https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-every-power-plant-in-the-united-states/
Crashing the gates worked as a metaphor because the kos ppl in the 2000’s were like barbarians with blog weapons taking down the Dem palace.
During those heady times there was a Jerome a paris contributor that inspired my budding career in wind and solar. His bringing the behind the scenes wind power and energy world to regular people was a gift. I ended up working unrelatedly for French project finance specialists and then launching my own green company. The dept of energy helped us. Thank you taxpayers!, we will pay that forward.
the aoc/green new deal (GND) deal needs a little help. here's a few thoughts, part technical part political.
First, political, don't change anything. Suck all the parties into the discussion with the socialist rhetoric. That gets everyone’s goat, making it sound like the govt must spend a gazillion dollars to save the planet. The right thinks they are onto a big winning streak riding the cow farts to the sky. The incumbent dem types instinctively go running to lock the gates. Don't worry about these idiots.
Second, political, be prepared to win, and to own the victory. Be gracious. Act centrist during the period of victory. For the reasons below it might feel like you are just declaring victory because the GND morphed a lot, but don't think that way. Even though some of the stodgiest republican outfits and biggest polluters are the ones making the biggest changes, who cares. Enjoy the victory. This isn’t sarcasm. I used to fantasize about being an edscan sockpuppet, but am not.
technical: Decarbonization is going to happen faster than the proposed GND. Wind and solar are cheaper. Companies like Budweiser are signing long term wind contracts and publicizing that on the Superbowl. Ameren is a big giant coal burning utility. Ameren lost their contract to Budweiser - they lost their best customer to what amounts to a computer nerd doing wind power day trading (it’s a thing. And it’s really cool and market based. DC bureaucrats would figure out a way to mess it up if they knew where to stick their blood funnels).
Point being, Ameren the Polluter is leading quickly the change from burning stuff to saving the planet’s atmosphere. They are, in one sense, still the stodgiest most coal friendly utility. But, now they are also whole hog into wind and solar, because those are cheaper and their customers want it. A newspaper could easily front page this headline "Biggest Polluter Moves in to Take over Wind and Solar Power". That would be an honest to god true statement. And it’s just simple math. If Utilities don’t change, they’ll lose their market share to neighbors that will fill the grid up with sun and wind (and natgas for now). Up until now they were partly slow, and partly defending their coal assets. But with wind, solar and gas so cheap, they have all given up on their coal assets. That is an open secret.
Fear from outer space: Utilities fear a democratized grid. In ten years a big city could go off the grid with their own supply contracts of electricity and fees paid for the use of the wires. If cities feel like the utility isn’t a good vendor, goodbye. This is a pretty crazy idea compared to the present feeling of being prostrate but it is simple and technically feasible. Boulder Colorado has been threatening this already for 5 years. Dispatch and balancing of the load/generation is better performed by a nimble smart network, as opposed to a stodgy centralized organization. So for all the upsides, utilities face some big threats.
technical opinion: the electrification of transport, cars and trucks, will happen 10x faster than people think. My bet is that someone like uber car or something like that will come along with a car that pulls into what was a gas station and switches out the battery pack like a flashlight. Then, the car owner doesn't have to front the battery cost. Increasingly, kids don't care about auto transportation as a personal statement. So, common cars will be $10k, fancy golf carts, with no upfront battery expense. And people will love them. There will still be lots of luxury vehicles like Tesla and GM/Ford V/Bolts, but lower market share. Utilities gain 30% more energy market from gasoline ppl (huge!!). Drillers and refiners of earth ooze get jobs craning up wind towers (fun!). Internal combustion engines simply cannot beat electric motors in cost or performance. That’s a fact; the question is how long it takes. Bet 15, faster than the GND. Electric machinery is easy to make.
technical EV aside: don't trust someone who says EVs are dumb because they run on coal. In a few years that will be natural gas and renewables. If somebody says, 'well natgas flaring causes more greenhouse gas problems than coal' see below, there’s a solution. There is no defense of coal. It’s a rock that burns inefficiently, and creates a mountain of mess. And there is already 4 ways to make electricity for cheaper.
