MPR sets a limit on the
procurement obligations of retail sellers under the RPS program.”35
AT Hurricanes Add-On
Offshore wind farms are susceptible to hurricanes
Kyle Niemeyer in 2012 (Kyle is a science writer for Ars Technica. He is a postdoctoral scholar at
Oregon State University and has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Case Western Reserve
University. Kyle's research focuses on combustion modeling,
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/02/model-shows-offshore-wind-turbines-at-risk-fromhurricanes/)
Initially, the
team looked at a 50 turbine farm and calculated how many turbines would be
destroyed if the farm was hit by a single hurricane, assuming the turbines couldn’t yaw. If
the farm encountered a Category 3 hurricane, meaning wind speeds at least 45 meters per
second, up to 6 percent of the turbines could buckle. A Category 4 hurricane, with wind
speeds at least 50 m/s, could buckle nearly half of the farm. For some perspective, every
state on the Gulf of Mexico and nine of the 14 on the Atlantic coast has been hit by Category 3
or higher hurricanes since 1856. Next, they calculated the probability of turbine buckling in the four specific locations over a
period of 20 years. In this case, they performed separate analyses of turbines that could and could not yaw. The team found that
Galveston and Dare Counties are the riskiest locations (of the four considered) for offshore wind farms. In Galveston County, without
the ability to yaw, there is a 60 percent probability that at least one turbine tower would buckle in
20 years, and 30 percent chance that half the farm would be destroyed. Dare County is little better, with the
same 60 percent chance for one turbine and 9 percent for more than half. Atlantic and Dukes counties, on the other hand, were much
safer. Without the ability to yaw, there was a 15 percent probability in Atlantic and 10 percent probability in Dukes that at least one
turbine would buckle in the 20 year period. In both locations, there was a less than one percent probability that more than half the farm
would buckle. Giving
turbines the ability to yaw significantly decreases the probability of buckling. The
chances of a single turbine buckling in Galveston and Dare Counties drop to 25 percent and 15 percent, and
the probabilities of more than half the farm being destroyed drop to 10 percent and less than one
percent, respectively. If the turbines in Atlantic and Dukes Counties can yaw, there is little chance that even a single turbine would be
destroyed in the 20 year period. Further emphasizing the importance of yaw, the researchers found that without yaw, there is a one in
ten chance that an entire 50 turbine farm could be destroyed in Galveston County.
***Warming Adv
US not key
Leadership not k
Non-US tech development solves warming – they commercialize their products as well
as the US and they have an investment system equal to the US
Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey 15 APR 2010 http://www.grist.org/article/a-clean-energycompetitiveness-strategy-for-america A Clean Energy Competitiveness Strategy for America
One emerging features of the clean tech race is the
development of clean energy clusters in countries around the
world, and China in particular. Clusters act as regional "innovation ecosystems" that connect research
and innovation activities with manufacturing scale-up, commercialization, and policymakers. Research
has shown that such clusters can create enduring competitive advantages at both the regional and the national level. One example of an
emerging clean energy cluster is the Chinese city of Baoding, which is composed of nearly 200 renewable energy companies and operates
as a platform that links China' clean energy manufacturing industry with policy support research institutions, and other social systems.
Myths and Realities About the Clean Energy Race Since the publication of our report last November and a number of later reports
confirming the decline in U.S. competitiveness in the global clean tech industry, a few myths have proliferated about the reasons that the
U.S. is behind and what it must do to compete in this critical economic sector. The
first myth is that China has a command
and control economy, and their economic system is no match for the liquidity of U.S. private capital
markets and the entrepreneurialism of the U.S. economy. The U.S. therefore shouldn't lose too much sleep over
mounting cleantech competition from China. In reality, however, the public policy environment created in China
has allowed China to attract more private investment in clean energy than the United States. And while
the U.S. still leads in VC funding for clean energy technology, Chinese companies dominated clean tech IPO proceeds in 2009, with 69% of
capital raised, and attracted more overall
private sector investment in clean energy sectors in both
2008 and 2009.
China is the world’s leader in Renewable Energy Resources
Elkis, 7-6-14
[Margaret, journalist for “Economy in Crisis- America’s Economic Report Daily,” 7-6-2014, China Is
Doing What We Ought to with Clean Energy, http://economyincrisis.org/content/china-is-doingwhat-we-ought-to-with-clean-energy]
In a study carried out by Pew Charitable Trusts, it
was discovered that, in 2012, China was the world leader in
clean energy investment. The United States saw a decline in clean energy investments and
technologies that year.¶ The Pew study examines these sort of questions. For instance, in 2012 there was a global
investment in clean energy equaling $269 billion! While that was a decrease from the previous year’s total of
$302 billion, investment in clean energy spiked in Asian markets by 16%, totaling an impressive $101 billion. China’s cut totaled $65.1
billion! Of that, $31.2 billion was invested in solar power, while the other $27.2 billion was invested in wind power. The Pew study
proves that the
leading country investing in clean energy has shifted from the United States and
Europe, to Asia–with China at the very top!¶ Unfortunately, the United States is a different story. In 2012, clean
energy investments in the U.S. declined a staggering 37% from 2011. Total investment was $35.6 billion. Why
the under-performance in clean energy investment? The answer is simple: “free trade.”
Warming =/= Conflict
No Consensus on Climate Change leading to Conflict
Salehyan, 2008
[Idean, Department of Political Science for the University of North Texas, May 2008, From Climate
Change to Conflict? No Consensus Yet,
http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/45/3/315.abstract?patientinformlinks=yes&legid=spjpr;45/3/315]
Many scholars, policymakers, and activists have argued that climate change will lead to
resource com- petition, mass migration, and, ultimately, an increase in armed around world.
This article takes issue with the 'deterministic' view that and resultant resource scarcities will have a direct impact on political violence.
Rather, the effect of climate change on armed conflict is contingent on a number of political
and social variables, which, if ignored by analysts, can Iead to poor pre dictions about when
and where conflict is likely. This article then discusses ways to improve research on the change—conflict
connection and outlines broad policy suggestions for dealing with this potential problem.
Scholars must communicate their findings with policy community in order to come up with
prudent solutions to this problem, while countering unnecessary rhetoric on both sides of the debate.
Warming Not Real
With recent research and evidence the rumor that global warming is happening is
completely false- evidence shows that there hasn’t even been any scientific evidence.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural
Charlotte Meredith
There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels. Throughout the
Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term,
natural climate trends. Peter Lilley MP said last month “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of
global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than
their counterparts in any other country in the world”. It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming
because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and
Greenland are getting colder. Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic
disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are
our
best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population. Why should politicians devote our
scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet
faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.
Alt Causes
China
No solvency – co2 emissions in China trigger impact – will not agree to cap on
emissions.
Taylor 2011, James (is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute). “New EPA Data Show Futility Of U.S.
Carbon Dioxide Restrictions.” 2/24/11. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2011/02/23/china-carbon-dioxide-emissions-opinionscontributors-james-taylor.html
Global carbon dioxide emissions may be rapidly rising, but the U.S. is not to blame, according to newly
released data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions declined 6% in 2009,
and are now 8% below 2000 levels, the EPA reports. Global emissions, by contrast, have risen more than 25%
since 2000. A closer look at global emissions trends shows how futile it would be for the U.S. to impose
economically punitive self-restrictions on carbon dioxide. Underdeveloped nations, which are not
required to make emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, accounted for virtually all of the global increase
in carbon dioxide emissions since 2000. China, which is one of the nations exempt from Kyoto Protocol emissions cuts,
accounted for roughly half the global increase. In 2005 China was the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, trailing
slightly behind the U.S. By 2009, however, China had left the U.S. far behind, accounting for 24% of global
emissions, vs. just 17% for the U.S. When 2010 numbers are released it is a virtual certainty the gap
will widen further. Most likely China in 2010 accounted for approximately 26% of global emissions, with the U.S. accounting for
roughly 15%. China has not only surpassed the U.S. in terms of emissions, but in 2010 likely surpassed
the emissions of the entire Western Hemisphere. Moreover, Chinese emissions have been rising by
nearly 10% per year. This means that even if the U.S. and the entire Western Hemisphere immediately
and completely eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, the growth in Chinese emissions alone
would likely render this action moot within a decade. China, moreover, has made it very clear it will not
agree to carbon dioxide restrictions regardless of whether or not the U.S. and other nations restrict
their own emissions. And make no mistake about it, forcing consumers to purchase wind and solar power (the only acceptable
power alternatives, according to environmental activists) rather than coal and natural gas will result in very painful economic
consequences.
China and India overwhelm
(First Post 2012)
(“Emissions set to raise in India and China: UN report”, 6-7-12, Firstpost. India,
http://www.firstpost.com/india/emissions-set-to-raise-in-india-and-china-un-report334911.html, accessed 6-9-12 wdw)
Emissions in India and China set to rise as Asia-Pacific region faces mounting challenges in tackling climate change,
water scarcity, species extinction and hazardous waste as its economy forges ahead, a UN report has warned. The region
needs to improve governance structures and accountability and scale up successful policy initiatives to achieve sustainable development,
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report. By 2030, China and India
would account for more than
half of transport-related emissions worldwide, which was projected to increase by 57 per cent from
the 2005 level, it said. More than 450 million people in the Asia-Pacific still had no access to clean drinking water in 2008,
accounting for over 40 per cent of the world total, and only a handful of the region's countries have established the necessary legal and
institutional capacities for integrated water resources management. The Asia-Pacific region was also under growing pressure on biodiversity, as government efforts lag behind the extent of habitat loss and degradation, over exploitation, alien species invasion, climate
change and pollution, it added. Unsustainable growth, population growth, rapid urbanisation and consumption increase impact on the
region's environment, according to the fifth edition of the Global Environment Outlook report released by the UNEP in Beijing. Under a
business as usual scenario, the Asia-Pacific was expected to contribute approximately 45 per cent of
global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2030 and an estimated 60 per cent by
2100, the report said.
The United States can do whatever it pleases, global warming will never be solved –
The bigger problem lies in China
Taylor in July of 2014
(James, Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute, Warmist Group Admits Obama’s CO2 Restrictions
Are Pointless, The Heartland Institute)
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2014/07/07/warmist-group-admits-obamas-co2restrictions-are-pointless
The Obama administration’s
proposed carbon dioxide restrictions will have little impact on global
climate, a prominent global warming activist group has acknowledged. Highlighting China’s growing use of coal power plants and the
gap in power plant environmental safeguards between the United States and China, Climate Central senior scientist Eric Larson predicted
on the Climate Central website, “ All
the windmills in the world won’t deliver our children a climate they can
depend on” without a substantial change in Chinese policy . Decades of Higher Emissions Larson warned such a
change is not coming. Instead, China is locking
in for decades its rapidly increasing coal use and
carbon dioxide emissions. China built more than 500 new coal power plants between 2005 and 2009, Larson noted, “the
equivalent of the entire U.S. coal-fired fleet of coal-fired power plants.” Between 2010 and 2013, China “added half the coal generation of
the entire U.S. again.” Larson observed, “China burns more than
homes, and factories. By comparison, the
4 billion tons of coal each year in power plants,
U.S. burns less than 1 billion, and the entire European Union
burns 600 million. China surpassed the U.S. to become the largest global CO2 emitter in 2007, and it is on track to double annual
U.S. emissions by 2017. While projections for the U.S. and Europe are for steady or decreasing coal use in the coming decades, barring
major policy shifts, China’s coal use is expected to keep increasing.” Larson added, “Economists predict that by 2040, China’s coal power
fleet will be 50 percent larger than it is today. Once these coal-fired power plants are built, they typically run for 40 years, or longer,
which means a commitment to decades of CO2 emissions.”
Farming
Meat eating and farming practices making warming inevitable
(Nightingale 2012)
(linton, works with climate action program—a program targeted at informing the public about global warming and ways to minimize our
carbon footprint, april 17, Global warming inevitable unless meat eating habits change,
http://www.climateactionprogramme.org/news/global_warming_inevitable_unless_meat_eating_habits_change/)
A new study has warned that climate
change is inevitable unless meat eaters in the developed world drastically
change their dietary habits. The research, published in Environmental Research Letters, calls for both a 50 percent
reduction in meat consumption and an overhaul of the food production process to stem the tide of global
warming. The use of fertilisers and manure in farming has long been linked to the heating of the planet,
due to their release of nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is widely considered the most potent of the greenhouse gases linked to
climate change, with over 80 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions coming from the agricultural sector. However, the
majority of these
emissions are produced when growing crops that feed the cattle and pigs that we will
eventually eat. If we are to reduce these emissions then eating less meat would in turn reduce the demand for
harmful fertlisers. Reducing emissions from food production and ensuring that there is enough food for an every growing
population is perhaps the single most difficult challenge we are faced with in our attempts to combat climate change. Despite
having the technological know how to implement such drastic change, there are many social,
economic and political barriers that stand in the way, explains Eric Davidson, director of the Woods Hole Research
Centre in Massachusetts, whose team carried out the research. The main problem, according to Davidson, is persuading people that they
need to cut back on their meat consumption. Not an easy task considering the dietary habits of both the western world and developing
nations, with meat consumption projected to rise sharply in the coming years. Add to this the fact that the
world’s population is
expected to hit the 9 billion mark around 2050 and that the daily per capita calorie intake will also rise
to 3130 calories; the scale of the problem and its effect on climate change is all too clear. However, Davidson and his researchers
are not saying that we should give up meat entirely, but instead make changes that are sustainably viable, such as switching from beef or
pork to chicken or fish, which have a notably lower carbon footprint. “The solution isn't that everyone needs to become a vegetarian or a
vegan. Simply reducing portion sizes and frequency would go a long way,” Davidson told the Guardian.
“I think there are huge challenges in convincing people in the west to reduce portion sizes or the frequency of eating meat. That is part of
our culture right now.” The research also suggests further examples of how modern farming techniques can be adopted to bring about
change, including the growth of winter ground cover crops that would absorb nitrogen to prevent its release into the atmosphere.
Deforestation
Burning oil and gas is not the only cause of global warming – Deforestation causes a
significant amount on its own.
Matthews in 2006, Christopher, Information Officer, FAO, Deforestation causes global warming:
Key role for developing countries in fighting greenhouse gas emissions, FAO(Food and Agriculture
Organization of The United Nations)Newsroom,
http://www.fao.org/NEWSROOM/en/news/2006/1000385/index.html.
Most people assume that global warming is caused by burning oil and gas. But in fact between
25 and 30 percent of the
greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year – 1.6 billion tonnes – is caused by
deforestation. About 200 experts, mostly from developing countries, met in Rome last week to address this issue in a workshop
organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and hosted by FAO. “We are working to solve two
of the key environmental issues – deforestation and global warming – at the same time,” said FAO Senior Forestry Officer Dieter Schoene.
Trees are 50 percent carbon. When they are felled or burned, the C02 they store escapes
back into the air. According to FAO figures, some 13 million ha of forests worldwide are lost every year, almost entirely in the
tropics. Deforestation remains high in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Deforestation has detrimental effects to global temperatures – studies prove.
Moraes, Franchito, Rao, in March 2013
(E. C., Sergio H., V. Brahmananda, Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology)
http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/ehost/detail?sid=4f54111d-386f-43e7-b4c24f7303604fe1%40sessionmgr4001&vid=8&hid=4209&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29w
ZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=86198358
In the last three decades there has been much effort to investigate the impact of tropical
deforestation on cli- mate. Many experiments have been conducted to simulate the effects of
deforestation on regional climate with a wide range of climate models, such as complex
general circulation models (GCMs) coupled to sophisticated biosphere schemes (Nobre et al.
1991, 2009; Lean and Rowntree 1997; Gedney and Valdes 2000; Chen et al. 2001; Sampaio et al.
2007; Medvigy et al. 2011; and many others), as well as simple climate models (Gutman 1984;
Franchito and Rao 1992; Varej~ao-Silva et al. 1998; Silva et al. 2006). The main results of these
studies are a reduction in evapotranspiration and precipitation and an increase in the
surface temperature in the tropical region when the forest is replaced by pasture.
No solvency
Wind Power not enough
Wind power does not impact emissions – intermittent and replaces natural gas.
