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Americans Happy To Pay More For Clean Energy, But Only a Little More
Fluffeh writes "A recent study of over 1,000 folks for a paper published in Nature Climate Change has found that the average U.S. citizen is inclined to pay a premium to ensure that by 2035, 80% of U.S. power comes from clean energy. At random, respondents received one of three "technological treatments" or definitions of clean energy that included renewable energy sources alone, renewable sources plus natural gas, and renewable sources plus nuclear power. Delving into the socioeconomics, researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES than respondents that identified themselves as Democrats."
An NCES is ...?
(Certainly not a first post)
Often absent from these discussions, and before the usual flamewars start, are solar power satellites, such as the ones JAXA is developing. This technology, while it may seem a bit blue sky at the moment is coming very much economically within our grasp over the next decade. All of the energy we need is flying right at us free of charge from the biggest nuclear reactor in the solar system, we just need to take advantage of it.
as fossil fuel prices go up, as they must eventually. Of course, a rise in fossil fuel costs will cause a rise in manufacturing and transport costs for renewable energy generating equipment as well.
NCES = national clean energy standard. Not that you'd want to clarify that in the summary or anything.
My webcomic
"The difference between public opinion and political support that we find is consistent with the observation that a majority of US citizens support clean energy and climate-change policies, whereas the necessary majorities in Congress do not," the researchers conclude.
Could it perhaps be lobbying by the energy companies?
Global Climate change aside, I would just like it if my eyes didn't burn and if I could go outside in the afternoons during the Summer here without scarring my lungs with Ozone and smog.
Gee, we clean up the air and low and behold a side effect is reduced greenhouse gas emissions - wierd how that works!
People started using less energy to go green, my power company jacked up rates. My power company invested in a wind farm and jacked up my rates. Power companies are always looking for a reason to raise rates, and many people don't have the ability to install solar panels.
They would rather pay more in the future to handle the effects of climate change rather than dealing with it now. Our great grandchildren thanks us.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
You could also say: Americans willing to donate money to the poor, but only a little bit of money.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I mean, once you've built the gathering mechanism, isn't the point of renewable that you're not paying for the fuel?
The price of "going green" can't exceed the perceived benefit. I didn't start buying to new CFL light bulbs until the price dropped significantly. Slowly but surely, I'm replacing most of the bulbs in my house. I can't do all of them though, because they don't fit in all of our fixtures, which is the next thing they need to work on.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This wont happen. See how the Russians are already balking at the US missile shield in Europe. How do you think they will respond when the US, or anyone else for that mater, start putting this kind of systems in orbit. ?
How would the US react if Iran or North Korea would put up some of these ?
Nice Try Cobra Commander... I saw that episode back when I was a kid. You just want a number of WMDs up there to use as weapons against GI Joe.
The oil industry is heavily subsidized by the US taxpayer via our massive military presence and operations in the Middle East. Exxon-Mobil and Chevron's shareholders don't pay that... taxpayers do.
Do conservatives ever even mention that? No, they don't.
Consumers should not have to make a conscious decision about which energy they choose. Deciding at the consumer level is moronic, and game theory shows why. Instead, governments should tax at a rate equal to the externality costs. If the cleanup of the pollution from coal costs 15 cents per KwH, then this should be the tax gov't levies. If solar's externalities are only 3 cents per KwH, then tax accordingly. Granted, I think solar should get some short term boost from the gov't to spur the industry, but the point is that if you include externalities, then you free consumers to do what they do best: buy what makes the most sense for them economically.
MyLongNickName
Austrians can opt-Out of donating their organs, after they die.
Germans can opt-IN...
As a result of the above differences, much -higher- %'s of Austrians are listed as ready to donate their organs.
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Let's apply what we know from organ donation systems to choosing to use -some- Renewable Energies.
Ie, Electricity suppliers can & should -assume- folks want to include (& pay slightly more for) Renewables; of course, they're free to Opt-Out... but - by making it so that it requires a (seemingly anti-social) opting-Out process, & a conscious decision to execute it.
This idea is not mine, but one proposed at a TEDxAdelaide (2010 or 2011), by an Environmental Scientist (name forgotten?)
Solar power satellites are obviously a bad idea: they may increase efficiency by a factor of up to maybe 2-4, but at a cost that is orders of magnitude higher. You're better off just covering more area on the ground.
And power satellites have serious security implications, allowing large amounts of power being focused anywhere in the world. In fact, the idea of space-based solar power is so obviously bad from an economic point of view that I suspect it really is just an attempt to get weapons into orbit.
Instead of playing a game of "who do I believe", why don't you use your own head and figure it out for yourself? Figuring out the relative cost and benefits of space solar energy is elementary.
