Public Power versus Privately Owned Power Generation and Distribution.

This is a short diary on the issue of public power. When I worked on the 2001 San Francisco public power campaign (as part of the Labor Task Force for Public Power) we did a lot of research in state and out of state on how publicly owned utilities (as in "owned by public entities" not companies that issue stock owned by individual members of the public) we discovered something awesome: on average, public power entities provided power cheaper than regulated monopoly private utilities.

This even included public power utilities that had to purchase power on the wholesale market, which, as many of you know, saw prices over $700 per MWhr during the worst of the crisis.

I believe that public power is still on the agenda as a commodity such as electrical power should not be in the hands of profiteers. Those of us at left-atomics.blogspot.com are strong advocates of power generation and grid nationalization.

From the American Public Power Association:

Public power is a collection of more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, serving over 44 million people or about 14 percent of the nation's electricity consumers.

Public power utilities are operated by local governments to provide communities with reliable, responsive, not-for-profit electric service. Public power utilities are directly accountable to the people they serve through local elected or appointed officials.

Some of the nation's largest cities – Los Angeles, San Antonio, Seattle and Orlando – operate publicly owned electric utilities, but many public power communities are small with their utilities serving 3,000 or fewer customers.

44 million Americans! This needs to be expanded by mass-action, united front community based campaigns. We need to bring as much generation and gird operations under public control as soon as possible to eliminate the ability of private corporation to black mail our country again like they did to California 6 years ago.

One of the nice things about public power is the ability to decide energy policy by public mandate and discussion, not left in the hands of those rich enough to own enough shares.

While you all know that I think publically owned and operated nuclear power plants would solve the electrical energy crisis in the US, at least it would be a public debate with actual consequences.

David Walters

•  Tips, if any

  by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 09:14:37 AM PDT

•  Public Power and Nuclear Energy? NO, NO, NO

  One of the worst economic disasters in the power industry was the attempt of a consortium of public power agencies in Washington state to build five nuclear power plants in the late 70s and early 80s.  The cost soared from $4 billion to $24 billion before voters scuttled it in the successful Don't Bankrupt Washington initiative campaign of 1981.

  I lived in Seattle and loved City Light.  I support public power.

  However, since nuclear power creates waste that lasts for thousands of years, it is not a solution.  Human institutions doe to have the stability over thousands of years to prevent radioactive waste from entering into the environment.  

  The solution to new energy is solar, wind, and conservation.  None have the kind of negative impact that nuclear waste does.

  by ammasdarling on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 09:28:59 AM PDT

  •  WHOOPS?

    Nothing like the public underwriting the nuke industry.  Britain is gonig that route again - and they're pressing hard in the U.S.

    I'm ready to talk nuclear when fusion reactors are viable.  Until then - no thanks.

    by johnnygunn on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 11:13:49 AM PDT

•  Ever Since the California Blackouts

  I have been a public ownership guy for just about every public utility. Heavily-regulated monopolies have become a thing of the past. So-called deregulation has been nothing more than pick-pocketing of the people.

  In my itty-bitty town of 2,000, we're really struggling to get rid of our corporate water system, California Water Service Company. We live on the shores of one of California's largest lakes, yet our rates are among the highest in the country. The Public Utilities Commission is but a handmaiden of these corporates. Our lake is dotted with small water companies, some public and some private. If they were all one publicly-owned nonprofit group, we'd save a lot of money.

  Also, we have a lot of geothermal power in our area. When the owner, CalPine filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, our little county should have taken them over through emminent domain -- but it wasn't even considered. Those power plants would have provided a perpetual source of energy and wealth to us, rather than them.

  And what about the telephony mess? Our power poles carry copper for phones, cable for the TV (which also have phones), and then towers all over the place for the various cellphone carriers. Wouldn't it make so much more sense to have the public dump all that copper crap and have a single, modern group of towers for cellphone, wireless broadband internet, and TV rebroadcast from satellites?

  And what about satellite TV? What if the government put up a satellite for we the people and offered 500 channels for free, allocated to any broadcaster for free by lottery rather than an auction to the richest right-wing bidder? We are so stupid to be paying cable and satellite providers $$$ for the privilege of watching corporate TeeVee full of commercials.

  And the government should move to public ownership of all railroads and act as common carrier and build a hell of a lot of new tracks. There are way too many trucks on the highways -- this can't last because the world's oil supplies are falling. Rail transport of cargo and people is so much more efficient than highways and streets.

  The trend toward privatization of everything governmental has been a total failure. We need to move in the opposite direction.

  by GW Chimpzilla on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 10:22:11 AM PDT