Bryce 2010, Robert (columnist for WSJ). “Wind power won’t cool planet.” WSJ. 8/24/10.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/244553/wind-power-wont-cool-planet-greg-pollowitz
The wind industry has achieved remarkable growth largely due to the claim that it will provide major
reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There’s just one problem: It’s not true. A slew of recent studies show that
wind-generated electricity likely won’t result in any reduction in carbon emissions — or that they’ll be
so small as to be almost meaningless. This issue is especially important now that states are mandating that utilities produce
arbitrary amounts of their electricity from renewable sources. By 2020, for example, California will require utilities to obtain 33% of
their electricity from renewables. About 30
states, including Connecticut, Minnesota and Hawaii, are requiring major
increases in the production of renewable electricity over the coming years. Wind — not solar or geothermal
sources — must provide most of this electricity. It’s the only renewable source that can rapidly scale up to meet the
requirements of the mandates. This means billions more in taxpayer subsidies for the wind industry and higher electricity costs for
consumers. None of it will
lead to major cuts in carbon emissions, for two reasons. First, wind blows only
intermittently and variably. Second, wind-generated electricity largely displaces power produced by
natural gas-fired generators, rather than that from plants burning more carbon-intensive coal.
Because wind blows intermittently, electric utilities must either keep their conventional power plants
running all the time to make sure the lights don’t go dark, or continually ramp up and down the output from
conventional coal- or gas-fired generators (called “cycling”). But coal-fired and gas-fired generators are
designed to run continuously, and if they don’t, fuel consumption and emissions generally increase. A
car analogy helps explain: An automobile that operates at a constant speed — say, 55 miles per hour — will have better fuel efficiency,
and emit less pollution per mile traveled, than one that is stuck in stop-and-go traffic. Recent research
strongly suggests
how this problem defeats the alleged carbon-reducing virtues of wind power. In April, Bentek Energy,
a Colorado-based energy analytics firm, looked at power plant records in Colorado and Texas. (It was
commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States.) Bentek concluded that despite huge
investments, wind-generated electricity “has had minimal, if any, impact on carbon dioxide”
emissions.
Wind power has negligible impact on co2 emissions – crowds out natural gas.
Cullen 2012, Joseph A (an assistant professor at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, PhD in
Economics). “Measuring the environmental benefits of wind-generated electricity.” This research was conducted with financial support
from the University of Arizona and the Harvard Univer sity Center for the Environment. June 2012.
http://www.josephcullen.com/resources/measuringwind.pdf
Renewable energy subsidies have been a politically popular program over the past decade. These subsidies have
led to
explosive growth in wind power installations across the US, especially in the Midwest and Texas. Renewable
subsidies are largely motivated by their environmental benefits as they do not emit CO2, NOx, SO2, or other pollutants which are
produced by fossil fuel generators. Given the lack of a national climate legislation, renewable energy subsidies are likely to be continued
to be used as one of the major policy instruments for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions in the near future. As such, a
better
understanding of the impact of subsidization on emissions is imperative. This paper introduces an approach
to directly measure the impact of wind power on emissions using observed generating behavior. The quantity of pollutants offset by
wind power depends crucially on which generators reduce production when wind power comes online. By exploiting the
quasiexperimental variation in wind power production driven by weather fluctuations, it is possible to
identify generator specific production offsets due to wind power. Importantly, dynamics play a critical
role in the estimation procedure. Failing to account for dynamics in generator operations leads to overly
optimistic estimates of emission offsets. Although a static model would indicate that wind has a significant impact on the
operation of coal generators, the results
from a dynamic model show that wind power only crowds out
electricity production fueled by natural gas. The model was used to estimate wind power offsets for
generators on the Texas electricity grid. The results showed that one MWh of wind power production
offsets less than half a ton of CO2, almost one lb of NOx , and no discernible amount of SO2 . As a benchmark for the economic
benefits of renewable subsidies, I compared the value of offset emissions to the cost of subsidizing wind farms for a range of possible
emission values. I found that the
value of subsidizing wind power is driven primarily by CO2 offsets, but that
the social costs of CO2, would have to be greater than $42/ton in order for the environmental
benefits of wind power to have outweighed the costs of subsidies.
Wind Increases Co2
Wind power increases carbon emissions
Bryce, 10
Bryce, R. American author and journalist in Austin, Texas.[1] His articles on energy, politics, and
other topics have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal, Counterpunch, and Atlantic Monthly. (2010, Aug 24). Wind power won't
cool down the planet. Wall Street Journal Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/746525716?accountid=14589
Because wind blows intermittently, electric utilities must either keep their conventional
power plants running all the time to make sure the lights don't go dark, or continually ramp
up and down the output from conventional coal- or gas-fired generators (called "cycling"). But coal-fired
and gas-fired generators are designed to run continuously, and if they don't, fuel
consumption and emissions generally increase. A car analogy helps explain: An automobile
that operates at a constant speed -- say, 55 miles per hour -- will have better fuel efficiency,
and emit less pollution per mile traveled, than one that is stuck in stop-and-go traffic. Recent
research strongly suggests how this problem defeats the alleged carbon-reducing virtues of wind
power. In April, Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy analytics firm, looked at power plant records in Colorado and Texas. (It was
commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States.) Bentek concluded that despite huge investments,
wind-generated electricity "has had minimal, if any, impact on carbon dioxide" emissions. Bentek found that thanks to the
cycling of Colorado's coal-fired plants in 2009, at least 94,000 more pounds of carbon
dioxide were generated because of the repeated cycling. In Texas, Bentek estimated that the
cycling of power plants due to increased use of wind energy resulted in a slight savings of
carbon dioxide (about 600 tons) in 2008 and a slight increase (of about 1,000 tons) in 2009.
Warming Inevitable
Dangerous climate change inevitable-most comprehensive accounts.
(Anderson et al. 2011)
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research professor, (Kevin, “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change:
emission scenarios for a new world”, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A January 13, 2011 369 20-44, DOA: 6-5-12,
ldg)
In relation to the first two issues, the Copenhagen Accord and many other high-level
policy statements are
unequivocal in both their recognition of 2°C as the appropriate delineator between acceptable and
dangerous climate change and the need to remain at or below 2°C. Despite such clarity, those providing policy advice
frequently take a much less categorical position, although the implications of their more nuanced analyses are rarely communicated
adequately to policy makers. Moreover, given that it is a ‘political’ interpretation of the severity of impacts that informs where the
threshold between acceptable and dangerous climate change resides, the recent reassessment of these impacts upwards suggests current
analyses of mitigation significantly underestimate what is necessary to avoid dangerous climate change [20,21]. Nevertheless, and
despite the evident logic for revising the 2°C threshold,31 there is little political appetite and limited academic support for such a
revision. In stark contrast, many academics and wider policy advisers undertake their analyses of mitigation with relatively high
probabilities of exceeding 2°C and consequently risk entering a prolonged period of what can now reasonably be described as extremely
dangerous climate change.32 Put bluntly, while the rhetoric of policy is to reduce emissions in line with avoiding dangerous climate
change, most policy advice is
to accept a high probability of extremely dangerous climate change rather
than propose radical and immediate emission reductions.33 This already demanding conclusion becomes even
more challenging when assumptions about the rates of viable emission reductions are considered alongside an upgrading of the severity
of impacts for 2°C. Within global
emission scenarios, such as those developed by Stern [6], the CCC [8] and
ADAM [47], annual rates of emission reduction beyond the peak years are constrained to levels
thought to be compatible with economic growth—normally 3 per cent to 4 per cent per year. However, on
closer examination these analyses suggest such reduction rates are no longer sufficient to avoid
dangerous climate change. For example, in discussing arguments for and against carbon markets the CCC state ‘rich developed
economies need to start demonstrating that a low-carbon economy is possible and compatible with economic prosperity’ [8, p. 160].
However, given the CCC
acknowledge ‘it is not now possible to ensure with high likelihood that a
temperature rise of more than 2°C is avoided’ and given the view that reductions in emissions in
excess of 3–4% per year are not compatible with economic growth, the CCC are, in effect, conceding
that avoiding dangerous (and even extremely dangerous) climate change is no longer compatible with
economic prosperity. In prioritizing such economic prosperity over avoiding extremely dangerous climate change, the CCC, Stern,
ADAM and similar analyses suggest they are guided by what is feasible.34 However, while in terms of emission reduction rates their
analyses favour the ‘challenging though still feasible’ end of orthodox assessments, the
approach they adopt in relation to
peaking dates is very different. All premise their principal analyses and economic assessments on
the ‘infeasible’ assumption of global emissions peaking between 2010 and 2016; a profound departure
from the more ‘feasible’ assumptions framing the majority of such reports. The scale of this departure is
further emphasized when disaggregating global emissions into Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 nations, as the scenario pathways developed
within this paper demonstrate. Only if
Annex 1 nations reduce emissions immediately at rates far beyond
those typically countenanced and only then if non-Annex 1 emissions peak between 2020 and 2025
before reducing at unprecedented rates, do global emissions peak by 2020. Consequently, the 2010 global
peak central to many integrated assessment model scenarios as well as the 2015–2016 date enshrined in the CCC, Stern and ADAM
analyses, do not reflect any orthodox ‘feasibility’. By contrast, the
logic of such studies suggests (extremely)
dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged, at least
temporarily, for a period of planned austerity within Annex 1 nations3 and a rapid transition away
from fossil-fuelled development within non-Annex 1 nations. The analysis within this paper offers a stark and
unremitting assessment of the climate change challenge facing the global community. There is now little to no chance of
maintaining the rise in global mean surface temperature at below 2°C, despite repeated high-level
statements to the contrary. Moreover, the impacts associated with 2°C have been revised upwards (e.g. [20,21]), sufficiently so
that 2°C now more appropriately represents the threshold between dangerous and extremely
dangerous climate change. Consequently, and with tentative signs of global emissions returning to their earlier levels of
growth, 2010 represents a political tipping point. The science of climate change allied with emission pathways for Annex
1 and non-Annex 1 nations suggests a profound departure in the scale and scope of the mitigation and adaption challenge from that
detailed in many other analyses, particularly those directly informing policy.
Biodiversity Turn
Wind Power Hurts Bio-D
Wind power threatens biodiversity – kills birds and bats – wind industry understates
impact.
Lynas 2011, Mark (Visiting Research Associate at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment). “Bats, birds
and blades: wind turbines and biodiversity.” http://www.marklynas.org/2011/06/bats-birds-and-blades-wind-turbines-andbiodiversity/
All the conventional ‘green’ scenarios for reducing carbon emissions include a dramatic upscaling in renewable power generated by
wind, both on and offshore. However, the
environmental impacts of this large-scale industrial deployment – both
of turbines and power lines, frequently in relatively natural areas – are often neglected by climate campaigners.
Here two ‘planetary boundaries’ conflict: those of biodiversity and climate change. That some wind farms kill worrying
numbers of birds, especially large birds like raptors, is undeniable – yet the wind industry does its best to
downplay the impacts. As the American Wind Energy Association puts it: Wind power is far less harmful to birds than the fossil
fuels it displaces. Incidental losses of individual birds at turbine sites will always be an extremely small fraction of bird deaths caused by
human activities. Both these statements may be technically true, but they do not mean that additional bird kills
by increasing
areas of wind farms are not a concern – they mean that new turbines are yet another human pressure on
bird species which are already a matter for serious conservation concern. This is particularly the case as
more power lines will be needed to connect disparate wind farms in upland or remote areas: in this
sense the decentralised energy generation so beloved of greens is worse for conservation then
centralised generation in big power plants, whose transmission infrastructure by and large already exists.
Here is an interview with the Norwegian ornithologist Alv Ottar Folkestad, who is concerned with the survival of white-tailed eagles in
coastal areas of Norway: …what to me is a really scaring prospective [sic] is the way wind power development has been introduced in
this country. The first wind power plant of significant size in Norway, on Smøla, is localized into the most spectacular performance of
nesting concentration of White-tailed Eagles ever known. There are plans for making wind power into huge dimensions, and most of
them localized in the most pristine coastal landscape of the most important areas of the White-tailed Eagle. During the last five and a half
years, the wind power plant on Smøla has been killing 40 white-tailed eagles, 27 of them adult or sub adult birds, and 11 of them during
2010. There are no mitigating measures taken so far, and hardly any to think of, and there is no indication of adaptation among the eagles
to such constructions. Similar stories are coming from Spain, where large-scale onshore wind development in recent years has
reportedly hit some raptor populations hard. In Greece, this extraordinary video shows an actual collision when a griffon vulture is hit by
a spinning turbine blade. Perhaps the
best-studied wind farm in the world is at California’s Altamont Pass, where
dozens of protected species from golden eagles to burrowing owls are killed each year, making the
area a significant population sink for these birds. Expert Shawn Smallwood has conducted surveys in
the area, and estimates that 70-80 golden eagles are killed each year by turbine blades, out of a total
Californian population of 3000-5000 eagles. As he explains on this video: We usually found the bird carcasses nearby the turbines.
Usually they were found dismembered. A lot of times the head was knocked off, or a wing, or the bird was cut in half length-wise, or
across the middle. Remediation measures are now underway, removing those turbines located in areas most frequented by raptors. But
how compatible is wind energy with bird conservation on a wider scale? I put that question to Clive
Hambler, a conservation biologist at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. This is his answer in full: I
think wind farms are potentially the biggest disaster for birds of prey since the days of persecution by
gamekeepers, and I think wind farms are one of the biggest threats to European and North American
bats since large scale deforestation. The impacts are already becoming serious for white-tailed eagles in Europe, as is
abundantly clear in Norway. A wind farm – built despite opposition from ornithologists – has decimated an important population, killing
40 white-tailed eagles in about 5 years and 11 of them in 2010. The last great bustard in the Spanish province of Cadiz was killed by a
wind development. In my experience, some “greens”
are in complete denial of these impacts, or hopefully
imagine that these bats and birds can take big losses: they can’t because they breed very slowly.
Birds of prey often soar where wind farms are best-sited, and may be attracted to their deaths by
the vegetation and prey around the turbines. A similar deadly ecological trap has been proposed for
bats, with some species attracted by insect prey or noise around the turbines. There are very serious
suggestions of a cover-up of the scale of the problem, by some operatives hiding the corpses of birds, but you only have to look
at the Save the Eagles website to see the evidence accumulating despite scavengers or deception. To my mind one of the worst problems
is that wind farms
will prevent the recovery of birds of prey, other threatened birds, and bats – denying
flies in the face of the legally
binding Convention on Biological Diversity, which encourages restoration of habitat and species
whenever practicable. It makes a nonsense of the idea that wind is ‘sustainable’ energy – except in that it sustains and renews
them great swathes of the European and North American continent where they once dwelt. This
ecological damage. Strong stuff. And as Hambler – who is equally critical of proposals for tidal barrages to harvest marine energy at the
expense of mudflats, fish and seabirds – says, bats are just as much under threat as raptors. Earlier this year researchers
writing in Science journal (sub req’d) suggested that large-scale wind development in the US Mid-Atlantic Highlands could join ‘white
nose syndrome’ as a major killer of bats, potentially helping spur their extinction from wide areas of the country. So where does all this
leave us? The RSPB in the UK has been trying to carve out a sensible position amongst the conflicting objectives of supporting renewable
energy whilst also protecting birds. It states: …the RSPB supports a significant growth in offshore and onshore wind power generation in
the UK. We believe that this growth can be achieved in harmony with, rather than at the expense of, the natural environment. We will
therefore continue to require that wind farms are sited, designed and managed so that there are no significant adverse impacts on
important bird populations or their habitats. Increasingly this does mean opposing windfarms sited in inappropriate areas, and
encouraging developers to take note of which regions should be out of bounds entirely. As always there will be conflicts between the
objectives of reducing emissions, protecting nature, and mitigating human impact on the land. Those whose enthusiasm for wind seems
to know no bounds should duly take note.
Offshore wind damages ecosystems – the foundation and operation displace and
destroy natural life.
Koller, Koppel, and Peters 6 (Julia, Johann, Wolfgang, “Offshore Wind Energy: Research on
Environmental Impacts”, Springer, PDF, p. 21-22,
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/392/bok%253A978-3-540-346777.pdf?auth66=1404325004_07c4943eddbf69966450c973c34dfea8&ext=.pdf)
Offshore wind energy installations can disturb and displace resting and foraging seabirds, and
for sensitive species this may result in permanent loss of habitat. In-flight collisions with installations (of
both migrating and local birds) can lead to direct losses of individuals. The benthos in the immediate area of the
installations foundations is, of course, destroyed. The installations influence on the hydrology and sediment conditions
may also alter the benthic communities in the vicinity of the installation. Animal and plant species more rarely occurring in the German
Bight, which otherwise is dominated by soft bottom communities, settle on the artificial hard substrate. Negative
impacts on
marine mammals arise from underwater noise especially due to construction but possibly also due to the
operation of the wind farm. It is uncertain whether this possible deterrent effect would lead to a restricted use of habitat in
wind farm areas. Such an effect cannot be ruled out for sensitive fish species as well. On the other hand, positive effects especially for fish
and benthic fauna could also be expected, provided that fishery activities (including aquaculture) are effectively excluded in the rind
farm area. Artificial magnetic and/or electrical fields occur at
cable connections which may
interfere with the short- and long-range orientation of fishes and marine mammals. Moreover,
the sediments surrounding the cable are heated and this may lead to cold-sensitive or
thermophilic benthic species settling there. During construction, sediment plumes caused by cable laying
and pile driving could result in local damage to fish roe or to the filtering apparatus of benthic organisms. In clear
weather conditions sites closer to the coast will be visible from the land and will thus alter the
scenery. Finally, the presence of wind farms does increase the risk of shipping collisions,
which under certain circumstances — eg. through oil or chemical leaks — could threaten
very large areas located far from the actual wind farms.
