Solar energy and the 'poisoned chalice'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jan/18/utilities-poisoned-chalice/



Solar energy and the 'poisoned chalice'
By Morgan Lee
6 a.m.Jan. 18, 2014

After resigning for health reasons, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission has warned of intense pressure by utilities to protect against the incursion of rooftop solar energy.

Commissioner Mark Ferron announced Wednesday that he could no longer perform his duties as commissioner after two years of treatment for prostate cancer. In a jocular parting report, he praised California for its leading role on energy and climate policy, while warning that its utilities "would still dearly like to strangle rooftop solar if they could."

By order of the state legislature (Assembly Bill 327), the commission is poised to overhaul how much customers can be rewarded for generating their own solar electricity. Ferron, a former executive at Deutsche Bank and Salomon Brothers, warned that zealous legislators with little experience in energy matters have handed the commission "a poisoned chalice."

"The Commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interests of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators" of solar electricity, he wrote, "all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness."

[kristopher]

1. How many time have we heard this same refrain from the pronuclear bloc on DU?

exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness

"The Commission will come under intense pressure to use this authority to protect the interests of the utilities over those of consumers and potential self-generators" of solar electricity, he wrote, "all in the name of addressing exaggerated concerns about grid stability, cost and fairness."

[hunter]

2. Watching wealthy people argue about their toys, taxes, investments and subsidies gets old.

I can't look at that photograph and think happy thoughts about solar power.

An ordinary person of this world would be overjoyed to use those solar panels to pump safe clean groundwater into an 8000 gallon tank.

No electric utility or batteries required and the benefits to the community are immense if they haven't previously had safe water.

I look at the photo in the original post and I see a bunch of wealthy people who have reduced their use of fossil fuels a bit. But just a bit.

I'm just as guilty of that sort of thing, my wife and I have two cars, and even though we are not commuters and haven't been since the mid 'eighties, we still use them. We have an on-demand gas water heater too. We get safe municipal water, with good pressure, from a magic pipe in the ground. Our sewage goes into another magic pipe in the ground which takes it to a state-of-the-art sewage treatment plant that turns it back into clean water.

If I had solar panels on my roof, I'd probably give them to my rural in-laws for their roof, to pump water from their well. That seems like it would be the most efficient use of materials, and "storing" any excess energy would be as simple as installing another water tank. That would be best for my long term happiness because dealing with blown inverters, dead batteries, or the electric company makes me very cranky.

We have a few neighbors with solar panels on their roofs which doesn't bother me, for all I know I'm using some of that electricity now, but that's not any kind of revolution. A revolution would be getting all the neighbors together, declaring our independence from PG&E, cutting the lines, and living with the consequences. I'm not sure many of my higher energy neighbors are willing to do that. And at the end of the day I'm not willing to do that. When I cut my electricity use to the point where I could afford the solar panels needed to support it, it's simply easier to pay PG&E a few dollars every month and then I don't have to climb on the roof or pay someone to climb on the roof for me. It's probably safer that way too.

[kristopher]

3. Please don't deny you are trying to rain on this thread because you support nuclear...

The only time you post this self-contradictory nonsense is to piss on renewable energy. I guess that's the role you've assigned yourself to play in the charade that is the nuclear club on DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014702839#post9

[hunter]

4. I am not, nor have I ever been NickB79

Being indifferent to nuclear power is not the same as pro-nuclear power. There are worse things in this world, most of them like automobiles, fossil-fueled.

Selling stuff to wealthy people -- solar, wind, nuclear, natural gas, "green" investments, whatever, is not my idea of a good time.

I used to work for Arco Solar back in the stone age of solar. Four inch single crystal cells, cutting edge, woohoo!!!!! (or maybe three inch, I don't remember...) I worked as a spy-who-loved me temp at San Onofre. I protested Diablo Canyon. I burnt a lot of gasoline driving up and down California from Humboldt Bay to San Diego attending public hearings. I dumpster-dove at General Dynamics and General Atomics. I gathered research about Rancho Seco. I can do the math of electric power networks.