•  At the risk of being tedious, let's explore

  the difference between the public and private corporation.  A corporation is a body of people who get together for common purposes.  When one of those common purposes is defense and requires the use of force, we prefer to rely on a corporation that's controlled by the public at large--i.e. what is commonly known as a political subdivision (city, county, state or nation) or public corporation.
  Private corporations are also bodies of people whose commitment towards common purposes is recognized by political subdivisions and differ, primarily, from the latter in that they are not entitled to use physical force to attain their objectives.  (Clearly, the advent of a corporation such as Blackwater is an anomaly, even though, historically, the coercive powers of the public corporation have, on occasion, been at the beck and call of the private--as in the National Guard being called to break workers' strikes).
  What kinds of common purposes, other than keeping the peace, should be restricted to private or public corporations has never been precisely specified.  For a very long time, it was considered convenient for public corporations to take on very large or risky projects, especially since the tradition of "sovereign immunity" protected individual office holders from being personally responsible for any negative consequences of their decisions.  In other words, in exchange for taking risks with the public's assets, office holders were protected from personal liability.  This seems to have been one of the main attractions for public service by people of a conservative bent.  Also, as long as favoritism wasn't too blatant, friends and relatives could expect to benefit from the person who had his "finger on the public pulse" so to speak.
  With the passage of the Federal Tort Claims Act of 1947 (along with state variants), this most favored status of public officials came to an end and as various Court decisions re-enforced the accountability of public officials (not just in cases of malfeasance or criminality, but simple negligence), operating public entities, including utilities, became much less attractive and the "private" corporation with its "proprietary information" exceptions from public inspection came to be seen as a refuge.  That is, privatization is a response to the people wanting to know what was being done with their resources and assets.
  To a certain extent, now that the stock-holders of these so-called "private" corporations are taking a greater interest in their operation, it increasingly seems like there's nowhere to hide--except off-shore and over-seas.  (It would seem that one of our big mistakes was in permitting U.S. corporations to continue as such while they moved their operations to foreign operations to foreign venues and not requiring them to meet the same standards and obligations they had at home).
  What I would argue is that if a corporation wants to be recognized as an American corporation, it needs to comply with all applicable regulations, regardless of where it does business.
  Since it isn't possible for power generating corporations to move their operations over-seas and there's no regulatory advantage to be derived from being a private, as opposed to a publicly owned, utility, the pressure to privatize the power generation and distribution industry has abated considerably.
  As mentioned above, public entities were generally involved in high risk enterprises and then taken private when the risk was low.  Indeed, that's what sort of happened with the nuclear energy business when the production of highly enriched uranium was privatized and dealing with the wastes was retained as a public responsibility.  I refer to this pattern as "privatizing the benefits and socializing the costs."
  It's my sense that if producing energy from uranium is really a good idea, then it ought to be able to be financed by the profits of power generating corporations.  If a public subsidy is needed after all this time, then it probably isn't worth doing.
  On the other hand, our supposedly "free-market economy" seems to be addicted to subsidies and monopolistic provisions and that may account for why there's been no real innovation in the nuclear power industry.  Other nations seem to be working on developing nuclear technology that doesn't have the same waste disposal problems.
  Competition is good.  Unfortunately, what seems to have happened in the U.S. is that "competition" has been replaced by "contest."  Moreover, from being a significant component of our industrial output, military hardware seems to be increasingly considered as an adjunct to "leveling the playing field" by taking the competition down--i.e. creating monopolies by destroying our competitors.  While this is rather devastating for our competitors, it's bad for our industries, as well, because the quality of what they produce keeps going down.
  Which is why the use of force needs to be kept separate and strictly contained to respond to real aggression, not our competitors and/or contestants.
  Thus, the rise of independent agents of aggression like Blackwater should be of ultimate concern, not just because there's no public accountability but because their employ by private corporations violates a basic principle of democratic organization.  Just as religion needs to be private, the military needs to be in the public realm.

  by hannah on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 10:33:31 AM PDT

  •  Public v. Private Corps

    Can you give me a starting point for this view of private versus public corporations? When I was studying corporate organization in business school, I realized that much of Transaction Cost Economics theory could be expanded to the political organization. This is one of the first times I've seen the comparison made explicit.

    Beyond that: Attitudes towards public and private production of public goods seems very cyclical,You seem to imply a cycle of corruption, where the ability to monopolize the public good results in distrust of the entity in charge. When the entity in charge is public, transparency is demanded and privatization results; when private, oversight is demanded and public entities result.

    RV

    by RanxeroxVox on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 11:37:43 AM PDT

    •  As I tried to suggest, from where I sit

      the only real difference between the "private" corporation and the "public" corporation lies in the legitimate use of force.
      Corporations dedicated towards civilian production and commerce rely on the public corporation (nation/state) for protection from aggression.
      The so-called "socialist" or "communist" state, where assets were owned in common by virtue of residence, rather than the purchase of a share, was generally decried because of the easy availability of physical force to enforce the will of those in charge.
      Now that the "communist" state has collapsed, it seems that much of the antagonism was really a sort of envy for the totalitarian conditions which Bush/Cheney have been doing their best to replicate.  Even the derision of the "planned economy" seems not to have been sincere.  At least, that's my reaction whenever the President's direction of the U.S. economy is touted.

      Anyway, corruption is always possible.  It's always possible for people to accept a charge and receive a payment for a particular task and then put their energies toward serving someone else.  And then, of course, there are always going to be people who are more attracted towards the manipulation of people, rather than getting things done.  It's true that people have to be manipulated to get things done.  What I'm objecting to is manipulation for manipulations sake because it makes the manipulator feel powerful.  I don't think that either the private or public corporation is more or less susceptible to abusive power grabs.  It's just something that has to be constantly watched.

      Finally, though this isn't quite on point, I do think that the public corporation is the only kind suited for the delivery of services that the recipients don't want or would rather not have.  That's because the relationship between utilization and success is inverse.  That is, a successful fire-suppression service is one that has to be used less.  Ditto for health care.  The model of increasing rewards for increasing use just doesn't work.

      by hannah on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:13:27 PM PDT

      •  On a certain level you are correct.

        Public ownership (nationalized industries, municipal utility districts, etc) are often corrupt. But in areas where there is strong community and union involvement, these issues are mitagated.

