|
RDevz posted:Unfortunately, peak demand doesn't correspond to times of peak solar generation - if you take the UK, you're going to see annual peak demand between 16:00 and 18:00 on winter evenings, when it's either twilight or just plain dark outside (source). Total solar generation at that point is zero. Actually sorry to double post, but since you just linked the Data browser for the entire UK grid, I can't actually find anywhere that it breaks out solar generation. So I'm not arguing that PV works at night, but just curious where on that site does it break out solar usage? I can't seem to even find anywhere that breaks out solar generation on an hour by hour basis for the UK grid. I imagine that would be very difficult since a large amount of PV installed capacity is on the distribution rather than transmission side of things, making it difficult to monitor at a grid level.
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 09:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 00:22 |
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:This is why location matters so much in energy discussions. While what you said might be true for the UK (your source doesn't work in chrome), it is not true in the US (and particular the US Southwest): quote:The analysis focused explicitly on a single period of the year: June 1 – August 31, 2013. The summer months have more daylight hours and higher levels of seasonal electricity use for air conditioning (in areas with such demands). Summer months present very different home energy use and solar generation profiles than other seasons. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Jan 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 09:45
|
|
|
RDevz posted:Unfortunately, peak demand doesn't correspond to times of peak solar generation - if you take the UK, you're going to see annual peak demand between 16:00 and 18:00 on winter evenings, when it's either twilight or just plain dark outside (source). Total solar generation at that point is zero. I got bad news for you if you want to use solar power for anything in the UK.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 09:49
|
|
|
How feasible is it to dig into the earth and create a giant tunnel of geothermal heat?
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 10:26
|
|
|
Arghy posted:How feasible is it to dig into the earth and create a giant tunnel of geothermal heat? It's expensive as gently caress
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 10:46
|
|
|
Arghy posted:How feasible is it to dig into the earth and create a giant tunnel of geothermal heat? Boreholes for power generation wouldn't make much sense. Let's say that you have a gradient of 30K/km (global average). The deepest borehole in the world might give you 260K (in fact it gave much less because they deliberately chose a "cold" location so as to simplify the engineering challenges). The maximum efficiency of a heat engine depends on its input temperature. Even assuming that you could magically circulate fluid from the borehole bottom without any loss of heat, you'd be constrained to a maximum thermal efficiency of 47%, which is much lower than any modern power plant (although it's a bit better than first-generation nuclear reactors). Note that this calculation assumes that you have a big convenient heat sink nearby, such as a river. You'll also need to expend energy on pumps - moving fluid 12 km vertically isn't fun. The next problem is capacity. Output (or "production") is limited by thermal conductivity of rock, and your effective "catchment diameter" may be as low as 10m. You can't simply run more fluid through your borehole - you'd thermally deplete it and then need to shutdown the power plant until it naturally replenishes. If you want more power then you need to drill a lot of holes. Each borehole is going to cost a few tens of millions (assuming that you're going deep - a shallow hole is cheaper but yields low temperature and therefore low efficiency). I don't know whether you'd ever be able to repay the capital costs of drilling. Insurance would also be a problem, and your construction permit might get held up for years due to the difficulty of assessing long-term environmental impact (e.g. "there's a teensy chance that we might trigger earthquakes, but the risk would probably be confined to a 200km radius"). Here's a real-world example. They drilled down 2.5 km and obtained 450kW of heat. If they tried to harness that low-grade heat into useful work, they might have been able to obtain 100kW. That's the equivalent of the muscle power of 200 athletes, or about half of the engine power of one Ford truck.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 12:03
|
|
|
Negative Entropy posted:Your article notes that: But the location point still applies, Winter peak is an issue once or twice a year in the US Southwest, versus the summer peak which is an issue for months. In the UK its obvious the winter peak is the bigger deal. In some third gird, I'm sure the peak characteristics would be different than either of these two examples. My general point is, that context is critical for making sense of energy systems.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 17:06
|
|
|
Moving from the UK (london) to north california, my mood brightened instantly because there's WAY more sun here. In the last year I lived in London, most of the summer was overcast, for months at a time. I can imagine solar being really, really poo poo there and not working well. My wife is from Arizona, and when I visited there recently I was anecdotally asking people if they knew anyone who used solar energy. Nobody did, it seemed.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 18:30
|
|
|
redreader posted:Moving from the UK (london) to north california, my mood brightened instantly because there's WAY more sun here. In the last year I lived in London, most of the summer was overcast, for months at a time. I can imagine solar being really, really poo poo there and not working well. This comes down to the huge impact that state regulations have on residential solar use in the USA. In California, Colorado, or even Texas, the regulations are structured to make it easy for solar to be installed in homes. A big factor is, how are utilities allowed to account for solar energy on your bill. Then incentives are another factor that can change on a state-by-state basis. There are a number of large scale concentrating solar power facilities coming online soon too, like 1GW in 2014. This in a region where solar does match peak, and most of the new concentrating thermal facilities continue to generate for an hour or two after dark, helping cover peak better. Of course, you look back at pictures of LA from the 1950s, and every home had a solar water heater. But then electricity was going to be too cheap to meter....