Offshore Wind affects aquatic life
Thomsen 06
[Frank, Effects of offshore wind farm noise on
marine mammals and fish, http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~ling/2A_EU3.pdf)
Since the beginning of the planning and installation of offshore wind farms, the possible impacts ¶
on the marine environment, especially on marine mammals, have been discussed intensively ¶
within the public and the scientific community. The most important possible adverse effect of ¶
offshore wind farms relates to the underwater noise generated during the construction and ¶
operation of wind turbines. The most common cetacean species in European waters , the ¶ harbour
porpoise, relies heavily on sound for orientation and foraging and is among the most ¶ acoustically
sensitive cetacean species (Au et al. 1999a; Kastelein et al. 2002; Teilmann et al. ¶ 2002; Verfuss et
al. 2005). Another common inhabitant of European waters, the harbour seal, ¶ communicates with
low-frequency calls when diving and has a well developed underwater ¶ hearing system (Riedmann
1990; Kastak and Schustermann 1998). Especially the noise created ¶ during pile-driving operations
involves sound pressure levels that are high enough to impair the ¶ hearing system of both species
near the source and disrupt their behaviour at considerable ¶ distance from the construction site
(Nedwell et al. 2003a; Nedwell and Howell 2004; Tougaard ¶ et al. 2003a, 2005; Madsen et al. 2006;
Thomsen et al. 2006). Operational noise is less ¶ powerful than pile-driving noise but might have the
potential to disrupt behaviours over ¶ distances of several hundred metres from the pile (Koschinski
et al. 2003; Madsen et al. 2006).
Offshore wind farms could lead to the destruction of aquatic ecosystems.
Foley 13
[Nov 04, 2013 GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse James A. Foley
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/4751/20131104/noise-offshore-wind-farmconstruction-harm-marine-mammal-life.htm 7/18/14-CMH]
Offshore wind farms are being championed as a major player in future carbon-reduction targets,
but their construction could have consequences to marine life, according to an international team of
researchers, who have developed a method for assessing how the construction of the wind farms,
especially the noise involved, will impact marine mammal populations. “Loud construction activities
can cause traumatic hearing injury or death at close range," the University of Maryland Center for Environmental
Science said in a news release about the new research. "The disturbances may lead seals to avoid the area and lose
favorite feeding grounds, potentially causing greater competition in other areas. It could also have
an impact on reproduction or survival rates. Changes in hearing sensitivity could make seals more
vulnerable to predation, and make it more difficult to find food or to find mates."
Invasive Species
Creating new, artificial eco systems with wind turbines leads to colonization by
invasive species
Langhamer, 12, [Olivia Langhmaer Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and
Technology, Høgskoleringen 5, 7491 Trondheim, Norway, Scientific World Journal, Artificial Reef
Effect in relation to Offshore Renewable Energy Conversion: State of the Art,
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2012/386713/. ]
One mitigating effect of offshore renewable energy on the local biodiversity may occur due
to colonization by invasive species. Ever since international shipping started, marine organisms have been distributed
all over the world by ballast water or as fouling on boat hulls. This introduction of alien species has dramatic
ecological effects, since it can be a threat to global biodiversity and lead to local extinctions
and fishery collapses Artificial hard substrates offer habitats for a large number of invasive
species normally attached to rocky reefs [54]. In general, artificial structures do not host exactly the same species as a
natural hard substrate [55, 56]. The installation of offshore renewable energy parks may not only
introduce hard substrata in otherwise sandy-dominated bottoms, but can also provide new
habitats for invasive species. Different hydrodynamics, such as more shelter due to new structures may lead to colonization
of organisms very different to those on nearby hard substrates and thereby establish and spread nonindigenous species [57]. On wind
and may provide
stepping-stones for spread, which could facilitate the establishment of the new taxa in the
recipient region.
turbine constructions in the North Sea and in the Baltic Sea the presence of alien species has been recorded
Invasive species are the second largest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss. An invasive
species is a species that is not native to a particular area, but arrives (usually with human
help), establishes a population, and spreads on its own. Invasive species have much larger
impacts on an ecosystem than other species. They have a disproportionate effect, which is
what makes them so harmful. Scroll down to see what these suckers do.
Invasive species are highly damaging to native ecosystems and lead to the loss of
biodiversity
Bax in 03[Nicholas Bax July 2003, Corresponding author for Centre for Research on Introduced
Marine Pests (CRIMP), Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, Marine invasive alien species: a threat to global
biodiversity, Marine Policy,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X03000411]
Invasive alien marine species threaten biodiversity, marine industries (including fishing and
tourism) and human health, and unlike oil spills only get worse with time. While some progress is
being made internationally on the 10,000 species estimated to be in transit around the world in the ballast water, effective solutions are
a long way off; meanwhile the
majority of vectors is being ignored. A systematic approach to invasive
alien marine species is required to target the means and location of the most effective
management actions. Cooperation among regional trading partners will be essential to effectively manage the threat.
Scientists and policy makers increasingly see the introduction of alien species as a major
threat to marine biodiversity and a contributor to environmental change. As these marine
introductions, intentional and accidental, can result from numerous human mediated
activities, management responses need to cover a diverse range of human activity. The
numerical dominance of invasive alien marine species swamps native species and alters
ecosystem services. In the Black Sea, an invasive comb jelly, Mnemiopsis leidyi, has been blamed
for the collapse of coastal fisheries worth many millions of dollars annually [11]. The Asian clam
Potamocorbula amurensis, now reaches densities of over 10,000/m2 in San Francisco Bay, and has been blamed for the collapse of local
fisheries. An invasive crab, Carcinus maenas, a European species now found in Australia, Japan, South Africa and both coasts of North
America, is blamed for the collapse of bivalve fisheries on the North American east coast, and it is it feared will outcompete migratory
bird populations on the west coast of North America for favoured shellfish. The
main economic and social impacts of
invasive alien marine species are negative impacts on human health and decreases in
economic production of activities based on marine environments and resources such as
fisheries, aquaculture, tourism and marine infrastructure. These effects have related social impacts through
decreases in employment in economic activities directly affected by invasive alien species but also through decreases in people's welfare
from the reduced quality of their environments and natural surroundings. There is an associated opportunity cost to economies and
societies from the foregone benefits of financial resources, labour and scientific and technical capacities diverted to the management of
invasive alien marine species.
Bio-D Impact
BIODIVERSITY LOSS CAUSES PLANETARY EXTINCTION
Diner 1994 (David N. Judge Advocate General’s Corps of US Army, Military Law Review, Lexis)
No species has ever dominated its fellow species as man has. In most cases, people have assumed the God-like power of life and death -extinction or survival -- over the plants and animals of the world. For most of history, mankind pursued this domination with a singleminded determination to master the world, tame the wilderness, and exploit nature for the maximum benefit of the human race. n67 In
past mass extinction episodes, as many as ninety percent of the existing species
perished, and yet the world moved forward, and new species replaced the old. So why should the
world be concerned now? The prime reason is the world's survival. Like all animal
life, humans live off of other species. At some point, the number of species could
decline to the point at which the ecosystem fails, and then humans also would
become extinct. No one knows how many [*171] species the world needs to support human life, and to find out -- by
allowing certain species to become extinct -- would not be sound policy. In addition to food,
species offer many direct and indirect benefits to mankind. n68 2. Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value that species have in
maintaining the environment. Pest, n69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits certain species provide to man. Plants and animals
also provide additional ecological services -- pollution control, n70 oxygen production, sewage treatment, and biodegradation. n71 3.
Scientific and Utilitarian Value. -- Scientific value is the use of species for research into the physical processes of the world. n72 Without
plants and animals, a large portion of basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the direct utility humans draw
from plants and animals. n73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species have been examined, and mankind may someday desperately
need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew n74
could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they
may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected
ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. n75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each
new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 4. Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of species preservation
is that diversity is better than simplicity. n77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has
decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of
individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. Biologically
diverse ecosystems are
characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological
niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The
more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in
which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of
threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." n79 By causing widespread
extinctions, humans have
artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the
risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the
1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if
this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly
perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human
extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic
removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, [hu]mankind may be
edging closer to the abyss.
The aquatic ecosystem directly impacts the direction of the economy.
Reid 5
[Core Writing Team of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. 2005 Walter V. Reid, Harold A. Mooney,
Angela Cropper, Doris Capistrano, Stephen R. Carpenter, Kanchan Chopra, Partha Dasgupta,
Thomas Dietz, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Rashid Hassan, Roger Kasperson, Rik Leemans, Robert
M. May, Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Prabhu Pingali, Cristián Samper, Robert Scholes, Robert T. Watson,
A.H. Zakri, Zhao Shidong, Neville J. Ash, Elena Bennett, Pushpam Kumar, Marcus J. Lee, Ciara
Raudsepp-Hearne, Henk Simons, Jillian Thonell, and Monika B. Zurek.7/18/14-CMH]
Ecosystem services contribute significantly to global employment and economic activity. The ecosystem
service of food production contributes by far the most to economic activity and employment. In 2000, the market value of
food production was $981 billion, or roughly 3% of gross world product, but it is a much higher
share of GDP within developing countries (C8 Table 8.1). That year, for example, agriculture (including forestry and
fishing) represented 24% of total GDP in countries with per capita incomes less than $765 (the low-income developing countries, as
defined by the World Bank) (C26.5.1). The agricultural labor force contained 1.3 billion people globally—approximately a fourth (22%)
of the world’s population and half (46%) of the total labor force—and some 2.6 billion people, more than 40% of the world, lived in
agriculturally based households (C26.5.1). Significant differences exist between developing and industrial countries in these patterns.
For example, in the United States only 2.4% of the labor force works in agriculture. Other ecosystem services (or commodities
based on ecosystem services) that make significant contributions
to national economic activity include
timber (around $400 billion), marine fisheries (around $80 billion in 2000), marine aquaculture ($57 billion in 2000),
recreational hunting and fishing ($50 billion and $24–37 billion annually respectively in the United States alone ), as well as
edible forest products, botanical medicines, and medicinal plants (C9.ES, C18.1, C20.ES). And many other
industrial products and commodities rely on ecosystem services such as water as inputs.
Damaging ecosystems lowers the ability to use renewable resources.
Reid 5
[Core Writing Team of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. 2005 Walter V. Reid, Harold A. Mooney,
Angela Cropper, Doris Capistrano, Stephen R. Carpenter, Kanchan Chopra, Partha Dasgupta,
Thomas Dietz, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Rashid Hassan, Roger Kasperson, Rik Leemans, Robert
M. May, Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Prabhu Pingali, Cristián Samper, Robert Scholes, Robert T. Watson,
A.H. Zakri, Zhao Shidong, Neville J. Ash, Elena Bennett, Pushpam Kumar, Marcus J. Lee, Ciara
Raudsepp-Hearne, Henk Simons, Jillian Thonell, and Monika B. Zurek.7/18/14-CMH]
The degradation of ecosystem services represents a loss of a capital asset (C5.4.1). (See Figure 3.1.) Both
renewable resources such as ecosystem services and nonrenewable resources such as mineral deposits, soil nutrients, and fossil
fuels are capital assets. Yet traditional national accounts do not include measures of resource
depletion or of the degradation of renewable resources. As a result, a country could cut its forests
and deplete its fisheries, and this would show only as a positive gain to GDP despite the loss of the capital asset. Moreover, many
ecosystem services are available freely to those who use them (fresh water in aquifers, for instance, or the use of the atmosphere as a
sink for pollutants), and so again their degradation is not reflected in standard economic measures.
The loss of natural resources means increasingly more co2 emissions.
Reid 5
[Core Writing Team of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. 2005 Walter V. Reid, Harold A. Mooney,
Angela Cropper, Doris Capistrano, Stephen R. Carpenter, Kanchan Chopra, Partha Dasgupta,
Thomas Dietz, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Rashid Hassan, Roger Kasperson, Rik Leemans, Robert
M. May, Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Prabhu Pingali, Cristián Samper, Robert Scholes, Robert T. Watson,
A.H. Zakri, Zhao Shidong, Neville J. Ash, Elena Bennett, Pushpam Kumar, Marcus J. Lee, Ciara
Raudsepp-Hearne, Henk Simons, Jillian Thonell, and Monika B. Zurek.7/18/14-CMH]
When estimates of the economic losses associated with the depletion of natural assets are factored
into measurements of the total wealth of nations, they significantly change the balance sheet of
those countries with economies especially dependent on natural resources. For example, countries such
as Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Congo, Trinidad and Tobago, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela that had positive growth
in net savings (reflecting a growth in the net wealth of the country) in 2001 actually experienced a loss in net
savings when depletion of natural resources (energy and forests) and estimated damages from carbon
emissions (associated with contributions to climate change) were factored into the accounts. In 2001, in 39 countries out of the 122
countries for which sufficient data were available, net national savings (expressed as a percent of gross national income) were reduced
by at least 5% when costs associated with the depletion of natural resources (unsustainable forestry, depletion of fossil fuels) and
damage from carbon emissions were included.
The loss of ecosystems will damage the well-being of humans
Reid 5
[Core Writing Team of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. 2005 Walter V. Reid, Harold A. Mooney,
Angela Cropper, Doris Capistrano, Stephen R. Carpenter, Kanchan Chopra, Partha Dasgupta,
Thomas Dietz, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Rashid Hassan, Roger Kasperson, Rik Leemans, Robert
M. May, Tony (A.J.) McMichael, Prabhu Pingali, Cristián Samper, Robert Scholes, Robert T. Watson,
A.H. Zakri, Zhao Shidong, Neville J. Ash, Elena Bennett, Pushpam Kumar, Marcus J. Lee, Ciara
Raudsepp-Hearne, Henk Simons, Jillian Thonell, and Monika B. Zurek.7/18/14-CMH]
The degradation of ecosystem services often causes significant harm to human well-being (C5 Box 5.2).
The information available to assess the consequences of changes in ecosystem services for human well-being is relatively limited. Many
ecosystem services have not been monitored and it is also difficult to estimate the relative influence of changes in ecosystem services in
relation to other social, cultural, and economic factors that also affect human well-being. Nevertheless, the following evidence
demonstrates that the
harmful effects of the degradation of ecosystem services on livelihoods, health,
and local and national economies are substantial. Most resource management decisions are most strongly influenced
by ecosystem services entering markets; as a result, the non-marketed benefits are often lost or degraded. Many ecosystem services, such
as the purification of water, regulation of floods, or provision of aesthetic benefits, do not pass through markets. The benefits they
provide to society, therefore, are largely unrecorded: only a portion of the total benefits provided by an ecosystem make their way into
statistics, and many of these are misattributed (the water regulation benefits of wetlands, for example, do not appear as benefits of
wetlands but as higher profits in water-using sectors). Moreover, for ecosystem services that do not pass through markets there is often
insufficient incentive for individuals to invest in maintenance (although in some cases common property management systems provide
such incentives). Typically, even if individuals are aware of the services provided by an ecosystem, they are neither compensated for
providing these services nor penalized for reducing them. These non-marketed benefits are often high and sometimes more valuable
than the marketed benefits.
***Econ Adv
Uniqueness
US leads now
China is not beating the US in clean energy – skewed statistics and analysis – plan
causes protectionism and tanks US-Chinese co-op.
Levi 1/19/2011, Michael (the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign
Relations). “Tilting at Wind Turbines.” Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/19/tilting_at_wind_turbines?hidecomments=yes
Among the newest worries
is the fear that China is poised to beat the United States in what many have claimed is the
premier technological competition of the early 21st century: the race to develop and manufacture the clean energy
technologies that will power the post-fossil-fuel world. "I am more convinced than ever that when historians look back at the end of the
first decade of the 21st century, they will say that the most important thing to happen was not the Great Recession, but China's Green
Leap Forward," New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote last week. Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently devoted an entire
speech, complete with frightening PowerPoint slides, to the Chinese juggernaut, declaring China's rapid clean energy advances a "Sputnik
moment" and calling on the United States to respond. These
warnings are grossly overblown. China is not crushing
the United States in a clean energy race. And this myth isn't merely wrong -- it is also dangerous. Unwarranted
fears of a clean energy competition threaten to spur a protectionist wave in the United States while
squelching cooperation between the two countries -- all of which will make it much tougher to
develop the robust clean energy economy that the world needs. The numbers, it's true, look scary.