Etc.

It all made me a very cynical person.

[kristopher]

5. I didn't say you were nick

I was highlighting the fact that you both have the same agenda - deriding renewables. And further, that you are in some rather dubious company in your effort.

Here is what I posted for him:
The idea you are seeding is the fundamental claim of the nuclear industry - renewables can't do the job.

Here's an earlier, similar exchange about the position Japan is in.

hunter
4. Well, let's see. They can burn coal or LNG or they can sit around cold, hungry and unemployed in dark waiting for some kind of solar miracle.

Germany shut their nuclear plants and replaced them with coal and natural gas. Japan could do that too, but coal sucks as bad or worse than nuclear power. A coal mine and power plant belch out many tons of greenhouse gases, carcinogens, toxins, and even radioactivity every day in their normal operation. Germany's solar and wind schemes were essentially greenwash.

Before anyone accuses me of being pro-nuclear again (and again, and again...) remember I advocate something much more radical -- the end of "consumer society" and "economic productivity" as we now know it. Throw away the cars, the big box stores, the highways; increase the density of cities and pull out of suburbs and other low density populated areas that are not suitable for high intensity organic agriculture; create a society where walking becomes the primary mode of transportation, etc., etc.

If that's not the sort of society you want, living and working on farms that look rather Amish, or in a dense urban environment, then you've got to pick your poison: Nuclear, fossil fuels, or expensive and environmentally destructive "alternative energy" schemes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014665714#post4

kristopher
5.That's rather remarkable logic you've chosen to use

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to Germany shutting down nuclear plants. And coincidently, the false narrative you weave is the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative risk of radiation from coal power and nuclear power. Coincidently, this false narrative is also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the options available to the Japanese in their energy choices. Coincidently, the false narrative regarding the inability of renewable energy sources to meet modern Japan's needs is, you guessed it, also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the options available to the everyone in their energy choices. Coincidently, the false narrative regarding the inability of renewable energy sources to meet modern society's needs is, you guessed it, also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative economic and environmental cost of "alternative energy" sources. Coincidently, this false narrative is yet again exactly the same one that avid promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative economic and environmental cost of "alternative energy" sources. Coincidently, this false assertion is yet again exactly the same one that avid promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you refer to "alternative energy" sources and the plans for their use as "schemes", a word connoting unethical behavior. Coincidently, this type of verbiage regarding efforts to move to renewables is an absolute favorite among avid promoters of nuclear.

All of that taken together has the appearance of not being coincidental at all.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014665714#post5

[hunter]

6. And all your claims are "renewable" energy and natural gas boosterism...

So?

Renewable energy cannot support the sort of economy we have now.

That's just the way it is.

I don't happen to like the sort of economy we have now so it doesn't bother me much. I wouldn't miss airlines, automobiles, or big box stores.

We can play by the rules of nature and thermodynamics. Or we can lose. There are no other options.

Honestly there is nothing new about humanity. This planet has seen plenty of innovative species come and go.

The ones that last tend to find a lower entropy niche. Even plants dump most of the solar energy that falls upon them. It's usually something else that limits their population.

Plants are not black. Why is that?

We're not going to do any better than the creosote bushes in the U.S.A. Southwest. Those live a very long time, thousands of years, but they do not cover every square inch of earth in spite of having all that "free" solar energy.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creosote_bush

[kristopher]

7. That's the #2 falsehood of the nuclear industry - "renewables can't cut it".

Number one being that nuclear power is safe.

A fundamental characteristic of your anti-renewable screeds can be exemplified with this:
We can play by the rules of nature and thermodynamics. Or we can lose. There are no other options.

