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44 Ways You Can Slow The Solar Century’s Arrival
44 Ways You Can Slow The Solar Century’s Arrival
August 15th, 2016 by Zachary Shahan
Since “22 Ways To Delay The Electric Car Revolution” and then the expanded “50 Tips For Slowing The Electric Car Revolution” were such big hits, I thought I’d run with “44 Ways You Can Slow The Solar Century” to keep the “fun” going. (Of course, as someone wrote under one of those articles, it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.)
I’m sure I’m again leaving a ton of tips out, so feel free to fill the gaps down in the comments.
Getting to the actors in this one, they are utilities, media, politicians, and university PR teams. Naturally, even if you aren’t a part of any of these industries, you can do your part to slow the transition to solar energy by sticking many of these claims on the bottom of articles across the internet.
Solar obstructionists, start your engines!
Utilities
1. Tell politicians, the media, etc., that the grid would collapse if solar power represented more than 5% of electricity.
When it becomes obvious that isn’t true, raise the percentage to 10%, then 15%, then 20%, and so on. (Ignore that some countries have gone well beyond 20% of electricity from renewables, and some even beyond 40%.)
2. Act as though you need a lot of cheap energy storage before you can integrate more solar power into the grid.
3. Ignore a large buffet of options (like demand response, renewable energy forecasting, quickly dispatchable electricity production from some non-solar power plants, regional grid connections, and time-of-use pricing) that can help to integrate a lot of solar power into the grid.
4. When discussing rooftop solar costs to the utility and other ratepayers under net metering, be sure you don’t indicate the benefits to the grid and society that rooftop solar provides (less need for transmission infrastructure, reduced load at times of high demand, reliable generation, more-secure decentralization of electricity generation, reduced pollution and CO2 emissions, etc.).
5. Try not to admit that the real reason you oppose net metering and rooftop solar is because rooftop solar eats into your profits.
6. Pretend that baseload power is still necessary.
7. Ignore the increasing difficulty of cooling thermal (fossil & nuclear) power plants...
more at: http://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/15/44-ways-can-slow-solar-century/
August 15th, 2016 by Zachary Shahan
Since “22 Ways To Delay The Electric Car Revolution” and then the expanded “50 Tips For Slowing The Electric Car Revolution” were such big hits, I thought I’d run with “44 Ways You Can Slow The Solar Century” to keep the “fun” going. (Of course, as someone wrote under one of those articles, it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.)
I’m sure I’m again leaving a ton of tips out, so feel free to fill the gaps down in the comments.
Getting to the actors in this one, they are utilities, media, politicians, and university PR teams. Naturally, even if you aren’t a part of any of these industries, you can do your part to slow the transition to solar energy by sticking many of these claims on the bottom of articles across the internet.
Solar obstructionists, start your engines!
Utilities
1. Tell politicians, the media, etc., that the grid would collapse if solar power represented more than 5% of electricity.
When it becomes obvious that isn’t true, raise the percentage to 10%, then 15%, then 20%, and so on. (Ignore that some countries have gone well beyond 20% of electricity from renewables, and some even beyond 40%.)
2. Act as though you need a lot of cheap energy storage before you can integrate more solar power into the grid.
3. Ignore a large buffet of options (like demand response, renewable energy forecasting, quickly dispatchable electricity production from some non-solar power plants, regional grid connections, and time-of-use pricing) that can help to integrate a lot of solar power into the grid.
4. When discussing rooftop solar costs to the utility and other ratepayers under net metering, be sure you don’t indicate the benefits to the grid and society that rooftop solar provides (less need for transmission infrastructure, reduced load at times of high demand, reliable generation, more-secure decentralization of electricity generation, reduced pollution and CO2 emissions, etc.).
5. Try not to admit that the real reason you oppose net metering and rooftop solar is because rooftop solar eats into your profits.
6. Pretend that baseload power is still necessary.
7. Ignore the increasing difficulty of cooling thermal (fossil & nuclear) power plants...
more at: http://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/15/44-ways-can-slow-solar-century/
1 replies
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