Congress and many state legislatures, including Minnesota’s, are exaggerating the potential for renewable energy, especially from wind, solar and biofuels.

By assuming that wind can supply 20 percent to 25 percent of our electric power in the coming decade, or that farm fields can replace oil and gas fields, our representatives can avoid voting on hard choices. Those choices include carbon taxes, large investments in nuclear energy and public transit, and measures that would force unpopular life style changes.

Shortly after 6 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2008, winds in West Texas died, and the massive blades on hundreds of wind turbines that pincushion the region stopped. Within minutes, 1,700 megawatts of wind power supplying the Texas electric grid declined to 300 MW, threatening the integrity of the grid, and creating the possibility of rolling blackouts statewide.

The grid’s overall manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, had planned for this possibility. ERCOT has large industrial customers on interruptible power, and ERCOT immediately cut 1,100 MW of demand. Along with some backup power, the grid maintained stability and service.

Electricity, unlike other commodities, cannot be stored. It must be moved and used as soon as it is generated. To allow a grid to maintain its delicate balance, the generation of power and the amount of power consumed by customers, often referred to as “load,” must always be in balance.

Texas leads the nation in wind power with more than 8,000 MW of nameplate capacity, far more than the next leading states, Iowa (2,900 MW), California (2,600 MW) and Minnesota (1,758 MW).

The electric power industry uses the term “capacity factor” to rate fuel sources on the effective power each delivers as a percent of what it would produce if operating at capacity round the clock.

For 2009, ERCOT projects Texas will need 72,648 MW of capacity to meet peak summer demand. In its 2009 report, ERCOT is projecting that Texas wind power will have an 8.7 percent capacity factor or 708 MW, providing 1 percent of the state’s need for 2009. ERCOT’s forecast for 2015 shows wind rising to provide just 1.2 percent of Texas electric power during peak demand periods.

In its latest Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that U.S. wind and solar combined will supply 96 billion kilowatt hours (bkwh) of electricity to our electric power grids in the year 2020. That is just 2.1 percent of total U.S. electric power supply of 4,618 bkwh projected for 2020.

Undeterred by this data, our Legislature passed the Renewable Energy Standard Bill, which requires our largest utility, Xcel, to get 25 percent of its energy from wind in the year 2020, 10 times the average U.S. wind contribution estimated by the EIA, and 20 times the Texas projection for wind power efficiency.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for 15 billion gallons of ethanol from corn by 2015. At 2.5 gallons of ethanol per corn bushel, that will require 6 billion bushels, half of our annual 12 billion bushel corn crop that uses about 80 million planted acres. The ethanol produced from 40 million of those acres will replace 7.5 percent of our annual gasoline consumption.

The idea that we dedicate 40 million prime acres of crop land to produce a small percent of transportation fuel does little for our environment or energy independence.

EISA calls for 5.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2015, rising to 21 billion gallons by 2022. At present, there is no commercial production of cellulosic ethanol.

All this suggests that our lawyer-dominated legislative bodies may need science training as a prerequisite for taking the oath of office.

This is the opinion of Rolf Westgard, a professional member of the Geological Society of America.