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The Koch Brothers Attack On Solar Energy
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "The NYT writes in an editorial that for the last few months, the Koch brothers and their conservative allies in state government have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, by pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive. 'The coal producers' motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nation's electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar arrays. But given new regulations on power-plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants, and the urgent need to reduce global warming emissions, the future clearly lies with renewable energy.' For example, the Arizona Public Service Company, the state's largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes (video) by raising electric rates. The ad tried to link the requirement to President Obama. Another Koch ad likens the renewable-energy requirement to health care reform, the ultimate insult in that world. 'Like Obamacare, it's another government mandate we can't afford,' the narrator says. 'That line might appeal to Tea Partiers, but it's deliberately misleading,' concludes the editorial. 'This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities, which to its organizers is much more important than clean air and the consequences of climate change.'"
Seems like it is only a matter of time until coal power goes away. It will be a long time, granted, but in the next decade or two solar will get so cheap that the impact on traditional centralized generation will be quite severe. I guess they are watching what is happening in Germany with horror and realizing that is their future too.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...that you disapprove just as much of Michael Bloomberg (another billionaire that spends a lot of money trying to influence politics) when he decides to buy a "grass roots" effort as you do when the Koch Brothers try to do so?
Or does the choice of cause mean that one billionaire trying to influence politics is worse than the other billionaire trying to influence politics?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Everywhere I go its the democrats whining about the evil billionaires giving money to the republicans and republicans whining about the evil billionaires giving money to the Democrats.
Shut the fuck up.
You're both getting big donations from billionaires... stop pretending like they don't have their own interests and axes to grind.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
America is being made worse by what the rich choose to fight.
They're more interested in protecting their own (sizable) wealth than they are about the future of humanity, the environment, or anything else.
These assholes should be suspended over the smokestack of a coal plant for about 6 months.
^this.
Where is Captain Planet when we need him?!
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Which Koch brother is this?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Need a Venn Diagram for the subsidies that the Koch brothers oppose.
Draw a large circle, and write "government subsidies of any kind" in it. Then, draw a larger circle around it, and label it "subsidies that the Koch brothers oppose.
Yes, the Koch brothers oppose solar subsidies, because they are subsidies.
It is also disingenuous to say they want surtaxes on solar. While it may be true, the context is that there are surtaxes on other forms of energy, and they want a level playing field.
This is a very bad summary.
They are not against energy subsidies, they are against renewable, and in particular solar, subsidies. They love their own subsidies, which means the title is very correct.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Renewable energy has tripled the electricity costs in Germany and Spain, in fact, it's so inefficient now that it has made the option of generating your own energy the best one, not because it's cheap (it's still frigging expensive), but because the subsidized renewables have made the grid absurdly expensive and unreliable.
Both Germany and Spain governments have reacted to the individuals and industry fleeing the grid by passing laws that punish you if you generate your own energy. This has made industry to move out of those countries. Individuals, however, can't leave the country that easily, specially the elders and low-income citizens, who are the main victims of this "green energy revolution".
Note that Obama is doing exactly the same things that socialist president Zapatero did in Spain. His goverment bankrupted Spain so hard and so fast, that his government and the next one keep faking the PIB so that people don't notice that their situation is worse than during the spanish civil war.
When the Koch brothers tried to attach climate change, we got the B.E.S.T. study. If this is equally counterproductive we'll be running the world on solar power within a week.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Can you spot the irony in all this? These corporations that are fighting against government subsidized green energy are all those who have themselves grown enormously through different types of government subsidies.
It's amazing how well the twisted corporationist logic sinks into the general public. The corporations on one hand speak for capitalism and free market, but on the other they cling to government subsidies and form monopolies effectively wiping out any competition on their markets.
Roosevelt once stated that this type of centralization of power in the private sector that corporations have today, could eventually lead to fascism. In some way, I don't think he was too far off.
Really, does anybody buy into it?
... working to advance the idiocy embodied by Harry Reid.
If the author really cared about money affecting politics, he/she would have brought up Steyer.
Instead, more drivel.
Bullshit, in this they are against stupid laws trying to handwave the economic reality because "hurrr durrr green energy!!".
These subsidies for solar mean higher prices for everybody else. Solar users using 0 net energy and getting retail prices for their output are a net loss and it's not like maintenance and protecting the grid from sudden surges in panel output is free.
Think about it, they are using the grid as their personal battery for $0 which would set them back thousands of dollars otherwise, drawing and pushing energy when it's convenient. All the baseline capacity, all the gear required to stabilize erratic flow - it's all on the energy company and the solar users don't pay for it in their bills, dirty peons who can't afford teslas and panels on the roof do.
The IRS considers grants and credits for self generation as taxable income. These windfall profits the homeowners are pulling down will increasingly help fund our government. National policy must include a money pump or it will fail.
True Grit, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading...this is your calling! Not bickering about energy!
traditional energy is getting hit at peak times in Australia by solar because when solar is at it's most efficient making energy is also when traditional plants (coal/gas) is selling their power at the most expensive peak rate. the article has explanation of how energy producers make 25% of profits from 36 hours of supply
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-04-27/5406022
it also shows that they have invested huge money in "the grid " when peeps are using the infrastructure less and they still want to get paid for huge asset so jack up prices for everyone the less you use the more you pay.
it seems the existing status quo is not going to go quietly
...strike where they are needed, like where the Koch brothers are....
How could you force people to stop owning slaves! That's wrong!
How do they mean higher prices for everyone else? There is no evidence to support that claim.
Solar does not typically use net 0 energy, and they do not get retail prices, they get wholesale prices, and then still have to pay retail for the energy they use at night, meaning they have to use much less energy in the evening, than during the days, to be able to have a net 0.
In addition since they only get wholesale prices the energy companies are making money off of the energy that the customers generate.
Lastly even if a customer is net 0 there is no evidence that they cost other individuals a penny.
So the person spewing the bullshit seems to be you
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Seems like it is only a matter of time until coal power goes away. It will be a long time, granted, but in the next decade or two solar will get so cheap that the impact on traditional centralized generation will be quite severe.
I hope you are correct but I think you are being wildly optimistic. Coal isn't going to disappear anytime in the next 40+ years baring some unexpected technological breakthrough. The US and China have HUGE amounts of coal and can get to it relatively cheaply. Solar will not catch up on a cost basis without continued subsidies for an unclear amount of time. Coal has an economic advantage because power plants that utilize coal are not required to pay the full economic cost. Even the cleanest coal plants are able to dump significant amounts of pollutants into the environment without any economic direct consequences. To level the playing field coal will need to be required to account for these costs and I don't really see that happening in any reasonably foreseeable configuration of political leadership in most of the world. There simply are too many people making too much money from fossil fuels for that to be likely to occur.
Solar is advancing relatively fast but it's no panacea and absent some energy storage breakthrough it's of limited use when the sun isn't shining. We should definitely advance solar as far as it will take us but it's not going to solve the entire problem alone. Same issue with wind. Very useful but difficult to predict availability on short time scales. Nuclear fission is current the only non-fossil fuel power source we have with sufficient generating capacity to serve as a base load in place of fossil fuel sources in places not blessed with hydro or geo-thermal close by. Obviously fission carries its own set of problems which are well known.
I guess they are watching what is happening in Germany with horror and realizing that is their future too.
Germany is spending a LOT of money to subsidize solar. It's unclear whether this is economically sensible though I do hope that their experiment proves a success. However there are (too) many here in the US who regard that sort of subsidy as blasphemy and will do everything they can to fight it. The fact that many of these same people will ironically support subsidies (both explicit and implicit) for fossil fuel production will never come up because they are supported by that industry.
Shills from coal industry in Germany talk about German Energiewende like about manna from heaven. They're massively building up coal and firing up all the old plants as much as they can becuase of it and raking in massive profits.
If I could be seen to be shilling for anything, it's not shutting down fission in Germany and replacing it with coal, as Energiewende has basically done.
To quote from the article
"The coal producers’ motivation is clear: They see solar and wind energy as a long-term threat to their businesses. That might seem distant at the moment, when nearly 40 percent of the nation’s electricity is still generated by coal, and when less than 1 percent of power customers have solar arrays. (It is slightly higher in California and Hawaii.)"
I do not think that the coal producers motive (and ower plant operators) is about preventing solar power, it is more about not being willing to subsidize the competition. Why should these guys have to finance their competition? This is not about keeping them out, but rather more of a case of Ford not wanting to pay a tax to subsidize Telsa.
