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California Poised To Hit 50 Percent Renewable Target a Full Decade Ahead of Schedule (cleantechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: Every year, the California Energy Commission releases its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) report, which gives details about the mix of energy experienced by all utilities within the state during the preceding 12 months. The report for this year, released in November, shows that all three of the state's investor-owned utilities -- Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric -- are projected to derive 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. That is a full decade ahead of schedule. PG&E reports it used 32.9% renewable energy in the past year. The figure for SoCal Edison was 28.2%. San Diego Gas & Electric led the pack with 43.2% renewable energy. Now that the 50% goal is within reach, California is looking ahead to its next milestone -- 80% renewables by 2050. "Once we get to about 50 percent, we're going to start to run into new challenges -- the second 50 percent will be trickier than the first 50 percent," Brown notes. Part of the challenge will be balancing the grid using new technologies to avoid the need for fossil fueled "peaker plants" to provide additional electricity when demand is high.
(and use pumped-storage hydro -- when water is available -- for load leveling as well)
Yes. Because Americans are scientifically ignorant cowards.
Renewables get more than the ~$500bil coal gets every year from externalized healthcare costs?
"Subsidies for renewables, which far exceed those of fossil fuels, are used to make them appear cost effective."
No, they are used so that people will have an incentive to adopt renewables, thus creating an economy of scale whereas renewables become commonplace. It's not just "for looks"
Did you know that air pollution costs us up to $1,000 per person per year? Are you factoring that into the economics of renewables versus fossil fuels? (Probably not.)
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
excessive regulation, excessive education requirements, an artificially limited supply of practitioners, mandatory insurance that encourages excessive billing
This is very misleading and also wrong. The regulations and education requirements do bring up the price of healthcare but account for a very small part of the increase. Do you honestly think regulations are why those general drug makers are increasing prices by 500% in a short time?
As for excessive billing... have you ever been billed for healthcare? Regulations have little to do if it. An uninsured person will get billed 4-5x the rate of an In Network insured patient. This was true before Obamacare. The insurance companies negotiated low rates but the end effect was to just raise prices on those without insurance.... the ones who can not afford the lower rate in the first place.
Additionally billing for a overnight stay at a hospital is horrendous. No one can give you an estimate for costs without a 20% margin! They can give you a rough likely price but say you could see additional billings from other providers?!? You will get a heavily discounted bill for the room that you do not need to pay until the insurance partially covers it. Then the rest is on you. And that might be corrected again later ending in a credit or additional billing.
Of course that is just the hospital. You came in through ER, another bill. Did the hospital use an external anesthesiologist, another bill. Did they use an external lab, another bill. Did you use an ambulance, another bill. Did your primary care physician come to check on you, another bill. Did a specialist come to check on you, another bill. Did they order special medication for you, another bill.
Each of these bills go through the back and forth discount, partial payment , review, adjustment, invoice, etc process. Many times people do not know their bill for 3-5 months! None of this is regulations based. Because the system charges those who can not pay more, there is a lot of unpaid bills. No one wants to be the bill collector and aggregate/bundle the costs. So each spends resources billing and negotiating their part of the equation.
Most readers are thinking that they do not see this complexity. You have the standard old plan of paying just the deductible. But this all happens in the background even for you and is handled by a complex network of healthcare payers and payees. People with HSAs will see a little behind the curtain. Those without proper insurance will see more and also deal with debt collectors who might contact them 6-12 months after service!
That horrible inefficient system is further burdened by arcane IT systems. Each provider has different ways to collect. Some only accept bank draft, others mailed/called CC info, others will have a website with disfunctional forms, etc. The reference that they provided you to tie back to the service is the cryptic procedure/medicine, its provider ID code, your name, date of procedure, billing company name, date of bill. That is it, good luck keeping track of all the bills if you visit an ER 2x in one year.
All these costs bundle into the cost of healthcare. And there is no incentive to reduce the complexity because you, the patient, do not get to choose the service nor provider nor know the bill up front. You are a captive customer.
Imagine going into a Kroger (grocery store) and walking out, not getting billed. Then a month later the bill arrives. Then another for each of the non-Kroger brands you bought. And you get a 70% discount if you are a member. No other industry is this absolutely stupid in IT and billing.
The industry has created a massive price distortion all by itself over the last 40 years. Congress knew about it and has been incompetent it addressing it for that long! Regulations have not really helped, but they are hardly a quarter of the pie. Insurance for all partially helps because you do not bill people for what they can not pay and avoid the resource wastage of that whole process!
Humans + Nuclear power is just bad news.
You mean, beside being the safest source of energy, even including those 1960s reactors still in use? And that's by quite a margin above renewables.
If you count in the cost of externalities, it's also among the cheapest. For an iBooks-to-OPiPCs comparison, put a condom on every coal chimney and store both pollutants and CO2 forever (they don't decay with time like nuclear waste does) -- and only then we can talk about being fair.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.