Slashdot Mirror
The Battle for Solar Energy in the Country's Sunniest State (newyorker.com)
Carolyn Kormann, writing for The New Yorker: Steyer [billionaire Tom Steyer, who for years has tried to pass Proposition 127, an amendment to Arizona's constitution that would require power companies to generate fifty per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030] and his coalition say that the problem is simple: A.P.S. (state's largest utility, Arizona Public Service) is an investor-owned company, motivated primarily by its responsibility to protect profits for its shareholders, many of whom reside out of state. In 2017, the company made four hundred and eighty-eight million dollars, an increase of forty-six million from the previous year. The Arizona Corporation Commission (A.C.C.), a five-member elected "fourth branch" of state government, is supposed to keep the utility's monopoly in check -- setting limits on capital investments and pricing, while guaranteeing a certain margin of profit.
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
But critics have long argued that the arrangement incentivizes utilities to "gold-plate," or make inessential investments. (The phenomenon even has a name: the Averch-Johnson effect.) For A.P.S., a two-hundred-million-dollar gas-fuel plant would be more lucrative than a twenty-million-dollar solar array because the utility can charge higher rates to recoup its investment costs. Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, who helped write the language of Prop 127, told me the Averch-Johnson effect explains why, in 2017, A.P.S. called for more than five thousand megawatts of new natural-gas additions, and almost no utility-scale renewables. "If they were truly acting in public interest," Kris Mayes, a former Republican A.C.C. commissioner, said, "they would not be proposing fifty-four hundred megawatts of new natural-gas plants."
When you are buying politicians.
https://www.npr.org/sections/m...
Steyer has done uniquely well with it, but if you think he is about clean energy or this proposal is think again
https://www.azcentral.com/stor...
It will force the early shutdown of APS's nuclear power plant and likely boost greenhouse gas emissions.
First off, he does not live in Az.
Secondly, he is working at trying to kill off their nuclear power plant. Right now, Az is a low emitter BECAUSE of their nuclear power. Instead of trying to close nuke plants, the far left should focus on replacing fossil fuel plants. In this case, the bill should require that all utilities have a minimum of 60% clean energy, along with requiring 2/3 of the energy to be base-load (i.e. on-demand).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I live in Arizona and voted 'no', but my reason is a little different. State constitutions are not the right place for energy policies. The constitution should include things about the structure of government, human rights, who is allowed to vote, powers reserved for the government, and limits to those powers. What kind of ass-hat tries to stick energy policy in a constitution? We have laws for things like that.
Arizona has the only nuclear power plant far from a major body of water. It already uses reclaimed water from suburbs of Phoenix upstream. What happens when that water is no longer available as the Southwest dries out from climate change? We may very well enter another megadrought forcing most people to leave Arizona in a decade or two. Arizona needs to switch to renewables, increase energy efficiency of buildings (wrap them in thick walls of adobe?), and conserve water, but if the rest of the world doesn't do its part, Arizona is screwed. So Vote Yes on 127 (if you live in the state).
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Ah Germany ... did you know that apart from Energiewende they coined another great term, Dunkelflaute. It means when there is very little solar or wind, which can happen across all of Europe at the same time. Which has happened. The German backup is coal, gas and some French nuclear power. There is no other backup in sight either. Power to gas could work, if we want to multiply our electricity costs by an uncomfortably large amount.
There's a page on the English wikipedia for Energiewende, not for Dunkelflaute though.