You appear to feel that when an individual produces something, they are entitled to lower payments for said product than when it is produced by a company.
You can read, watch, and listen to the unedited versions of the two white men telling you what they know about the Negro just about anywhere on the internet.
Are solar users using zero net energy? I haven't seen that this is the case for most people I know with solar.
They also use energy. I think there are few who actually produce more energy than they use.
During the day, their solar arrays add energy to the grid when the need for energy is the highest so it seems that those with solar arrays are providing a service by supplying energy to the grid when energy use is at peak.
Then, at night solar users pull energy off of the grid. But it comes at reduced rates since they added energy to the grid all day.
This is all negotiated into the rates one receives.
Seems to me that in this instance the power companies just want to discourage people from getting solar arrays by being allowed to add a nice hefty tax to solar users. If they were having problems with maintaining infrastructure for solar users, why not just adjust the buy-back rate???
This to me looks like a special up-front tax make people think twice before installing solar. Nobody wants to install solar and then have energy bill go up too. Especially, when solar users are providing free energy to the energy companies for some reduced rates on the energy they are using.
So your position is that the Koch brothers are for improved fairness in taxation by imposing new taxes on emerging industries? I don't believe that for one second. They see a threat to their profit and they are attacking. I have no idea how you can try to pretend this is benevolence.
Why I get downmodded just for pointing out the objective facts that the only countries that have LAWS against self-generating your energy are the ones that heavily subsidized their renewables, AND the ones that tripled their electricity bill in record time? Is it because you can't handle the truth, because cognitive dissonance is breaking your candy world, or because I happen to say the same thing that a Koch brother, therefore I have to be silenced?
Last week, Spain's ex-minister of Industry publicly acknowledged that the electricity bill has raised solely because of the subsidies to renewables, and that it was a mistake to directly charge the consumers, because that made the citizens aware of the scam. A very interesting and revealing interview here in which talks about the economic interests of his own party to heavily subsidize a solar bubble.
Using locally produced solar energy in a northern area that sees peak energy usage in the middle of winter is not really a good idea
They don't use air conditioning in Germany? Solar isn't going to fix every problem but even if it can solve just part of the problem then it remains a good idea. Why would you not want to use relatively clean solar energy for at least those times when it is available? The only credible argument against solar power is an economic one. No it will not be able to supply all our power needs but neither is any other single source of fuel. They all have drawbacks of one sort or another. What seems abundantly clear however is that any technology that allows us to reduce use of fossil fuels at reasonable economic cost is a good thing.
There is this stupid tendency here on slashdot to dismiss partial solutions to any problem as unworkable. Solar does not have to supply all our energy needs to still be a good idea. The economics of it still need to make sense but there is no principled reason why it should not be a significant part of the energy supply equation.
I can only speak for Denmark, but the wind and solar producers get only about 1/3 of retail for the power they put on the grid. In times where they consume, they pay retail for what they receive.
The power companies apparently make a lot of money on this asymmetrical exchange.
Bullshit, in this they are against stupid laws trying to handwave the economic reality because "hurrr durrr green energy!!".
Non-green energy has externalities which are not directly attributable to the producers of that energy, which makes its price inconsistent with its true costs.
Things like increased health costs on the population affected by, say, coal plant smoke are borne by society as a whole. There are also other factors which are more difficult to put a price on, but affect society as well: sound pollution, destructive mining of otherwise green land, climate change, and so on.
This is why green energy subsidies make sense. It's a way for society to balance those costs somewhat and in a way pay for a better life.
But I don't know why I'm even replying to you. Your "hurrr durrr green energy!!" comment says everything about your position and your willingness to change it, not to mention the level of your maturity.
I'm replying to a -1, but it has to be said...
you need to look up how much subsidies oil gets before you make that argument again.
I don't know why these Koch fellows are all up in arms. They are an energy company, like any other and so stand to make huge amounts of money as more super expensive renewable energy comes on line. Guess who owns all these renewable projects - GE, BP, Shell, Suncor, NextEra, etc. If it sounds like another company, it probably isn't.
The only reason that the Koch brothers are doing all of this is - wait for it - they have a conscious.
A wholesale turn to the Greenpeace vision of No Coal, No Gas, No Nukes, Wind + Solar + Biomass, would mean $2/kWh power, and laws to prevent people from unplugging from the grid (as a home depot generator running on $4 gasoline is well under a $1/kWh). It would also mean the end of things like schools and healthcare and road maintenance, as all of your money would be going to the green industrial revolution.
and they do not get retail prices, they get wholesale prices
That depends on where you're located. In some places you only get wholesale, in others you get paid retail, and in some you can even get more than retail (TVA pays retail + $0.04/kWh for solar for the first 10 years after a system is installed: http://dsireusa.org/incentives/incentive.cfm?Incentive_Code=TN02F).
In addition, how you get paid also varies. Some places only allow you to offset your usage with what you generate for that current billing cycle. Other let you build up credits that can be used to offset your usage for a greater period of time, and others will actually pay you for your excess power.
I happen to live in an area that pays retail and lets you save credits for 12 months to offset your usage.
...that you disapprove just as much of Michael Bloomberg (another billionaire that spends a lot of money trying to influence politics) when he decides to buy a "grass roots" effort as you do when the Koch Brothers try to do so?
Or does the choice of cause mean that one billionaire trying to influence politics is worse than the other billionaire trying to influence politics?
Well, one difference is the intentions.
The Kocks' intentions are (AFAICT) to increase profits for themselves, and externalize costs to society in the process: both environemntal and and healthcare (increased illness, premature deaths, etc.). They're also stiffling innovation by trying to smother a nascent industry that competes with their own established industry.
Bloomberg does not seem to be in it for profit, but rather trying to reduce the suffering that comes from inappropriate firearm use and the pain that communities feel from events like the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
So it may not be the action (financially/politically support a 'cause') that people are objecting to, but rather the end goal of that support (personal profit, versus societal good).
Of course some folks think Bloomberg is trying to destory the American Way of Life(tm) (i.e., Second Ammendment), and that the Kochs brothers are trying to Support Capitalism.
It's not immediately clear to me why the Koch brothers should be against renewable energy. I can certainly understand why they would oppose "incentives" (read: subsidies) for renewable energy, and if that's going on then there's nothing to see here. But if we suppose they're motivated by a desire to enrich themselves and not a love of coal per se, then why couldn't they just invest heavily in solar and then exert all their shady political influence to make that investment extra-profitable?
Fossil fuels will become obsolete sooner or later, and the world will be better off for it.
While I would love that to be true, what technology do you think is going to make that happen? Solar and wind cannot do the job by themselves due to their unpredictability on time scales shorter than months. Nuclear fission is feasible but the waste and operational safety concerns make it too much of a political and economic hot potato. Geothermal and hydro simply aren't available in a lot of locations in sufficient quantity. Transmission losses force power generation to need to be relatively close to point of use and there is no economically viable form of superconductivity. Nuclear fusion and other more exotic power sources remain perpetually 25 years away.
I'd love to say that fossil fuels are doomed but I don't see any reasonably likely scenario in at least the next 40 years where that could possibly be true. Sure we might see a breakthrough in fusion or energy storage that would change the equation significantly but we cannot presume such a breakthrough will occur. We absolutely should maximize our use of solar and wind. Nuclear could be a bigger piece of the energy pie. Fossil fuels should be regulated to ensure that they have to pay the full cost of their use including all pollution they cause. But will all that occur? I doubt it.
Either you pay for the lines feeding your house, or you only get wholesale rates for your power. My water bill is that way, I pay a flat monthly fee, plus an additional cost for water. I don't see anyone whining about the poor being affected.
If someone with solar doesn't like it, they can go to a completely self-contained system with batteries that doesn't feed anything back.
Government subsidies create unfair marketing systems that artificially reduce one cost while moving it somewhere else and hiding it. In the US, we pay lower prices for food because of agriculture subsidies. But, in the end. we still pay the 'real' cost because of increases in taxes. Plus all of the administrative overhead that goes into managing the subsidies. Better to eliminate the subsidies, lower the taxes, and let the market set the prices. If the government then needs to supplement the food stamp system, it can do that.
Plus, subsidies seem to never go away. Some special-interest lobbying group somewhere manages to present biased statistics 'proving' that the subsidies are still needed.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
How could paying for subsidies that don't benefit you not raise your cost? Electric companies bill every customer usage-based fees for solar, and the fixed cost of the grid is also billed to customers based on usage. Of course the electric company is guaranteed to make at least the same profit, but customers not getting free sunshine are going to be the losers
The problem with AZ is that the power company was paying 4 times the going rate to buy power from solar panel users.