        The Sacremento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is a case in point were corruption is down, public involvement in THEIR company is up and rates are below that of PG&E, the large private utility that surrounds the SMUD juridiction.

        Most public corps are run like capitalist companies, often management personnel float from private to public to private again. The difference is that they are not run for PROFIT, the motive force is SERVICE. I can't explain it any better than that.

        David

        by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:54:05 PM PDT

        •  You're right.

          We used to think that profit motive would prompt high quality in order to insure repeated sales.  But, it's turned out that increasing profit is actually a result of "planned obsolescence" or what I refer to as "failure by design."  Even if a particular service or product provider doesn't benefit from putting out a shoddy product, somebody else in the same industry does.
          So, we might even conclude that the profit motive is directly responsible for decreasing quality.  Quality and profit are inversely related.

          by hannah on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 02:26:33 PM PDT

•  The Los Angeles DWP workers rip off taxpayers

  They rangled themselves 100% pensions...when they retire their paychecks keep on coming in full....i.e.if they were making $74,000 when they were working(the average DWP carpenter pay), then their retirement is $74,000/yr

  by redeploynow on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 10:42:54 AM PDT

  •  ALL Pensions should be 100%

    It's only in America that people think 'retirement' is a step above poverty. Many public servants: cops, firemen, etc all get 70% or more of their wages as pensions. The 100% of the pensions, built into the rate base of the DWP is paid for by the RATE BASE not taxes. Secondly, it's a testament to their union(s) that they can get that high a pension. I say "right on!".

    David

    by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:51:05 PM PDT

•  Public Power

  I think every Canadian province has a provincial Crown Corporation for power, except Alberta.  Ontario for example, instituted Ontario Hydro in the 19th century to help businessses grow and for electrification, and that was under a Tory government.

  by junta0201 on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 10:44:42 AM PDT

•  toxic wasta lasts forever

  Perhaps organic toxins like dioxin decompose with time, but heavy metals will stay where we dump them until the respective piece of Earth crust plunges into a rift --- which does not always happen.  Of course, even when we do nothing, Earth crust contains heavy metals, some of them radioactive.

  There is more radioactivity in coal ashes than in the waste of nuclear power plants.  Once in Poland they made concret from power plant ash and build appartment blocks, and then there was a problem because the radioactivity level was tad higher than an appartment should have.

  For other reasons, hundreds of thousands of suburban homes have radioactivity in their basement -- radon gas is seeping from the bedrock.  So special ventilation has to be installed.

  Simple road construction can bring heavy metals to the surface with significant diposal problems --- but solvable problems.  Of course, pyrite will contain lead forever if it contained lead to start with.

  Thus radioactive waste is not qualitatively different from other kinds of waste with toxic metals, all of them are obnoxious, but the problems can be handled.  Somehow, the disposal of millions of tons of toxic dirt does not generate emotions associated with radioactivity.  In the meantime, we should think how to substitute billion tons of coal that were burn every year, with tens of million of tons of toxic wastes, and global warming effect to boot.  And natural gas generation is cleaner with toxic wastes, but almost as dirty with global warming effect, so we have to replace, eventually, two billions of tons of fuel every year.

  Solar, wind and conservation will not do it alone.  Opposition to nukes is the support of global warming and of the generation of millions of tons of toxic waste.  And of cutting off the mountain tops.

  The French have good record with nuclear energy, and they use public utilities for that.

  by Piotr on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 11:11:46 AM PDT

  •  The Last Time I Looked -

    The radioactivity of a pound of spend nuclear fuel and a pound of coal ash were a LITTLE bit different.

    The difference is geometric in scale.

    by johnnygunn on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 11:18:12 AM PDT

    •  I agree... I think Piotr may

      of overstaed his case a bit.

      The point is that with 1500 coal plants of various size and 49% of the US capacity (IEA) and nuclear with 20%, the total amount of radiation from the coal FAR outweights that of nuclear.

      The waste issue is one we can discuss later. As someone pointed out, it's only the US where waste is not an issue but a problem. One that is in large part solved but which has a technology solution. Later on this.

      David

      by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:57:09 PM PDT

      •  As I Commented Earlier -

        I cannot support any expansion of fission-based nuclear.
        I believe that it is a failed technology.
        The nuclear waste you mention does not include things like decommissioning.
        What do you do with all of that contamination?

        The use of nuclear power is fundamentally unethical.
        I will, reluctantly, consent to continued operation of current facilities -
        but no more.

        As for public ownership - absolutely.
        If we had public ownership we would have far greater incentives for micro production and on-site generation.

        by johnnygunn on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:07:55 PM PDT

        •  Johnny, I will get back to this in a few days.

          Your concerns, of course, reflect that of many people and deserved to be answered. I'll post a Diary on "Nuclear Waste: What It Is and What It Isn't". Give a week or so. I work 12 hour days, and it can be destracting (I actually work in a power plant, but not a nuclear one).

          David

          by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:12:38 PM PDT

    •  A pound of spent nuclear fuel

      is isolated from the biosphere and shielded, and the volume is very small: 1.5 tablespoons. Eventually it will decay to the radioactive level of the ore it came from.

      Coal provides 51% of our electricity. A pound of fly ash contains toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium which never decay. It also contains concentrated uranium-235, which is why coal-fired plants emit 100 to 400 times as much radiation as nuclear plants.  Coal waste is exempted from being classified as hazardous.  However, that waste, far from being isolated, is placed in unlined slurry ponds and ash piles where it leaches into the soil and water table.  The ash is blown around and its small particulates get into lungs and cause disease and heart failure.  