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 18:48
|
|
|
The installed capacity of solar power in the US doesn't quite match up with what people might expect geographically though:
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 18:53
|
|
|
Looks like a pretty good match up of climate + population.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Looks like a pretty good match up of climate + population. You might want to look at a map of the US again. New Jersey's 23% of the population of California, 5% of the land area (to say nothing of how there's no huge tracts of low latitude deserts), but it has 37% the installed solar capacity. And Texas is absurdly low for its area, population, and amount of ideal solar production area. Consider these official government maps of solar potential: 
Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:00
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:You might want to look at a map of the US again. New Jersey's 23% of the population of California, 5% of the land area (to say nothing of how there's no huge tracts of low latitude deserts), but it has 37% the installed solar capacity. As a note, those numbers are PV and excludes the utility scale solar thermal plants. All these quirks comes back to local regulations and incentives. All the states with high installed capacity numbers are ones with good incentives and workable regulatory structures. Texas has good regulation of solar but poor incentives. New Jersey has great incentives, plus a lot of rooftops.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:14
|
|
|
The main thing with New Jersey is that most of the electric utilities have been sticking south-facing solar panels on every utility pole in their territory. I'm not sure how effective they actually are, but it's fuckin' everywhere.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:21
|
|
|
I've been seeing a lot of those where I live too. I always imagined they were just to power some specific equipment or what ever. But then I think "why the gently caress do you need a stupid inefficient solar panel to power something attached to a power line??" Like I guess a solar panel is ok for your boat or your cabin but it seems really stupid and inefficient when you have the actual power grid right there, at least where I live. Solar is for hot sunny places that are running a lot of AC. Turn that stupid radiation that's making you run your AC into power for your AC. If you live in a climate where no one has AC solar is probably a pretty poo poo option.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:30
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:The main thing with New Jersey is that most of the electric utilities have been sticking south-facing solar panels on every utility pole in their territory. I'm not sure how effective they actually are, but it's fuckin' everywhere. I drove from San Jose to Tucson over christmas and I saw loads of those, too! mostly in Arizona/Southern California outside L.A.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:33
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Solar is for hot sunny places that are running a lot of AC. Turn that stupid radiation that's making you run your AC into power for your AC. If you live in a climate where no one has AC solar is probably a pretty poo poo option. This is only true insofar as AC usage correlated with latitude(and other weather affecting solar power). There is plenty of AC use in both New England(in the summer) and Florida but solar panels are going to be much more effective in the latter. I think it's the weather and latitude that are the true predictors for the efficacy of solar power in an area, and AC just happens to be a reasonable proxy for that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:36
|
|
|
redreader posted:Moving from the UK (london) to north california, my mood brightened instantly because there's WAY more sun here. In the last year I lived in London, most of the summer was overcast, for months at a time. I can imagine solar being really, really poo poo there and not working well. In Arizona I can anecdotally say that it's becoming more popular each year, since people are noticing the nice federal and state subsidies that make installation relatively cheap. In Hawaii solar is a booming industry. Not only are there nice subsidies in place, but electricity here is also loving expensive, so solar is more appealing. The issue is that a lot of homeowners here don't have that much money, and those who do have a lot of money only live here for part of the year. And a lot of people rent. Despite that, you see more homes with solar panels every month, and even government buildings are putting up PV panels over their parking lots.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:In Arizona I can anecdotally say that it's becoming more popular each year, since people are noticing the nice federal and state subsidies that make installation relatively cheap. This'll change as the rent-seeking shifts. The APSC already wants the utility commission to let it pay lower rates for net-metered power, and won permission to start charging a fee to customers who have solar panels. The installed solar base goes up you're going to see more of that. It's analogous to how when just a few people have electric cars, the government wants tax credits to encourage people to buy more electric cars. But then when a lot of people have electric cars, the government wants to tax electric cars because it means not as much gas tax revenue is being collected.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 19:59
|
|
|
Just goes to show why fuel taxes were never a particularly smart idea for permanent infrastructure funding (like just about everything, it should have been progressive income tax for that purpose).