While on its face and taken in isolation the statement is true; when you use to as support for your antirenewable agenda then no if and or buts, it is false.
There is no empirical or analytic basis for that claim - none. It was accepted as definitively disproven by the scientific community since the research accomplished in preparation for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit was completed and published.

The ONLY group that presses that meme consists of the various industries that have a stake in maintaining the present carbon centric system of energy provision.

Who can doubt your commitment to duplicity when you routinely come out with demonstrably false claims like that on a regular basis?

Here's another: "Those live a very long time, thousands of years, but they do not cover every square inch of earth in spite of having all that "free" solar energy"

With that you are obviously pushing the storyline that renewables require too much space - which would be about #4 on the list of falsehoods promoted by the nuclear industry. To show how just how whacked out that claim is we need only know that the US could meet all its energy needs by converting just our brownfield sites to solar. And no one thinks that only solar is the way we will go since wind, various forms of hydro, geothermal and biofuels all work together to form a more dependable energy supply than the filth those using the same talking points as you are trying to have us hang onto.

Brownfields Definition
With certain legal exclusions and additions, the term "brownfield site" means real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

[hunter]

8. Nuclear can't "cut it" either. It's not a competition.

I don't care who "wins" the Super Bowl, nor will I watch it on television. Competition is a lie.

Solar vs. Nuclear vs. Fossil Fuels? That's not what matters.

I don't respect "economic productivity" or "wealth" as it is currently defined, nor the market as it is currently organized.

Living gently upon the earth is what matters. Taking care of one another is what matters. Having fewer children is what matters.

Anyone working at a Planned Parenthood type agency, here or anywhere else in the world is doing far more for the planet than someone selling some new energy system.

Making more people, making more stuff, that's what got us into this mess. Making fewer people, making less stuff is what will get us out of this mess.

I'm trying to sell that.

I'm trying to sell an end to the automobile age and removal of the highway system.

I'm trying to sell the restoration of coastal wetlands and a retreat from the coast.

I'm trying to sell organic gardening and an end to "factory farmed" meat and dairy products.

I'm trying to sell energy efficient "walkable" urban areas that are islands around which wildlife can migrate freely.

It's a crazy dream that few share, but I do know the way we are living now is not sustainable, it's not ethical, and that solar and wind power wouldn't save this civilization from catastrophe even if solar panels and wind generators grew from seeds you could plant in your own backyard. Someone else would just take the fossil fuels or nuclear power you "saved" and make some sort of crap to sell people, or make some sort of weapon to kill people.

If we want to stop using fossil fuels or nuclear power, we simply have to stop. Existing "markets" will not solve this problem, no "magic hand" will save us.

[kristopher]

9. Sounds like a nice fairy tale for when you are cornered.

That is a list that any right-minded person should see the value in. Unfortunately it doesn't relate in the least to what you habitually post.

However, it is incredibly easy to document that this is absolutely the norm for you:

hunter
4. Well, let's see. They can burn coal or LNG or they can sit around cold, hungry and unemployed in dark waiting for some kind of solar miracle.

Germany shut their nuclear plants and replaced them with coal and natural gas. Japan could do that too, but coal sucks as bad or worse than nuclear power. A coal mine and power plant belch out many tons of greenhouse gases, carcinogens, toxins, and even radioactivity every day in their normal operation. Germany's solar and wind schemes were essentially greenwash.

Before anyone accuses me of being pro-nuclear again (and again, and again...) remember I advocate something much more radical -- the end of "consumer society" and "economic productivity" as we now know it. Throw away the cars, the big box stores, the highways; increase the density of cities and pull out of suburbs and other low density populated areas that are not suitable for high intensity organic agriculture; create a society where walking becomes the primary mode of transportation, etc., etc.