In essence making the rest of the consumers pay for people's solar panels.
If it were the going rate, I would have no issue with solar panels, but why should I pay more so someone else can have solar panels?
"claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes"
i.e. the Koch brothers...
If you limit contributions to a sane level it wouldn't matter if it came from people or corporations. It would max out so fast that a politician wouldn't feel beholden to something they're not really in favor of because even if they lost from a segment of the pool they'd still have plenty more to choose from.
It seems to me that not switching to wind, solar and nuclear and not putting oodles of funds into fusion research will have not only a negative impact on the human species in general, but a huge negative impact on long-term profits. By fighting clean power they are being very focused on short-term gains, not long-term profits. Just how profitable do they think that rolling blackouts will be?
I'm all for installing solar on every new home, and vertical windmills wherever the local climate supports it and encouraging clean power adoption through tax breaks rather than forcing it by requiring it. If they are first to achieve truly efficient (80%+ efficient) solar panels, THAT would lead toward LONG-TERM profitability. Fighting it is only a short-term money grab at best.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Which lowers the price of oil for everyone to some extent. Lower prices for solar only benefit some people
"Company, the state's largest utility, funneled large sums through a Koch operative to a nonprofit group that ran an ad claiming net metering would hurt older people on fixed incomes by raising electric rates"
What's astonishing is that I've had people say that to me.
I had no idea this was a talking point being funded by a lobby group.
Since apparently they have zero business training, let me explain what they should do. When a competitor arrives and you know you'll eventually take over, copy or buy them. In this case, copy them. Coal will fail. They should be investing in factories that make solar panels and wind turbines.
Like hell. Watch the unedited clips. (Well, of Bundy, at least. I'm not sure there are unedited/original clips of Sterling yet.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
In the vast majority of cases the subsidiaries come from the federal/state government, not the electric company...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
depends, is 4 times the going rate more than what they charged? Please cite that.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I don't care about all the B.S. in this thread.
I think solar panels on homes is a good idea. Distributed generation just seems smart to me.
Batteries, or using an electric car as a battery to load balance also seems smart to me.
As we try new ways to power our homes, the technology will mature and become cheaper and more efficient.
I wish all that money blown on Solyndra and other boondoggles was instead made available to home owners as low cost loans to add solar panels and/or a wind turbine to their homes.
Where I live on the New Jersey shore, such a combination along with a good battery system should be sufficient to meet a homes needs.
I've been trying to get in to one of those programs that say they will lease a set of panels to me, but my roof is just a bit too tiny for it to be cost effective.
I'm hoping solar panel efficiency will rise just a bit in the next few years to make it feasible.
Fossil fuels will become obsolete sooner or later, and the world will be better off for it.
While I would love that to be true, what technology do you think is going to make that happen? Solar and wind cannot do the job by themselves due to their unpredictability on time scales shorter than months.
Up to about 10% energy market penetration, solar is fine; it is primarily producing power during peak times. With relatively modest changes in usage patterns, this could go up to about 30% without disruption. Since solar is under 1% now, that represents 3000% growth, so I'd say there's a lot of growth possible.
Beyond that, you either need significant changes in usage patterns, or else energy storage. But this is not a physics problem; there are hundreds of storage technologies that could work. It's an economic problem: making storage systems cheap. And, given incentive, economic problems turn out to be something that industry is very good at solving.
--the above is for the developed world. Arguably a much larger problem is the developing world, much of which doesn't have reliable electricity to start with. For this, technologies which produce electricity at low cost only when the sun shines is something that could make a tremendous difference. The huge and intractable problem with carbon emissions is that if the third world moves to using energy at the same rate that the industrialized world does, several billion more people start contributing gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere. Solar (and wind) energy can short-circuit that. This is a huge potential for solar-- produce energy for people who don't currently have an energy infrastructure.
... Fossil fuels should be regulated to ensure that they have to pay the full cost of their use including all pollution they cause. But will all that occur? I doubt it.
Indeed. Economics calls these "externalities"-- cases where the company producing energy gets the profit, but the damages are spread out across the world.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Transportation. Those brothers should be hung.
As should anyone assisting them. What else about our energy cost id fake is what everyone should be asking themselves.
And hunt it down and arrest everyone involved and use the death penalty for something it would actually be useful at preventing.
Are solar users using zero net energy?
Depends where they are. In Arizona, New Mexico, southern California, yes, some of them are. Seattle, Toronto, Minneapolis, probably not.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How soon before there is a conflict between solar energy producers and endangered species protection? This report tells of the aviary carnage caused by the new plant in Nevada. Note that this is during the construction phase. There was also a report last year from England where bird watchers were out for a sighting of a species of bird that hadn't been seen in many years - until it promptly flew into a wind turbine.
Since our economy is far less dependent on heavy manufacturing than it used to be, we're not in nearly as much trouble as other nations.
As a percentage of they overall economy yes but in absolute size the US manufacturing sector is enormous. Depending on how you measure it the US manufactures $2-4 Trillion in goods each year which is roughly the size of the entire GDP of Russia. The only country with a manufacturing sector even close to that in size is China. The "death" of manufacturing in the US has been greatly exaggerated. Manufacturing is a large and vital portion of the US economy and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
you need more RAM
Lower prices for solar benefit everyone...First of all it makes solar more affordable to the masses, so that they can buy them where previously they could not, it also allows them to buy energy that has a lower pollution effect on the world, which is a benefit, not to mention the costs to buy solar will drop as well, as there is not a product to process.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Shouldn't the title say `Koch brothers fight Incentives` instead of Solar energy? I bet you a dollar that if there was money to be made in solar power, they'd be hip deep in the middle of it.
The world has never faced a technology which had the potential to take out the entire human ecosystem before.
You mean like nuclear weapons? Perhaps you are not old enough to remember the Cold War. We've had the capability to destroy the entire planet for roughly 60 years and on a few occasions have come disturbingly close to doing it. Fossil fuel pollution is a serious threat but it's not the first technology in a position to wipe us out entirely. Fossil fuel pollution has only become an acute threat in the last few decades though that should not be interpreted to minimize the seriousness of the problem.
Once again, shocked, shocked that a company is engaged in rent seeking or lobbying to protect their profits. That the government is so much involved in picking winners and losers makes it inevitable that businesses will try and advocate for their piggy-bank. It is cheaper to buy the government (I mean "lobby" of course) than to change your business model. To expect much by way of principle from companies is foolish... Amazon was stridently against on-line sales tax before it started putting bricks and mortar in all taxing jurisdictions, now it is for it because it doesn't want to compete with other companies who aren't having a physical presence outside of North Dakota and don't collect the taxes. Lots of principle there. Would be amusing when Google becomes a much larger ISP and suddenly discovers that Net Neutrality is evil or something because it can become a toll-taker too (just a hypothetical, but could happen)...
How is the NY Times editorial page "News for nerds" anyway? Any editorial targeting the Kochs is more like like "red meat for liberals", and most editorials aren't "news" anyway. That the Koch brothers are the current designated liberal whipping boy is main reason for editorial. Other than that, nothing much to see here far as I can tell... I personally have no beef with solar, or with subsidizing it for a reasonable -- but hopefully limited -- period of time to see if it can become competitive industry.
While they probably are against solar power since it will affect their bottom line, why shouldn't they fight to prevent the government from GIVING money to their competitors? Think about it
1) coal has boatloads of environmental regulations that cost the industry money, and the Obama administration continues to add to them
2) renewable energy sources have gotten billions of government funded research dollars over the last couple of decades (universities, NASA, national labs, etc.)
3) There has been significant military research into renewable energy sources (remote power, reduce fuel supply lines, long flight drones, etc.)
4) I can't even guess how many failed startups were centered around solar power spent a shitton of VC money and had massive tax breaks(which didn't help much because they didn't make money)
And despite all of that burning coal is still cheaper, so there are still incentives being given to end users. I get there is something to be said for reducing cost through manufacturing scalability but at some point you have to step back look at just where(locations and applications) solar really makes sense.
do you realize that main producers of energy get wholesale rates and grid resells it with a markup to pay maintenance, invest and make a profit? Grid companies DON'T WANT the solar energy from consumers if there is a much cheaper, more reliable, hassle free alternative. Laws forcing to buy unneeded energy at full retail prices are pure unadulterated economic bullshit.
The US has the best Free Market (TM) money can buy.
Well, pretty obviously yes. In this universe, anyway.