      Annually in the US 24,000 people die from toxic coal waste. Per capita share of the solid toxic coal waste comes to 876 pounds a year. CO2 emissions from burning coal come to about 1,000 pounds per person per year.

      Nuclear power provides 20% of our electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. Annually in the US 0 people die from spent nuclear fuel. Per capita lifetime share of spent nuclear fuel: 2 pounds.

      Annually Americans discard 179,000 tons of batteries--about 8 per person.  These contain toxic waste and are usually disposed of in landfills. The toxic heavy metals from the batteries leach into the soil and water table.

      The entire inventory of spent nuclear fuel from commercial plants operating over the last 50+ years comes to 70,000 tons.  Of that, less than 1% is long-lived radioactive waste.  All of that waste could fit into a single football field stacked a few yards deep. At present it's stored in secure, protected nuclear plants around the country, isolated, often underground, and totally enclosed by concrete and steel walls several feet thick.

      by Plan9 on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 03:23:23 PM PDT

•  Every building should have own off-grid generator

  Large scale electricity generation (no matter the method) is fraught with problems at best and controversial to the point of never happening at worst. No-one wants a power plant near their home, not even a solar or wind farm. However, its an easy matter of buying your own solar panels or small wind turbines (like the little windmills they used to have all over the Midwest) and installing them on your property, or designing a new building to include them.

  Transporting electricity long distances is wasteful as a percentage of the electricity is absorbed by the lines and machinery and transformed into heat. The longer the distance and the hotter the machinery gets, the greater the loss to electrical resistance.

  In Europe, when you build a building, you must also provide for electricity generation, either on site or hooked into the grid at a distance. I propose something similar: require every building to be designed or retrofitted to generate all its own electricity. We'd no longer need big, controversial new plants or the wasteful grid. A few solar panels and/or small wind turbines on every last building would facilitate the switch to renewable sources of energy and largely bypass the whole tedious, corporate-corrupted Department of Energy and EPA and the greedy, parasitic energy companies.

  Requiring generators to be located on site means they could only be so big, creating additional pressure for energy efficiency to keep the generator small enough to not place a major restriction on the size of the building. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy would cease to be effective means of generating electricity since no-one would want a noisy and dirty coal, oil, natural gas, or gasoline/diesel genrator anywhere near them, and nuclear reactors simply can't be made small enough and cheap enough to power individual buildings.

  by Visceral on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 11:17:38 AM PDT

  •  local is better

    The closer power generation can be driven to the local level, the better the chances that it will be efficient and clean in the long run. Ideally each house or apartment building should generate at least some of the power it uses, and why would you put up with an inefficient, dirty source of power generation attached to your own home? Local power sharing and backup cooperatives would be the next best mechanism, backed up by regional sharing and backup systems. This is a classic "small is better" anti-corporate libertarian type of multi-level solution where the local level gets the most control over its resource use without being cut off from the wider community for when things get tough.

    The trouble with this type of set-up is that it obviously would blow away the whole profit model of huge power generation and distribution corporations and make their inefficiencies, heavy environmental footprint and reliance on public subsidies a glaring negative by comparison. But this is where we have to try and get to before Peak Oil cuts off our ability to come up with the transitional technology and put it in everyone's hands.

    by glaser on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:47:38 PM PDT

    •  Smaller is worse.

      The economy of scale on the one hand dicates larger and larger is cheaper and cheaper because it's more efficient. Thus, for example, wind power turbines are getting bigger and bigger, up to 3.6 MWs now each.

      You need a GRID to run civilization, especially in the cities and suburbs where 3/4 of the population lives. When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, you have to keep the grid up to keep the lights on, heating and cooking. Only base load nuclear can do that in a reiable manner. Wind is for supplemental power and a way to keep fossil down, somewhat, by about 20% if things are going right.

      Small nuclear is good too (see Adams Atomic Engines for an explanation and expample of this) but large nuclear to keep the pubic grid online. If it's public nuclear, there is no profit.

      All verions of small off-the-grid operations make lots of money for the big companies that make the wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries.

      David

      by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:01:57 PM PDT

      •  false economies of scale

        In this case the economies of scale end up being false because they place too much control in the hands of the few, who then can use that and the profits they make to buy legislation and regulatory exceptions, game the system, and erect barriers to competition that erase any incentive to be efficient or environmentally responsible. And that's usually followed by demands for massive public subsidies and tax breaks. Better to pay more per unit at the local level in the beginning but preserve local control, provide redundancy and maintain a competitive market environment.

        by glaser on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:26:38 PM PDT

      •  Well, there's nothing wrong with...

        ...making a profit building RE equipment, big or small.
        And everyone can contribute, too.

        For example, Calamity Jean and I live in an old
        bungalow in Chicago, with a southern exposure and
        a 25-ft. wide lot. I doubt that we could stack enough
        PV panels to supply all of our electricity needs, but
        if we were to install enough to power, say, the
        refrigerator, the furnace and blower, and a few
        lights, it might provide a dent in our power bills.
        Then, if none of the appliances are using any power,
        and the batteries hold a full charge, the juice flows
        back into the grid. We become a small electrical
        power utility!

