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Clinton Plan To Power Every US Home With Renewables By 2027 Is Achievable
Lucas123 writes: As part of her campaign pledge, Hillary Clinton has said she would make it a priority in her first term to increase the number of solar panels by 500M and U.S. installed solar capacity from 21 gigawatts (GW) today to 140GW by the end of 2020. Her plan, is to increase solar, wind and other renewables so that they'd provide 33% of America's electricity by 2027, enough to power every home. While the plan may sound overly ambitious, experts say, it's not. Today, renewables provide about 15% of America's power. Shayle Kann, senior vice president at GTM Research, said the Clinton's renewable energy goal is doable, but with caveats. In order to achieve the goal, current programs, such as federal tax breaks for solar installations (set to expire next year), must continue and future initiatives, such as Obama's Clean Power Plan that will begin in 2018, must not be curtailed. Considering that if elected, Clinton wouldn't take office until 2017, the her campaign goals could be more bravado than reality. Clinton, however, is not alone. While most candidates have yet to announce their clean energy plans, Clinton's Democratic contender, Martin O'Malley, also came out with strong support for the end of fossil fuel use and a full clean energy economy by 2050, and creating a national goal of doubling energy efficiency within 15 years.
The ACA was well intentioned
No it wasn't. IT was designed from the beginning to snooker the American people into a broken "insurance" scam designed to break the medical/insurance industry. It was designed to fail, so that Americans would jump into single payer, crap healthcare.
You can keep your plan (Lie)
It isn't a tax (Lie)
You can keep your doctor(Lie)
It will cost less(Lie)
You'll have better coverage (Lie)
And I am sure supporters will provide anecdotal evidence that some of these claims were true for them. Plenty of people lost their doctors, plans and spend more for less insurance. OH, and Obama lied about not increasing taxes on those making $250k or less. BUT who cares, Cecil the lion is dead!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
First Solar, Recurrent Energy are successfully building projects and generating gross margins of 15-20% by selling power at 0.0387 $/kWh and .047 $/kWh respectively. They are doing it for 5 and 6 cents all over the world, even locations without subsidy. That is competitive with virtually any new energy construction
No it isn't, but thanks for playing. Note that you listed 2 rates, then noted it costs more elsewhere "without subsidy".
So those rates aren't real and couldn't be scaled up because they are being bought down with tax dollars.
You are clearly not up to speed on the technology, the production costs, the financing, or the global explosion in the industry.You have rested on some older state of knowledge too long. The technology awesome. The economics are extremely favorable. The only barrier is the transition to an enlightened long term view about power production.
The irony is that you need a mirror, you're the one with fantasy thinking...
Let me help you out with a specific, real example.
I just signed an agreement for power for my business. Thanks to the dropping price of oil and natural gas, my rate is going down for the first time in awhile.
I'll be paying 6.2 cents per kwh for the first 2,000 kwh and 6.8 cents per kwh for everything over 2,000 kwh. That is the total bill price. That is very cheap for such low usage and it includes everything, from power delivery to generation to taxes. The source of that power is a mix of coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
The same company can provide me with 100% renewables if I want it, 9.1 cents per kwh for the first 2K and 9.6 cents beyond that.
So renewables are 50% more than coal and natural gas where I live.
Sometimes because of ACA, though I've heard rumors that in the decades before the ACA insurance companies sometimes changed their policy offerings without Obama causing it! Seems unlikely I know...
But yeah, the ACA did change a lot of "good if you never needed them" plans. You would think that the free market would have weeded out either the shysters who offered those plans or the gullible marks who bought them, but that never seems to happen in practice.
The ACA doesn't kill insurance plans, insurance companies kill insurance plans. (Yeah, this version is just as nonsensical).
ACA does kill the plans by making them no longer affordable. When the president or his lobbyists can add new things and require them to be covered at 100%, a lot of cheaper plans that younger people would have wanted fall apart.
And regardless, Obama is the one that made the claim that insurance would be cheaper once everyone was on it. That hasn't worked out at all as lots of people predicted.
Archangel Michael is correct. This was not a well intentioned plan. It was a plan designed to crash the current health system while making it look to be the fault of the evil insurance companies.
Say what you will about Obama, he is very good at making himself look like the victim being picked on by mean bullies. Name one debate where he didn't use the phrase "common sense solution" and then criticize or make fun of everyone who didn't agree with him
You can keep your plan if it's a legitimate insurance plan. Lots of shitty plans stopped being offered.
It isn't a tax, as in it's not a line-item on your tax bill. By your logic, Wal-Mart is a tax, because they get corporate subsidies for their welfare-requiring employees.
You can keep your doctor, if your insurance allows you to. Before the ACA there were those problems, too.
It does cost less, overall. The rate of healthcare cost increases is the lowest it's been in decades. It's not about you personally, it's the overall trend. Not to mention more people now qualify for insurance.
Overall? Most people have better coverage, and more people have coverage, period. If you lost coverage, it was only because you were profiting from the people who were paying for plans that didn't really offer any protection.
Oh, and don't forget that the Baby Boomers are aging, and are creating a huge load on the system... that's driving costs up for everyone. But I'm sure that's Obama's fault, too.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.