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, China led the world in clean energy investment last year at $51.1 billion, up 30 percent
from 2009. The United States runs a trade deficit in clean energy products with China that, according to the AFL-CIO, cost U.S. workers
8,000 jobs in 2010. A team of Harvard University researchers reported in November that the Chinese government spent $11.8 billion on
energy technology research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) in 2008, while the United States spent barely a third as much.
These figures, however, are misleading. Yes, China
spent more money buying wind turbines and solar
panels than any other country last year. But consumption does not necessarily translate into
technological leadership -- if it did, the United States would have little to worry about in most product
categories. Massive deployment of clean energy will give the Chinese government leverage with
foreign firms (because Beijing will be able to demand concessions in exchange for market access) and provide
opportunities for incremental innovation. But the cutting edge is, in most cases, far away: The Chinese innovation
system still has enormous difficulty moving ideas from the laboratory to commercial application. The
AFL-CIO employment analysis, for its part, is extraordinarily narrow. Many clean energy products manufactured in
China incorporate sophisticated materials and components made in the United States, which means
that U.S. manufacturers can often benefit from their Chinese counterparts' gains. The Harvard report, while
more careful, also paints only a partial picture. Much U.S. RD&D happens in the private sector, which means it
doesn't register in the researchers' government-to-government comparison. The Chinese economy,
by contrast, is dominated by government and state-owned enterprises; as a result, a much larger fraction
of its spending shows up in the analysis. No one has good numbers that describe the full picture, but it's certainly too
early to conclude that the United States is far behind. But don't broader trends reinforce the doom-and-gloom message?
According to Chu's speech, China has jumped from 15th to fifth in global patent rankings and from 14th to second in published research
articles, while passing the United States as the leading source of global high-tech exports. But none of these statistics tells the full story.
As my colleague Adam Segal argues in his fascinating new book Advantage, Chinese
patent numbers are inflated by
perverse incentives: Universities and enterprises encourage people to file for patents even when
they have little or no real intellectual property to protect. He also points out that Chinese scientific journals are rife
with plagiarism and fraud. That's not unrelated to the impressive publication counts: When institutional pressures reward publication at
all costs, the result is both high quantity and low quality. The purported Chinese
dominance in high-tech exports,
the product of statistical sleight of hand. Chu's figures describe the total value of Chinese
exports. That gives China credit for the full price tag of every product it exports -- even if it's only
responsible for its final assembly. (If China imported a Mercedes and painted it green, it would rack up tens of thousands of
export dollars.) A careful analysis would focus instead on value added, which is what drives profits and wages. And
meanwhile, is
on that score, the United States is still firmly in the lead. The prophets of doom back up their figures with tales of woe.
The sob story of the day is Evergreen Solar, a Massachusetts-based company that announced last week that it would shut down its solar
module-manufacturing factory in the face of stiff competition from China. But lost in the noise was another report that Evergreen would
boost investment in its U.S.-based R&D efforts. Moreover, while the shutdown is clearly bad for employees at Evergreen's Devens, Mass.,
plant, it's not entirely clear that it's bad for U.S. manufacturing workers in general. U.S.
firms and workers still dominate
the most lucrative parts of the solar value chain, particularly the production of the ultrapure silicon
that ultimately goes into solar panels. (In the long term, China might compete there too, but most observers believe that
day is still a ways off.) By bringing down the price of those panels, Chinese firms expand the global market
in ultrapure silicon, benefiting U.S. firms and workers in the process. The ultimate balance between jobs created
and killed is difficult to pin down, but the net result is far murkier than it might seem. The growing U.S. paranoia about
Chinese clean energy comes at a real cost. Advocates might hope that highlighting Chinese strength will spur U.S.
lawmakers to pass legislation boosting U.S. deployment of clean energy and investment in energy R&D. So far, it hasn't -- and the more
likely result is much uglier. Fears of
China lead quickly to calls for protectionism, through steep barriers to
clean energy imports or to Chinese investment in U.S. clean energy projects and firms; investment and
imports are currently relatively small, but have great potential to grow. Such moves hurt support for Washington's efforts
to open up foreign markets (including Chinese ones) to U.S. firms. They slow the flow of clean energy
technology across borders, stifling innovation and delaying much-needed cuts in the cost of green
technology. They starve capital-hungry U.S. firms of investment, while depriving U.S. consumers of
access to cheaper sources of pollution-free power. At the same time, the Sputnik rhetoric is bound to sap
lawmakers' enthusiasm for the sort of clean energy cooperation with China that President Barack Obama will
push for during Hu's visit. This will hobble the development of cheaper sources of clean energy, delaying
the much-needed expansion of clean energy markets and increasing costs for U.S. consumers. To be
sure, the United States has little reason to rest on its laurels. U.S. spending on energy R&D is pathetic relative to investment in other hightech areas. Moreover, absent strong U.S. government policy to encourage deployment of more clean energy at home, opportunities to
learn by doing in the United States will be few. U.S. policymakers should also be clear-eyed when facing real Chinese dangers: Beijing has
used its big domestic market to pressure foreign firms to turn over their most prized technologies, something that will ultimately hurt
the U.S. economy. And while China sometimes attracts U.S. firms because of genuine competitive advantage resulting from things like
cheap labor and land, it also uses questionable -- and possibly illegal -- trade barriers and subsidies (such as its rules requiring local
content in many clean energy projects). Washington should push back when Beijing goes too far. But U.S. leaders must not lose sight of
the bigger picture. Neither China
nor the United States alone has the resources required to drive down the
cost of clean energy to a point where markets for it will flourish. Shortsighted pursuit of victory in an imagined
clean energy race will backfire, keeping costs high and public appetite for clean energy down. Without that demand, there will be no
clean energy race to be won.
No clean energy race – different specializations and cooperation between US and
China.
Plumer 2010, Brad. “Are we really in a clean energy race with China?” The New Republic. February 8, 2010.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/are-we-really-energy-race-china
Nowadays, it seems like every third Thomas Friedman column is about how the United States is engaged in a green-tech competition
with China—one that, much to his chagrin, we seem to be losing handily. His argument's not totally groundless. China really has
put
more effort (and money) into developing cleaner energy technologies than we have. So have plenty
of countries, like Germany and Denmark. And, if you're trying to nudge the United States onto a lower-carbon path,
invoking the specter of China isn't a terrible idea, rhetorically speaking. At the same time, though, this notion that we're in a
race with China to see who can develop solar panels and wind turbines the fastest isn't really
accurate. If China zooms ahead and figures out how to make really cheap wind turbines, that doesn't
hurt anyone—it just makes the enormous task of cutting global carbon emissions that much easier. And, likewise,
as Christina Larson reports in a great Yale360 article on the subject, we're more likely to see specialization: China will
likely continue to dominate in low-cost manufacturing, while the United States focuses more on the
innovation side—something China's still not as well-suited for (at least for the time being): At present, America
still has significant advantages — including the world’s leading university system and the
entrepreneurial culture and venture-capital spigots of technology hubs, particularly Silicon Valley.
“Intellectual property rights have done a lot to hamper China’s development of green technology,” says Linden Ellis, U.S. director of
nonprofit China Dialogue. “People would rather come to Silicon Valley and develop a technology where they know it will be protected by
the law, right down to every line, than go to China and try to develop a technology there where maybe the components will be cheaper
and there is a lot of interest, but people do not trust that their findings will be protected.” Similar concerns have, for the past two decades,
grounded Beijing’s attempts to build a domestic airline industry, considered the pinnacle of high-tech manufacturing. Foreign companies
and top-notch engineers have simply been unwilling to share technology with China (Boeing has even avoided building factories in China,
for fear of commercial espionage). The result: Planes that fly from Beijing to Shanghai today are still built by Boeing and Airbus. … Of
course, China would like to change this. Beijing is doing its best to both allay the fears of international partners and to nurture its own
homegrown innovators. A program known as the “State High-Tech Development Plan,” launched by Beijing in March 1986 and
nicknamed the “863 Program,” aims to develop top scientists in China and to incubate cutting-edge technology projects in energy and
other sectors. So far, its results have been modest over two decades: birthing a family of computer processors known as Loongson, and
some technology used in the Shenzhou spacecraft. While the 863 Program’s track record should certainly dispel Western assumptions
that no good research can come from China, it also disproves the notion that money alone can clone a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Sergey
Brin. There
are also plenty of areas where the two countries can actively cooperate, like the development of
plug-in cars or carbon capture for coal plants. (See Evan Osnos's New Yorker article for an example of a California
electric-car designer hooking up with a Chinese battery firm.) To be clear, none of this will really take off until the United
States actually lays down a price on carbon and enacts other policies to give a big jolt to the cleanenergy sector. Friedman's certainly right that we need to take those steps. But once that happens, the push for green
tech probably won't turn into some all-out brawl, or—since Friedman insists on using the Sputnik analogy—anything
resembling the space race in the 1960s.
While Chinas Manufacturing sector is growing, the growth of US manufacturing is still
outpacing it
IMT 6/30, IMT Staff. "Industry Crib Sheet: Chinese Manufacturing Up; U.S. Way Up | Industry
Market Trends." Industry Market Trends RSS. Industry Market Trends, 30 Jan. 2014.
http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2014/06/30/industry-crib-sheet-chinese-manufacturing-up/
Web. 30 June 2014. CS
China’s manufacturing sector expanded, albeit slightly, in June as operating conditions improved for the first
time in six months, according to the HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI. The headline 50.8 reading for the flash PMI was a sevenmonth high, as was the 51.8 manufacturing output sub-index. Over the last three months, Chinese
manufacturing has
clawed its way back to positive expansion territory, with the sector demonstrating improvements via April’s
48.1 and May’s 49.4 ratings. In June, the major sub-indexes for output, new orders, and new export orders all rose, though employment in
China’s manufacturing sector continued to shrink but at a softer rate. “The improvement was broad-based with both domestic orders and
external demand sub-indices in expansionary territory,” said Hongbin Qu, HSBC’s chief economist for China and co-head of Asian
economic research. “Inventory reduction quickened, and the employment sub-index also showed signs of stabilization.” A growing work
backlog and the influx of new orders should influence higher employment levels among Chinese manufacturers. Qu commented that the
PMI improvements reflect the “mini-stimulus” actions China’s central government has taken to push economic growth. The government
is holding onto a 7.5 percent GDP growth target for 2014, even as the nation’s economy and property sector have slowed considerably. It
has implemented measures such as easier access to financing in order to stimulate private investment and home-buying and announced
plans for domestic infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, Markit Economics, which runs the Chinese PMI with HSBC, said the U. S.
manufacturing sector continued to push the pace in June, as the Flash U.S. Manufacturing
PMI rose 1.1 points to a 57.5 headline rating. It was the strongest upturn in the PMI since May 2010,
driven by surges in manufacturing output and new orders. Moreover, Markit said the U.S.
manufacturing sector’s average pace of expansion from April through June was the fastest
for any quarter since its PMI began in early 2007. New orders, at 61.7 — a 2.9 point jump over May — more than
offset slow growth in export orders, at 50.9. Bookings for domestic work, in fact, saw the most marked improvement since April 2010,
despite business from abroad moving at its slowest pace of expansion in five months. U.S. manufacturing
employment
rose for the 12th straight month, according to the PMI, though the employment index inched up just 0.1 point to 53.8 over
the previous month. Chris Williamson, Markit’s chief economist, said based on the firm’s data, U.S. second-quarter GDP should rise by at
least 3 percent. However, despite “the best quarter for factories for four years,” Williamson said the “near-stagnation of exports” will be a
drag on second-quarter growth. Most
economists are predicting an above-3 percent GDP expansion for
the April-through-June period after an abysmal first quarter.
US Competitiveness Rising
Increased confidence in public and private institutions, US economic competitiveness
is recovering
Associated press ’13 (9/4/13, U.S. economic competitiveness on the rise, still trails northern European countries, Singapore, The
Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com/money/index.ssf/2013/09/us_economic_competiveness_on_t.html, accessed: 6/29/14 GA)
The United States' competitiveness among global economies is rising again after four years of decline,
though northern European countries continue to dominate the rankings published annually by the World Economic Forum. In its latest survey,
released Wednesday, the Forum ranked
the U.S. — the world's largest economy — in fifth place for overall
competitiveness, up from seventh last year. The U.S. turnaround reflects "a perceived improvement in the
country's financial market as well as greater confidence in its public institutions," the report concluded. The
Forum, which hosts the annual gathering of global business and political leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos every winter, ranks a
country's competitiveness according to factors such as the quality of its infrastructure and its ability to
foster innovation. Six European countries dominated the top 10: Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the
United Kingdom. The remaining three slots were Asian: Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. The most competitive economies, the
Forum said, were Switzerland, No. 1, followed by Singapore, then Finland, all three unchanged in their
rank from last year. Germany moved up to fourth place, from sixth last year, reflecting high-quality
infrastructure, an efficient goods market and a high capacity for innovation. Hong Kong moved up to seventh and
Japan advanced to ninth. But Sweden dropped to sixth, while the Netherlands sank to eighth, and the U.K. moved down to 10th, reflecting what
the Forum called the distractions of public debt problems and concerns about the future of the euro currency. Klaus Schwab, the Forum's
founder and executive chairman, said innovation was increasingly the key ingredient in an economy's ability to prosper. "I predict that the
traditional distinction between countries being 'developed' or 'less developed' will gradually disappear," he said, "and we will instead refer to
them much more in terms of being 'innovation rich' versus 'innovation poor' countries." Switzerland has topped the rankings of 148 economies
in the Global Competitiveness Report for the fifth consecutive year. The Forum said Switzerland's
standing rests notably on its
innovation, labor market efficiency, sophistication of its business sector and top-notch scientific
research institutions. The survey found that countries in southern Europe, such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and
Greece, continue to suffer numerous economic problems, including weakness in their financial markets
and poor access to financing.
Manufacturing High
Manufacturing as a percent of our economy has declined, but our production is at an
all-time high
Worstall ’14 (Tim Worstall, economist for Forbes, 5/11/14, If US Manufacturing Hasn't Declined Then We Don't Have To Explain The
Decline Of US Manufacturing, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/05/11/if-us-manufacturing-hasnt-declined-then-wedont-have-to-explain-the-decline-of-us-manufacturing/, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)
One of the economic tales of our times that continually puzzles is me is the amount of effort that’s put
into first describing and then providing causes for the decline of American manufacturing. The reason this
puzzles me is because as far as anyone can tell there hasn’t been a decline in American manufacturing. Far
from it, output is at all time highs. It is absolutely true that manufacturing as a percentage of the US
economy has fallen. But that’s not because manufacturing itself has shrunk, that’s because other parts of
the economy, most obviously services, have grown faster than manufacturing. It is also true that manufacturing
employment has dropped precipitately. But to decry that while production is still rising is to be most foolish. For having rising output combined
with falling employment is generally regarded as a good thing. Labour, workers, are a cost of making something. An input into the system. And
if we get more out of the system while putting fewer resources into it then this means that our system is becoming more productive. And
another name for the system becoming more productive is that we’re all getting richer. For whatever limited resources we have available to us
we’re getting more things that people can drop on their feet: we’re getting richer. The piece that puzzles me today is this over at Brad Delong’s:
The contribution of this decades-long trend to the rapid decline in American manufacturing has not been fully acknowledged. The details of the
research being outlined are most interesting (well, to those of us of a wonkish persuasion perhaps) but don’t particularly concern my point
here. That
point being that there has been no rapid decline in American manufacturing so looking for
contributions to such a decline is rather an odd thing to be doing. It might well be true that American finance and
shareholder short-termism (parts of the subject of this research) have changed American manufacturing: but without a decline they cannot be
said to have contributed to a decline that has not happened. As you can see the value of industrial (which is akin to, but not exactly the same
as, manufacturing output) has been on a century long tear. And yes, there was a substantial collapse during the recent recession but output is
already above the peak reached in 2007. BTW, given that this is an index, yes, of course it is inflation adjusted. And yes, it’s also true that we
are always only concerned with the value of output, not the tonnage or number of pieces. As
above I agree entirely that
manufacturing has fallen as a percentage of the US economy. But then manufacturing has been falling as
a percentage of the world economy as well over the same time period. And manufacturing employment has been
falling: but global manufacturing employment (yes, even in China) has been falling recently too. All of which leaves us with that puzzle still to
solve. Why
are people trying to investigate the decline in US manufacturing when there hasn’t actually
been a decline in US manufacturing?
