154 comments on Energy Policy per American Petroleum Institute
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154 comments on Energy Policy per American Petroleum Institute
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Yup, that good ole "free market" is the solution. Now let me see, just how many solutions has the market thrown up as possible solutions? Hmmmm. Nuclear? Nope, too many subsidies. Solar? Nope, not economical yet. Wind? looks, good, but the market hasn't figured out how to power a car on it yet. Coal? Ah, yes, there we go. What? what's that you're saying about CO2?
To be fair, maybe the "free market" could solve our problems, but seeing has how we don't have one, it's hard to see what difference it makes.
The "free" market is a myth and always has been. It is a buzz phrase the right wingers use when they have nothing else to say. It simplifies everything and gets rid of all those details that you have to think about to actually make anything really work.
It simplifies everything and gets rid of all those details that you have to think about to actually make anything really work
Right. Like the corrput government we have, as exemplified by this failed de-energy bill, has a solution?
Just look at Los Angles and the rest of California. As far as their energy policy has gone, and it is as leftist as it gets, it's a failure.
They don't call it "metrofail" for nothing.
"corrput government" like a meeting of a VP guy in a undisclosed location with a bunch of undisclosed cronies?
hmmmmm..I live in Los Angeles and when Enron was busy turning off the grid in Santa Monica and Pasadena my good old Department of Water and Power kept chugging along.
"Department of Water and Power kept chugging along."
Yeah, like good old TVA keeps rolling along as well, despite being 'public power'. I believe that LADWP was run at that time by a former Chattanoogan and TVA board chairman, S David Freeman.
S David Freeman.
Yea- Freedman introduced several important fixes the LADWP, he laid off several employees and cut expenses, the unions whined but the mayor was Republican and the councilman felt that they had no choice because of the debt load the dept was running.
The best move he made was sticking the the general plan, thats estimated the amount of population the city proper would have then aquiring the power to match it before useage.
The plan went under fire in the early 90's when the population was declining (riots, earthquakes) but the dept stuck to it and acquired 50% ownership in two Utah coal power plants. Had a private firm been in change the plants would have never been bought and Enron would have the city shut down literally.
Freeman before he left had a solar program in place and wanted to create local gas power plants. I guess it would be powered with LNG. I don't think the plan went anywhere.
Just look at Los Angles and the rest of California. As far as their energy policy has gone, and it is as leftist as it gets, it's a failure.
They don't call it "metrofail" for nothing.
I have lived in Los Angeles for 28 years. Please help me understand exactly what I am supposed to be calling "metrofail". I have never heard the term before.
Also, please explain how CA's energy policy is "leftist". I too remember the tax payers of this state being ripped off royally by the free market forces of Enron.
Currently the rightist minority elements in Sacramento have an outrageous impact over the annual budget process, which requires a super majority, and appear to have successfully cut funding to much needed, energy efficient light rail, while continuing to fund freeway expansion. Not very leftist to me.
I have lived in Los Angeles for 28 years. Please help me understand exactly what I am supposed to be calling "metrofail". I have never heard the term before.
A. Do you remember Proposition AA on the November 1982 ballot and what they said the funds would do as far as metrofail?
B. Ridership is horrible. They promised us Metrofail would cure our traffic problems.
C. Unless you're a shut-in and don't get out, do you dare argue that the traffic has gotten horribly worse the last few years?
Also, please explain how CA's energy policy is "leftist". I too remember the tax payers of this state being ripped off royally by the free market forces of Enron.
Uhm...are you sure you lived in Cal as long as you said you did? I lived there 44 years and STILL work there 8 months out of the year.
Currently the rightist minority elements in Sacramento have an outrageous impact over the annual budget process, which requires a super majority, and appear to have successfully cut funding to much needed, energy efficient light rail, while continuing to fund freeway expansion. Not very leftist to me.
Actually it has been AG Brown who has stopped any new construction desigend to alleviate the traffic problems which wasted untold millions of gasonline and pollute the air.