Political opinion: It is easy to make these technical realities happen fast, much faster than the GND. First is to change or remove laws at the federal level. This will sound like Repub talking points. Here's a few examples: 1) it takes forever to get a transmission line built due to a labyrinth of federal rules. a lot of people don't like transmission lines. But if you want to save the planet, you want to accelerate the retirement of coal. That means new transmission lines. They aren't expensive. Just a pain to permit through the federal labyrinth. As soon as transmission lines are in, private capital fills those wires up with wind and solar faster than you can get a suntan or wind burn. A lot of that is pension fund money. Regular people retiring on wind and solar farms. This has been happening all over the US for the last 5 years when the few T lines go in. it's not speculation. 2) if a utility has a coal burner and 15 years left on it's FERC (federal) permit, the utility is less likely to mothball it. the federal govt could pass a law to let the utility switch to let's say half natgas and half wind/solar and keep all its derivative rights - for the 15 years. There's money in the congestion rights. Like if you could park your car on the freeway until someone paid you cash to get out of the way. 3) there's a bunch of other scenarios like this that are basically incumbent company inertia that is protected by Dems and R’s in Congress in exchange for chump change to retain their seats. Utilities two big jobs were basically burning mother earth fatty reserves and talking about grid reliability. Pretty much overnight, some nerds figured out better, cheaper, earth friendly technologies. And we are living in that change right now. There will be books about. You were there.
market aside: natgas has gotten so cheap due to the fracking boom that wholesale power is about 35% of its 50 year average. This is a phenomenal fact not intended as pro frack. Wholesale electricity was 5c per kilowatt-hour for 50 years. and now it's 2 -3 cents for the last 10 years steady. In other words, nobody will miss a beat if the frackers have to pay 10% extra to stop flaring. you can see their fires from space. it's a cosmic sin. But, fracking natgas has also been a great great thing for wind and solar. That's because gas turbines cycle on and off with the wind and sun easily. Coal and nuclear are ‘thermal units’ that boil water first. Thermal has to hog the grid bandwidth and run all the time. Anyhoo, back to flaring, DC could tomorrow pass a law to prohibit flaring. Flared natural gas is pollution across state lines. So that is federal jurisdiction. Flaring prohibition would make natgas more expensive, and it would end flaring very fast. The frackers would have to build relief piping and transport and use that gas. Jobs for union pipefitters, woo! Lot of wins, fast and cheap.
disclaimers: lot’s of people work at coal plants. They will need to get jobs in electric fleet vehicles delivering solar panels. Wind farms kill birds, although I’ve seen a lot of turbines and never seen a bird killed since they fly in the tree level; geese must be smart or there’d be a lot of youtubes – any case buildings and highways kill something like 10,000x more birds. I’m not sure how to square the GND WPA stuff - give everyone a job, only the gummint can solve a problem this big. I think more people will get jobs if DC GND ppl got surgical and rapid about getting inertial, crappy old laws, out of the way. I loved the old guard, glenzilla, kos, digby, juan cole. Out of that whole crew I like josh marshall’s path, but the others are still heros to me. The use of the vampire squid reference for DC bureaucrats is appropriate. DC ppl game everything just like the big investment banks do. It’s not good for the country to have that concentration of stupidity and money in one place. That alone should get people to ‘hop back over the gate’. But the trend is the reverse, concentrate power and decision making in DC.
Sad but true: the fastest way to save the planet is to say some nice stuff about Cheeto guy and get some of the past century regulatory crap out of the way, then stand aside and watch the nerds and builders go to town. I don’t feel like doing reference links. If this gets read I’ll stick some in, but it’s all pretty easy to google. Energy is really hard to understand. The u.s. has a great EIA website https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34452 but it’s best to know some technical basics to understand what the EIA data is saying.