US is not suffering from unhealthy manufacturing, still maintains top spot
Levinson ’13 (Marc Levinson, section research manager for the CRS, 2/11/13, U.S. Manufacturing in International Perspective, CRS
(Congressional Research Service), http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2025&context=key_workplace, accessed:
6/30/14 GA)
The standard measure of the size of a nation’s manufacturing sector is not manufacturers’ sales, but
rather their value added. Value added attempts to capture the economic contribution of manufacturers in
designing, processing, and marketing the products they sell. At the level of an individual firm, value added can be calculated as total
sales less the total value of purchased inputs, such as raw materials and electricity. The intuition behind this calculation is that a firm that
purchases raw materials and processes them only slightly may have substantial sales, but its manufacturing efforts will not have transformed
the materials in ways that significantly increase their value. Alternatively, a firm’s value added can be measured as the sum of its employee
compensation, business taxes (less subsidies), and profits. The aggregate value added of a country’s manufacturing sector cannot be
determined simply by adding up the value added of its manufacturers. If a domestic manufacturer uses inputs from its plants abroad, those
inputs contain value added by the firm, but not within the United States. Calculating total value added in manufacturing thus requires
adjustments for imported parts and components incorporated into the output of domestic factories, and also for domestic products that were
According to World
Bank estimates, the United States retained its position as the largest manufacturing nation in 2010, with
exported and used in a foreign plant to make products that were subsequently imported into the United States.1
value added of $1.8 trillion, closely followed by China. Japan ranked third in manufacturing value added at $1.1 trillion (see
Figure 1). Germany is the only other country whose manufacturing sector is more than one-fifth the size of those in the United States and
China.2 Data
from U.S. government agencies indicate that manufacturing value added rose approximately
6% in 2011in nominal dollars, but less than 3% after adjustment for inflation. The United States has also
performed well in manufacturing, compared to other countries. The only countries with faster growing
manufacturing sectors were Finland and Sweden. Additionally, data on inflows of foreign investment suggest that the
United States has been an attractive manufacturing location relative to other high-income countries in
recent years. Over the 2007-2009 period, 34.6% of foreign direct investment coming into the United States
went into the manufacturing sector, compared to 21.1% in Italy, 18% in the United Kingdom, 11.4% in France and Japan, and less
than 10% in Germany and Korea.6 Comparative data are not available regarding the extent to which foreign direct investment finances
construction of new manufacturing facilities as opposed to acquisition of existing facilities.
The economy is growing now because of increased manufacturing
Isfeld March 2014 (Gordon Isfeld, National Post's Financial Post & FP Investing (Canada),
FINANCIAL POST; Pg. FP4, March 4, 2014 Tuesday, “Factories to get boost from U.S., weak dollar;
Surveys point to manufacturing turnaround”, lexis nexis)
Manufacturers in Canada and the United States appear to be weathering the economic storms - literally - and could
finally be set to lead the long-awaited resurgence in North American growth. Surveys in both countries show
a turnaround in February of sentiment among purchasing managers - key decision-makers across a large swath of manufacturing sectors
- after a pattern of weakness, some of it blamed on extreme storms at the end of 2013 and the start of this year. But that doesn' t mean
companies will be taking over from consumers as the main drivers of the Canadian and U.S. economies. Households in both
countries still look confident about their financial future and will likely continue
spending above their weight. The
RBC Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to 52.9 in February, from a ninemonth low of 51.7 in January, and
showing improved business conditions in all regions of Canada. The February increase reflected higher production
and indicated a "return to job growth" during the month, RBC said in a report Monday, adding that some of the previous
three-month decline was "the result of the temporary impact of extreme winter weather." "Given our expectation that the Canadian
manufacturing sector will increasingly benefit from a strengthening U.S. economy and a weaker Canadian dollar, we are assuming that
the PMI will continue to trend higher going forward." Craig Wright, RBC's chief economist, agreed that this year should produce "a
strengthening in exports relative to imports, with trade contributing more than it has to Canada's growth over the past decade." Derek
Lothian, national spokesman for Canadian Manufacturers &; Exporters (CME), said the PMI survey "is definitely promising and it does
reflect what we've been hearing on the ground." "That being said, there is still a plethora of risks on the global stage, particularly for
exporters to Europe and East Europe, and also to the United States, because of how integrated those economies have become," he said.
"So, there are a lot of risks out there, and while the numbers are positive, we're still looking at them with extreme caution." That U.S.
market is particularly important for Canada, it being our biggest trading destination. The good sign is the February reading by Institute
for Supply Management (ISM), which showed the
U.S. manufacturing index increased to 53.2 from 51.3 in
January - an eight-month low - was better than what economists had forecast. "New orders rose at a slightly
faster pace than the prior month, but surprisingly the production index dropped below 50, suggesting that actual manufacturing output
may still be being affected by unseasonably bad weather," noted Andrew Grantham, an economist at CIBC World Markets. RBC, in its
analysis of the U.S. data, said "beyond the expected rebound in activity as weather conditions improve, February's gain in the new
orders sub-index points to manufacturing
activity increasing in the next few months." "We expect that
further strengthening in manufacturing activity will support an above-potential pace of growth this year."
Meanwhile, consumer spending - supporting about two-thirds of the Canadian and U.S. economies - may not be subsiding as hoped by
policy-makers to reduce household debt. Canadian households remain weighed down by record-high debt, thanks to near-to-bottom
lending rates and a still-frenzied household market. Despite debt concerns, Canada consumers are still optimistic about their personal
finances, according to the Bloomberg Nanos confidence index. The positive measure on personal finances was 21.4% for the week ended
Feb. 28, up 19% in the previous week, Nanos said Monday. In the U.S., consumers spoke with their wallets in January, spending
0.4% more during the month - much of that on household services, such as heating, while retail purchases were likely limited
by the severe weather.
US Manufacturing is not declining, still the top investment destination among the
world’s investors
Ikenson 6/4, Ikenson, Dan is director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies,
where he coordinates and conducts research on international trade and investment policy. "The
Myth of a U.S. Manufacturing Decline - The Experts - WSJ."The Experts RSS. The Wall Street Journal,
4 June 2014. http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2014/06/04/the-myth-of-a-u-s-manufacturingdecline/ Web. 30 June 2014. CS
Many who opine about manufacturing seem to yearn for the past, but let’s hope the sector doesn’t backslide to 1979’s level of relative
inefficiency, when the average U.S. worker produced $28,000 of value added annually–less than one-fourth as productive in real terms as
today’s $170,000 annual per worker value added. Nor should we hope for the economy to be as dependent on manufacturing as it was in
1953. Though the real value of U.S. manufacturing output has increased more than sixfold since 1953, U.S. consumers spend
twice as much on services than on goods, today, and 90% of the American workforce is
employed outside manufacturing. The term “revival” implies that U.S. manufacturing is on a downward trajectory. But
the $2.1 trillion of U.S. manufacturing value added in 2013 was a new high–in real terms. Indeed, if
U.S. manufacturing were its own country, it would be the world’s 10th largest economy, just
after Russia and before India. Excluding cyclical recession years, U.S. manufacturing sets records almost every
year with respect to value added, revenues, exports, imports, profits, and returns on capital.
Yet the myth of manufacturing decline persists like a chronic medical condition. As of 2013, nearly $1 trillion of foreign
direct investment was parked in U.S. manufacturing, by far the number-one manufacturing
investment destination world-wide. Clearly, the most successful foreign-headquartered companies see a future for U.S.
manufacturing. Their revealed preferences for investing in America should count for more than the tales of woe spun by those who
petition Washington for protectionist outcomes.
Wind Power not key
Doesn’t create jobs
Job creation is negligible – manufacturing is done overseas
(Karl 2010)
ABC News Staff Writer, 10
(Jonathan February 9, “New Wind Farms in the U.S. Do Not Bring Jobs,” http://abcnews.go.com/WN/wind-power-equal-jobpower/story?id=9759949, d/a 7-19-12, ads)
One reason so much money is going overseas is that there is
not much of a wind power industry in the United States -only two major American manufacturers make wind turbines: General Electric Energy and Clipper Wind based in
Carpinteria, Calif. Even those companies do a significant amount of their manufacturing overseas. General Electric told
ABC News that GE's Renewable Energy business has 3,000 employees around the world, 1,350 here in
the United States. Schumer said the way to revitalize the domestic wind power industry and to create green jobs is to require that at
least some of the turbine equipment to be made in the United States. An American Farm With Chinese Jobs Perhaps the most
controversial wind project is one that has yet to receive stimulus money. A Chinese company called
A-power is helping
to build a massive $1.5 billion wind farm in West Texas. The consortium behind the project expects to get $450
million in stimulus money. Walt Hornaday, an American partner on the project, said it would create some American jobs. " Our
estimation," he said, "is that we are going to have on the order of 300 construction jobs just within the
fence of the project." But that's in addition to 2,000 manufacturing jobs -- many of them in China.
Stimulus proves job creation will be less than 1% of estimates
(Hughes 2012)
Washington Examiner Staff Writer
(Brian, May 26, “Green energy jobs far short of Obama goal,” http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/1314901, d/a 7-19-12, ads)
The wind industry has actually lost about 10,000 jobs since 2009, even though it doubled its domestic
production, the American Wind Energy Association reports. And Republicans were quick to point out that as Obama blocks the
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas, the oil and gas industry has added 75,000 jobs since the start of his term.
Obama spent $90 billion of his stimulus package on green energy projects, including weatherization of buildings and
development of electric vehicles. Yet, by the end of last year, just 16,100 people landed new jobs in the so-called
green industry, Labor Department statistics show, far short of the 200,000 jobs the White House projected it
would help create each year. The lack of progress has some Democrats bemoaning the current state of green energy, particularly when
compared with the vision laid out by Obama. "To me, the most glaring failure
of the Obama administration has
been a total inability to deliver on green jobs," said one top Democratic strategist not associated with the president's reelection campaign. "Even worse, it's not even part of the national dialogue -- you'd think it would be a bigger part of his platform with all
the focus on gas prices, but sadly, it just the occasional stump speech."
Manufacturing in China
China holds majority of wind turbine manufacturing market
North American WindPower 4/11
[NAW Staff, 2014, Top 15 Wind Turbine Suppliers,
http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.12710]
MAKE Consulting has released its list of the top 15 global wind turbine suppliers of 2013.
According to the report, Vestas has maintained its No. 1 spot, GE has dropped from second to sixth place, and Chinese original equipment
manufacturers (OEMs) have secured over half of the top positions. The top 15 turbine suppliers of 2013, with
their respective market shares, are as follows: 1. Vestas - 13.2% (also held the No. 1 spot in MAKE's top 10 list of 2012) 2. Goldwind - 10.3%
(up from No. 7 in 2012) 3. Enercon - 10.1% (up from No. 5) 4. Siemens - 8.0% (down from No. 3) 5. Suzlon Group - 6.3% (up from No. 6) 6. GE - 4.9% (down
from No. 2) 7. Gamesa - 4.6% (down from No. 4)
8. United Power - 3.9% (same position as in 2012) 9. Mingyang - 3.7% (up
Envision - 3.1% 13. DEC - 2.3% 14.
Sinovel - 2.3% (down from No. 9 in 2012) 15. Sewind - 2.2% Following a tough 2012, the Chinese market
rebounded in 2013, with a 16% year-over-year (YOY) increase in installations. MAKE says this strong year in China from No. 10) 10. Nordex - 3.4% (did not rank in MAKE's 2012 top 10 list) 11. XEMC - 3.2% 12.
coupled with contraction in Western markets, especially in the U.S. - pushed several Western OEMs down the rankings, as exemplified by GE, whose No. 2
spot was taken by China’s Goldwind. MAKE Consulting’s Luke Lewandowski explains why GE fell to sixth place in the rankings. “GE couldn’t overcome the
combination of 80 percent less capacity grid-connected in the U.S. and nearly 500 MW of installed-yet-not-grid-connected capacity in Brazil,” says
Lewandowski. “GE did have a strong year in Asia Pacific, excluding China, but any gain was offset by less capacity connected in Europe YOY. “It is important
to note that even if the capacity not yet connected in Brazil had been added to GE's total, its global position would have remained in sixth place,”
Lewandowski continues. “Thus, the main story line is the huge drop in U.S. opportunity in 2013. GE needed roughly 1.95 GW of additional grid-connected
capacity in 2013 to maintain its second-place position, a possibility in an ordinary year in the U.S.” Despite financial struggles, Vestas maintained its position
as the world’s largest turbine OEM in 2013, and the company has welcomed the news. “Vestas has been through a tough two-year turnaround process to
return to profitability,” says CEO Anders Runevad. “That we simultaneously achieved our financial goals in 2013 and solidified our market leadership is a
testament to the strength of the company.” According to the report, the majority of the top 15 OEMs saw market increases, especially Chinese OEMs such as
Goldwind and Envision. Although Chinese OEMs experienced a very positive 2013, MAKE says it should be noted that their
success was highly dependent on the status of their home market. Excluding the China market, no Chinese turbine OEMs would have made the global top 10 a distinction that MAKE says highlights the challenges in competing against established global companies outside of China. MAKE says the biggest winners
from the West were Enercon and Nordex, which secured some of the highest market share gains, boosted by a record year for added capacity in Germany.
The report adds that Siemens had a massive lead in the offshore wind sector - reflecting the successful sale of its G4 platform - but struggled in the onshore
wind sector, with a 58% decrease YOY in new onshore installations
China manufactures the majority of Wind Turbines
Bradsher 10
[January 31, Keith, China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy, New York Times, Keith
Bradsher is a business and economics reporter for The New York Times.]
China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to
become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this
year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the
country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants. These efforts to dominate
renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance
on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China. “Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in
China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.
President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries,
especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I
know you don’t either,” he told Congress. The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable
energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to
prevail in the energy-technology race. Multinational corporations are
responding to the rapid growth of
China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just
erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern
China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.
“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast
development in a wind market.”
Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching
1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed
Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association. Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy
than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity
will still be from coal. China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by
2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity
in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest. As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of
being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45
billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing. China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on
Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a
“superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself. Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more
renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of
activity on rooftops across China. China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet
demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as
much electricity generation capacity as the United States will. So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the
world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the
American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.
Outsourcing hurts American consumers and takes away jobs
Moreland 6/10
[JUNE 10, 2014 JAMES MORELAND, The Outsourcing of American Jobs Hurts the Economy on Every
Level, http://economyincrisis.org/content/the-outsorcing-of-american-jobs-hurts-the-economyon-every-level,]
for workers and consumers,
outsourcing creates a multitude of problems. It poses a whole host of problems for shipping,
communication and culture – but the biggest setback might be the loss in quality. The capitalist
Outsourcing in the U.S. has obviously enriched the heads of massive corporations. But
market in the United States makes it nearly impossible for any successful company to avoid the lure of cutting American industrial jobs
and shipping the work abroad. “Free trade” agreements such as NAFTA and our membership in the WTO have caused the U.S. to be
forced to compete with third world countries such as China and Mexico, where wages are often less than $4 an hour. This has little to
nothing to do with patriotism. It’s simply a matter of market competition, and when the means are so available, they are essentially
unavoidable. By leaving our businesses with no protection and giving out full access to our markets, it makes no sense to produce in the
United States. Meanwhile, America’s most ruthless competitors are doing just the opposite. In China, for example, if a company wants
access to those one billion-plus consumers, there is a minimum percentage of their parts and labor that must be produced in China.
Unable to resist the potential gains in such a massive market, many companies move to China just to enjoy this benefit, while continuing
to ship their products back to the U.S. Since
entering the WTO in 2001, trade with China has resulted in
the loss of 2.8 million jobs through 2013, according to the most recent study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Those fortunate enough to retain their jobs witnessed their annual earnings decrease by
roughly $1,400. American workers are put in direct competition with one another as more
and more employers look to offshore production to nations with lower wage rates. Also, in place
of tariffs, more than 140 nations use a consumption tax called a value-added tax, or a VAT, to penalize imports and subsidize exports in
order to meet their WTO obligations. The only developed economy on Earth that does not employ a VAT is the United States, and because
of it, we are at a massive trade disadvantage. We should consider implementing a border consumption tax as part of a competitive tax
plan for the U.S. As part of the fix to these issues, we must make it profitable for U.S. companies to employ workers in this country and
produce goods. We should not have to worry about quality jobs leaving the U.S. and rely on foreign companies to provide employment.
