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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed
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To: yard_man who wrote (102255)5/15/2001 5:12:51 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer  Read Replies (1) of 436258
 
Tippet, your statement "there is a difference in being competitive as in the customer receiving a payoff in 5 - 10 years versus the rate they are paying and whether the project is really economic overall" brings out a key issue that most economists tend to ignore: the time element.

A business may very well look for a short term payback, while a longer term payback may be acceptable to individuals. But if we confine the choice of the energy alternative to the shortest payback, we miss other desirable factors, such as less dependence on fossil fuels (and therefore more availability of fossil fuels for transportation use). By not relying on individual energy sources, such as residential rooftop solar units or windmills, we risk total chaos when a large central generating station fails or goes down for maintenance during a period of peak demand.

There are also a number of issues such as the effect of terrorist attacks on central facilities (very vulnerable right now) and the relative difficulty of attacking smaller, decentralized facilities and causing an entire system failure. At a time when we are considering an antimissile defense, maybe it might be better to look at decentralized alternatives, which would be cheaper and offer greater security.

Art
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