        This something we are planning to do on our retirement
        farm, BTW.

        by JeffW on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:30:34 PM PDT

      •  All wrong

        It's always easier for something small to happen than for something big to happen. Even with economies of scale, it's going to take far longer for a large-scale, centralized power generation and distribution network to go green - if it ever happens: what with NIMBYs, lobbyists, and just the expense of constructing solar and wind farms and dismantling the existing plants  - than it'd take for everyone to do what I'm suggesting and generate all their own electricity. A few thousand dollars and a few weeks versus hundreds of billions in taxes and decades: which do you think would be more popular?

        You don't need a grid if everyone has their own private generation capacity. That's what we're talking about here. You, me, each of our neighbors, and everyone in the country supplying all their own electricity through a combination of solar, wind, and conservation. You never use solar or wind by themselves, but always in combination to prevent being cut off by the weather: when the weather is good, there's no wind, but the sun is shining, and when the weather is bad, you have no sun, but the wind is blowing. And anyways you're getting your light from daylight, your heat from the sun (even when it's overcast - I've done the heat gain calculations in school myself), good building insulation, extra layers, and a Eastern European style masonry stove that'll keep the room warm for 12 hours straight on a handful of dry grass, and when it's dark, you're asleep and not doing anything anyway.

        I wouldn't want to live anywhere near a nuclear reactor, no matter how small - if it malfunctioned, I'd be dead. Besides, the thing would be too complex to maintain myself, thus defeating the purpose of small-scale private power generation - you'd still need some massive power company or public utility.

        Finally, why wouldn't we support the companies that make solar panels, wind turbines, and ecologically sound batteries by buying their products? These companies deserve to make money because they're actually making something that does the world good.

        by Visceral on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 07:26:01 PM PDT

        •  Do you ...

          currently supply your own electricity?

          If not, why not, if it's so easy?

          by bryfry on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 01:43:20 AM PDT

        •  You wouldn't want to live near

          a NPP but you drive every day? Live in the flight path of a airport? Everything you do every day is worse than living near a NPP. This shows the true insanity of anti-nuclear propaganda world wide. "IF" this happened I'd die? My goodness, how DO you get out of bed in the morning Visceral?

          Propety values tend to be very high around NPPs. Ever wonder why?

          David Walters

          by davidwalters on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 05:50:45 AM PDT

        •  Hope you don't eat bananas

          Radiation exposure from eating 1 banana: 0.01 millirem.

          Radiation exposure from living near a nuclear plant: 0.009 millirem.

          by Plan9 on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 09:57:15 AM PDT

    •  Power companies & government can't stop us

      That's the best part. There's nothing the huge power generation and distribution corporations can do to stop the entire United States population from buying photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, disengaging from the grid, and practicing energy conservation wherever they can.

      Unless they twist the government's arm to make it all illegal - which the people would never put up with: imagine environmentalist liberals and anti-government libertarians and conservatives protesting together! - all it will take is sufficient will on the part of the people to spend the money and make the changes.

      What frustrates me is that we don't use the power of the purse that we as individuals possess. We could do so much to create a better world just by changing what we buy and who we buy it from. I'd love to live in a world where ordinary people take control of the market and regularly discipline and destroy massive corporations through smart purchasing and company boycotts. There's no law that says you have to buy electricity from Big Power, just like there's no law that says you have to get your water from the government utilities, or your food from Big Food, or your you-name-it from Big You-Name-It.

      The conservatives are right; you can't rely on the government for anything. The liberals are right, you can't rely on the corporations for anything. I'm all for self-sufficiency that isn't just an excuse to throw all but the super-rich to the wolves.

      by Visceral on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 07:02:58 PM PDT

      •  GE: one of the largest makers of wind turbines

        Exxon-Mobil and other megacorporations provide subsidies to wind and solar entrepreneurs.

        Also, most people can't possibly afford the tens of thousands of dollars you have to spend to acquire the capacity to live off the grid.  In the real world, I have to tell you, in a lot of households, both partners work at two jobs and at raising kids.  Running a home power plant on top of all that is asking a lot.

        I have to check out my own groceries, pump my own gasoline, and spend a lot of my paycheck making sure that I and loved ones have health insurance that probably is not going to cover much.  So I don't mind the power company providing my electricity.  What I do mind is that the power company burns coal and natural gas to do so.  

        But utilities do have a choice, and several of them have realized that having more nuclear plants to meet increased demand for electricity is a good idea.  Uranium is relatively cheap and occurs in stable, democratic countries; plants run at over 90% capacity; and if there is ever a tax on carbon, nuclear utilities are going to look very smart.

        by Plan9 on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 10:09:17 AM PDT

        •  Risk-Shifting...

          ...the most insidious thing ever slipped under the
          radar by the Republicans.

          by JeffW on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 11:41:37 AM PDT

    •  Yes--and we all do it every day

      People routinely are fine with their own dirt and resent the dirt of others.  People own SUV's.  People throw batteries & other forbidden stuff in the dump.

      And every single freakin- home heating furnace puts out more smoke and crap per pound of fuel burned than anything except old style coal plants.  Have a look at the chimneys on a quiet winter morning & the dark plumes of smoke rising from them.

      Check the greenhouse gas chart-electric power generation and home heating generate about the same percentage--and this is really amazing when you recall that some areas of the country need very, very little home heating but all areas use electricity.

      Typically, stuff that is built for the consumer is built for planned obsolescence and frankly, built to break and need replacement. It is indifferently maintained by many due to lack of time, money, or simple ignorance of what is needed. It is minimally regulated as the voting block who would be affected by increased cost is very large.  "Incentives" is the way politicians deal with stuff that is individually owned.