For example, a billionaire influencing politics so that certain ethnicities are rounded up and placed in offshore torture camps is clearly worse than a billionaire influencing politics so that charities that provide surgery for children with cleft palates are exempt from taxation.
Jebus, I hope you were trolling.
Do you realize that in the vast majority of places the electric company pays the wholesale price?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
sure, there are externalities of coal but that doesn't make solar peachy. Execution matters. These solar subsidies are not extended to the whole populace. They are not at the grid level so everybody gets to enjoy them, they are at the household level, which means their scope is localized to an already well-off people who can afford the investment. People with too much money get subsidies, then EXTERNALIZE the cost of batteries they don't need and the poor are seeing it in their bills. If you are one of people complaining about suppressed aggregate demand because the poor don't have monies, guess what - this won't help.
the Koch brothers
Am I supposed to know who they are?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
like the other dude said, these subsidies are only for well-off people who can afford the investment, the peons get thrown under the bus. If you ever complained about the divide between the haves and the have-nots, guess what - it's the same thing of privatizing the gains by the few, externalizing the costs to many.
a) it is not an "article" It is an editorial and thus opinion.
b) stop taking money from taxes to subsidize installation of solar panels. My school taxes are high enough already thank you.
c) why should a private company be forced to buy and resell your product and assume all the delivery expenses?
d) why should I or anyone else be forced to pay higher electric bills just so you can sell your solar power back to the grid?
Ex: "Learn how you can sell the electricity you generate back to Georgia Power at a premium price, currently 17.00 cents/kWh."
They it seems likely that in those places solar at times might be adding energy to the grid. Do people get paid when they are putting extra energy on the grid or does that energy just flow onto the grid for free?
While there might be trillions of barrels of "oil" in the Earth, little of that is both economically and energetically profitable. When enough investors figure this out, asset prices drop to zero or negative (Used oil platform anyone?) and financing for new equipment dries up as the returns look iffier and iffier.
So, the oil industry does what it does. It buys people at government agencies at the EIA to make the reports look less scary. It google-bombs the net by publishubg hundreds of little stories in small on-line publications where commenting is not present, to reassure naive investors that everything is OK, there will be oil forever and that business as usual will continue.
And it will, until the next economic crash.
You need a certain threshold of economic activity to maintain the current petroleum production industry. Since most of the cheap oil is gone, that threshold is very, very high compared to what it was 50 or 100 years ago when *cheap* oil was easily and widely available. The next economic crash will start the decline of the oil industry in a big way. It won't die for lack of oil. It will die for lack of money.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
As per usual, the sensible option is somewhere in the middle. The people bashing solar power? You're absolutely right; it's a great PARTIAL solution. The people with a pro-coal agenda, trying to attack the alternatives out of fear? To them I say the same thing! Coal is a great PARTIAL solution. If you're worried about your LONG term business model, you better learn to adapt, like all companies have to do over time to remain successful!
I'm looking into solar panels on my new house, in the next few months. But honestly, the more I research it, the more hesitant I become to pull the trigger on the installation right now. I love the concept, but living in a part of Maryland where the cost per kilowatt hour on electricity is pretty low -- solar doesn't always make economic sense. The strongest argument in favor of it is based on future projections; the argument that "15 years from now -- there's a good chance it will cost considerably more for electricity that you're not producing yourself, making it pay off". Unfortunately, there's an equally strong argument saying the public utilities might stop giving you credit for putting electricity back on the grid by then -- erasing much of the potential cost benefit of the installation.
Without spending nearly double the normal installation price, you're not currently able to put in a solar system that actually STORES your generated power to use later. So you're still tied in to the electrical grid, getting all your electricity from it while your panels just earn you credits back for whatever they dump back out onto the grid. If there's a power outage, your power is out despite having solar -- because your panels have to shut off so linemen working on the outage don't get electrocuted from electricity on the grid they weren't expecting (from your panels).
Can you spot the irony in all this? These corporations that are fighting against government subsidized green energy are all those who have themselves grown enormously through different types of government subsidies.
There's no irony, here. This is one group of subsidy recipients arguing that government needs to limit new subsidies in order to be able to afford the ones the receive. Pure self-interest. Irony would be them successfully campaigning against all subsidies, to the point that their own government freebies are withdrawn. The word you're probably looking for is hypocrisy, wherein someone rails against policy benefiting someone else, while praising the same policy when it benefits himself. Irony frequently inspires a chuckle. Hypocrisy frequently inspires disgust.
I get nervous. These guys are akin to the velociraptors from Jurassic Park -- always on the prowl.
I've found that in the last few years my own personal political views have gone further to the left to compensate for the total douchebaggery on offer from the right and their asinine outlooks on humanity and the human condition.
Take, for example, the cost of medical care in the UK. Government spend about $2600 per person and the care is actually pretty good all things considered. Now, in the US, it's $6700. Wouldn't the right wing, wanting to save money, be all over a system that saves taxpayers hard-earned money? I guess not. This is but one instance where the right wing couldn't find their ass with both hands. Also, what part of stupid prevents people like these guys from seeing that clean energy and healthcare are basic to the human condition?
Roosevelt once stated that this type of centralization of power in the private sector that corporations have today, could eventually lead to fascism. In some way, I don't think he was too far off.
Thank you for mentioning Roosevelt. I did a search just now and came up with his address to Congress on curbing monopolies in 1938. I think it gives me more of an idea as to the real reasons for WWII: private power versus public power.
Here is an exerpt:
Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Just like changing the annual funding increase for a program from 10% to 5% isn't a "cut", being opposed to subsidies isn't an "attack" on green energy.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The easy solution for all of this ridiculous behaviour is to enact a federal law making lying illegal. A punishment equal to purgery if the act is committed in the public forum would be sufficient. Perhaps then all these scum sucking spineless cowards would think twice about their first tactic being dishonesty.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That claim is wrong.
Neither do we fire up old coal plants nor do we build new ones in the sense you claim. We build newer plants (which where planned and decided about 30 years ago) to replace older more dirty plants.
So: there is no massive build up, neither in absolute GW nor in percentages
Regarding fission you are wrong, too. Most reactors are still running. And they get replaced by wind power mainly.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
let the Koch brothers screw over the US.
The rest of the world (e.g. Germany, even freakin China), will continue developing alternatives. These alternatives will become cheap enough to be viable. Eventually they'll be cheaper than coal could ever be (since for renewables you don't need the costs of supply lines to transport stuff you dig out of the ground - which also costs money).
Then the rest of the world will have cheaper energy than the US... and your economy will stagnate like any economy does when it hits a resource bottleneck.
Suck it US, you're leadership is betraying you.
I doubt there would be much lobbying if the energy was sold back at the wholesale price and the companies were not forced to eat the whole cost of increased complexity caused by erratic nature of renewables. In some states eg in Arizona the spread is 4x and the companies are forced to buy back the this ridiculously overpriced energy they don't need, with all the hassle where to direct it in order to stay within the grid specs.
Such laws way out of line with economic reality are a pure pie in the sky bullshit and fully deserve to be lobbied against. As the adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Solar panel creation uses many toxic products, chemicals and dangerous gases, including Sulfur Hexaflouride, the MOST POTENT GREENHOUSE GAS... Is it really about the planet, or is it about money?
From Wikipedia - "According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that it has evaluated, with a global warming potential of 23,900 times that of CO2 when compared over a 100-year period."
This is a typical left-wing response to a typical right-wing move: it's hurting the coal industry's profits. This is wrong.
Solar may hurt coal in the long run, but it won't hurt Koch Industries. The adoption is gradual enough and Koch has enough resources that they could move towards that industry if it was profitable. The simple fact is, it is not without government subsidies, hence their argument. A successful business like Koch Industries will move where there is money to be made; they are very diversified in oil (not that much in coal these days, in terms of revenue), and that business will not be hurt as solar is not going to replace oil in cars nor is it going to replace oil in asphalt or polymers, which are key industries Koch operates in. Yes they do have a coal arm, but that can be divested away if solar was profitable enough.
Don't bother arguing it's profitable. I've seen all the models that say it is, and I've worked on 5 different utility scale solar projects that fell apart because they were not. It's always lost in the efficiency of the panels, or the materials cost for solar thermal, or the transmission lines to market, but without fail utility scale solar consistently ends up being unprofitable without government support. Their point is that you should not pursue a market that cannot exist without a government lifeline, as that simply hides the gross cost to society through taxation.
You can argue the environmental piece, and that is a fair argument. But Koch is correct on the financials.
