Ted Re.......Sounds like a good exercise - in futility. The market will take care of the reduction of energy consumption, when the prices go high, but it will bring the economy down, until the economy can absorb the new prices.
Joe,
How very stupid.....if we learned to conserve effectively and not let the energy market dictate the state of the economy. we would not have to go down.<<<<<
Ted. I would have to agree with you over Joe on that
because as long as the money is kept in the community, it shouldn't cause a recession. For instance, building more power plants will create more jobs.
That said, while I haven't read a lot of the letters here lately, nobody seems to have mentioned one of the major causes of CA electricity problem, which is that both CA regulations and the EPA regulations forbid the building of nuclear and coal fired plants. All new power plants in this country,(not just CA) have to be natural gas, or wind, or solar powered,(because of pollution controls on coal and safety concerns with nuclear.) and these are the most expensive forms of producing electricity. Frankly, everyone in this country will eventually see high energy prices because of this country's over reliance upon natural gas. Even the long term contracts will eventually run out, and the new contracts you can be certain will cost more. Simply put, I doubt if we will ever produce enough natural gas in this country such that natural gas will not only heat our homes and factories, but also be expected to run the power plants, and possibly cars.
While I am not anxious to rile up Scumbria, I believe it is inevitable that we will have to come up with an alternate source of power for our electricity plants; and right now they seem to be either coal or nuclear. Why? For several reasons.
ONe. It isn't that easy to transport natural gas long distances. We don't have the tankers to bring in natural gas and we have no strategic natural gas reserve. Shortages are bound to appear, but there isn't any way right now to import natural gas.
Two. By having the power plants compete with housing for gas, the higher heating costs will force many homeowners to go to alternate sources, (wood or oil), which will cause far greater pollution problems than if we had coal fired power plants, because the utilities can afford the scrubbers, and powderized coal it requires to burn coal cleanly. Most of the furnaces sold for housing are 90% efficient natural gas or LPG. To replace them with 70% efficient oil furnaces will increase pollution significantly; and wood burners will be even worse.
Three, We need Nuclear, specifically breeder reactors, in order to clean up the nuclear wastes in this country and we should buy all of the excess plutonium warheads. By converting low level waste into a higher level fuel, which can be used to power our current nuclear plants, we could eliminate the need for Yucca Mountains, and get rid of bomb material the terrorists would love to get their hands on. While I realize Carter vetoed these plants because of terrorist concerns, I would consider the excess plutonium floating around the world a greater threat. Nuclear has no air pollution, and modern plants are safe. Certainly, the -plants can be sited away from population centers, ten miles offshore or in the desserts, such that no one could get hurt even with an accident.
Four Solar will never have a large following until the efficiencies can be gotten above 40%. Most photovoltaic cells run under 8%.
Conservation. A good start but, conservation by itself won't solve the problem. We need all three, an aggressive conservation plan as well as drilling and new plants.
In the end, all those who say that CA bought this upon itself, had better wake up and smell the coffee. All of us here in America, will pay more for our energy,even with cheap oil, because frankly right now natural gas is the cleanest form of energy, but supplies are limited. We need a nationwide acceptance of reality. |
