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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Post-Crash Index-Moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (12319)	3/17/2011 7:59:22 AM
From: yard_man	1 Recommendation Respond to of 119360

Couple of points worth responding to there >>I'm ambivalent on nukes. They clearly have some advantages, but the big disadvantage is that they are not operated on true economic grounds, because the risk associated with the lifecycle is socialized. I'd be happy with nukes if the producers & consumers who use them, got stuck with all risk associated with them. << Externalities, externalities, externalities .... Who do you propose calculate these? How do you propose they be calculated? I assume you do know that they can't build the plant without funds to deal with the waste -- it isn't all that is necessary most likely, but the agreement to socialize the costs at that level was public policy -- of the same kind that many would like to use to penalize fossil fuels to make wind and solar "competitive." Unfortunately, that won't cause magic breakthroughs to spring forth. We've had NREL for years and year. We've had programs at the DOE for years and years. I like passive solar and wouldn't it be great if all houses, where they could be, were earth-bermed or built so freaking thick that passive solar would work?? The problem is not everyone can afford that type of construction. It is a trade of capital for operating -- a trade that some many be unwilling to make absent compulsion from government "standards." I am against such standards on ethical principles. I don't own such a house, because at the time I couldn't afford to build one, but bought an existing house. I don't believe one can justify such radical requirements which could only reasonably apply to new housing stock. Moreover, there is considerable existing housing stock and sunk capital in the current generation and transmission system that simply cannot be replaced overnight. I consider this to be an indisputable fact: Renewables cannot supplant coal generation any time soon. In fact, it is unlikely to make more than single percentage impact in overall fossil fuel use for generation in the next 10-20 years. Efficiency, right now, is the best bang for the buck and economics have always driven this and will continue to drive it even further, but as population grows -- the best we can hope for is decreasing the rate of growth in the use of these. Plans that would have us "go back" to the usage in a given year simply aren't possible sans severe economic retrenchment. Prices for generation will rise as time moves on and this will still continue to spur changes. But these changes will occur within the context of the huge sunk costs we already have in generation and transmission in this country. People don't like to hear this, but in spite of the "exclusive frachises" granted public utilities, we do have a system that is reliable, economic and affordable. Smarter use of the same, we do need!!