It raises energy costs by using a source that is less efficient.
Efficient by what measure? BTUs? BTUs per unit of pollution? Are you accounting for ALL the costs including pollution and related effects?
End the subsidies, and let people decide what power is best for them.
Ok, then you need to end the subsidies for fossil fuels as well, both the explicit ones (tax reductions, etc) as well as the implicit ones (not paying for pollution). Right now fossil fuel users are able to dump massive amounts of pollution into the environment and thus externalize much the cost of their actions. If you want to get all libertarian about this then let's REALLY make it a level playing field and have all the costs involved on the table.
So no reduction in conventional power is possible because back-up is always needed at night or when the wind does not blow.
No reduction? Bullshit. You need standby production but they do not have to be active - inactive plants generate little/no pollution. Solar and wind demonstrably can replace a significant amount of traditional (fossil + nuke) sources. Solar and wind cannot replace the entire need but that does not make them a bad idea.
The rest of the post I'm responding to is complete troll bullshit without any credible scientific sources so I'll just ignore the anonymous troll from here.
What naysayers forget is that with Wikipedia's model, if it can be vandalized by anyone it can also be corrected by anyone. You don't have to eliminate vandals to develop massive amounts of accurate content this way, you just have to have the constructive participants be more dedicated than the disruptive ones.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
If the people of Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia are smart they will try to preserve their water resources. Clean water is going to be the most valuable and sought after resource in the coming decades. But that is not an easy sell. And the coal companies are doing to everything to get one more shot at the buffet table, gutting regulations, gutting safety, gutting pollution control to stay competitive against natural gas.
Solar/wind beating coal is not enough. It needs to beat natural gas to go utility level scaling. But for large customers, the retail price of electricity is already comparable with utility grid electricity. Utilities are worried about this, if big box retail customers with large parking lots and huge roof area go solar, and the utilities are forced to buy their electricity at retail rates, their bottom line would be seriously affected. But both big box retailers, mall owners and the utility companies are titans with lots of political influence. The one who is going to lose net-metering are going to be residential customers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If we ruin the planet they won't have anywhere to live. Can't even they see that?
Where is the evidence of this 4x price you keep spouting? Or do you mean 4x the lowest wholesale price? You cannot use that type of number, as many parts of the distribution that energy companies chose to use cost that much as well.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
"This campaign is really about the profits of Koch Carbon and the utilities..."
Or perhaps it's about the truth; household solar panels are in fact a joke, a novelty for people to delude themselves they are making a difference. The miniscule amount of energy they produce probably won't even offset the carbon footprint to market. LOL
You do not have to have "too much money" to have them. With subsidies from state and federal you can tend to only have to foot 33% of the bill, meaning that the lower middle class can afford them as well.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
As for why the higher electric bill, they sell the electricity back at the same price they charge us for it. It is NOT a premium price, it is the same price. We are not forcing you to pay a higher electric bill, you can go get your own solar panel as well.
The main problem you and the energy companies refuse to recognize is that the real problem is not the work-arounds we have created to encourage solar energy, it is how the electrical utilities have been jack asses about trying to get higher prices, rather than embracing solar power.
There are several intelligent electrical utilities that do the following:
1) Get a multi-year contract with home owners.
2) That lets them install the Utility owned solar panel on your home.
3)Charge you a reduced rate (in exchange for letting them put the solar panels on your home), for all electricity generated by the solar panel.
4)They get to keep any extra electricity their panels make.
The real question is why ALL utility companies in high sun areas don't do this. Mainly because of idiots being in charge.
The current problems you complain about are all the fault of the utilities - and the government's attempt to get them to stop acting like morons is not to blame for the problems they created.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Mass deployment of nuclear power could almost completely replace fossil fuels in half that time.
Not economically or politically possible. The risks involved with nuclear fission mean that private insurance is not going to happen so governments will have to indemnify it and that isn't likely to happen in a lot of places. Too many voters are too scared of nuclear. While reactors have become safer, they haven't been demonstrated to be safe enough to not require absurdly strict oversight. Nobody has solved the problems of waste or weapons proliferation. Nuclear is relatively safe generally but when accidents happen they can be REALLY dangerous and make large areas uninhabitable for centuries.
Technologically it fission could replace a lot of (though not all) fossil fuels but it will not happen because technology concerns are just one part of the equation. Put it this way: if you asked 100 people whether they would rather live next to a nuke plant or a coal plant, I'd lay you good odds that 90%+ would prefer to live near the coal plant even if the data showed the risk to their health was higher.
The only application which would require somewhat more work is airplane propulsion, where it's hard to match Jet-A
The "only application"? Not true, particularly for marine applications. First you have to replace virtually every internal combustion engine on the planet including those cars, power tools, some appliances, boats, ships, personal watercraft, etc. Some of those have solutions in the pipleline (cars, applicances and some tools) whereas others have no practical replacement likely in the near term. There is no practical way to power most marine vehicles with electricity. We can make a few large vessels nuclear but doing so en-mass is a bad idea on a whole bunch of levels. There is presently no electric motor replacement for an outboard motor on a smaller boat. Even if it were possible today to convert all these engines (it's not) it would still take decades if we started now for economic reasons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
an awful lot of 'retail rate' in that table
http://www.instituteforenergyr...
They're annoyed by Daitarn 3 solar attack because they're meganoids and the monster of the week is always defeated with solar energy with the homungous robot that Haran Banjo stolen to them.
Thorium based MSR technology should be a national priority.
I probably agree but even if it proves to be as safe and reliable as one might hope, it's still nuclear power and thus it's probably dead on arrival. Too many broken promises and bad safety disasters by other fission reactors to get people to listen rationally. Thorium reactors mitigate a lot of the problems with fission power but they don't eliminate the problems entirely. They make less toxic waste but they still make it and it still needs to be dealt with. They make weapons proliferation more difficult but not impossible. They still can release radioactive materials under some disaster scenarios. So what will happen politically is that those who oppose more nuclear power (oddly both fossil fuel producers AND many environmentalists) will do is point out that all the same risk factors exist and let people's fears do the rest. Since people are scared of radiation, thorium reactors will be unlikely ever see the light of day in most places.
http://www.instituteforenergyr...
make it 3.5x. Either way one source is much cheaper, much more controllable, predictable and compatible with the existing infrastructure, the other requires expensive upgrades to facilitate two way flow safely, is much more expensive, volatile, unpredictable, having max potential output outside the peak demand and requiring the baseline backup just in case. Nobody in his right mind would buy the residential solar energy in these circumstances.
Germanies goal is to be 100% renewable at 2030, that is in 16 years.
They can have whatever goal they want and I admire the idealism. Won't happen though, at least not in that time frame. There are no existing or near term likely technologies that would permit a country the size of Germany to go 100% renewable within 16 years. They could make a huge dent - maybe 30-50% but 100% is impossible. Planes and most boats will require fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and I doubt all cars will go electric by 2030 either. Solar and wind are unpredictable sources of power on time scales shorter than months which means fusion or fossil fuels are still in the equation. Germany has limited hydro and geothermal resources. Bio-fuels like ethanol and methanol require fossil fuels to produce and there isn't enough crop land to satisfy demand even if we use them. Technologically it simply isn't possible to get to 100% renewable in the near future.
That said I'm rooting for Germany to get as close to 100% as they can. We really do need to take this sort of stuff seriously and I admire some of the efforts they are making.
I believe the USA can at least manage 20% - 30% till then.
Feasible though I'm dubious about its chances politically.
Actually, Germans tend not to use air conditioning, at least in homes and small businesses. That was the case when I lived there last year, anyway.
Forcing utility companies to pay higher than market rates for electricity generated by home solar panels compared to market rates for other mass-produced electricity will NOT cause electricity rates to necessarily sky-rocket...
How could raising the cost of electricity to the utility cause the price of electricity to go up? /sarcasm
Ken
If it's over 100 miles from tortoise habitat, why were they trying to force the idiot Bundy off the land?
It was to make room for a solar plant and line the pockets Dinghy Harry Reid and his family.
. . . Just invest in solar and wind power?
They are against renewable energy or are they being paid to take that position. Are they for the destruction of our world completely as a catastrophic end of other energy sources approaches our civilization? My opinion is they should be superglued to the floor and made to drink laxitives..
I think the buy back rate is regulated by statute.
So could someone put more energy on the grid with their sunny AZ, CA weather and then at night have to use power and get charged a buy the back rate even though the amount of power they put on the grid is more than they are using?