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 20:15
|
|
|
In Texas most of the renewable money is going into wind, for a variety of reasons (although mostly because a local billionaire is invested in it) and indeed I can get 100% of my power from wind right now (although it costs like twice as much).
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 20:30
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:There's a huge difference between the turbines from the 70s on steel derricks and modern turbines. Plus, I was also kinda pointing out the laziness that often people just go to the old wind farm that is really close to San Francisco rather than a wind farm constructed this decade. I'm surprised they haven't been torn down by whoever owns them, that much unused steel in one place has to be worth something.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:Just goes to show why fuel taxes were never a particularly smart idea for permanent infrastructure funding (like just about everything, it should have been progressive income tax for that purpose). Fuel taxes are, prior to electric vehicles, a really good proxy for miles driven. Use the roads more, you pay more in tax. A progressive income tax for the same purpose provides a disincentive for people to minimize their use of the resource; if you're going to tax me the same whether I drive or not, might as well drive. They're regressive in nature, but you can offset that by other means. If you want to tax people who use the roads in order to fund the upkeep on the roads, then a fuel tax has a lot to recommend it as a way of doing so.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 20:57
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:Fuel taxes are, prior to electric vehicles, a really good proxy for miles driven. Use the roads more, you pay more in tax. A progressive income tax for the same purpose provides a disincentive for people to minimize their use of the resource; if you're going to tax me the same whether I drive or not, might as well drive. Yeah and the whole idea just doesn't make sense unless created with the idea that efficiency can never go up and actual usage will never go down. Meanwhile much infrastructure maintenance doesn't actually go down with less miles driven or fuel used. And that's before you get into how most states have long used gas/diesel taxes for funding all forms of transportation "The people who use it pay for it" sold to politicians and the public, but it's not actually viable long term. Especially when you consider that the richer you are the more leeway you have to avoid it and vice versa. Especially when you consider things like multiuse infrastructure with heavy bus traffic on the automotive lanes, or with rail usage on the same structures. Edit: essentially "disincentivizing a particular good associated with an activity" and "funding the infrastructure for that activity and others off taxing that good" come into conflict once people have a choice besides just using at the same rate. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
Actually, wind is a good example of how you can structure subsidies to accelerate an industry and then remove it once the industry develops. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-09/wind-energy-companies-prepare-for-tax-credits-end computer parts posted:In Texas most of the renewable money is going into wind, for a variety of reasons (although mostly because a local billionaire is invested in it) and indeed I can get 100% of my power from wind right now (although it costs like twice as much). Texas's wind investment has nothing to do with T. Boone and everything to do with the reduced rules associated with building new power lines in ERCOT versus elsewhere in the US. That and Texas is so pro-business, they don't even care if its a green business: they support it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:Yeah and the whole idea just doesn't make sense unless created with the idea that efficiency can never go up and actual usage will never go down. That'd be the case if the tax amount were set in stone, but it's not. A tax on fuel is actually a *driver* of efficiency, because it's a disincentive to use more fuel. Again, if you're taxing me by the same amount of my income no matter how much I drive on the roads, then I don't have as much incentive to purchase a fuel-efficient car. With a fuel tax, the funding of the roads falls disproportionately on the people whose vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of damage: heavy fuel-sucking SUVs and trucks (which, hey, means it stops being disproportionate). quote:Meanwhile much infrastructure maintenance doesn't actually go down with less