Furthermore, apart from the horrible cost/benefit tradeoffs for space solar, and the military risks, your web site points out yet another problem: energy balance. Ground-based solar doesn't change the overall energy balance much, since the solar radiation is coming in anyway and most gets absorbed whether you use it for energy or not. But space-based solar pumps large amounts of energy through the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't have come in, and then converts it all into heat on the ground.
Here in UK, our DoE-equivalent have computed on-shore wind as being close enough to coal - and we're running out of coal, so I'm guessing it will be marginally cheaper in few years.
I gladly pay MORE for clean energy. I went out and bought and installed solar connected to a grid tie inverter. But in reality I end up paying less because it significantly reduces my electrical bill as it runs the meter backwards during the day. In the middle of the summer with the AC cranking it makes up for 1/2 the electricity I use for the AC. so it will pay it's self back in about 3 more years. after that it's free money.
unfortunately most of my fellow countrymen are not smart enough to handle their money and do this. I have had friends look at me and not understand the whole payback thing. they get stuck on the "You paid $5000 to put solar on your house and you will pay an electric bill?" They cant understand that monthly bill reduction = money saved.
Which makes me sad, I though I had smarter friends.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And a study done by Nature Climate Change... we don't even need to ponder that... Right?
Are happy to charge way, way more for 'clean' energy. They are quite happy to charge everyone out the ying-yang for anything they can brand as 'green', even if the prices they charge have no baring on the actual cost.
What you pay and what energy costs no longer have any baring. It is long, LONG past time that the US tears open the chest of the energy companies, rips out the profit motive, and chops off funding for fossil fuels. Take these bucking-broncos and turn them into docile geldings and then we can change the world.
I choose to pay about 25% more for my electricity to have 100% renewable. The extra $20 a month isn't a big deal to me, and while I'm not a dirty enviro-hippy, I do think its a matter of being responsible. I can afford to pay extra for it, so I do.
People choosing to do things like that (buy clean electricity, the people who bought the early hybrid cars, people buying the pure electric and extended range electric cars etc) help to fund the growth of the technology where it can become ubiquitous. (Or, as another example, the people who pay $250k for a ride on Virgin Galactic -- its all the same.)
A few years back I spent some time in Romania. My first impression of the country was "Miami without emissions controls". Everyone smoked in Romania at the time, and outside there was the constant smell of diesel exhaust. By the end of a week there my lungs actually hurt. After that, I appreciate the achievement that someplace like Downtown New York City has made in having breathable air. I wonder if you asked citizens of Beijing if they'd be willing to pay more for energy in exchange for significantly improved air quality, how many of them would say yes.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Where places like Denmark have tripled their power prices to the most expensive there is, with a 20% impact from Wind. (Its also not really 20%, as most wind power gets exported for free to Norway..).
Germany has very expensive electricity, and a huge bill from Wind turbines and solar.
In short, there is no technology other than nuclear and hydro (and the USA is out of hydro) that can power the country to an '80%' level without bankrupting nearly everyone.
To paraphrase Jack Handy "It's easy to sit there and say you'd like to have clean energy. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that clean energy."
Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. You want to measure whether people will ACTUALLY do something? Measure the people who actually sign up. Not the people who SAY they will when they know they won't have to follow through.
What the article doesn't say is that most of those who identify themselves as democrats are either unemployed or members of a labor union (which means they're getting paid more than they're worth) - so of course they're willing to pay a "premium" for clean energy... the unions will just demand more money to compensate and the unemployed are uneffected.
Please price your bullshit energy-subsidised boondoggles appropriately.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You might be interested in this infographic.
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
As it turns out, the world is remarkably large.
I see your infographic and raise you a Randall:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2011/11/22/xkcd-the-cost-of-electricity/
I pay extra income tax to send my country's military forces halfway around the world, to provide security for privately-owned oil tankers full of privately-owned oil to pass through the Persian Gulf. I pay extra income tax in order to provide non-humanitarian "foreign aid" to several other governments in the oil-rich area, just to keep them (somewhat) friendly.
Even if I opt out of using subsidized oil, I don't get to opt out of paying for the subsidy. Why would I pay even more to subsidize Yet Another competing energy source? (Well, ok, let's not get fanatical about that .. I understand that we've all come to an agreement to subsidize coal by allowing the plants that burn it to dump their CO2 into the public atmosphere as an externality (there's the subsidy) instead of making them plant forests to soak it up, but coal isn't really a direct competitor to oil; it's used differently so by subsidizing both, I'm not really paying to back two sides against each other, which would be silly.)