      For example, trains in NYC are electric but gas guzzling SUV's are not banned.

      So no, just because something is in your house, it will not be cleaner than something done by a corporation.  Usually, but not always, it's worse.

      by LIsoundview on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 09:17:35 PM PDT

      •  when the incentive becomes survival

        You're right about how the market (and people's laziness) discourages responsible use now, but my assumption is that post-Peak Oil the planned obsolescence and flaunting of wastefulness will become survival threats. In a scarcity situation you can't be as lazy and wasteful of resources as you can be in an abundance situation--not if you want to survive and have anything even distantly resembling the kind of amenities we enjoy today. I guess if we all accept going back to wood burning or peat burning neo-primitivism and give up on technology altogether, we'll be stuck with dirty, inefficient power and have lives that are nasty, brutish and short. ;^) But I'm hoping we can use the technology we have now not to perpetuate the centralized systems that work okay in our abundance economy (and that generate huge profits for stockholders and big CEO salaries) but to bridge the transition to a scarcity economy where community self-sufficiency can be at least partially realized.

        So I think the first couple of generations of technology as sold to the consumer may well be shoddy and unacceptably dirty and wasteful by the standards of what our grandchildren will need to rely on. But it's transitional technology anyway, because using petroleum by-products to fabricate it will soon become too expensive. The object is to get to a sustainable technology that can be used to generate power on a highly distributed basis, because the whole concept of centralization and transport (of power, food, manufactured goods, etc.) from highly centralized distribution points over long distances will become impractical, as the economic impact of the fall-off in petroleum availability gets more dire.

        And that doesn't even address the vulnerability of centralized power generation grids to asymmetric warfare, as seen in Iraq now, probably coming to a neighborhood near us all sooner than we'd like to think, as Government Of The Corporations, For The Rich, By The Privatized Police State Thugs ceases trying to disguise itself as something else and people start resisting it however they can (the phrase "bringing the war back home" from the old Firesign Theater routine comes to mind). But even if you don't believe in that threat, which to me seems more likely than terrorism to be our big problem in the future, terrorists also can cut huge power lines, sabotage nuclear plants, and otherwise use low tech means to disrupt the delivery of power over national or sufficiently large regional grids. Keeping a significant portion of the generation local makes for many more "low value targets" and few high value ones.

        by glaser on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 10:30:55 PM PDT

        •  How can terrorists "sabotage" nuclear plants? n/t

          by Plan9 on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 10:10:33 AM PDT

          •  like a lot of people said at the time

            9/11 could have been much worse if they had crashed one of those planes into Indian Point. But even blowing holes in some water pipes could force a plant to shut down. Two or three years back there were quite a few reports about suspicious characters apparently "casing" a surprisingly large number of nuclear plants in the south and midwest, so it's not like this hasn't occurred to somebody out there.

            by glaser on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 10:51:51 AM PDT

            •  Actually

              it would have been much better if they had tried to crash a plane into Indian Point. Then, instead of killing thousands, they would would have killed far fewer.

              If they could have hit such a small target as a power plant (much smaller than the very, very large office buildings they instead aimed their hijacked planes at), they most likely would have hit a turbine building -- an expensive incident for the plant owners and probably fatal for some of the workers at the plant, but hardly a safety threat outside of the plant itself. If they had managed to hit one of the containment structures, the plane, which is mostly made out of aluminum, remember, would have broken up upon impact, with little damage to the containment itself. In the very rare event of a direct hit (necessary to cause any significant damage), the impact of the plane would have not only needed to breech the think concrete structures, but also would need to penetrate the steel components inside. The worst realistic case imaginable would be a large-break loss of coolant accident, which has been studied to death by the industry and accounted for in the safety design of the plants.

              The terrorists did consider attacking nuclear plants and wisely (for them, but unfortunately for us) rejected the idea. Why should they take a risky endeavor such as hijacking four planes, and add additional risks such as attacking a nuclear power plant, when so many softer targets are easily available?

              Well, history has demonstrated where the true vulnerabilities are. They are not at commercial nuclear plants.

              by bryfry on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 11:16:35 AM PDT

              •  Indian Point's design goals

                included a possible airplane crash.  Of course, at the time it was built, it was assumed such a crash would be accidental--but that doesn't matter.

                The containment vessels at Indian Point are scary thick.  I've seen pictures of them from the build process.  I've tried to talk the friend of mine who took them into putting them on line; no luck yet.

                If I were a terrorist, it's not the target I'd pick.  Furthermore, there seems to be an assumption that if Indian Point were to be blown up by terrorists that the wind pattern in the area would blow the debris south to New York city.

                http://en.allexperts.com/...

                The prevailing wind at New York City's latitude is west to east--and more typically on Long Island Sound, it's southwest.  In other words, the plume from Indian Point being exploded by terrorists, if they could do it, would be towards Putnam County in NY and Fairfield County in Ct.

                http://en.allexperts.com/...

                Accuweather discusses NYC airflows--and sensationalism in reporting.

                You might be interested in reading NNadir's diary on Indian point

                http://www.dailykos.com/...

                and his previous diary on a possible nuclear terrorism attack on New York.

                http://www.dailykos.com/...

                or not, as the case may be.

                by LIsoundview on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 08:22:13 PM PDT

            •  Oh ... and by the way ...

              But even blowing holes in some water pipes could force a plant to shut down.

              Well, of course! You want the plant to shut down.

