John,
Yeah, there are many ways to provide incentives. I prefer ways that do not throw economics in the toilet entirely.
As far as raising rates, my ideas would not to raise electricity rates directly, but indirectly, with a tax on the portion of the electricity generated from coal, oil and gas. Let's say a tax of 50% phased in over 25 years with 2% increments.
Something like this would not upset things too drastically over the short term, but that kind of legislation being in place would change the incentives and future planning of the utilities.
BTW, as far as incentives for utilities to buy power from homowners with solar panels, my idea would make it attractive for utilities to do so, because it would be electricity not taxed by the sliding tax.
For the utilities it would cut down if not eliminate new plant expense. One problem might be summer months between ~7PM and 10PM when demand is still high but distributed generation would be low. There is still no good technology for even temporary large scale electricity storage.
That's very true that there is nothing out there for large scale storage. The only think that's remotely useful are dams. You can vary the amount of water you can let through during the peak hours, and not very much off-peak. But not all the dams are friendly to this. I went to a field trip back when I lived in Slovakia where waw a perfect solution. 2 connected lakes. One high up in a mountain, one at much lower elevation. They pumped the water up when there was excess power, they let the water go down during the peak period. But that is still a very small scale compared to what would be needed.
Another problem is that the nuclear plants (which don't generate greenhouse gases) are not really variable in their power generation. You can't start them up and shut them down quickly. Oil and gas plants are good for that. You can start them up and shut them down in a matter of minutes. I am not sure about coal plants. They are slower to start up and shut down than gas/oil burning plants.
But rather than thinking storage, there is the national grid. There is a 3 our offset between the east and the west, which is kind of storage in a sense.
Longer term you replace coal with nuke plants.
It's better to stay in reality, on the ground. Good starting point is looking at this chart:
eia.doe.gov
The biggest problem, IMO are the oil and gas sections. Not because they generate more greenhouse gas (coal does) but because we should be saving these energy sources and using it where others can't work. You can't cook a dinner with coal, but you can with gas. You can't drive a car with coal, but you can with oil (or gas).
The next one is coal, which generates the most CO2. This one can be most readily replaced with nuclear, because the only place it is used these days is in power plants.
Electricity generation generates roughly half of the CO2 emissions. If you look at France, they generate nearly 80% (last figure I heard was 78%) from nuclear energy. So we are generating almost 2x the greenhouse gases as a result of the fact that our energy policy has not been as rational as that of France.
That gives you a scale of how much damage the so called environmentalist and alarmist of all kind have done to the environment by killing nuclear energy. Or maybe I should say potential damage if it turns out that the earth can't naturally adjust to this by revving up its CO2 sinks.
BTW, the damage does not stop there. If the nuclear industry was not killed for all practical purposes, we would have more efficient plants in place, generating cheaper electricity, and cheaper electricity can readily replace a lot of the other CO2 generators - home heating, cooking, and eventually transportation. We would have been much further on the way of nuclear power generated electricity replacing burning of fossil fuels, if the clock has not stopped.
So, IMO, for any of the past "environmentalists" or alarmist to be taken seriously, they first need to go to a public confession about how they killed nuclear power, and how the US greenhouse gas generation is where it is because of them.
That would be a pre-requisit, IMO, before these clowns get to pontificate (at best) or setting US police (at worst).
The fact that you don't hear any of that from the so called environmentalists only shows that these guys are BS artists.
Joe |