If that's not the sort of society you want, living and working on farms that look rather Amish, or in a dense urban environment, then you've got to pick your poison: Nuclear, fossil fuels, or expensive and environmentally destructive "alternative energy" schemes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014665714#post4

kristopher
5.That's rather remarkable logic you've chosen to use

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to Germany shutting down nuclear plants. And coincidently, the false narrative you weave is the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative risk of radiation from coal power and nuclear power. Coincidently, this false narrative is also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the options available to the Japanese in their energy choices. Coincidently, the false narrative regarding the inability of renewable energy sources to meet modern Japan's needs is, you guessed it, also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the options available to the everyone in their energy choices. Coincidently, the false narrative regarding the inability of renewable energy sources to meet modern society's needs is, you guessed it, also the same one promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative economic and environmental cost of "alternative energy" sources. Coincidently, this false narrative is yet again exactly the same one that avid promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you make a false presentation of facts relating to the relative economic and environmental cost of "alternative energy" sources. Coincidently, this false assertion is yet again exactly the same one that avid promoters of nuclear use.

You say you don't advocate for nuclear, yet you refer to "alternative energy" sources and the plans for their use as "schemes", a word connoting unethical behavior. Coincidently, this type of verbiage regarding efforts to move to renewables is an absolute favorite among avid promoters of nuclear.

All of that taken together has the appearance of not being coincidental at all.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014665714#post5

And as for this: "If we want to stop using fossil fuels or nuclear power, we simply have to stop. Existing "markets" will not solve this problem, no "magic hand" will save us."
That is as nuts as the Republicans saying "the free market" will solve everything or that unemployment insurance is the reason people don't go out and get a job when there are no jobs.

I am sure even you don't believe a word of it. "We simply have to stop" indeed.
The basic formula for pressure sales is: Create the need, establish the value, ask the price.

This is your execution of that formula:
Attempt to create anxiety (anxiety sells products)
Eliminate the solution you don't want the customer to select (in this case renewables)
Offer a completely absurd and unacceptable alternative ("let's just stop using energy&quot
Plant the seed for the desired choice ("...unless you want nuclear&quot

ETA: And that doesn't even get into your routine use of rightwing, antirenewable talking points that you know are demonstrably false.

[hunter]

14. Selling solar to affluent people is not a bad thing to do...

... it's not something horrible like tar sand or coal extraction, or whaling, but it's not something that's going to change the world. What you are doing, from my perspective, is roughly equivalent to selling the small hybrid car over the giant SUV. But it will not change the direction of society in general. It's still a high energy industrial resource intensive society that turns energy into dollars and ultimately "wealth" that is not shared by the most wealthy but shifted around in financial games or used to buy the political process without any benefit and often to the detriment of greater society.

I stand by my words. If Japan or Germany want to maintain their current industrial and economic infrastructure they have no choice but fossil fuels and/or nuclear power.

Personally I think they are insane to subject themselves to that sort of pressure-cooker industrial economic system, but there you go. Me, I don't see the reason for any externally motivated pressure-cooker work except in the fields of emergency and critical care medicine, or natural disaster management. Other problems should be approached thoughtfully and without much stress.

One of my siblings is a fire department paramedic. Her job goes from slow and mundane to terrifyingly stressful in the blink of an eye.

I have another sibling who was upper management of a national box store chain. They were flying him all over the country to put out imaginary fires. Sometimes a more senior executive would get a bee up their ass about something trivial and off my brother went. He was making good money until he started answering the phone at two o'clock in the morning asking things like, "Is anyone going to die? No? Fax it to the office."

He didn't last much longer in the corporate world with that attitude.

Whatever you are selling, Kristopher, I'm not buying it. That's all.

I'll drive my piece of shit 'eighties car until it dies and then I'll probably have to buy another piece of shit car because this society will still be living in a primitive automobile age. The most advanced form of transportation is comfortable shoes, or electric legs or wheels for people who need those.

I'll probably come upon another discarded laptop before my current Pentium III equivalent laptop dies, but I'm in no hurry. (It draws 18 watts running hard according to the Kill-a-Watt meter) My desktop computer is a similar machine. (I love using Linux with flash memory "hard drives." Quiet too.)

