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62 comments on A Little History of the Affordability of Domestic Energy in Great Britain
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62 comments on A Little History of the Affordability of Domestic Energy in Great Britain
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Thanks for this Bob. Your closing sentence is interesting. I do wonder if we are so much richer now than we were in the past. I think in many ways we are considerably poorer (we have less decent topsoil available these days for starters!). Consider physical things, large projects that we could afford to do decades ago yet the equivalent is now out of reach. In the UK things like the London Underground train system, the motorway network and in little more than a decade the construction of the 7 AGR nuclear power stations. We don't seem to have the capital to do things of that scale any more, how can this be if we're richer than ever?
I would suggest we have be living off, drawing down upon, previous wealth and investments for quite some time now. Not only is this a fundamentally unsustainable regime but is also particularly problematic when we consider the large capital investments required to move our energy systems away from fossil fuels. We might simply not be rich enough.
This is an interesting point that has occurred to me in the past a few times. We have much better technology today that in the 1960's and yet we can't do some of the things that we were able to do in the 1960's because it isn't economic. eg. we used to be able to fly across the Atlantic in little more than 3 hours (Concorde), not any more. It takes longer to cross the English Channel than it used to (Hovercraft is now gone). We went the moon, starting from scratch in 8 years (we can't even build a disposable replacement for the shuttle into low earth orbit in 8 years now!). The speed record for a manned plane was set in the 1960s (X-15). We've spent 50 years trying to develop a replacement for the B-52 and after at least 4 attempts (XB-70, B-1A, B1-B, B-2) still haven't managed it.
Those are just the first things that come to mind. It certainly suggests there is some problem with the price of some modern technologies when they are applied to physically large projects (ie not computers, etc., which are relatively small). (Ofcourse there are a few counter examples, eg. the Gotthard Basis Tunnel but there aren't very many of these (and I can't think of any in Anglo-Saxon economies...)).
We have built the internet which is great.
We have built wireless telecoms networks.
We have built CERN - which is likely the most expensive experiment ever done. I assume this money is being spent so that once the physicists work out how stuff works, they will be able to work out how to get energy from it.
We have spent vast sums on improving health care - thus keeping more and more people alive for a lot, lot longer. An interesting debate to be had around this point since over population lies at the heart of the global resource problem.
And we have spent vast sums on road and air transport infrastructure. Politicians inability to foresee the significant trend reversal that lies ahead of us make this the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of Man (Kunstler).
But in general I agree - this ME ME ME culture we live in, subsidised by past generation's generosity and Earth's legacy of high eroei FF.
You can make an argument that we don't invest in infrastructure anymore because we're too rich; that is, the investor class is. When you get 15-20% ROIs from financial legerdemain there are few corporate executives that will actually build projects that take 5-10 years to complete and have pesky ROIs in the 5-6% range. That was cool pre-70's, but now big money wants big returns.