We need to control foreign trade, as other nations are doing. By looking at both sides of the equation, it’s obvious that while we are
gaining short-term profit and a few jobs, we are forfeiting our manufacturing and industrial base. Eventually, we’ll be left with few to no
American-owned factories, leaving the nation completely dependent on other countries for work, resources and a fair standard of living.
These are the economic characteristics of a third-world country. These are the chains that our forefathers fought to shake off more than
200 years ago. That is a vision of the U.S. that no American is comfortable imagining.
Trades off with oil jobs
Fossil fuel industry creating jobs now—plan trades off and leads to a net decrease in
employment
(Hemphill and Perry 12)
Thomas and Mark, “How Obama’s Energy Policy Will Kill Jobs” [http
What makes this differential tax treatment especially misguided at this time is that the oil
and natural gas industry has been
jobs that Obama agrees are so critical
to the economic recovery. Overall employment in the U.S. economy still remains short by almost 5 million jobs,
and more than 3 percent below the pre-recession employment peak in November 2007. But the oil and
natural gas industry has added 34,200 jobs over that period and expanded industry employment by
more than 22 percent. Oil and natural gas companies have been on a hiring spree, adding almost 100
new payroll jobs every day for the last year. In contrast, job creation in green energy projects has so far
been very disappointing. According to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis of $4.3 billion in public funding for wind energy under
Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there were 36 wind farms that employed 7,200
American workers during the peak of their construction, or an average of 200 workers per project. Today,
according to these companies and state and local government economic development officials, those projects employ only
about 300 workers, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $14 million per permanent job. And consider the solar
sector. Struggling company Abound’s recent announcement of 180 layoffs was the latest example of
an ongoing solar shakeout that started with Solyndra’s bankruptcy last fall and the loss of 1,100
jobs. According to the Washington-based Solar Energy Industries Association, there are more than 37,000 additional solar jobs at risk,
one of the most robust sectors of the economy, actively creating the “shovel-ready”
because the $10 billion of taxpayer-funded subsidies for renewable energy that were part of the aforementioned 2009 stimulus program
expired in December. The
oil and gas industry could be creating even more jobs if the United States had more
of a pro-development policy for traditional energy sources instead of a government-driven, heavily
subsidized, green energy approach. For example, energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie evaluated the
impact on production, jobs, and government revenues of implementing regulatory policies that
support the development of oil and natural gas resources, including: a) opening federal land that is currently “off
limits” to exploration and development; b) lifting the drilling moratorium in New York; c) increasing the rate of permitting in the offshore
Gulf of Mexico; d) approving the Keystone XL and other future Canada-to-U.S. oil pipelines; and e) leaving regulation of shale resources
predominantly at the state level. Under a scenario that encourages the development of new and existing domestic energy resources,
Wood Mackenzie estimates that by 2015 an additional
1.27 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) could be
produced, rising to 10.4 million BOE by 2030. That would be a 47 percent increase over the estimated 2030 production
levels under a current development path case. Furthermore, under the new development path, there would be a potential
increase of 1 million new oil and natural gas jobs by 2018, and 1.4 million new jobs by 2030, while
adding cumulative potential government revenue of $36 billion by 2015, and nearly $803 billion by
2030. America’s manufacturing sector is another area of robust job growth, and manufacturing companies have hired almost 400,000
new workers since the beginning of 2010. U.S. energy and tax policies have important implications for the
manufacturing sector because of the energy intensity of America’s industrial sector. In 2010, it was estimated by the U.S. Energy
Information Administration that roughly one-third of total U.S. delivered energy is consumed by the manufacturing sector. Additionally,
total industrial demand for delivered energy will increase 16 percent by 2035. Nevertheless, the government estimates that fossil fuel
consumption will decline only modestly, from 83 percent of total U.S. energy demand currently, to 77 percent in 2035. Therefore,
traditional energy sources of oil and natural gas will continue to play a major role in providing
stable supplies of affordable energy to America’s factories. To the extent that oil and natural gas
companies are targeted with higher taxes or unfavorable regulatory policies by the Obama administration,
American manufacturers will be hurt by higher energy prices, which could jeopardize job growth in
one of the economy’s key sectors. Obama’s tax proposals to favor solar and wind energy over traditional
energy sources like oil and natural
gas might make sense for him politically, but can’t be justified with either
economic or scientific principles. Obama’s policies are destined to damage the economy because they
will penalize the efficient, job-creating oil and natural gas industry, which requires no direct
taxpayer subsidies beyond what any American manufacturer is entitled to, and because they will
raise energy costs for American consumers and manufacturers. Meanwhile, subsidizing the inefficient
green-energy industry with generous amounts of taxpayer money would destroy jobs on net and raise
energy costs.
Alt Cause
Trade Deficit
Trade deficit must be solved to gain competitiveness
Moreland ’14 (James Moreland, writer, economist, historian, 4/22/14, Trade Deficits Hurts U.S. Manufacturing and Overall Economy,
America’s Economic Report, http://economyincrisis.org/content/trade-deficits-hurt-u-s-manufacturing-and-overall-economy, accessed:
6/30/14 GA)
It’s no secret the
United States has alarming trade deficits with a number of countries, but with no country on Earth
in 2013, our trade deficit with the Chinese was $318 billion. This
is even more devastating when you take into account our debt owed to China, which is well over $1
trillion dollars. How did the United States get to this point? Kimberly Amadeo’s article in the About.com Guide, ‘U.S. Trade
Deficit With China,’ claims that it is because U.S. manufacturing jobs have plummeted 34% between
1998 and 2010. China is able to both produce goods for a lower cost and sell their cheaply-made
products to U.S. consumers at a lower price, making U.S. manufacturers uncompetitive. This has a trickle
down effect, causing the loss of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs, encouraging the outsourcing of
businesses to China, and causing our market to become flooded with cheaply-made, Chinese imports.
is our trade more unbalanced than with China. Back
This is largely due to the fact that China has, according to Amadeo’s article: A lower standard of living, which allows companies in China to pay
lower wages to workers An exchange rate that is partially priced lower than the dollar As mentioned before, this is bad news for U.S.
manufacturing companies who cannot compete with these low costs. Unfortunately,
U.S. consumers have gotten so used
to these cheap Chinese goods that any action made by legislators to combat China’s low costs would
most likely be met with resistance. For example, if we were to impose tariffs against China in an effort to decrease the amount of
imports entering our markets and to reinvigorate our crippled manufacturing industry, U.S. consumers would be forced to suffer higher prices
for products made in America. If you’ve ever compared prices between a product made in America to that of an imported product, you’ll most
likely notice a dramatic difference. “Made
in America” goods cost more. This is the reason our trade deficit with
not only China, but other countries as well, will continue to remain high. Americans like to pay as little as
possible for their goods, no matter the repercussions — such as job losses. This is a habit that we must
break if we are to obtain economic prosperity in the future. For the United States to become
competitive in the global marketplace again, we must attack the source of the problem: “free trade” and
other harmful trade relationships that hurt our economy. Our relationship with China has resulted in a high trade deficit,
alarming debt, thousands of job losses, the decimation of our manufacturing industry, outsourcing of many powerful U.S. companies, and a
we must strive towards becoming more
self-sufficient in the future, or else our debt and trade deficits will continue to rise and U.S. jobs will
continue to be lost. Contact your Congressional representative and urge them to reexamine our trade relationship with China in order
consumer base content on living off of cheaply made, foreign imports. That being said,
to protect U.S. jobs and industries. Send this article to five of your friends and have them do the same.
Laundry List
The US is losing economic competitiveness for other reasons – fiscal imbalances,
political deadlock
Harjani ’12 (Ansuya Harjani, writer for CNBC business with bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics, 9/5/12, US Slips
Down the Ranks of Global Competitiveness, CNBC business, http://www.cnbc.com/id/48905756#. Accessed: 6/29/14 GA)
The United States has slipped further down a global ranking of the world's most competitive economies,
according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey released on Wednesday. The world's largest economy, which was placed 5th last
year, fell two positions to the 7th spot - marking its fourth year of decline. A lack of macroeconomic
stability, the business community’s continued mistrust of the government and concerns over its fiscal
health were some of the reasons for the downgrade, according to the annual survey. "A number of weaknesses are chipping away at its
competitiveness...the U.S. fiscal imbalances and continued political deadlock over resolving these challenges,"
said Jennifer Blanke, Economist at the Geneva-based WEF. Political deadlock over reducing the unsustainable federal
government budget deficit – projected to hit $1.1 trillion this year – prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the country’s credit
rating by one notch toAA+ from AAA last August. A mix of U.S. tax hikes and spending cuts – referred to as the "fiscal cliff" - are set to come into
force in January unless lawmakers reach a compromise for avoiding them. The survey, which has been conducted annually for over three
decades, ranks the competitiveness of 144 countries based on 12 key indicators including infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, labor
market efficiency and innovation. “If you look at competitiveness, what we are talking about is productivity. It’s countries that are productive
that can support the sorts of rising living standards and high wages that everyone is looking for,” Blanke told CNBC. Despite
declining in
the overall ranking, the forum highlighted that the U.S. remains one of the world’s top innovators –
supported by an “excellent” university system - and continues to offer vast opportunities because of the sheer size of its
domestic economy. Switzerland and Singapore retained their positions as the most competitive economies, coming in 1st and 2nd, respectively.
Switzerland’s top spot was achieved as a result of its strong performance across the board, according to WEF, with notable labor market
efficiency, sophistication of its business sector and its innovative capacity. The country has among the highest rates of patents per capita
globally. “Switzerland’s productivity is further enhanced by a business sector that offers excellent on-the-job-training opportunities and labor
markets that balance employee protection with the interests of employers,” the report said.
A2: Heg impact
No internal link
Economic strength does not translate into hard power – US does not need to win
innovation race to be hegemon.
Salam 1/21/09, Reihan (a fellow at the New America Foundation, has worked for the New Republic, the Council on Foreign
Relations, the New York Times, NBC News, and The Atlantic). “Robert Pape is overheated.” The American Scene.
http://theamericanscene.com/2009/01/21/robert-pape-is-overheated
Pape spends a lot of time demonstrating that U.S. economic output represents a declining share of global output, which is hardly a
surprise. Yet as Pape surely understands, the
more relevant question is how much and how readily can
economic output be translated into military power? The European Union, for example, has many state-like
features, yet it doesn’t have the advantages of a traditional state when it comes to raising an army. The Indian
economy is taxed in a highly uneven manner, and much of the economy is black — the same is true across the developing world. As for
China, both the shape of the economy, as Yasheng Huang suggests, and its long frontiers, as Andrew Nathan has long
argued, pose serious barriers to translating potential power into effective power. (Wohlforth and Brooks give
Stephen Walt’s balance-of-threat its due.) So while this hardly obviates the broader point that relative American economic power is
eroding — that was the whole idea of America’s postwar grand strategy — it is worth keeping in mind. This
is part of the reason
why sclerotic, statist economies can punch above their weight militarily, at least for a time — they are
“better” at marshaling resources. Over the long run, the Singapores will beat the Soviets. But in the long run, we’re all dead.
And given that this literature is rooted in the bogey of long-term coalition warfare, you can see why the unipolarity argument holds
water. At the risk of sounding overly harsh, Pape’s
filed, it seems — is
understanding of “innovativeness” — based on the number of patents
crude to say the least. I recommend Amar Bhidé‘s brilliant critique of Richard Freeman, which I’ll be talking about
a lot. Pape cites Zakaria, who was relying on slightly shopworn ideas that Bhidé demolishes in The Venturesome Economy. The
“global diffusion of technology” is real, and if anything it magnifies U.S. economic power. “Ah, but we’re
talking about the prospect of coalition warfare!” The global diffusion of technology is indeed sharply raising the costs of
military conquest, as the United States discovered in Iraq. The declining utility of military power means
that a unipolar distribution of military power is more likely to persist. And yes, it also means that
unipolar military power is less valuable than it was in 1945.
Competition not key
Competitiveness not key to maintain US primacy – marketing and consumption ensure
US lead.
Bhide 2008, Amar (business professor at Columbia University). “Is the US losing its economic edge?” Inc. Nov 1, 2008.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/q-is-the-us-losing-its-economic-edge.html
These are people who, in the
context of trade and globalization, think that protectionism is bad, but that in order
the "onslaught of competition" from China and India, we have to crank up our
technological investments so that we continuously stay ahead. These people say, let's invest more in R&D, let's
invest more in basic research, let's train more engineers -- on the premise that the greater the technological lead
that you have vis-à-vis other nations, the more prosperous you're going to be. And that's wrong?
Absolutely. The U.S. isn't locked into a winner-take-all race for scientific and technological
leadership with other nations. What's more, the growth of research capabilities in China and India, and thus
their share of cutting-edge research, does not reduce U.S. prosperity. My analysis suggests exactly the opposite.
Advances abroad will help improve living standards in the U.S. Moreover, the benefits I identify aren't the usual
ones of how prosperity abroad increases opportunities for U.S. exporters. I show how cutting-edge research developed
abroad benefits domestic production and consumption. That's counterintuitive for most people. It's helpful to think
of a specific example. The World Wide Web was invented by a British scientist living in Switzerland. Think
of how much this invention in Switzerland has revolutionized lives in the U.S. and has improved U.S. prosperity, probably to
a greater degree than it has in Switzerland and certainly to a greater degree than it has in most other parts of the
world. Why? Because the U.S. is really good at taking things like the Web and weaving them into our
commercial fabric. Or, to give you another popular example: Many of the high-level technologies associated
with the iPod were developed outside the U.S. Compression software comes from Germany; the design of the chip
comes from the U.K. The whole idea of an MP3 player comes out of Singapore. But most of the value has been captured in
the U.S., because the U.S. happens to represent the majority of the use of MP3 players in the world. So the
point is that U.S. businesses are particularly adept at taking inventions and applying them to the
marketplace? No, it's more than just applying them to the marketplace. It's also about our ability to consume these
innovations. That's the really critical piece. At the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Coca-Cola (NASDAQ:COKE) had a pavilion set up
for us to survive
where they were teaching the Chinese how to drink Coke, explaining that it should be drunk cold. That really caught my attention.
Think about how much further the U.S. is on the consumption side. What does that really tell us? That we live in
a more commercial culture than any in history. There is no other country where commerce and business have so completely pervaded
everyday life. And so people are always looking for ways to serve consumers. Look at the historical differences between Europe and the
U.S. In Europe, consumption started off for aristocrats. A classic example in Europe involves guns. When people first made sporting guns,
they were primarily built for the aristocracy to hunt. But when people made guns in the U.S., they were used by farmers and ranchers. So
these more standardized guns were made in the U.S. at a lower cost and for a more mass market. Even if Americans
are the
best consumers on the planet, why shouldn't we still be fearful of the rise of China and India and
their incredibly fast-growing economies? Because economic systems don't compete with each
other. Every gadget, car, or other product imported into the country brings in its wake what I call nontraded
services. Consider a car. I bet there's three times as much value in all the nontraded activities that go along with the car as in the
import value of the car itself: the employment at the dealer's showroom, the six-month servicing, the inspections, and so on. And every
new physical gizmo, regardless of
where it is manufactured, will end up generating many times the
employment in the nontraded services sector it does in the traded sector.
No impact
No impact to loss of competitiveness – not zero-sum.
Bhide 2009 (Amar, Glaubinger Professor of Business at Columbia University, editor of Capitalism and Society, member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, and author of The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses,) “ The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation
Sustains
Prosperity in a More Connected World,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance • Volume 21 Number 1, Winter 2009
The techno-nationalist claim that U.S. prosperity requires that the country “maintain its scientific and
technological lead” is particularly dubious: the argument fails to recognize that the development of scientific
knowledge or cutting-edge technology is not a zero-sum competition. The results of scientific research
are available at no charge to anyone anywhere in the world. Most arguments for the public funding of scientific research
are in fact based on the unwillingness of private investors to undertake research that cannot yield a profit. Cutting-edge
technology (as opposed to scientific research) has commercial value because it can be patented; but patent
owners generally don’t charge higher fees to foreign licensors. The then tiny Japanese company Sony was one of the
first licensors of Bell Labs’ transistor patent. Sony paid all of $50,000—and only after first obtaining special permission from the
Japanese Ministry of Finance—for the license that started it on the road to becoming a household name in consumer electronics.