Can we just get the Central Committee's existing government-planned subsidy payments transferred? Why does the politburo always go with oil and coal in their five year plans? I'd be willing to do a subsidy re-assignment, at least short-term. (Long-term.. well, actually I'm unsure about the wisdom of even having a Central Committee and all this economic planning, but that's another topic.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Considering that "dirty" energy sources are going to continue to go up in price anyways, and people will happily pay it because the alternative will be to not have said energy at all, I'm not sure why they'd only be happy to pay a little more for clean energy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
After my IT consulting company cratered under the weight of the economy, I got involved with an Energy Supply Company, that I will not spam you with. Now that I've gathered a few hundred customers, who are all given the option of having their bills go down using traditional energy sources or having their bills go up using Green-e Certified energy (wind power here in NY) exactly ZERO chose to pay an extra $0.02 per KWh to go green.
This is exactly right. A few days ago this article came out that showed, quite dramatically, the effect existing Solar photovoltaics have had on wholesale electricity prices in Germany--it has essentially chopped off the top of the price curve.
Solar produces best at the peak of the day, which is exactly when spot prices for electricity peak, so your payback is even faster than average electricity prices would indicate. And the amazing thing is that even without taking that consideration into account a payback period of, say, 5 years is still pretty trivial when you're gonna own the house for 30 years.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
This cannot be reinforced enough, humans only have so much mental bandwidth. We have habits and routines that don't require significant mental effort, freeing up "cycles" to deal with more demanding tasks, and when your life is stable it is very hard for people to continue to override those subconscious programs.
I was recently at a pediatric subspecialty conference (Yes, I'm an MD, thus my anony-mouse posting) and in a section on childhood obesity, a recent paper was briefly discussed. They looked at the ability of people to make "healthy" choices with and without distractions. I can't find the paper now (Not at my desk) but, IIRC, when people only had to choose a healthy meal, without any other distractions or tasks, most people could make "healthy" choices. But with a task as simple as remembering a sequence of random numbers, a significant number of subjects wouldn't make the "healthy" choice. They just couldn't free up the bandwidth to do so. Which puts a spin on the obesity epidemic, doesn't it?
I know *I've* had countless situations where I've made the "easy" choices, or the "quick" choice because I was stressed or distracted or busy, rationalizing that "it's just this once, it's not worth the effort," and I'm (damn me but this will sound arrogant) far better positioned to make smart choices than the average consumer. Discarding modesty (which is hard, because I have a hard time *believing* this about myself) I'm rather clever, financially comfortable (Doing the math, I'm damn near the accursed "1%"), with little debt, a stable job, a beloved spouse in a stable relationship, I'm frankly one of the BEST people in the world to make smart, well thought out, well planned decisions.
And I still screw it up, more often than not. My wife and I are a good team, and we can catch a lot of bad decisions between the two of us, but we are, frankly, a rare pairing.
When you look at the "average" citizen and the amount of money and effort that is spent to bypass or just plain wear down their psychological defenses and routines, we don't have a damn chance. SOMETHING else has got to change, because people are people. Wonderful, irritating, brilliant, stupid people.
Look up the book "Who Really Cares?"
Conservatives are more generous than liberals in all sorts of categories. Donating time to charities to donating blood.
The cause seems to be that when you think it is the government's responsibility to help people, you are less willing to help people. Personally, I think focusing on the government being the main source of help turns people into greedy narcissists only concerned about how much they are getting. You don't have to worry about helping others because it isn't your responsibility.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
that ensure that I can put gas in my tank which is required to get me to work, my kids to school, and allows my family to have the occasional family outing. You know, actually live free and enjoy that freedom.
I see. And the folks in the US who can't afford a car are not free.
And the millions and millions of people who can do exactly the same thing in Saudi Arabia, China, N. Korea and Singpore are just as free as you?
You confuse Convenience with Freedom, sir.
With a big fossil fuel plant or a hydro dam, you get 90% or more of the rated output, and outages are rare.
With a big solar PV plant, you get 1/3 to 1/4 the rated maximum output, and outages happen nightly
With a big wind farm, you get 30% of rated maximum, if you're lucky, and long periods of calm happen more frequently than you'd like.
For example, England has been working on wind power for the last decade or so. The results have not been good.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
A tax scheme is the first step toward control - you can easily see the tax code changing for different classes of "churches" depending on how close they toe the governement line. Won't accept gay clergy? higher taxes for you!
The problem with taxing anything is "how" - do you tax reciepts? that is, going to church is subject to a "sales tax" - 6% of your donation goes to the government? or by "profit" ((revenue - expenses)*.06)? what counts as expense in that case? or just a fixed fee? or fee-per-sq.ft.? or fee per member?