Brown, who was also the former governor, is a hard-core leftist enviromentalist.
So all of Arnolds bonds which passed last November have been for naught as far as fixing the roads and building new ones.
Oh yeah, Arnold, the "green" governor, stopped a Ligth-rail project from getting on the ballot.
You gotta love that one.
You mean to say there are parts of L.A. that have not been paved over yet? If highways, byways, overpasses, and concrete were the answer to traffic problems, then L.A. would be heaven on earth. I drove in L.A. as far back as 1977; it was hell on earth then and it dominated by freeways even then. You say it's gotten horrible in the last few years? Try the last 40 years.
Maybe Brown is stopping new construction because he knows how futile that is. Denver, where I live, just spent billions on a new, improved interstate system through downtown. Yeh, things are just rosy there now and all problems are solved. To their credit, they have been doing a fairly good job expanding their light rail which does, in fact, make it easier to get to and from downtown and will be even better in the future.
If you want to build a transit system that is utilized it is counterproductive to make auto travel easier simultaneously. As far as burning fuel stuck in traffic goes, this can and will be solved by the widespread implemenation of hybrid vehicles with start/stop mode.
Taking the long view, at some point you just have to stop building more and "better" roads. All you do is create a hopeless treadmill. Besides, we're supposed to be running out of oil. And your solution is to create more demand for oil.
And why are you complaining about Arnold. So, he's not really all that green is he. You should be happy. Arnold's solution to global warming is to build the hydrogen highway. Please!! And he would be traveling that hydrogen highway with his Hummer yet. Yes, you should be happy. Arnold is not the hard core, left wing environmentalist you seem to detest so much.
Your solution to the hole L.A. and much of the rest of the country is in is to build a bigger hole. With taxpayer money, of course, even though you are mister conservative.
I think there is a basic conflict between having a great or even good mass transit system and a road system which has lots of excess capacity. As soon as the transit system starts to meaningfully take the load off the road system, then people tend to gravitate back to the road system. Let those who choose to do so, drive through hell every day, but provide them an alternative.
I nominally lived in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia from about 1968 to 2002. To go any further left you would be talking Khmer Rouge or something like that.
Los Angeles isn't as "leftist" as it gets.
LA has cars cars cars and zillions of roads.
Europe has much more rail investment and it is actually quite successful. Are they full of super-humans? No, same sort of people.
Like the corrput government we have, as exemplified by this failed de-energy bill, has a solution?
This again is the right winger's non answer: "destroy and thwart everything the government does because it's intrinsically bad."
The alternative is to insist on less corrupt and effective programs with significant impact.
I'm for eliminating subsidies AND restrictions on all of them. If Solar is economically viable than I'm all for it. We know that it isnt' and won't be in our lifetime, but hey, let the cards fall where they may.
Anything the free-market offers is better than what these clowns in D.C. have suggested.
Good idea - last time I looked "anything" in my gas tank got me 0 mpg. When my local electric company put "anything" into their coal-fired plant we got "nothing."
Cheering the "free-market" as an ideology is all fine and good. But when it comes right down to it, the market we have now (and it ain't free by any stretch of the imagination) would offer us oil until its more expensive than coal and then it would switch to coal. That is the market's answer and I'm not sure that it is better than the 3-ringer in DC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
The problem with infrastructure is it cannot involve a totally absent of any regulation - in part because the cost of entry to add to the grid is way too high and the maintenance is “externalized” to government agencies.
I think that we need to remove all regulation regarding property owners with power generation – if someone wants to add a windmill then so be it, we need to encourage the property owners to view power as something they have to, in part, provide by themselves.
As I understand it, the grid has to be able to accept the fluctuating power of the various windmills that are added. I suppose there are also issues of needing to properly connect up with the grid. It seems like some regulations will be needed.