Moreover, if
patent holders choose not to grant licenses but to exploit their inventions on their own,
this does not mean that the country of origin secures most of the benefit at the expense of other
countries. Suppose IBM chooses to exploit internally, instead of licensing, a breakthrough from its China Research Laboratory
(employing 150 research staff in Beijing). This does not help China and hurt everyone else. Rather, as I discuss at length later, the
benefits go to IBM’s stockholders, to employees who make or market the product that embodies the
invention, and—above all—to customers, who secure the lion’s share of the benefit from most
innovations. These stockholders, employees, and customers, who number in the tens of millions, are located all over the
world. In a world where breakthrough ideas easily cross national borders, the origin of ideas is
inconsequential. Contrary to Thomas Friedman’s assertion, it does not matter that Google’s search algorithm was invented in
California. After all, a Briton invented the protocols of the World Wide Web—in a lab in Switzerland. A Swede and a Dane in Tallinn,
Estonia, started Skype, the leading provider of peer-to-peer Internet telephony. How did the foreign origins of these innovations harm
the U.S. economy?
Heg Bad
The U.S. cannot effectively utilize hegemony.
Drezner 9
[Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School and a
contributing editor to Foreign Policy.MAY 20, 2009
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/20/the_bad_habits_of_hegemony-7/19/14-CMH]
If these moves do not amount to much, then why all the hubbub? To be blunt, America
is out of practice at dealing with
an independent source of national power. For two decades the United States has been the
undisputed global hegemon. For the 40 years before that, America was the leader of the free world.
As a result, American thinkers and policymakers have become accustomed to having all policy
decisions of consequence go through Washington. Our current generation of leaders and thinkers
are simply unprepared for the idea of other countries taking the lead in matters of the global
economic order. Most of China's recent actions do not constitute a real threat to the United States; indeed, to the extent that China
helps to boost the economies of the Pacific Rim, they are contributing a public good. Obama—and Hunstman—need to
make the mental adjustment to a rising China, welcoming many of China's policy initiatives while
pushing back at those that threaten American core interests. If they can make this cognitive leap,
then Sino-American relations can proceed on the basis of shared interests rather than mutual fears.
Abandon Hegemony in Asia-Pacific, Or Risk Catastrophic War
Glaser 14
[John Glaser, A journalist and editor that has been published at The Washington Times, Al Jazeera,
The American Conservative Magazine, and The Daily Caller, among other outlets. January 17, 2014
http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/01/17/abandon-hegemony-in-asia-pacific-or-risk-catastrophicwar/7/19/14-CMH]
Denny Roy, a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, writes at The Diplomat that the crux of
the tensions between the
U.S. and China is a contest for power in the Asia-Pacific region. The squabbling over competing sovereignty claims
of this or that island chain in the East and South China Seas, he writes, is peripheral to the real battle for regional hegemony. A
Chinese sphere of influence here would require the eviction of American strategic leadership,
including U.S. military bases and alliances in Japan and South Korea, U.S. “regional policeman”
duties, and most of the security cooperation between America and friends in the region that now
occurs. Washington is not ready to give up this role, seeing a strong presence in the western Pacific
Rim and the ability to shape regional affairs as crucial to American security. A basic problem, then,
is that Beijing wants a sphere of influence, while Washington is not willing to accede it. I’m reminded of
the stark choice put forth in Noam Chomsky’s 2003 book Hegemony or Survival. Relying on official documents, Chomsky warned that it is
dangerous that “the
declared intention of the most powerful state in history [is] to maintain its
hegemony through the threat or use of military force, the dimension of power in which it reigns
supreme.” In the official rhetoric of the National Security Strategy, “Our forces will be strong enough
to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or
equaling, the power of the United States. One well-known international affairs specialist, John
Ikenberry, describes the declaration as a “grand strategy [that] begins with a fundamental
commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor,” a
condition that is to be “permanent [so] that no state or coalition could ever challenge [the U.S.] as
global leader, protector, and enforcer.” Ikenberry went on to say this quest for permanent
hegemony threatens to “leave the world more dangerous and divided – and the United States less
secure.” America’s current defense posture in Asia – to back all of China’s neighboring rivals in an attempt to curb
China’s regional ambitions – is at once an attempt to implement this hegemonic grand strategy and a threat
to peace. “My biggest fear is that a small mishap is going to blow up into something much bigger,”
says Elizabeth C. Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If there is a use of force between
Japan and China,” warns her colleague Sheila A. Smith, “this could be all-out conflict between these two Asian
giants. And as a treaty ally of Japan, it will automatically involve the United States.” As I’ve written,
maintaining global hegemony does ordinary Americans little good. Such an exclusive hold on power in the
sphere of international relations is greatly beneficial to political elites and the wealthy entities to which they are closely tied, but not
much for the general population. Given this,
the question of whether we prefer maintaining hegemony to
“all-out conflict” in the Asia-Pacific is pertinent. We can either continue to risk catastrophic conflict
between two of the world’s most powerful states, or, as Roy puts it, “accede” to China’s regional
ambitions which, after all, mirror America’s own regional ambitions when it was a rising power.
Hegemony not only bad for U.S., but bad for the world.
Hashim 5
[Zakaria Hashim-Journalist at Malaysiakini News| May 27, 2005
http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/36487-7/19/14-CMH]
From one perspective, the toppling of the Taliban and Baathist regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq
respectively by the US-led forces can be seen in positive light because the wars have effectively
ended two reactionary and murderous regimes. However, the US is still not blameless or faultless.
The rise and consolidation of the Taliban was the result of the political irresponsibility of the
US which, after the Afghan war against the Soviet occupation ended in 1989 with the pullout of the
Soviet troops, simply walked away and abandoned the country allowing it to degenerate into
anarchy. The US also did nothing effective to stop Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
from continuing to collaborate with the Taliban and making use of the latter as a surrogate to gain political
influence and control of post-war Afghanistan. We must also not forget that the Taliban, as a faction of the anti-Soviet
'mujahidden', was trained and armed by, among other countries, the US. In the process, the CIA also
motivated the 'mujahidden' with fanatical and militant Islamism which was believed to be the psychological
antidote to Soviet's 'godless' communism. Seen in this context, the US had reaped what it sowed. In Iraq's case, the
secular Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein was also an American ally in the latter's strategic response to the 1979
Islamic Revolution in Iran. Saddam deserves no sympathy because he was an opportunistic collaborator of
the US in the 1980-1988 war against Iran which caused the deaths of millions of innocent Iranians as
well as Iraqis. One may argue that it was Iran which first fanned anti-Americanism in the wake of
the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, if we go further back into history, we surely cannot fail to see that
Iranian anti-Americanism was, in fact, a reaction to America's gross interference into the Iran's
internal affairs such as by assisting in the staging of a coup d’état in 1953 and by supporting the oppressive Shah Reza Pahlavi
regime from 1953 to 1978. From these two examples, we can see that the US is not as benign and altruistic
as some would like us to believe. Behind or beneath US's rhetoric of 'freedom' and 'democracy', 'human
rights' are its national self-interests in securing cheap supplies of natural resources, opening up foreign markets for its
goods and services and using some countries or groups as pawns to destabilize, control, influence or
confront other countries and groups. What's so bad about US global hegemony? It is essentially
bad because it cannot thrive and prosper without having to create enemies all the time and
also because it can befriend you at one moment and dump and vilify the next as an 'enemy of
civilization' when your strategic value has expired.
The stability created by United States hegemony creates instability by itself – the act
of antagonizing other great powers is problematic
Layne 02 Chair in Intelligence and National Security at the George Bush School
of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University [Christopher Layne
PhD, March 1, 2002 Offshore Balancing Revisited Washington Quarterly]
In the wake of September 11, saying that everything has changed has become fashionable. Yet,
although much indeed has changed, some im- portant things have not. Before September 11, U.S.
hegemony (or primacy, as some call it) defined the geopolitical agenda. It still does. Indeed, the
attack on the United States and the subsequent war on terrorism waged by the United States
underscore the myriad ways in which U.S. hegemony casts its shadow over international
politics. The fundamental grand strategic issues that confronted the United States before
September 11 are in abeyance temporarily, but the expansion of NATO, the rise of China, and
ballistic missile defense have not disappeared. In fact, the events of September 11 have rendered
the deeper question these issues pose—whether the United States can, or should, stick to its
current strategy of maintaining its post– Cold War hegemony in international politics—even more
salient. Hegemony is the term political scientists use to denote the overwhelming military,
economic, and diplomatic preponderance of a single great power in international politics. To
illustrate the way in which U.S. hegemony is the bridge connecting the pre–September 11 world to
the post–September 11 world, one need only return to the “Through the Looking Glass” collection of
articles in the summer 2001 issue of The Washington Quarterly. A unifying theme runs through
those articles: the authors’ acknowledgment of U.S. pri- macy and their ambivalent responses about
it. Collectively, the “Through the Looking Glass” contributors make an im- portant point about U.S.
power that policymakers in Washington do not al- ways take to heart: U.S. hegemony is a doubleedged sword. In other words, U.S. power is a paradox. On one hand, U.S. primacy is
acknowledged as the73 most important factor in maintaining global and regional stability.
“[I]f not for the existing security framework provided by bilateral and multilateral alliance
commitments borne by the United States, the world could, or perhaps would, be a more
perilous place.”1 On the flip side of the coin, many—in- deed most—of the contributors
evince resent- ment at the magnitude of U.S. power and fear about how Washington
exercises that power. China, specifically, wants the United States to accommodate its rise to
great-power status and stop interfering in the Taiwan issue. The political elite in Moscow
wants Washington to treat Russia like a great power equal to the United States and stop
meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs.2 Warnings are issued that for its own good—and the
world’s—the United States must change its ways and transform itself into a benign, or
“enlightened,” superpower. As the contributions to “Through the Looking Glass” demonstrate, the
paradox of U.S. power evokes paradoxical reactions to it. U.S. primacy is “bad” when
exercised unilaterally or to justify “isolationist” policies, but U.S. hegemony is “good” when
exercised multilater- ally to advance common interests rather than narrow U.S. ones.3
U.S. primacy is bad – It creates local conflict and spurs resistance on the global level
Shor 10- Francis Shor teaches in the History Department at Wayne State University. (War in the Era of Declining U.S.
Global Hegemony, Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 2 (2010),
http://www.criticalglobalisation.com/Issue2/65_81_DECLINING_US_HEGEMONY_JCGS2.pdf) SA
There can be no doubt that a more emboldened imperialism and militarism have been the
hallmarks of recent U.S. geopolitical strategy. Carl Boggs has traced that ‘revitalized U.S.
imperialism and militarism’ to a number of factors: “a growing mood of American
exceptionalism in international affairs, the primacy of military force in U.S. policy,
arrogation of the right to intervene around the world, the spread of xenophobic patriotism,
[and] further consolidation of the permanent war system”(2005, p. x).3 However, as acknowledged
by Boggs and other critics of U.S. imperialism, such imperialism and militarism not only
exacerbate and/or even create local insurgencies, but constant saber-rattling by the U.S. also
produces global resistance, such as the massive world-wide mobilization of millions that
occurred on the eve of the U.S. military invasion of Iraq in February 2003. In effect, the pursuit
of imperial dominance through geopolitical militarism and war contains contradictions that further
undermine hegemony abroad and legitimacy at home, reinforcing, in the process, a crisis of empire.
Hegemony causes economic collapse – previous economic crisis’ proves
Eland 9 (Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on peace and Liberty at the Independent
Institute, Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, B.A. Iowa State University, M.B.A.
in Economics and Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University, Ivan, The Independent
Institute, “How the U.S. Empire Contributed to the Economic Crisis”, May 11th,
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2498)
A few—and only a few—prescient commentators
have questioned whether the U.S. can sustain its
informal global empire in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since World War II. And the
simultaneous quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading more and more opinion leaders and taxpayers to this question. But the
U.S. Empire helped cause the meltdown in the first place. War has a history of causing financial and
economic calamities. It does so directly by almost always causing inflation—that is, too much money chasing
too few goods. During wartime, governments usually commandeer resources from the private sector
into the government realm to fund the fighting. This action leaves shortages of resources to make
consumer goods and their components, therefore pushing prices up. Making things worse, governments
often times print money to fund the war, thus adding to the amount of money chasing the smaller
number of consumer goods. Such “make-believe” wealth has funded many U.S. wars. For example, the
War of 1812 had two negative effects on the U.S. financial system. First, in 1814, the federal government allowed state-chartered banks
to suspend payment in gold and silver to their depositors. In other words, according Tom J. DiLorenzo in Hamilton’s Curse, the banks did
not have to hold sufficient gold and silver reserves to cover their loans. This policy allowed the banks to loan the federal government
more money to fight the war. The result was an annual inflation rate of 55 percent in some U.S. cities. The government took this route of
expanding credit during wartime because no U.S. central bank existed at the time. Congress, correctly questioning The Bank of the United
States’ constitutionality, had not renewed its charter upon expiration in 1811. But the financial turmoil caused by the war led to a second
pernicious effect on the financial system—the resurrection of the bank in 1817 in the form of the Second Bank of the United States. Like
the first bank and all other government central banks in the future, the second bank flooded the market with new credit. In 1818, this led
to excessive real estate speculation and a consequent bubble. The bubble burst during the Panic of 1819, which was the first recession in
the nation’s history. Sound familiar? Although President Andrew Jackson got rid of the second bank in the 1830s and the U.S. economy
generally flourished with a freer banking system until 1913, at that time yet another central bank—this time the Federal Reserve
System—rose from the ashes. We have
seen that war ultimately causes the creation of both economic
problems and nefarious government financial institutions that cause those difficulties. And of
course, the modern day U.S. Empire also creates such economic maladies and wars that allow those
institutions to wreak havoc on the economy. The Fed caused the current collapse in the real estate
credit market, which has led to a more general global financial and economic meltdown, by earlier
flooding the market with excess credit. That money went into real estate, thus creating an artificial
bubble that eventually came crashing down in 2008. But what caused the Fed to vastly expand
credit? To prevent a potential economic calamity after 9/11 and soothe jitters surrounding the
risky and unneeded U.S. invasion of Iraq, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan began a series of interest rate
cuts that vastly increased the money supply. According to Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in Meltdown, the interest rate
cuts culminated in the extraordinary policy of lowering the federal funds rate (the rate at which banks lend
to one another overnight, which usually determines other interest rates) to only one percent for an entire year (from June 2003 to June
2004). Woods notes that more money was created between 2000 and 2007 than in the rest of U.S. history. Much
of this excess
money ended up creating the real estate bubble that eventually caused the meltdown. Ben Bernanke,
then a Fed governor, was an ardent advocate of this easy money policy, which as Fed Chairman he has continued as his solution to an
economic crisis he helped create using the same measures. Of course, according to Osama bin Laden, the primary reasons for the 9/11
attacks were U.S. occupation of Muslim lands and U.S. propping up of corrupt dictators there. And the invasion of Iraq was totally
unnecessary because there was never any connection between al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, and even if Saddam
had had biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons, the massive U.S. nuclear arsenal would have likely deterred him from using them
on the United States. So
the causal arrow goes from these imperial behaviors—and blowback there
from—to increases in the money supply to prevent related economic slowdown, which in turn
caused even worse eventual financial and economic calamities. These may be indirect effects of
empire, but they cannot be ignored. Get rid of the overseas empire because we can no longer afford
it, especially when it is partly responsible for the economic distress that is making us poorer.
US heg motivates terrorism – fear of no support or aggression
Jervis, 2009 (Robert- Robert Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, and has
been a member of the faculty since 1980, Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wp/summary/v061/61.1.jervis.html, Volume 61, Number 1, January 2009 , pp. 188-213)
Some classical balance thinking still applies, however. States have a
variety of security concerns that require
influencing or acting independently from the superpower, and they have interests that extend beyond
security that may call for a form of counterbalancing. Even if others do not fear attack from
the unipole, they may believe that the latter’s behavior endangers them, a worry that parallels that of
traditional alliance entrapment.46 Thus today some states believe that the way the U.S. is pursuing its
“ war on terror” increases the chance they will be the victim of terrorist attacks and decreases
stability in the Middle East, an area they depend on for oil. So there is reason for them to act in concert to
restrain the U.S.47 The point is not to block the U.S. from conquering them, as in traditional balancing,
but to increase their influence over it. Although such efforts will not be automatic and their occurrence will depend
on complex calculations of costs, benefits, and the possibilities of success, these concerns
provide an impetus for trying to make it harder for the unipole to act alone. Others may also
fear that the unipole will refuse to act when their security, but not its own security, is at stake. As Waltz
notes, “absence of threat permits [the superpower’s] policy to become capricious.”48 It is not
surprising that American policy has changed more from one administration to the next after the cold war than it did during
it, and the fear of abandonment may be the main motive behind the Europeans’ pursuit of a rapid reaction force. With it they
would have the capability to act in the Balkans or East Europe if the U.S. chose not to, to intervene in small
humanitarian crises independently of the U.S., and perhaps to trigger American action by
starting something that only the U.S. could finish. This is not balancing against American power ,
but, rather, is a hedge against the possibility that the U.S. would withhold it, perhaps in
response to European actions of which the U.S. disapproved. 49
Hegemony causes war – Empirics prove
Robinson 7-10.