Generally, I would prefer all "non-profits" to disappear and become conventional corporations, subject to the (revenue-expense)*x tax rate, plus property taxes. However, I come from a background that sees a church as a group of people, rather than a building...
What a load of propagandist bullshit designed to solicit empathy from calmatistic fatalists and fool the rest into thinking there really is something we can do to "save the planet". Not gonna happen. The measly "energy savings" from say a CFL is nothing compared to the resource drain a global population increase is and will have. Besides, there is no reason a CFL for example needing to cost more than a standard incandescent.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
And an equally large proportion of Americans are willing to engage in silly, time-wasting rituals that have been sold to them by priests and ministers as a way of ensuring they get into "heaven" when they die. These rituals are typically sold to people by making them feel bad about themselves for not doing the rituals. Guilt can make people do awfully irrational things.
Similarly, the environmentalists have done a great job guilting people into feeling bad about themselves unless they waste their money on "green," too.
I support clean energy---when it provides a material benefit to people: For example, when it's cheaper, or when it's more sustainable, or when it lessens dependency on centralized infrastructure---but not merely when someone tries to make me feel bad about us "ruining the planet" with carbon dioxide and pollution.
Liberty in your lifetime
Randall's estimated cost of buying enough solar panels to power US homes for one year (based on extrapolating from 2005 data and California usage) doesn't really address the issue I thought we were talking about, which is that the original poster thinks solar panels can't produce a useful amount of power because they take up too much space.
However, I love XKCD and welcome any chance to link to Randall's work! So good job there.
PS: Bio-generated natural gas is the fuel of the future. It's carbon-neutral, it scales with population, it's possible to create it anywhere on Earth, and we already have all the infrastructure we need to distribute and use it. It's the cheapest, safest, least-polluting option, and it doesn't require militarized central facilities or poisoning the water table.
Here's a theory: conservatives donate time and money to charity to assuage their guilt over championing a system that inordinately rewards the rich, screws the lower classes, and generally prevents social mobility. Personally, I think that denying a government role in protecting the most vulnerable members of society is a convenient way of ignoring problems too big to be solved by individual charity. Maybe if their token gestures impress Jesus, it'll make up for their selfish political policies in heaven.
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Except for preventing malaria, helping control overpopulation, & providing funding for immunologists, sickle cell anemia has never solved anything.
researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES"
Translation: Researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and paranoid Republicans were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES.
The interesting question to me about this is always how much of a Church's revenue flows back out as social works.
If you sincerely believed that the existing governments were about to collapse and that the world would fall under the rule of a heavenly kingdom, wouldn't helping people learn about the coming kingdom count as social work?
If a church uses the money to build a more beautiful sactuary, or a recreation center that primarily benefits the members, then it's not much more charitable than paying a monthly fee to Bally's or a country club.
I don't know about the finances of other religious groups, but the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses separates the congregation's donations into three categories:
The books of Jehovah's Witnesses are open. You can go into any Kingdom Hall and look at a report of amounts contributed to and paid from each category before the public talk every Sunday.
From cheaper, cleaner, more secure, coal power plants. Peak coal is a long ways off, peak oil already happened. Nuclear still costs too much and now solar is cheaper and faster to build than nuclear. In a few years grid power storage could be viable if the big power industries do not buy off enough government to delay it.
The grid should be government owned and managed like the roads. Power generators and users would operate on it similar to the markets built upon the "free" transit infrastructure. Coal power will not compete for much longer against solar power when it loses its grid monopoly power to undermine democracy and force subsidies funded by the public. Let coal compete on an even marketplace against the others without corruption and you just watch... but 1st you have to remove them from owning the grid, 2nd you have to LIMIT how much power 1 company can generate (because we have too much concentrated power which again undermines democracy.)
We have approximately $6 TRILLION needed to redo the USA power grid, it will take a long long time to do that - hopefully people come to their senses and do it smart (and I don't mean "smart grid" but something decentralized and open over some of silly ideas I've been hearing about - I'd rather my fridge did not talk to the grid but my solar panels got paid a fair up to the minute rate without the power company screwing me over at every chance.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Even if this article wasn't pure bullshit.
Who has changed the laws of the road to allow higher amp electric bike hubs? Quads, Trikes, Bikes... Nothing... Silence. Even if you manage to buy them at $500 + S&H , they are Regulated to holy crap and treated as off road bullshit.
Who has changed the laws of the homeowners association?
Who when they search for deep cycle batteries or copper wire or true sine wave inverters switches amazon, or ebay to "most expensive first?"
