Question: What puts the "green" in "green power?"
Answer: The "greenbacks" from your wallet!
Our elected representatives have already chosen to break the bank on "man-made global warming" and "carbon capture." The big problem is that nearly everyone who understands the fallacies of both issues has a vested interest in the matter. I break it out as follows:
1. The Investor Owned Utilities (IOU's), like Duke Energy Corp, see this as a big cash cow; now they have an excuse to write-off their existing coal-fired power plants that generate power at $0.03/kWh and have a blank check to replace them with natural gas-fired power plants that generate at $0.06/kWh. If you understand that the IOU’s get a fixed 8% return on all sales, then it doesn't take much math to understand why they'd love to double their wholesale power costs. It's good for their profit margins, good for their investors, and no one cares about the customer. And which IOU thought of this scam first? Enron! And when they went broke, guess to which other IOU they sold their renewables business…
2. The product manufacturers, like General Electric, are also experiencing a huge cash windfall; GE just got congress to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, whose next best replacement is CFL bulbs. Now, if they have a fixed profit margin, call it 15%, you can see why they'd love to sell light bulbs for $2.00 each rather than $0.50 each - they just quadrupled their profit margins! And that's just on the consumer side. On the utility side, in that same law congress decreed that transformer efficiencies increase from 98% to 99%. This 1% increase in efficiency will double the cost of every single transformer that every utility in America buys. So, it's all good for their profit margins and investors, and no one cares about the customer.
3. The large research labs, like Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), are also waiting with baited breath for the huge cash infusion from congress. These scientists know full well that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are not causing global warming, and are very careful not to say anything on that subject. What they are saying, however, is that with a little extra funding EPRI could research ways to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels. (They're very clever not to make any claims as to whether or not that will affect global warming - they've let Al Gore make that case for them.) And what is their price tag for the research? $2 trillion! That's just 1/6 of our GDP is all.
Answer: The "greenbacks" from your wallet!
Our elected representatives have already chosen to break the bank on "man-made global warming" and "carbon capture." The big problem is that nearly everyone who understands the fallacies of both issues has a vested interest in the matter. I break it out as follows:
1. The Investor Owned Utilities (IOU's), like Duke Energy Corp, see this as a big cash cow; now they have an excuse to write-off their existing coal-fired power plants that generate power at $0.03/kWh and have a blank check to replace them with natural gas-fired power plants that generate at $0.06/kWh. If you understand that the IOU’s get a fixed 8% return on all sales, then it doesn't take much math to understand why they'd love to double their wholesale power costs. It's good for their profit margins, good for their investors, and no one cares about the customer. And which IOU thought of this scam first? Enron! And when they went broke, guess to which other IOU they sold their renewables business…
2. The product manufacturers, like General Electric, are also experiencing a huge cash windfall; GE just got congress to outlaw incandescent light bulbs, whose next best replacement is CFL bulbs. Now, if they have a fixed profit margin, call it 15%, you can see why they'd love to sell light bulbs for $2.00 each rather than $0.50 each - they just quadrupled their profit margins! And that's just on the consumer side. On the utility side, in that same law congress decreed that transformer efficiencies increase from 98% to 99%. This 1% increase in efficiency will double the cost of every single transformer that every utility in America buys. So, it's all good for their profit margins and investors, and no one cares about the customer.
3. The large research labs, like Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), are also waiting with baited breath for the huge cash infusion from congress. These scientists know full well that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are not causing global warming, and are very careful not to say anything on that subject. What they are saying, however, is that with a little extra funding EPRI could research ways to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels. (They're very clever not to make any claims as to whether or not that will affect global warming - they've let Al Gore make that case for them.) And what is their price tag for the research? $2 trillion! That's just 1/6 of our GDP is all.
4. The press has discovered that headlines featuring natural disasters, real or imagined, sell more than headlines stating that the weather is normal, cyclical, and unpredictable. Plus, they have to generate enough copy to fill their airwaves 24/7, and if you watch the news very frequently (I watch CNN, Fox News, and CBS news simultaneously on three TVs every morning for an hour during my workout at the gym) you will quickly note that there is not that much happening around the globe, so they have to stretch, fill, and generate their own news a significant portion of the time. I'm reminded of the L.A. Times' motto: "Bad news is good news, good news is bad news, and old news is history." So, of course you get the press corps clutching at every opportunity to tout "man-made global warming," making them complicit in the scam however ignorantly.
So now you have the “perfect storm” of well-funded lobbyists from the big IOUs, manufacturers, and research labs, as well as the press, all telling congress that Al Gore is right (even though they know he's not) and that our government needs to throw some serious money their way or there will be dire consequences. The only sector that I see trying to tell it like it is, and protect their consumers' best interests, are the rural electric cooperatives. Being non-profit entities we have no vested interest in seeing our rates increase - we have no profit margins to increase and no dividends to pay to share holders. We answer only to our member/consumers and our only interest is to sell electricity with the best reliability possible at the best possible price. Unfortunately, we’re so small that our lobby in Washington is relatively small, so now our only hope to stem the hemorrhaging is to ignite a grass-roots movement among our members. I was talking to our lobby people in DC last week and they told me that they'd done all they could do with the legislators in Washington and now it was up to our members to get involved. Hopefully you'll be a part of that.
Following are three questions that our lobbyists suggest that we all ask our elected officials:
1. Experts say that our nation’s growing electricity needs will soon go well beyond what renewables, conservation, and efficiency can provide; what is your plan to make sure we have the electricity we’ll need in the future?
2. What are you doing to fully fund the research required to make harmful emissions free electric plants an affordable reality?
3. Balancing electricity needs and environmental goals will be difficult. How much is all this going to increase my electric bill and what will you do to keep it affordable?
On the subject of "carbon capture": while this concept is being bandied about in Washington DC as if it were something we could actually do, it's still very much in the theoretical stage, part of that $2T study that EPRI wants to do, so no one yet understands how it would be done or what it might cost us. This is one of those cases of "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."
So now you have the “perfect storm” of well-funded lobbyists from the big IOUs, manufacturers, and research labs, as well as the press, all telling congress that Al Gore is right (even though they know he's not) and that our government needs to throw some serious money their way or there will be dire consequences. The only sector that I see trying to tell it like it is, and protect their consumers' best interests, are the rural electric cooperatives. Being non-profit entities we have no vested interest in seeing our rates increase - we have no profit margins to increase and no dividends to pay to share holders. We answer only to our member/consumers and our only interest is to sell electricity with the best reliability possible at the best possible price. Unfortunately, we’re so small that our lobby in Washington is relatively small, so now our only hope to stem the hemorrhaging is to ignite a grass-roots movement among our members. I was talking to our lobby people in DC last week and they told me that they'd done all they could do with the legislators in Washington and now it was up to our members to get involved. Hopefully you'll be a part of that.
Following are three questions that our lobbyists suggest that we all ask our elected officials:
1. Experts say that our nation’s growing electricity needs will soon go well beyond what renewables, conservation, and efficiency can provide; what is your plan to make sure we have the electricity we’ll need in the future?
2. What are you doing to fully fund the research required to make harmful emissions free electric plants an affordable reality?
3. Balancing electricity needs and environmental goals will be difficult. How much is all this going to increase my electric bill and what will you do to keep it affordable?
On the subject of "carbon capture": while this concept is being bandied about in Washington DC as if it were something we could actually do, it's still very much in the theoretical stage, part of that $2T study that EPRI wants to do, so no one yet understands how it would be done or what it might cost us. This is one of those cases of "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."