I'm sorry, but that is an outright lie. The reason I know this is because I have family working in one of the biggest hydrocarbon power plant design and contsruction firms. They are talking about massive inflow of tenders for new plants, and old ones are NOT getting decommissioned - instead whenever possibly they are being fired up to run again.
In fact, it's so bad that after Energiewende started, Germany which had goals to reduce CO2 emissions, which it was meeting, had to give those goals up. Instead of reduction, firing up of all the older coal plants and newer ones getting started cause CO2 emissions of Germany to actually increase for the first time in many years, and this particular trend is only picking up pace. It's actually pretty hilarious to see many environmental organisations complain about this issue, when their lobbying for wind as "kinda sorta" base power and shutting down nukes is the direct cause of this occurring in the first place.
And of course reactors are still running. There aren't enough mothballed coal plants to replace all the production you'd lose. Instead they are being mothballed as older and newer coal plants that replace them come online. That's what's causing the increase in CO2 emissions in Germany.
There is a lot of problems with that. Firstly it is 3x as much according to that, not 4x. Secondly it is comparing the price to one plant, not the market. The way electric generation works is that they start the lowest cost plants, then buy off the market after that or start up the higher priced plants. You are trying to compare the price of solar to that lowest price plant, that is just idiotic. Lastly this is a Koch brother site, not exactly independent..
When you cant win, ad hominem.
And you cannot generate all the electricity from that one source, and the upgrades to facilitate the 2 way flows are footed by the consumer already. But nice ending with a logical fallacy.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
The article you link to doesn't describe a "new tax". When legislatures mandated net metering, they arguably imposed new costs on electric grids and companies, and this fee is supposed to compensate for it. It's not a tax because it goes to the utility, and it's part of regulations that otherwise constrain utilities.
Home solar generation provides neither the 24/7 capacity nor the grid that these people rely on, yet they can get their bill all the way to zero if they install enough panels. People who have the land and resources to install solar are so well off that people who don't have the money shouldn't also subsidize the rest of the infrastructure that they rely on like everybody else.
These two clowns are constantly on the news and it's never for good reason. Why? I mean, how expensive would it be to take out Tweedledee & Tweedledum? They're constantly fighting against everybody's interests! Sounds like a job for Kickstarter if i ever heard one! I wonder if someone would do it for free? There was someone to take out Lennon & JP II just to get famous! Why not these 2 clowns?
depends, is 4 times the going rate more than what they charged? Please cite that.
His Republican lies have been exposed. That doesn't happen. It certainly doesn't happen in most places so even if it does happen in a single place, it is still a fucking Republican lie. His kind is all alike. The can't think logically so they just lash out emotionally and illogically. Then when they don't win, they start attacking children. That is their way. Their kind is disgusting, and you people here are even more disgusting for not banning or deleting Republican posts. You are part of the problem and are partially responsible for the deaths of the children they decided to kill.
Problem is most of these companies don't want any form of renewables. For years the utilities have argued that peak consumption & increased energy usage was killing them, so they got increased rates & smart metering so they could hit people with bigger bills during the day. Now power consumption has gone down and people are installing solar panels that tend to produce most of their power during those peak hours and what are the power companies & their investors/owners arguing? That's right, that they need MORE money because people are using less power & decreasing the stress on the grid by producing their own peak power. Renewables are of course not perfect at the moment, battery technology would go a long way towards helping but even without that they have many advantages over traditional forms of power generation. They require no fuel, they have far less maintenance & produce little to no pollution. It will never become a base load without MAJOR advances in power storage tech but it does work great for peak power & intermittent loads.
I don't know about you all.. but if I owned one of the largest industries in the US I'd have the financial might and manpower to invest in renewable energy and corner the new market. Thus keeping my dominance and relevance for generations to come.
I guess they're just old fossils that don't want change.
The US coal companies should embrace the US not using coal, so they they can focus on the export of coal. Once done, they could flood the export market as needed (as Saudis do with oil) and essentially be a coal cartel. They can then properly extend their reach on a global scale controlling the economies of other countries.
They're actually more evil than Mr. Burns.
Germany's renewable energy sector is among the most innovative and successful worldwide. The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 25 percent in the first half of 2012.[1][2] In 2011 20.5% (123.5 TWh) of Germany's electricity supply (603 TWh) was produced from renewable energy sources, more than the 2010 contribution of gas-fired power plants.[3][4] In 2010, investments totaling 26 billion euros were made in Germany’s renewable energies sector. Germany has been called "the world's first major renewable energy economy".[5]
Siemens chief executive, Peter Löscher believes that Germany’s target of generating 35 per cent of its electricity from renewables by 2020 is achievable – and, most probably, profitable for Europe’s largest engineering company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
As far as replacing gasolin goes, USA is actually not doing bad at all, actually pioneering it in some areas. E.g. E85:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Germany's renewable energy sector is among the most innovative and successful worldwide. The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 25 percent in the first half of 2012.[1][2] In 2011 20.5% (123.5 TWh) of Germany's electricity supply (603 TWh) was produced from renewable energy sources, more than the 2010 contribution of gas-fired power plants.[3][4] In 2010, investments totaling 26 billion euros were made in Germany’s renewable energies sector. Germany has been called "the world's first major renewable energy economy".[5]
Siemens chief executive, Peter Löscher believes that Germany’s target of generating 35 per cent of its electricity from renewables by 2020 is achievable – and, most probably, profitable for Europe’s largest engineering company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
And 35% by 2020 is also quite achievable.
You know, for people that calm to be devotees of Ayn Rand's work, the Koch Brothers (and the Tea Party in general) clearly haven't read Atlas Shrugged.
Using the government taxes and rules to crush your opponents (when you can't do it in the free market) was the main tactic...of the book's villains.
Don't just game, Dungeoneer
The real innovation left these industries a century ago, which is when the last upgrade to coal plants occurred.
Adapt or die.
Solar is Freedom, not working for Oligarchs, and being able to yell "Freedom!" as you charge the King's Army with battleaxes and claymores drawn!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No shit. It's super profitable for Siemens and others involved in the buildup. They're the ones who get a lion's share of that massive investment - they build the turbines after all.
It's the people who have to pay for the those investments that suffer, as well as those that have to live in the world where CO2 emissions in Germany stopped being reduced and are increasing as the amount of coal burners that rotate Siemens turbines increases.
Really interesting article. I found this excerpt from it even more on point with this article:
Most complaints for violations of the anti-trust laws are made by business men against other business men. Even the most monopolistic business man disapproves of all monopolies but his own. We may smile at this as being just an example of human nature, but we cannot laugh away the fact that the combined effect of the monopolistic controls which each business group imposes for its own benefit, inevitably destroys the buying power of the nation as a whole.
One should add that in those places, individuals installing solar will decrease the air condition-induced peak demand, thus decreasing the overhead for the utilities, contrary to what the AC troll a few posts up in this thread asserted.
We already have reduced our carbon footprint in relation to 1995 by far over 25%. ... you are wrong.
I don't get where you get your date from, sorry
(And honestly: I suggest you look up what the word 'lie' actually means)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Please? They're an active threat to the health, happiness and future of the entire human race.
No, it was because he's refused for several decades to pay his fees, which all his neighbors have been paying, on the theory that he has a hereditary right to land that Nevada specifically ceded to the U.S. as a condition of statehood, a decade and a half before the first of his ancestors arrived in Nevada. He has been granted so much lenience that if I were some poor bastard incarcerated for ten years for having a pot stash, I'd be about ready to riot. The idea that there's some civil rights issue buried in this is hilarious.
you don't know what you are talking about.
Not that it requires proof, but there are real world wind and solar grids which prove that the sun and wind exist somewhere on a large enough grid that MOST the problem can be eliminated with a modern electrical grid.
What is left is a new marketplace for power storage systems. Will it cost more initially, sure. big deal suck it up you cheap ass bastards and stop pushing off responsibility to your children and grandchildren you selfish pricks!
So, what if power always costs more than today? well, you won't waste so much of it. power usage is incredibly wasteful and has only gotten better as prices rose and people became a little more responsible. Power costs today are MUCH higher than they were 50 years ago and they will NEVER go back down to that but we manage with the higher costs we have today. Alt power isn't going to cost much more long term than coal does already and it won't run out and it won't have long term costs in the trillions and millions of lives either.
You're assumptions are completely wrong.
I disapprove of Michael Bloomberg because he's a filthy jew who puts Israel first, and America second.
Don't try to twist the facts buddy.
