Great article. As a former state senator I can tell you that I don't know a single Democrat legislator who understands this but they are pushing disastrous energy policies that will make electricity far more expensive and far less reliable. They are blaming the Millstone deal for the big jump in electricity costs in July, 2024. But the standard offer rate from Eversource is 8.9 cents per kWh while the Millstone deal is 4.99 cents per kWh. Only a politician could claim that those numbers show Millstone is contributing to the big increase in electricity costs. There's more to be explained that I don't have time for in this post. Keep up the good work Chris B.
Do? I'm beginning to think the best course of action would be to stop subsidising Wind & Solar [because they cannot be relied on] and instead subsidise Nuclear.
My "do different" is to subsidize nothing but to tax net emissions [meaning in practice an excise tax on first sale of a fossil fuel in proportion to its carbon content and subsidy per unit of CO2 removed and permanently sequestered], remove the very substantial regulatory barriers to development of nuclear (and geothermal) energy, and subsidize R&D. Some of that R&D subsidy could be in the form of a payment per unit of zero CO2 energy produced by an experimental technology.
A detailed and comprehensive debunking of the kind of thinking that our policy makers are being exposed to.
Your detailed analysis shows that adequate technology for doing net-zero by wind, solar and storage is decades or even centuries away.
And we're all ignoring the basic Physics of this which tells us that atmospheric CO2 is already 'saturated' (>300ppm) and hence adding even lots more will hardly increase its greenhouse contribution and global temperature. My garden likes it too.
In other words, we're trying to solve the wrong problem.
Great article. As a former state senator I can tell you that I don't know a single Democrat legislator who understands this but they are pushing disastrous energy policies that will make electricity far more expensive and far less reliable. They are blaming the Millstone deal for the big jump in electricity costs in July, 2024. But the standard offer rate from Eversource is 8.9 cents per kWh while the Millstone deal is 4.99 cents per kWh. Only a politician could claim that those numbers show Millstone is contributing to the big increase in electricity costs. There's more to be explained that I don't have time for in this post. Keep up the good work Chris B.
Thank you for your comments, Len.
Here in the UK apparently we're leading the word in becoming an all-'renewable' energy superpower, according to our Governments (old and new).
This is my current electricity tariff:
Standing Charge 63.36p per day [USD 0.832 /day for the grid connection]
Unit Rate 22.4991p per kWh [USD 0.2955 /kWh]
[exchange rates courtesy xe.com]
For *some* reason, most of the rest of the world is not following our lead.
Best regards.
So what is the policy implication? DO more? DO less? DO different? And who should DO it?
Thank you for your comment.
Do? I'm beginning to think the best course of action would be to stop subsidising Wind & Solar [because they cannot be relied on] and instead subsidise Nuclear.
But I need to do more info-digging.
My "do different" is to subsidize nothing but to tax net emissions [meaning in practice an excise tax on first sale of a fossil fuel in proportion to its carbon content and subsidy per unit of CO2 removed and permanently sequestered], remove the very substantial regulatory barriers to development of nuclear (and geothermal) energy, and subsidize R&D. Some of that R&D subsidy could be in the form of a payment per unit of zero CO2 energy produced by an experimental technology.
A detailed and comprehensive debunking of the kind of thinking that our policy makers are being exposed to.
Your detailed analysis shows that adequate technology for doing net-zero by wind, solar and storage is decades or even centuries away.
And we're all ignoring the basic Physics of this which tells us that atmospheric CO2 is already 'saturated' (>300ppm) and hence adding even lots more will hardly increase its greenhouse contribution and global temperature. My garden likes it too.
In other words, we're trying to solve the wrong problem.