Who has bough a panel based on price per watt and then realized they need a hell of a lot more investment than just that panel? A way to wire it, A way to mount it, and on and on.
Here's the thing.
Alternative Energy is not the same as going green.
Alternative Energy requires people understand physics, electronics, and math. Not everyone can work with it. It'll be a disaster to be forced on everyone by the UN and the fucking greentards when "NOT EVERYONE CAN WORK WITH IT" - that's par for the corps for population reduction. If you are living in stacked houses, your not going to have solarpanels which belong to you. They won't be green, cause you will pay someone else to deal with the entire thing, that is if you live on the top floor. Which you don't.
Agenda 21 comes with "Going Green" and that so pisses people off that no progress is made over time. Go look at the green blogs, the same fucking questions are still being asked as they were two years ago, four years ago. Solutions ARE NOT THERE.
Also, being subsidized, at any point along the path from raw material, manufacturing, transportation, installation, isn't green, it's socialism, and when you get right down to it theft when these subsidized solar manufacturers go under. Still the panels aren't cheap, they won't EVER be cheap.
Go look at PESN and you see this stuff still isn't READY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE IN A DEPRESSION.
no matter what you eco fascists say, your alarmist climate science is fucked, and your subsidized warez aren't what you claim. They are overpriced, and there are SCAMS out there. Recently... re: Stirling engine blueprints "power your whole house" - yeah right.
If you want to design a solar generator then just do it, but stop with the Agenda 21 crap, they need to get the hell out of our local city councils NOW.
These organizations are pushing AGENDA 21 at your local city council level.
NADO - National Association of Development Organizations
NADO is an NGO with "consultative status" with the UN.
ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability
EDA - Economic Development Administration
You don't think your on the list?
http://www.icleiusa.org/about-iclei/members/member-list
Not in the USA? We can fix that too!
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=11454
Keep in mind iclei creates stupid projects like say an automatic gate at an airport, then all the city has to do in return, is tighten the Agenda 21 goals down on the people. Iclei urges officials to break their sworn oath to the Constitution by signing UN treaties, or make bad laws, at all levels city, state, federal to roll out the planned population reduction. The local city council doesn't give a shit about you. Meanwhile city hall will fill up with occupy people "who don't seem to have any focused goal" creating a bunch of noise for anyone trying to take on this problem.
I have a tip my grandmother told me for the #occupy people
"The unplanned life leads to disaster"
This is one of those things, which really don't matter if you believe it or not. It's kind of like water, you know, wet.
"...Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance..."
Uhh... someone want to clarify? Or are they simply misusing Independent to mean third-party?
His isn't comparing like-for-like though. He uses the price for each technology today. Nuclear benefited from massive subsidy in terms of research and development that drove the cost down, while the cost both types of solar is still falling rapidly. Solar thermal in particular will dramatically drop in price in the next few years.
There is also a better chance of getting a good return on money invested in certain kinds of energy because it is in demand and can be widely exported (especially to emerging economies).
He includes costs for coal from health damage and pollution, but then says he doesn't have figures for dealing with nuclear waste, clean-up, insurance, security and so forth. The US puts a limit of 40 years on nuclear site decommissioning, but that only requires the reactor to be entombed in concrete. In the UK where the site is returned to its natural state ready for re-use it takes us 80-90 years...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
How are those two groups different?
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make install -not war
So? Germany and Denmark also have among the highest gasoline and fuel oil prices. Because their economies actually charge closer to what these energy sources cost.
Unlike in socialist Republican paradise USA, where the government for a century has been wealth transferring from all the proles into the subsidized wallets of the oil/gas/nukes cronies who run the place, keeping fuel prices seeming low by separating the subsidies and costs of damage from the retail price.
Geothermal could replace all the coal/gas/nukes making electricity, and power our vehicles. But because nuke fetishists always insist that "only nukes" this or that, the nukes cronies get all the subsidies and smart alternatives like geothermal languish.
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make install -not war
I can't figure out what your horse in the race is. Space based power is so obviously a bad idea given current launch costs that you must have some angle. Do you work in the space industry? Do you work for a company that wants subsidies? Or are you so enamored with the Star Tram system that you hope you can manipulate people into funding it this way? Come on, come clean.
In my arrogant opinion, avoiding oil the key. Oil comes from extremely oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We threaten Israel's enemies militarily (thus helping increase the already-too-large US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers, subsidise economic cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol. Not only for the environment, but for safety.
This is more important than subsidising solar. Solar is already reaching grid parity as soon as 2015 (check the Wikipedia article on grid parity), and then it will continue its rapid evolution and become cheaper than coal. Therefore, market forces are enough and there's no need to waste on solar tax money that can go to subsidising economic cars.