Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (62608)	4/30/2008 9:33:05 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 541900

Power plants costs double since 2000 — Efficiency anyone? According to a new index by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA): [EDIT: This is one of the articles cited in my previous post. Links are in the original: climateprogress.org The cost of building a U.S. power plant has risen 130 percent since 2000, and 27 percent in the 12 months to October 2007 alone. CERA’s Candida Scott explains most of the implications: “These costs are beginning to act as a drag on the power industry’s ability to expand to meet growing North American demand, and leading to delays and postponements in the building of new power plants. As the cost of construction rises, firms may become reluctant to invest in new plants, or delay and postpone these projects, in turn constraining the growth of capacity.” The real implication for policymakers: It is time to revise utility regulations (as Obama and Clinton both propose) to put energy efficiency on an equal footing (with decoupling and incentives), since it was the cheapest option in 2000, and now is even more cost effective. The reason for the price rise is straightforward — demand, demand, demand: “The latest increases have been driven by continued high activity levels globally, especially for nuclear plants, with continued tightness in the equipment and engineering markets, as well as historically high levels for raw materials….” “The global power sector is facing heavy strains, with new builds in the Middle East and Asia, and expansions in the United States all occurring simultaneously. Nevertheless, we expect 80-110 GW of power to be built and come on-line over the next five years in the U.S. In addition, many long-lead-time items for coal and fired power plants may be contracted in the next three years.” “As a result of all of this activity, lead times for engineered equipment has increased up to 50 percent in the last 6-12 months for some items, and as expected, prices have increased,” Scott added. “Overseas sourcing for many components further compounds cost pressures because, as costs of raw materials and shipping have risen, those increases are passed through to projects.” And yet, for all this, CERA expects, “80,000 megawatts to 110,000 megawatts in new U.S. plants to come on line in the next five years.” What a gross mis-allocation of capital — especially for the coal plants. We simply can’t get new presidential leadership in this country soon. This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 9:07 amand is filed under Economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

To: Sam who wrote (62608)	4/30/2008 9:35:34 AM
From: Sam	Respond to of 541900

Nuclear power is about the last form of electricity you would turn to if you care about price — or if you cared about delivering power in a hurry, for that matter. Just highlighting one of the basic takeaways from Romm's article. The guy is a physicist, and was head of DOE's alternate energy division in the Clinton administration. He knows what he is talking about.

To: Sam who wrote (62608)	4/30/2008 9:38:31 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541900

Let them eat biofuels! Food riots? Rationing? Governments overthrown? [EDIT: Links in the original: climateprogress.org] … a series of poor harvests in the area led to soaring bread prices, provoking food riots…. A worker’s daily bread took 97% of his income…. With bread prices at record levels, hungry mobs attacked the gates … where customs collected taxes on incoming grain convoys. They raided every possible source of arms, ending up with capturing the Bastille prison. Oh, sorry, that was 1789. No worries, then. Not like that lead to a violent revolution or anything. Anyway, the Washington Post has a terrific front-page article, “The New Economics of Hunger: A brutal convergence of events has hit an unprepared global market, and grain prices are sky high. The world’s poor suffer most,” which is the first in a series. No, national and global mandates for biofuels (= bad energy policy) aren’t the only reason for this emerging catastrophe. Obviously, high oil prices (= bad energy policy) play a role. And then there are those poor harvests in places like Australia due to climate change (= bad energy policy). OK — the last one was kind of a stretch, given that the amount of climate change to date was probably all but inevitable. But my point is that if we don’t drastically reverse our self-destructive energy policies soon, things are going to get much worse…. We have mandates for far more biofuels (see “The Fuel on the Hill — The Corn Supremacy), and we are going to see much higher energy prices (see “Peak Oil? Bring it on!“) and much worse global drought and desertification (see The Century of Drought“). What they heck are people supposed to eat then — Biofuels? Apparently that’s what politicians in this country and Europe think. Heck, in a Friday article, “IEA warns against retreat on biofuels,” the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, ironically enough, has this to stay: Biofuel production is critical to meeting current and future fuel demand in spite of its possible role in driving up food prices, the west’s energy watchdog has warned. Some may believe that biofuels are not a major contributor to the recent food price spike, but the conservative European magazine, The Economist, certainly does (see “The End of Cheap Food,”), calling the price rise “the self-inflicted result of America’s reckless ethanol subsidies” and pointing out last December the amazing statistics: In other words, the demands of America’s ethanol programme alone account for over half the world’s unmet need for cereals. Without that programme, food prices would not be rising anything like as quickly as they have been. According to the World Bank, the grain needed to fill up an SUV would feed a person for a year. The head of the International Monetary Fund shares this view, writing in the Financial Times last week (here): Higher food prices over the past few years in part reflect well-intentioned, yet misguided policies in advanced economies, which attempt to stimulate biofuels made from foodstuffs through subsidies and protectionist measures. And Prime Minister Gordon Brown says the British government “is concerned that biofuels are stimulating inflation and pushing up food prices around the world.” The consensus among leading biofuels experts presenting at an American Meteorological Society seminar Friday I attended (see here, I’ll post the video when available) was that governments should ban all biofuels made from crops or on productive lands — in part because such biofuels almost certainly don’t provide a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and in fact probably increase emissions. One thing seems very clear to me — if we don’t get on the path to 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide immediately, then we are facing a future of 9 billion people and soaring energy prices and drastic reductions in arable land and water. In such, a future any competition between food and fuel will easily be won by food, as it should be. This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 5:13 pmand is filed under international. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.