Deliberate lies aiming at usurping money while causing death and harm to the environment are not something free speech should protect. In essence the right wing conspires to commit acts that can only be considered criminal in intent and implementation are in play. Conspiracy is a broad enough concept that we should be able to arrest and convict those who use these criminal tactics to steer the ignorant. The same could be said of those who try to block education of concepts such as evolution. Such nonsense is clearly an attempt to cripple the thinking processes in school age children.
In the vast majority of cases the subsidiaries come from the federal/state government, not the electric company...
But you still pay for them, regardless. Subsidies aren't free money that comes from nowhere, they just get charged to the taxpayers.
At least in that case you could claim that the retired grandma isn't getting dinged, since the wealthier will take the larger portion of a progressive tax, rather than the more usage-based electric company fees.
Non-green energy has externalities which are not directly attributable to the producers of that energy, which makes its price inconsistent with its true costs.
Solar panels are fairly "dirty" in production and disposal. It's only during the active life that they produce "clean" energy, but health-wise you get dinged pretty hard before and after.
Can you cite something more than your own words to disprove it? If not you may as well move along. The numbers may be skewed, I certainly wouldn't be surprised but to act like only the most optimal case would make the OP correct is no reason to act like there isn't a problem here.
Solar and wind are only viable when generously subsidized. Add in that Obama with the militant EPA are putting coal powered plants out of business. Obama stated that energy prices under his plan "would necessarily skyrocket" and that is exactly what is happening.
Just wait until the summer CA. When all of those coal plants are out of business and there is a shortage of electricity. Remember the rolling brownouts a decade ago? Those will be nothing compared to the blackouts where there just won't be any electricity.
"You reap what you sow" will never be more true after the coal powered plants are forced out of business.
Here's a little article detailing some of the Koch Brother's positions.
http://www.minnpost.com/effective-democracy/2014/04/fdr-today-s-gop-how-meaning-freedom-changed
For those who don't want to read the article, here are a few excerpts from when one of the brothers got on the Libertarian ticket in 1980. These are a few of the platforms from back in the day.
-An end to the individual and corporate income and capital gains taxes, leading eventually to “repeal of all taxation,” but with a possible interim step in which all criminal and civil penalties for tax evasion would be “terminated immediately;”
-The “abolition” of Medicare, Medicaid and (“the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive”) Social Security system, although with a possible interim step of making participation in Social Security voluntary;
-Abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the U.S. Postal Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission
-A “complete privatization” of public roads and highways, also complete privatization of all schools and repeal of compulsory education laws and all minimum wage laws;
-An “end to all subsidies for child-bearing built into our present laws, including all welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children;”
-Opposition to “all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs,” which the party declared to be “privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning, and inefficient.”
So yes, fighting back is very much in the cards--and quickly before these clowns take over the country.
Yes, you have. And the direction was to continue to reduce before Energiewende.
Unfortunately in recent years, the direction of change in emissions changed very abruptly, from steady reduction to steady increase.
The fact that you have to quote 1995 instead of more recent numbers from this decade as a relative starting point shows exactly that which you are trying to obfuscate - that the trend set by last two decades has been abruptly changed this decade because of Energiewende.
Every home should produce its own power.
Each home should be able to produce excess power and sell it back in the power internet.
That is the primary reasons for many of these attacks, and although I do agree there is a lot of exhisting vestment in power, centralization and control is something a lot of these new technologies lack.
Non control is far more threatening to the Globalists who are carrying out Agenda 21 Ugenics and Carbon Taxes.
You know Al Gore stands to make trillions in Carbon taxes if his ideas come to fruition for example.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Well I can't speak for parent, but honestly this has been the case since political power overtook that whole tribal test of strength thing back in the days. Submit a single instance where those who held the highest concentration of resources (money, slaves, oil (crude or olive), land, etc...) didn't use them to get favorable status from those who represented the people and then we'll talk.
Yes, wealth leads to a democratically dispropotionate influence over politics. That's why it matters how skewed the wealth distribution is. The more skewed it is, the larger fraction of power will be in the hands of the few rich. Inequality in the USA is rising, and the problem did not use to be as bad as it is now. In the 70s, the United States had a significantly lower Gini coefficient (though still much higher than most European countries), but it has been rising since then:
http://www.americanprogress.or...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Inequality is also different from country to country. Again, due to the natural tendency for the rich to dominate, one expects that on average democracies with higher economic equality should be healthier. The USA does quite poorly on metrics of income inequality lately:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So I agree that the huge influence of people like the Koch brothers is not that surpising in light of the huge income inequality in today's USA. But it's still scary, and should not be taken for granted. It can be fought, and the most obvious way of fighting it is by reducing the different between rich and poor. Saying that "this has always happened" ignores that the degree to which it has happened has changed and can be changed.
Big rich fossil fuel companies on one side. Poor powerless climate scientists on the other side. And you think there's a conspiracy among the climate scientists to retain their poorly paid jobs instead of getting different jobs? Or simply studying the climate in a different way? (You know that climate science is useful even if there's no global warming, right?)
You sir, are a knob head. Just like all the other knob heads out there who can't think their way out of a wet paper bag.
Solar cannot compete with fossil fuels without massive government subsidies. The only place government can get that money is from taxes - sneaky taxes, overt taxes and, most of all, taxes on anything that competes with solar. The net effect is inescapable: you drive up the cost of all forms of energy. You drive up the most heavily taxed first, but you drive them ALL up. Inevitably you will drive them to a level where some people will not be able to afford them any more, at which point they cease to be able to provide for themselves, or even stay employed. No small number of them will become homeless.
This is something Democrats LOVE to do. They hated the Hoovervilles of the Depression Era (made FDR's idiot solutions too obvious) and dedicated themselves to eliminating "substandard" housing - quite successfully, too. Everyone applauded. Damn eyesores. But that CREATED the problem of homelessness, but that's much better, homeless people are much less obvious than Hoovervilles, they don't stick around as long, dying of exposure and other issues that even minimal shelter could provide. And we avoid the problem of poor, dispossessed people nailing together a couple sheets of scrap plywood to make some sort of shelter and forcing them to turn to the government -- which can then decide whether or not it is politically helpful to actually give a damn about them. Which it usually isn't, so it's cheaper all around.
I loved the way Sag Harbor NY built a big shower facility at the main marina so all the fancy-shmancy billionaires could grab a free shower and then got all upset when they discovered that homeless people were using them too. You can't mix BILLIONAIRES and HOMELESS PEOPLE, what kind of schmuck would DO that?! And you can't have CLEAN HOMELESS PEOPLE! What if they got cleaned up and got JOBS?! So they solved the problem the typical Democrat way: they closed the showers and built new tennis courts at the park. HA! Homeless people can't afford tennis rackets! And everyone was happy - except those damn homeless shmucks, but, really, who cares about them? It's not like they VOTE...
"As for why the higher electric bill, they sell the electricity back at the same price they charge us for it. It is NOT a premium price, it is the same price. We are not forcing you to pay a higher electric bill, you can go get your own solar panel as well. "
False.
The price you claim to be the same in fact includes the cost of delivery and administrative services. Why on earth are you entitled to those markups?
c) why should a private company be forced to buy and resell your product and assume all the delivery expenses?
You forgot, why should private property owners be forced to let private companies run their infrastructure over their property and why should private companies get sole use of right aways along public roads etc?
Or perhaps your one of those socialists who believe that only the rich should get benefits as they obviously deserve them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Wouldn't the benefit of not having to construct another expensive power plant and recoup the expense be good for everyone?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
To destroy the world's carrying capacity for humanity we have to opt-in to global thermonuclear war. To destroy that same capacity through climate change simply requires that a modest proportion of the world's population does not opt-out of mitigating carbon release (the Pareto-optimal level of GDP is pretty small, actually, around 2% of global GDP).
Here's the full Bundy statement, in context:
http://disinfo.com/2014/04/une...
Here's the extended Sterling transcript which shows his lady friend attempting to bait him into saying something out of bounds -- note the leading questions and that she brings up race first:
http://deadspin.com/exclusive-...
Futurist Traditionalism
Bullshit, in this they are against stupid laws trying to handwave the economic reality because "hurrr durrr green energy!!".
You are so far off base, you are on the wrong planet. The Koch bros are about screw the planet, screw everyone else, even screw themselves for a little short-sighted short-term monetary profit.
There are certain harsh economic realities that unfettered markets do not deal with correctly. Generating energy from coal has great negative externalities. IOW, the Koch bros are not paying for the cost of dealing with all the pollution their plants generate.