I'm not in any hurry to put solar panels on my roof either. I'd sooner get rid of my refrigerator, interrupting the entire energy-intensive refrigerated and frozen food chain, but my wife's not going for that.

Hurry, hurry, faster, faster is what made this mess humanity finds itself in. Hurry, hurry, faster, faster will not get us out of it.

[kristopher]

15. What I read is that you really don't care about solving the climate crisis.

Crawling in a hole and pretending the world is going to magically change because you don't like it is pretty close to insanity when the issue is survival.

And frankly I'm still of the opinion all of that is a sham. You've spent years slamming renewables and serving as a peanut gallery for the pronuclear club; that doesn't get erased by a sudden bout of primitivist angst.

And then we have the routine use of false claims. If you are actually acting on legitimate motives, why the steady stream of nuclear industry falsehoods such as the claim that we can't run a modern civilization on renewable energy?

I've noticed that you are very careful to frame that assertion in terms that omit the expected democratizing effects that adopting a system of distributed renewable energy is universally expected to deliver.
Why is that?

How do you square the use of falsehoods, and false framing straight out of the fossil centric industry playbook with these let's-just-give-up ideals that you are espousing?

[oldhippie]

16. The Master at work ....

It is just awesome to behold.

You could have been talking about me. Or anyone here that doesn't completely agree with you and bow and genuflect at the altar of renewable energy.

And Kris, the climate crisis will be solved. I guarantee it. With or without your help.

[CRH]

11. Good post, n/t

[Iterate]

13. You have political and philosophical allies if you want them.

Other people have had similar notions of what a workable civilization should look like. You're not alone and you're not the first. None of us are.

And I wouldn't say it's just a few people. Not in the least. In fact, most of the best ideas are not even new, but are derived from cities evolved before the auto -mostly low rise, concentrated, walkable with streetcar, tram, and train. The same with farms and towns/villages -hub and spoke, linear, radiating blocks of small to medium scale farms that sell to smaller markets. Big markets are a consequence of concentrated purchasing, in turn a consequence of mass market food chains and regional supermarkets.

It's not even a crazy dream -because this is precisely how hundreds of millions, especially in other parts of the world, are living now. No one is claiming that model is currently zero FF, but it is at 1/3 or 1/4 of the US average, and there is at least a chance, with considerable effort, of reaching near zero within a couple of decades.

The consensus view from those societies that they need to turn to renewables is not derived from a consumerist model. If anything, it's anti-consumerist as it requires people to think of energy as a precious resource, with natural limits. That idea alone is so antithetical to FF, nuclear power, and the power generation/distribution cartels that it probably explains the bulk of their opposition and the consumer fear they have injected into the national/international dialogue. Renewables are the key to breaking those cartels, as nothing much will change if people continue to rely on them.

Consider just one aspect of PV solar. Along with ground source heating, they are the only sources adaptable to a home or neighborhood. Just because some company wants to pitch them as a consumer product (businesses are opportunistic after all), do you discard them?

Yes, it's a big task to replace an ill-conceived infrastructure designed by property developers and car dealers. And existing markets will not solve it. So make a new market.

[madokie]

10. You miss the whole point

The point in all this is to lower the amount of greenhouse gases going into our atmosphere. Any electricity from these panel is less co2 being produced. Pretty simple

[hunter]

12. It's not simple.

So long as we're still using fossil fuels or nuclear power we're still on the highway to hell, but powered by the sun when the sun is shining and the wind when the wind is blowing.

To reverse direction we have to do two things: reverse the direction of our population growth and stop using fossil fuels. Solar and wind will not "replace" fossil fuels no matter how aggressively they are subsidized. The only way to stop fossil fuel use or nuclear power is to ban them, but few people are willing to go that far because it would require radical lifestyle changes and an extensive restructuring of both our economy and our national infrastructure.