What I don’t understand is, why isn’t Nat gas getting more attention as part of the clean energy solution? Nat gas burns very clean, we have an enormous supply of it in this country, and we have an infrastructure already in place that we could build upon.

Comparing Nat gas to biofuels or ethanol, the biofuels and ethanol need to be manufactured, which means more energy is consumed to produce them; and aren’t biofuels made up of the same carbon-based lifeforms as Oil and Nat gas? Where is the savings by using biofuels and ethanol?

In my opinion, Nat gas is good, domestic oil in moderation is good, distributed solar and wind are good, Nuclear is bad, ethanol bad, biodiesel in moderation is good, geothermal is good, electric cars – hmmm… nah. We have so much we could do here right now, and we could tell OPEC to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Thanks

We must articulate, in the simplest terms to the average consumer, the feasibility and advantages of decisiviely moving toward a decentralized energy infrastructure in America.

Take for example nuclear power verses solar water heating in Florida.

Progress Energy has manipulated the state government to allow it to bill Florida ratepayer in advance for the construction of a new 2.2 GigaWatt nuclear power facility in Levy county for the “ESTIMATED” cost of about $28 billion dollars. This plant will increase Florida’s base load capacity by about 4%, cost ratepayers thousands of dollars each to build, and result in a 50% increase in the cost of electricity for them.

Now almost every ratepayer in Florida has a water heater and collectively those water heaters use approximately 10% of the electricity consumed in Florida each day. Solar water heating could eliminate that demand on the electric power grid for a fraction of the cost it will take to increase the grid capacity to meet growth that will occur if we continue on, business as usual.

If consumers where given the clear choice between spending $5000 dollars of their money on building a new nuclear power plant that will increase their electric bill by 50% or investing $3500 dollars into building a statewide decentralized energy infrastructure that would DEcrease their electric consumption 20% and eliminate the need for that nuclear power plant, what do you think they would choose?

Ratepayers need to be given that choice, it’s their money and they don’t appreciate or understand how it is being spent by others and what some of the real alternatives could be. It won’t happen easily because the decision to persue a decentralized energy infrastructure where every home has a solar water heater and micro power system big enough to supply 1 kWD per household will represent a huge transfer of wealth from a small minority of power brokers to all the people of Florida. But this approach is better for the ratepayers, better for the economy, and better for the environment.

The development of a decentralized energy infrastructure will not eliminate the need for our current centralized electric distibution system but could eliminate the need for it to grow and even require it to contract. This is going to cost some people with a lot of power a lot of money. The current business model of investor owned utilities is in direct contradiction to the goal of reducing carbon emmissions and global warming. Reducing carbon emmission with alternative energy is not a technical problem, we’ve had the renewable techology to do it for 100 years.

Nuclear is not the solution! But it is certainly the most profitable approach for the electric energy industry. Just because it has low CO2 emmissions does not make Nuclear “Green” however the power industry sure has done a good job making it seem that way.

We need to make it a national goal to displace conventional energy consumption with renewable energy technology at the point of use where it is most effective and cost efficient. Not this splattering of centralized solar power stations that do almost nothing except greenwash consumers into thinking something meaningful is being done. We need a mechanism to capitalize the building of a bottom up renewable energy solution using ratepayers money to serve ratepayer interests because consumers have niether the will nor the resources to do it individually for themselves.

General Electric could make more money producing 250 million solar powered refrigerators in the next 10 years instead of 100 AP1000 nuclear reactors and everyone would be a lot better off if they did.

Has anyone tried to convince them of this?

The only real technical solution to attain meaningful carbon emmission reductions will have to be done from the bottom up because it simply won’t work from the top down!

Centralized solar energy plants don’t work that well and are much more expensive than building energy infrastructure at the point source of energy use, directly in the home and small business. And the bottom up approach puts a lot more people to work because it is far more labor intensive.

Thank you SACE for all your efforts in the right direction.

That’s my energy rant for the today, I need to get back to work!