Dr. Paul
Paul Robinson holds an MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Toronto
and a D. Phil. in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Prior to his graduate studies, he served as a regular officer in the British
Army Intelligence Corps from 1989 to 1994, and as a reserve officer in the Canadian Forces from 1994 to 1996. He also worked as a
media research executive in Moscow in 1995. Having published six books, he has also written widely for the international press on
political issues. His research focuses generally on military affairs. In recent years, he has worked on Russian history, military history,
defence policy, and military ethics. International Society for Military Ethics Texas A&M University. July 10, 2013.
http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE05/Robinson05.html
Just as the United States of America dominates the world today as a ‘hegemonic power’, so once did Britain and Rome. It is the purpose of
this paper to compare the use by contemporary America, nineteenth century Britain and Ancient Rome of the strategy of pre-emptive
war. In so doing it will suggest that the doctrine of pre-emptive war is one
promoted by those with great
power to justify the aggressive use of force in pursuit of their own hegemonic interests. I will
show that both Rome and Britain regularly fought what they claimed were ‘pre-emptive wars of self-defence’, justified by
exaggerated fear of largely non-existent threats. Romans and Britons were willing to fight over
these flimsy pretexts because their power was sufficiently strong to enable them to do so at
relatively little cost to themselves. In short, they made war because they could. Other weaker
powers did not have the luxury of engaging in ‘pre-emption’ in the same way, and from the
perspective of those attacked in these wars they could not be described as anything other than
‘aggression’. One can now observe a similar pattern in the wars of the United States of America,
most especially the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I will conclude that the purpose of the doctrine of pre-emption, today
as in the past, appears to be to provide a means by which hegemonic powers can re-define
aggression as self-defence. As such it is not a doctrine which one can expect anybody other than those with hegemonic
power to accept.¶ It should be stressed that the form of ‘pre-emptive war’ in question does not refer to military action taken against
actually existing threats which pose an imminent danger to national security. Rather, the subject of the paper is military action
undertaken against threats which are more remote, and may not even have yet manifested themselves. As we shall see, Romans, Britons
and Americans have all fought wars of this second kind.¶ The 2003 invasion of Iraq falls into the same pattern we have observed in Rome
and Britain above. In the first place, a hegemonic power attacked a much weaker state. In the second place, it did so
on the basis of exaggerated tales of future threats. Just as Caesar justified the attack on the Germans by a
series of extremely improbable ‘ifs’ (‘If the Germans formed a habit of crossing the Rhine … If those fierce barbarians
occupied the whole of Gaul’), in 2003
US Hegemony Bad- Wars in the middle east prove
Bedi ’06 (October 1, 2006, Bishen Bedi, Malaysian Business, Blowback,
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/docview/229698909?pq-origsite=summon)
WORLD oil prices have come down quite appreciatively since the end of the Israel-Hizbollah war in Lebanon. But the peace is thin.
Petroleum's bowser price has also fallen quite a bit the past few weeks, to motorists' delight. But complacency and madness have
returned. For politicians, easing oil prices mean the heat is off them, at least for a while. After all, they have yet again managed the oil
crisis pathetically. Yet, the possibility of oil prices soaring in the medium to long term looks real, because of `peak oil' syndrome. That's
not the end of the problems. An
old problem is being renewed, but to great new and dangerous
heights, since the United States and its allies declared war on terrorism. And it is being so
poorly managed - by all sides 1 - that belligerence and recalcitrance have festered angrily in
heads that won't see reason, only victory at whatever cost. The world, and in particular the US, has observed
the fifth anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks by Osama bin Laden and al- Qaeda. But the centre of world terrorism doesn't reside in
Afghanistan or Iraq, but Pakistan. As President George W Bush laid a wreath at the steps of the memorial where the twin World Trade
towers once stood, his prosecution of the war against terror continued to lurch towards becoming a spectacularly miserable failure, like
its Vietnam adventure. That's saying plenty about the intelligence capacity of the neo- conservatives, headed not only by Bush but also
his chum and Vice- President Dick Cheney, as much as it does also about the blind loyalty given to Bush by the politically stubbed British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, like Bush, will soon leave politics, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who, more so than Blair,
counts Bush as the world's saviour. Installing
strongly pro-US regimes in countries like Iraq and
Afghanistan has brought neither democracy and freedom nor economic development to
these states. If anything, mob rule reigns. Anarchy isn't that far off either. And it's a
throwback to US policy in the halcyon days when it led coups against radical governments
from Asia to Africa and South America and helped install conservative dictatorships in their
place. Now is no different to then. US policy isn't about propagating Western liberalism,
democracy, freedom and free-market capitalism everywhere: it is the West's attempts to
reassert control at a time when US hegemony is seriously dwindling, and American power is
imperially over-stretched. The war on terror has taken Iraq and Afghanistan closer towards
civil war and total collapse. The Taliban, backed by al-Qaeda and Islamic extremists inside
Pakistan and known to President General Pervez Musharraf, is once more resurgent in
Afghanistan. Already, most Nato countries, except Australia and Britain, have baulked at reinforcing troop numbers there. In Iraq,
sectarian violence is so rife that it's hard not to see the hand of shi'ite Iran in what is billed inside Iran (and Washington) as a proxy war
against Western infidels on the one hand. On the other hand, it is revenge against the minority sunni who, under Saddam Hussein, had
barbarically ruled the majority shi'ite and Kurdish population. Yet, what Iran is doing in Iraq is no less barbaric than Saddam Hussein's
long reign of terror. It is no less ruthless and calculating than the financial, military and ideological support it, along with Syria, has given
to Hamas and Hizbollah in Palestine and Lebanon. The
war on terror has turned slowly and increasingly
from the objective of ridding the world of Islamic fascists towards something that will only
widen the rift between the Islamic and Christian world while re-sharpening key differences
between both civilisations. These chasms will be so substantial that any chance of a joint
effort by both at eliminating future terrorist threats will disintegrate. Scores more of
innocent men, women and children will be slaughtered, not just by terrorists, but also by
Western forces. Already, almost 3,000 US forces have lost their lives in Iraq, and Bush looks willing to sacrifice many more in his
ideological war. Bush, Blair and Howard will go down in history as, among other things, pathological liars over their choreographed
decision to invade Iraq. They'll also be remembered for having quietly sponsored the underpinnings for Western conservative ideologues
to whack uncivilised nations that exist outside Western rationality since these inherently conform to barbaric behaviour and evil
practices. On the fifth anniversary of 9-11, Italy's conservative newspaper La Stampa again declared, just as France's Le Monde had done
immediately after the first 9-11 attacks, that we're all still Americans. But Indonesia's Jakarta Post had a different view: `As America
showed the world about its poor understanding of Islam, bin Laden's biggest missile fired at the US - which it failed to recognise - was the
unleashing of religious emotion and the fanning of hatred towards the West.' And Saudi Arabia's Al Watan declared: `If we were to grade
the performance of the US over the past five years, it would get a big zero, and the blame goes to the worst US administration since World
War I. Everything has crashed against the rock of arrogance.' It's not hard to guess that we are on the cusp on unravelling civilisation
back to those centuries when great civilisations clashed, and clashed violently and for a long time. The West's war against terrorism is
being lost. No ifs about that. There are no exits from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that would save them face. If 120,000 Soviet troops
could not bring Afghanistan to heel, what chance does Nato have, let alone the Americans in Iraq, whose Washington-sponsored regime is
as crony-infested as it is sectarian- ridden? The real danger is if Bush and his allies, in their final shameful desperation, open up new
fronts in wars on cultural margins where victory cannot be guaranteed, but death and mayhem on a large scale can and that will
reverberate to every corner of the world.
Heg doesn’t solve wars – last 2 decades of instability prove
Monteiro 11 [Nuno P. Monteiro - is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University; “Unrest
Assured Why Unipolarity Is Not Peaceful”;
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00064] RahulNambiar
In contrast, the question of unipolar peacefulness has received virtually no attention. Although the past decade has witnessed a
resurgence of security studies, with much scholarship on such conoict-generating issues as terrorism, preventive war, military
occupation, insurgency, and nuclear proliferation, no one has systematically connected any of them to unipolarity. This silence is
unjustiaed. The past two decades of the unipolar era have been anything but peaceful. U.S. forces have
been deployed in four interstate wars: Kuwait in 1991, Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan from 2001 to the present, and Iraq between 2003
and 2010.22 In all, the
United States has been at war for thirteen of the twenty-two years since the
end of the Cold War.23 Put another way, the past two decades of unipolarity, which make up
less than 10 percent of U.S. history, account for more than 25 percent of the nation’s total
time at war.24 And yet, the theoretical consensus continues to be that unipolarity encourages peace. Why? To date, scholars
do not have a theory of how unipolar systems operate.25 The debate on whether, when, and how unipolarity
will end (i.e., the debate on durability) has all but monopolized our attention.
***Spending Links
Wind energy will cost hundreds of billions
Abrahamsen, 2010 (A B, N Mijatovic, E Seiler, TZirngibl, CTræholt,
P B Nørg°ard, N F Pedersen, N H Andersen and J Østerg°ard, Superconducting wind turbine
generators, IOP Science)
There are many indications that our dependency on fossil fuels must be addressed in the next few decades in order to formulate
solutions to problems such as lack of resources and the impact on the climate. In this context there have been many political discussions
on how to regulate the release of CO2, with agreements such as the Kyoto protocol. The
reduction of the CO2 emissions
recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (ICPP) is rather high and
of the order 50–80% by the year 2050. In a European perspective a target of 20% greenhouse gas reduction by 2020
compared to the 1990 level, 20% of energy demand supplied by renewable sources and a 20% reduction of the energy consumption have
been decided among the member states as an initial step towards addressing the climate challenge. Wind
power is
considered as one of the main technologies to deliver the renewable energy for Europe and
the European Wind Energy Association has formulated scenarios that predict a need for 300
GW of installed wind power by 2030 [1]. A share of 120 GW is expected to be installed
offshore, because the population density in the coast areas of the member states of the European Union (EU) is relatively high and
offshore installation will cause less interference with the habitants. It is interesting to compare the predictions from the European Wind
Energy Association (EWEA) with the development of the offshore capacity, as shown in figure 1. The
offshore capacity was
first significantly increased around the year 2000 and the 626 turbines installed by the end
of 2008 had a 1.5 GW capacity, corresponding to 2.2% of the total capacity [2]. The working horse of
the present offshore wind farms is a 2.3 MW turbine and the largest farm is 166 MW. However, the turbine size of the wind
farms under construction will have an average size between 3.0 and 3.6 MW and a significant
number of 5 MW turbines will be installed. A further increase of the turbine size is expected, because the turbine
price is only about half of the wind farm installation price with foundations and grid connections being the other major costs. Thus the
optimal offshore wind turbine size will depend on the local wind and water conditions of the installation site and preliminary analysis in
the UPWIND project indicate that 10 MW offshore turbines will probably be desirable [4]. The number of
10 MW turbines
needed to fulfil the EU offshore target is then of the order 12 000 and with a 1 km distance
between the turbines an area of 110 km × 110 km would be needed in the North Sea. The
installation price of offshore wind power is expected to be approximately 1300–1500 Euro
kW−1 and the up-coming offshore market would be of the order 180 billion euros [1]. In
contrast to the above analysis, the onshore market is considered to be quite mature and the size of the onshore turbines is not expected
to increase above the present 3–3.6 MW size due to transportation limitations. The installation price of onshore turbines is expected to
be 600–700 Euro kW−1 and the future market is of the same order as the offshore market prediction above.
Cumbersome and expensive installation
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Land-based turbines are normally installed on concrete foundations . Offshore
turbines must be attached to a form
of foundation that extends from sea bed to sea level so that the tower can be affixed atop it.
These foundations can take several forms, but the most often used is a driven pile (a steel pile driven into the sea bed) that protrudes
above the water line. The wind turbine tower is bolted to the top of this structure. The
cost for installing such a pile is
normally significantly greater than the basic concrete footers used for a land-based turbine.
Costs in this model were derived from a University of Massachusetts study [11], augmented with private industry communications
expressed as a function based on machine rating. Effort is under way to develop engineering-based models for these structures.
Monitoring expenses sky-rocketing
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
WindPACT studies identified a cost of $10,000 for control, safety, and condition monitoring
systems for a 750-kW turbine. A slight scaling factor was applied for larger machines to take into account additional wiring
and sensors. However, these data were based on 1999 designs. During the early 2000s, operators realized the
value of additional sensing and monitoring systems. To take this into account, this number
for land-based systems was increased to $35,000 in 2002 dollars, regardless of machine size
or rating. Offshore systems are expected to be more sophisticated and extensive. For offshore systems, this number
was raised to $55,000, regardless of machine size or rating. These rough estimates were based on
discussions with industry development partners.
Major maintenance costs
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
3.4.2.1 Marinization ¶ The
Marinization component covers special preparation for all components to increase their ¶
¶ special paints and
coatings, improved seals for gearboxes, generators, electrical components, and ¶ electrical
connections. It is calculated as a percentage of all turbine costs from the tower up. ¶ The
percentage used in the current model was derived from data published in a range of ¶ European journals. These numbers
suggest marinization factors of between 10% and 15% [10]. ¶ 23A number of 13.5 % has been chosen for the
survivability in the extremes of an offshore ocean environment. These preparations include
baseline model. This is a rough estimate and may ¶ vary with the design.
Expensive insurance
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Offshore turbines operate in an extreme environment. Because of this and their remote
location, many manufacturers believe that providing an adequate warranty will represent a
greater risk than for land-based installations. As offshore installations become more common and operational
history improves, warranty cost would be expected to be adjusted appropriately. Current warranty estimates are based on private
industry communications. Additional study and experience is required to improve the current estimate.
Offshore warranty premium = 15.0% of turbine and tower cost
Using onshore data being used for offshore project
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
3.4.2 Offshore Elements
The turbine cost and scaling model was originally developed for land-based technology. The
need to evaluate offshore wind technology led to expanding the model. The majority of cost for landbased components will not be affected by offshore designs, so the models proposed here for turbine subsystems and components are
Some of the cost factors used for both land-based and offshore
differ for the two different types of installation. If there are differences, they are noted below. A few additional
elements of cost specific for offshore installation and preparation must be added. These factors are discussed below. The data for
deriving these factors are extremely meager and are primarily based on magazine articles or
private industry communications converted to scaling factors. Where data are public domain, they have
been referenced. At this time, the model only handles shallow water installations. In most cases, these
numbers are very rough estimates, and each area is one in which more in-depth research is
believed to be appropriate for offshore.
required for the development of offshore technology.
Data provided for the Shallow Water installation here are
primarily based on a 500 MW wind farm using 167, 3 MW turbines. These machines would have a rotor diameter of 90 meters and a hub
height of 80 meters. This wind farm would be installed in 10 meter water depth 5 miles from shore. Array spacing would be 7 rotor
diameters by 7 rotor diameters. This is assumed to be a mature design with mature component productions. This baseline turbine and
the sources of many of the factors below are described in greater detail in [13], a draft report to be published by NREL in the near future.
Long-term adumbration hard to create
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
3.4.2.4 Port and staging equipment
Offshore wind installations require unique facilities to install and maintain operation.
Special ships and barges are needed for installing piles, setting towers and turbines, laying
underwater electrical lines, and providing ongoing servicing. Long-term data on these costs
are still sketchy.
The costs available to date are based on private industry communications converted to a scaling 24factor based
on machine rating, and cross-checked with some data published in European journals. Little hard detailed industry data are available.
Few specific models available
Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
In most cases, offshore wind installations will require their own electrical transmission
system to bring the turbine power to shore. In addition to the connections to shore,
underwater electrical cables will be required to go from turbine to turbine to gather the
turbine power. Some forms of redundancy may also be considered for such installations. Because few such largescale installations have been built, very little detailed information for this cost element has
been developed, though a modeling effort is under way. The costs in this element includes the cost of cabling
between turbines and the cable to the grid interconnect at the shore. Costs in this model are based on calculations and data developed for
the first DOE offshore white paper [12]. The cost for cable and other equipment for this calculation came from an internal DOE/NREL
study and a report that has not been published. This number should be
used with significant care, as it is
calculated specifically based on a distance to shore of 5 miles, a water depth of 10 meters,
and an array spacing of 7 by 7. Changes to any of these factors would be expected to change this number significantly, as
the electrical cost factor is primarily driven by cable cost. Work is underway to develop an improved model that will adjust electrical
interconnect costs based on all of these factors. It is hoped that this work will be completed in 2007.