              Nuclear plants are designed to shut down at the first irregularity. It's called safety. In fact, you couldn't license a plant in the US that is not designed to shut itself down (with redundant or physically inherent systems) in the event of an emergency.

              by bryfry on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 11:44:55 AM PDT

              •  Clearly, since they flew OVER

                Indian Point NP they chose not to hit such a hard target.

                It's hard to hit because you it's only about 50 feet high and there is no vertical 'close enough' allowed: you have to come in at an angle, the correct one, from the right direction, etc.

                Secondly, there is NO PART of the fusilage that could come close to even denting the containment dome. The only part of the plant at 600 MPH that could come close to this is impaling one of the engine rotor shafts into the dome, full penetrating it, then hitting the pressure vessel/core area itself. The engine rotor shafts are usually carbon steel and very hard, very strong. You'd have to line up ONE of the engines to do this, located 30 feet port or starboard from the suicide pilot and his line of sight, all at the required angle.

                Thirdly, worse case scenerio, a some radiation might expscape, no one but plant workers would be injured (mostly because of the crash itself).

                Lastly, "If I Were A Terrorist" dark-fantasy, and I wanted to KILL PEOPLE, I'd hit Yankee Stadium during the play-offs.60,000 people, all in one spot. What's not to like? Hitting Indian Pt. NPP would "terrorize" for A DAY until they realized that at worst, one of the 1 GW reactors would be off line or trashed. That's it.

                David

                by davidwalters on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 12:00:03 PM PDT

            •  Nuclear plant presents an extremely small target

              compared to two of the biggest buildings in the world, the WTC and the Pentagon.

              To compare, check out p. 5 of this short PDF.

              Also, there's a phenomenon called ground effect that basically prevents a plane from flying at tens of feet from the ground at 500 mph.

              Also, most reactors are located deep underground and the core is 12 feet by 12 feet.  And all reactors in the US are in containment buildings with steel and concrete walls about 5 feet thick.

              by Plan9 on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 12:17:27 PM PDT

      •  You don't know what you're talking about

        And every single freakin- home heating furnace puts out more smoke and crap per pound of fuel burned than anything except old style coal plants.  Have a look at the chimneys on a quiet winter morning & the dark plumes of smoke rising from them.

         The vast majority of home heating is gas furnaces -- they burn very clean -- they put out plenty of CO2 and some NOx but virtually no "smoke" or "crap" if you mean particulates and all of the really dirty constituents you get from burning coal or even oil.  I'm glad to see that you can run a detailed flue gas analysis by looking at smoke coming out of chimneys.  For natural gas furnaces, you are actually looking almost entirely at water vapor.

        But your truly ignorant statement was:

        Check the greenhouse gas chart-electric power generation and home heating generate about the same percentage--and this is really amazing when you recall that some areas of the country need very, very little home heating but all areas use electricity.

         Well, based on EPA data  Home heating with gas is about 263 MMT of CO2 per year while electric generation is about 2381 MMT -- only about 9 times as much.  Even if you add in the oil heat at 95 MMT you are still only a tiny fraction of electric power generation.  Please show me your source that says they are equal -- or did you just make this up...

        by NRG Guy on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 04:16:05 PM PDT

        •  Here in the northeast

          there is not as uch natural gas used for heating.  Why? Because we don't have the pipes for it in most places. I did a search recently for a client who wanted natural gas heat.  Maybe 10 of 300 houses in the search had it.

          In FL, they mostly use heat pumps and they're electric.

          It depends where you live what heat you use.

          In the graph I saw of sources of CO2, it was almost 1/3 home heating, 1/3 electric, and 1/3 for a mixture of cars & other forms of transport.  Electric heaters would fall under electric, I'm assuming.

          Where there is no natural gas piping, there is no natural gas heating.

          by LIsoundview on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 08:36:28 PM PDT

          •  still misinformed

            It is true that natural gas heat is not common in places without natural gas (obviously) and is less common in the Northeast, but you are still mistaken in both the prevalence of gas heat and the GHG emissions.  Natural gas is the most prevalent heating fuel in the US (51% of homes) and in the Northeast (50%).  In new construction, it's 75% of the Northeast.  Only 8% of US homes are oil heated although it is 32% in the Northeast and even higher in a few states (Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are all >50% oil).  

            In terms of GHG emissions -- are you claiming that some table you remember seeing is more accurate that the US EPA greenhouse gas inventory report I linked?  

            by NRG Guy on Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 08:51:44 AM PDT

            •  You need to update your link

              http://epa.gov/...

              The link you published didn't work.  And this one does't include the inventory you cited.

              by LIsoundview on Sun Oct 14, 2007 at 08:00:32 AM PDT

  •  Most of the off grid folk I know

    may have a windmill on the roof or on a tower or on a rack in the backyard.  (a few have solar as well) However, unless they are plugged into the electric grid (which means their backup for underpowered days and nights is typically the baseload power of the grid, supplied primarily by coal & nuclear), they have a honking old diesel generator in the basement, a huge wood pile for winter heat, or a huge propane tank in the backyard, and/or a huge rack of batteries.  I've known a few who burned coal in coal stoves (Yikes!) Kerosene stoves, too. None of which is clean & lovely.  Furthermore the exhaust from the diesel generator is not particularly clean, and it is sure as heck not quiet.

    Off the grid is not always as nice as you'd think from the ads.  

    by LIsoundview on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 09:07:42 PM PDT

    •  Indeed. "Living off the Grid" is a Utopian

      Fantasy for 99% of Americans. It's silly to even bring it up unless you want live like that yourself, hunt for your own food, use a mule to pull a plow...in fact, going back to the 19th Century would be more applicable than a real alternative to the problems modern society has with burning fossil fuel.