Yes, I meant having a windmill power the properties directly not feed into the grid. If everyplace has a standardized battery hookup then market activity can start taking place at some local level.
I guess I don't know all that, but hey, maybe that's just me.
In certain applications, solar is viable today-- Passive solar, solar lighting, thermal solar, remote off-grid PV systems, PV power in Hawaii, Italy. (ref)
According to the DOE solar timeline: "Within 10 years, photovoltaic power will be competitive in price with traditional sources of electricity." (ref)
The National Renewable Energy Lab has a 2015 target price of solar PV of 5-10 cents/kWh, which would be viable for net metered grid-tie systems. Increased production, as from tax incentives, would get us to "grid parity" sooner. (ref)
Germany, with its financial incentives (feed-in tariffs) is competitive with commercial electric rates today. (ref)
The world is full of conventional wisdoms, things that will never come to pass in our lifetime, that do indeed come to pass. I can remember people saying that LCD displays would never replace CRTs, yet they did. And isn't there currently a very similar CW running around about peak oil?
There is retail PV being sold now for $3.00/Watt and wholesale PV being sold for $1.29/Watt.
I would say that 7 cents/kWh is happening today so 4 cents/kWh by 2015 should not be a problem.
Chris
WaltC - You have a highly non-pedestrian and scientific approach - who here uses references - are you inside or outside the solar industry?
Thanks, I'll take that as a complement. I'm a retired telecom engineer, so I'm about as 'outside' as you can get.
BRNM,
There was a guy on CSPAN this morning talking about how our government-propped infrastructure is at every level aimed towards supporting the car-centric life style.
On the local level, police spend most of their energy enforcing traffic laws. There are traffic lights and highway signs everywhere; etc.
On the Federal level, our armies are out and about the world to secure the oil over "there" because we plum ran out of it over "here".
There is nothing "economical" or uneconomical about oil versus solar. Our government entirely props up (subsidizes) the petroleum way of life and then accounts for it in whatever funny way is necessary so as to make it sound "economical".
I really don't know what kind of "economical" thinking you are engaging in. We as a society are sinking all our resources, time and energy into an infrastructure that is destined for failure. Have you noticed a couple of little things "collapsing" as of late? Any bridges? Coal mines? Dried out forests? Bankrupt cities? Off-shored jobs? These might be clues.
On the Federal level, our armies are out and about the world to secure the oil over "there" because we plum ran out of it over "here".
Good. I know you're not sitting in some carbon-neutral home, nor are you driving some car that runs on solar or wind power. If we listened to luddites such as yourself the country would be in a deep-recession right now. And guys like you would be blaming Washington for not doing something about it.
There is nothing "economical" or uneconomical about oil versus solar. Our government entirely props up (subsidizes) the petroleum way of life and then accounts for it in whatever funny way is necessary so as to make it sound "economical".
I'm all for taking away said subsidies on both petroleum and solar. Solar would die on the vine while the oil industry could keep going on.
I really don't know what kind of "economical" thinking you are engaging in. We as a society are sinking all our resources, time and energy into an infrastructure that is destined for failure. Have you noticed a couple of little things "collapsing" as of late? Any bridges? Coal mines? Dried out forests? Bankrupt cities? Off-shored jobs? These might be clues.
Coal mines? Geez, digging for coal has always had the risk of "collapsing". Nice try to link what is happening in Utah to the energy crisis. No cigar though.
My goodness! You're just a font of conventional wisdoms! I'll have to start jotting some of these down just for future reference.
I can see why someone might be against subsidies, but based on the few posts of yours I've read you also seem to be against solar. Is there something that you are a fan of, or are you also against all other alternative energy sources as well? In which case, what are your plans in a post peak oil world?
What part of Selling-Congress-to-The-Highest-Bidders (SC2-THB) is there that you don't understand?
Of course we have a free market.
Just leave the cold cash in your representative's fridge.
You didn't see the memo? All bribes are now regulated by the ATF.