Another thing unfettered markets don't deal with correctly is limited resources. Those resources might be fossil fuels in the ground or the capacity of the atmosphere to hold carbon emissions without disastrous effects on the human race. If the wisest policy involves not using up these resources as fast as possible then unfettered markets don't do the right thing.
Even if we accept your unstated assumption that the subsidies of the fossil fuel industries do not dwarf those of renewables, it still makes sense to subsidize renewables. Partly due to the current subsidies, the cost of renewables is dropping. It is in the best interest of the human race to switch over to renewables before we run out of non-renewables and before the waste products of non-renewables make the planet uninhabitable.
Blind faith in the infallibility of markets is part and parcel of the greed is good mentality that continues to wreak havoc on our economy and on our social stability. These are the harsh economic realities the Koch bros are ignoring.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
"Global warming emission"? Yes, let's skip the FACTS that there has been no warming for 15 years, the flawed models the regulation are based on, or the frigidly cold temp all over the world with record arctic ice production 2 years in a row. And what is with the demonization of all with money, unless of course they are rich democrats? I can't believe so many claim they are dealing with facts or that they are so "smart" on these subjects, but they can't see this as a money grab and totally political
Bloomberg isn't going to make money off a gun ban. If he were pushing legislation to ban competing financial software, you might have an apples-to-apples analogy. And Bloomberg's express motivation is to counter the influence of the NRA, one of the most powerful domestic lobbies...as opposed to solar panel companies.
Hmm! I wonder what the NYT slant is? Let's see: 1) liberal, 2) liberal, or 3) liberal. The Koch brothers: don't fit the NYT narrative. So, the NYT villainizes them. Standard fare. Ho hum.
I'd be a lot more concerned about hydrogen converted fuels than solar power grids.
Think of all the criminals we continually try to put out of work! Oh no! Many of them won't know how to make an honest living! We need to feel sorry for them! Their buying power as a group was never the same...
NO. fuck'em. Times change and their profession HARMS everybody including themselves; it's not just a matter of a dying out of date profession and the changing marketplace; they HARM people. (I'm back to talking about coal. but they are quite similar and coal corrupts, harms, and probably already kills more people.)
Less than 80,000 coal miners exit in the USA. We already have many times that in green jobs. We sure fight like hell over a SMALL profession... and a lousy one at that.
Unfortunately our current Leadership has not shown itself to be very good at the first two, revels in the third, and has shot themselves in the foot with the fourth several times so far. Everyone wants to vilify the Energy giants for making money. And no one bothers to credit them for what they bring to the party. Let us take the hit on our Power Grid and everyone is going to find out just how much we rely on those Greedy Money-Mongers. Getting rid of coal is fully understandable from an Environmental standpoint. And the same is true of all fossil fuels. However, removing those fuels from our use needs to be tempered with replacing those fuel sources FIRST. Not after we have created a criminal element if you use fossil fuel. Solar, Wind, Ocean turbines, etc. are all viable resources. They just are not ready for prime time, and they are very expensive as a social experiment. This administration has tried to raise all fuel prices to make alternative resources more acceptable. They have artificially increased our costs whenever possible to push the public into accepting alternative fuel sources. Get the alternative working economically, and then get people to convert. The same is true of our Immigration debate. The current Administration, and the controlling party in the Senate wants Immigration reform in the form of Amnesty for one purpose only; to get the current illegals to vote for them. The 700 miles of new fences for Border Security as been approves and appropriated. And we can trust the idea that the Security fence will get "taken care of" just about as much as we could trust "If you like your Insurance you can keep it".
Why don't you just google for the numbers yourself?
E.g. you would find something like this: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Electricity is fungible. Every kwh that somebody with a solar panel doesn't buy from the grid is a kwh that is available to non-solar users on the grid. All else held equal, additional capacity affectcs the supply/demand balance even if that additional capacity is directly consumed by the owner of the panel and never ends up on the grid.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I recommend reading your links. They fully support my facts. Coal burning was on steady increase throughout 2011-2013, and went down only in Q1 2014 for fairly obvious reason - extremely warm winter which reduced need for power to be used for heating.
Isn't the right word "subsidies"?
And aren't subsidies a bad thing?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Solar is cheaper than peaking natural gas at wholesale rates and nuclear power and much new coal. And it deploys automatically with 1/3 the infrastructure at 30x the speed. The economics of solar have been clear for a decade and indisputablely superior compared to hundreds of gw/billions $ of global fossil fuel productionfor several years. Nevermind the predictable multi decade march toward cost parity. Idiots will keep fighting long after it annihilates global energy markets long after billion dollar utilities all over the country enter irreversible death spirals because of a failure to adapt. they dont have much else to offer after they sold off a multitrillion dollar economy for maybe a 15 year extension to a dying economic hegemony. They lack the vision of their forefathers who developed the world fossil fuel economies only via epic public and private cooperation.
I have to ask myself, what does each have to gain? We know the Kotches are after money and that creates jobs, lots of jobs. What does soros gain? Remember what he said his hobbies were in an interview? Playing wit the the currencies and economies of countries. He bragged about having caused the collaps of economies of countries. Think of the misery that caused. He bragged that his next target was to cause the colapse of the US economy. Think of that the next time he offers help. How the kotches can boost coal as it's on the way oun by natural selection? Any coal increases would only be temporary. Gas is better for the utilities and consumers. Natural gas has become very cheap! and is far less poluting than coal. NG is only 10% of what it was a little over a decade ago, or so. Wind generation of power is approaching par with conventional power. Particularly the newer installations. The Gratiot County (Michigan) wind farm has apparently been making money without subsidies since its inception. So renewables are approaching the point where they dont't need subsidies. Last year, we reached the point where China replaced the US as the #1 importer of energy and the US passed Saudi Arabia as the #1 exporter. AND, many renewables reached parity with fossile fuels. There are still many renewable companies left to go under, but we've reached some major milestiones. Solar is still very expensive. Other than coal, the interests of thr kotch Brothers are more in line with middle class Americans. Their standars of living may be different, but their overall goals benefit us as well as it does them. Soros? From his own statements in that interview, "Not so much!" It's on the net, if it, like many documents hasn't been scrubbed.
"False presumptions?" Care to back that up, buddy?
Then you and I read differently ... I don't see any significant changes, and the last winter was not 'that warm' it was in average in germany rather cold.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Last winter was EXTREMELY warm across entire continent. This is well studied because of the global "polar vortex" event which occurred on large scale, resulting in massive freeze in US and very warm winter over European continent.
Even if the installation bill is cheap.. you need to buy a house to put the panels on :). So that depends on the area as well as income or wealth. But maybe the low middle class can afford it.. Now you're depending on subprime mortgages and remote suburbia again. Coal companies can get pissed, but the banks and oil companies will like it fine.
If you put excessive cheap energy during the day (maybe not using any at your home, while you're at work) and then consume quite some at evening and night when it is relatively expensive and in short supply.. Then it would only logical to pay for power even if you put 3x more on the grid than you used. That's an example number out of my hat, in case the situation is severe.
If you don't do that the coal companies, power utility companies, home users without panel are those suffering. Yes we're supposed to hate the coal companies and I do hate them I guess, but they're pissed off by wholesale electricity prices collapsing during peak renewable production. That's your "disruption of energy markets", the economics of coal power are getting threatened. It would be fine except the system depends on that coal power to be here at night or otherwise when solar production is low.
Natural gas has less problems at this because they can be turned off/turn on swiftly, and have lower capital costs I think.
Solar and renewable production increase would make more sense if home owners of solar panels could be charged or paid with a small granularity and they were encouraged to use the power when they produce it (let's say, laundry and dish water get started on afternoon). But such things would be a bitch to implement and it's paradoxical.. We'd want to incentize home users not to sell their electricity.
Well, Vaph is right that it costs money to maintain the grid infrastructure. So if you are connected to the grid and paying zero dollars, you really are a moocher.
However, what he/she concludes is wrong. The right answer is making everyone, not just solar users, pay a baseline "maintenance fee" for the privilege of being connected to the grid. That is how a physical phone line works. 20-30 bucks a month regardless of whether you make a call.
Yeah, I totally don't get it.
Republicans and "right wingers" are supposedly pro law enforcement, but they're all cheering for this guy. I think he should pay his decades long tax evasion and go to jail... (I am registered R, BTW.)
K. S. Kyosuke: You've been called out (for tossing names) & you ran "forrest" from a fair challenge http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Than these two. American Hitlers.
May their money only prolong their death agony.