Editor:
There are no simple solutions.
I believe it was in the ‘80s that the Caterpillar Tractor Company came under fire from environmental groups because they believed the machines were causing destruction of the environment, especially by the logging and mining industries. The company came back with this slogan: “There are no simple solutions, only intelligent choices.”
The Batavia Daily’s December 31 editorial, “Our View: Power failure,” presented some of the intelligent choices that must be made to address the climate issue in contrast to the simplistic solutions being advocated by politicians (All Electric Building Act), the Climate Acton Council, and climate zealots.
Of particular interest were the comments on nuclear power.
Windmills and solar panels, aside from being a blight on the landscape, are unreliable for generating the amount of power required for going totally electric. Windmills shut down if there is too much or too little wind, and solar panels cannot generate at night or when covered with deep snow. Storage batteries have been suggested to overcome these problems, but how big would the battery or bank of batteries have to be to power a small city like Batavia or a large city like Rochester, for one, two or three days of a power outage? (Think Buffalo during Christmas).
Nuclear is reliable, environmentally friendly, and safe. Duke Energy in North Carolina has been using it for years. Naval vessels have been running on nuclear reactors for decades.
Hydro is another clean source. Unfortunately, thanks to environmentalists, dams are no longer being built. Also, as far as I know, there isn’t another waterfall the size of Niagara to use for generating electricity.
Another power source that seems to get little mention is geothermal, tapping into the earth’s natural inner heat. Two of my friends in Varysburg have gone geothermal, one when building his new house, and the other retrofitting his present house.
As a renewable resource, geothermal is clean, reliable, and cost effective. It can even be used to generate electricity. It is estimated that by 2050 it could meet 10% of the world’s energy need.
Of course, no power source will be effective if the power grid is inadequate, and the present power grid is definitely inadequate. The intelligent choice would be to first upgrade the power grid before enacting the plans advocated by the CAC and other climate groups.
I am enough of a realist to realize that going electric on a large scale is eventually going to happen, but there will still be a need for fossil fuels for the transition to electric and as a supplement, although on a much lesser scale than used today.
Again, your editorial is spot on: “State Authorities must reconsider these plans put forth by the Climate Action Council.” And, as the Caterpillar Tractor Company slogan so aptly states, “There are no simple solutions, only intelligent choices.”
Gary Towner
Warsaw