      Real solar power application means integration with the grade. The city of Davis in California has the most number of Grid Integrated Photo Voltaics (PIPV) where the grid is used a massive battery, reciving extra solar power during the day (making your meter spin backwards) and provides power at peak and at night time when their is no solar available.

      AT least this is realistic IF you can afford the solar panels and associated inverter and electronics. Right now this is a "Green Yuppied Dream" since only middle class people, right now, can afford it with a 50% subsidy in California.

      Residential consumption of power in my state is only 19% of the grid, the rest is commerical and industrial.
      David

      by davidwalters on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 05:56:08 AM PDT

      •  Ha ... I like the term

        "Green Yuppie's Dream." Pretty much calls it for what it is. I might have to steal it.

        Here are some folks who actually do it, and are honest about it. ("The cutting edge of low technology.")

        They live too far back in the woods for the power lines, so they build their own wind turbines, purchase and install "used" solar panels (probably from some rich suburbanites who originally purchased them for the tax break and got tired of maintaining them), install their own batteries, and let's not forget the solar powered outhouse. (Apparently, electricity is not the only thing that these people are unafraid to go without.)

        Nevertheless, they are honest about what it takes for conservation:

        City Slicker Habits-- We're not joking here either. People who move to a remote area and expect to run their solar-powered house the same way they did in town are in for a rude surprise (ruined batteries). Those of you who have spent a year or more reading by kerosene lamp or candle, hauling water in 5-gallon buckets, and using a stereo powered by AA batteries will marvel at how wonderful even a single solar panel and battery are--and will conserve power to keep the system working for as long as possible!

        I think that an addiction to blogging on the Internet can be considered a "city slicker habit," and it certainly appears to be a popular pastime with the "Green Yuppie" set.

        They also like propane refrigerators, and they're very honest about what the backup plan is when their home-spun renewable energy sources can't cut it.

        Now, if any of the folks here who are huffing and puffing about how wonderful distributed energy, local power sharing, and private generation capacity are could demonstrate even a fraction of what these "good ol' boys" are actually doing for themselves, then I could take them seriously. Right now, I think they're all just blowing smoke and have no idea what they're talking about.

        by bryfry on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 06:52:39 AM PDT

        •  City life is greener than rural life

          Chiefly because you can use public transportation and apartment houses are less wasteful of energy than suburban homes.

          Top ten green cities.

          by Plan9 on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 10:14:39 AM PDT

          •  I agree

            And I live in a city. One of the chief things that I complain about over and over, for environmental reasons, is sprawl.

            It was one thing 100 years ago when much of the population lived out on farms and pretty much stayed there all of the time, except for a rare trip into town to buy whatever they could not get in the country. Today, however, people who live in the country (and on "farms," the new suburbia) drive into town all of the time, to go to work, to shop at megastores, to visit friends, etc., etc.

            by bryfry on Sun Oct 07, 2007 at 10:45:10 AM PDT

•  Public energy is subsidized

  The US provides highly subsidized hydro to public utilities.

  Also re local nuclear power

  I am highly supportive of nuclear power, I don't see how we can stay below 550 parts per million atmospheric GHG without it, let alone 450 ppm (nor does any analysis I've ever seen), and even at 450 ppm, we have a 50% chance of a 2 C increase, but...

  I would guess that most any source of power more complicated than natural gas probably does better with larger entities with experience. This is true of nuclear power, this is true of intermittent sources of energy.

  by KStreet on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 12:38:57 PM PDT

  •  Hydro subsidized?

    I don't think so. The cost of hydro in the US is 1.1 a KWhr...without a "subsidy". It's the cheapest, "renwable", reliable power around and I say this as a die-heart nuclear geek. If the Mississipi River was 500 feet higher at St. Louis, we'd probably have 50,000 MWs of hydro right there. But we don't. Oh well.

    Interesting numbers of the GHG. My biggest issue with fossil (namely coal, less so NG) is very immediate: soot. It's the particulate that causes the up to 40,000 respiratory deaths a year (you would think there would be a HUGE anti-coal project by Greenpeace or some organization as this shit kills people NOW). This why I'm in large part pro-nuclear.

    If we built another 300 nuclear plants (actually 250 of the Gen III+ kind) we cold close EVERY coal plant in the US (we need 200,000 MWs of additional nuclear to do this since that is the name place capacity of coal plants in the US).

    If we didn't invade Iraq for FOSSIL FUEL, we could of done this because its about the same amount spent on war fightign for petroleum as it is to build this much nuclear power.

    David
    PS...ALL OUT FOR OCTOBER 27 ANTI-WAR MARCHES IN YOUR AREA!

    by davidwalters on Sat Oct 06, 2007 at 01:07:51 PM PDT

    •  cheap hydro provided to public utilities

      All sources of electricity have subsidies.

      The feds preferentially provide cheap hydro to public utilities, so the energy they buy is much cheaper.

      In California, public utilities do not have to meet many mandates required of private ones -- the CA Climate Action Team, which figures out the details of reducing GHG, analyzes separately regulations on public and private utilities.

      Many private utilities barely have enough capital to buy nuclear power plants without loan guarantees -- how are smaller public utilities going to compete?

      Many of us still prefer larger utilities with lots of expertise building and running nuclear power plants.

      by KStreet on Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 04:59:42 AM PDT