miles driven or fuel used. Road maintenance does. Especially when there are fewer heavy vehicles being driven fewer miles. quote:And that's before you get into how most states have long used gas/diesel taxes for funding all forms of transportation That's not really an argument against fuel taxes, that's an argument against specific-purpose taxes being dumped into the general fund and used to pay for <whateverwefeellikethisweek>. quote:Especially when you consider that the richer you are the more leeway you have to avoid it and vice versa. How does one avoid a fuel tax, no matter how rich you are? If I'm Eric Schmidt and I fly around everywhere in my private jet, there's still taxes on that fuel. How does your statement there not apply similarly to income taxes? The rich don't have more leeway to avoid income taxes than poorer people do? If you want to adhere to the notion that the users of a resource should be the ones who fund it, and that that funding should be in proportion to their use, a fuel tax is a *great* way to fund the roads, until (a) you do something like not raise the tax for 20 years which constricts your revenues because one of the intended effects of the tax, to reduce fuel consumption and miles driven, has actually come to pass, and (b) fuel consumption stops being a good proxy for miles driven, which has started to happen. And then you reach the point we're at, where the general fund has to start kicking money back to the highway fund to make up for the shortfall. I haven't seen any solid answers for this. Raising the tax is complicated, because while it would raise revenues in the short-term, it's then an even larger disincentive for consuming fuel. On one hand, most of the low-hanging fruit for improving ICE fuel efficiency has been picked, it's not like we're going to start turning out 40mpg SUVs. But on the other hand, overall fuel efficiency would go up a lot if the tax seriously started incentivizing people to buy smaller vehicles. And on the other other hand, if they *did* do that, then road maintenance requirements would go down and you wouldn't need as much revenue in the first place. But that still doesn't touch (b): as more people go electric, fuel use becomes a worse proxy for miles driven. And another much-floated solution, sticking trackers in everyone's car so you can just track their miles driven directly and bill them accordingly, is politically a giant can of worms; you can't just look at the odometer, you need to track location, because otherwise you'll be taxing people on driving miles in another state, or on private roads, etc. Oregon has a voluntary scheme based on that sort of tracking, and they really really promise to destroy the personal records after 30 days, but good luck getting a lot of people to sign up for that sort of thing now, in light of Snowden's revelations, etc. If you're willing to forego the notion that the users of a thing should pay for it, okay, sure, income tax it is. But if you don't want to charge people who aren't using a thing for the use of a thing, what else can you come up with?
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 21:30
|
|
|
Fuel prices themselves already serve as a deterrent to driving more miles though. You are correct that fuel taxes are more of one, but they disproportionately tax low income people relative to how much driving they do. I'd be fine with ending fuel subsidies for drivers filling up at the pump as long as the cost savings were used to provide gas vouchers for low income people who are again disproportionately affected, but I don't think a fuel tax is a very good way to fund highways in general. If we want the users to pay the taxes, I'd rather we tax vehicle purchases at the time of title transfer and parametrized by fuel efficiency, vehicle weight, and income of the title holder. That would at least force higher income people to do it in their own name if they want to own their cars, whereas the same thing for gas wouldn't work since you could have a lower income friend go fill up your car.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 21:39
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:That'd be the case if the tax amount were set in stone, but it's not. A tax on fuel is actually a *driver* of efficiency, because it's a disincentive to use more fuel. Again, if you're taxing me by the same amount of my income no matter how much I drive on the roads, then I don't have as much incentive to purchase a fuel-efficient car. With a fuel tax, the funding of the roads falls disproportionately on the people whose vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of damage: heavy fuel-sucking SUVs and trucks (which, hey, means it stops being disproportionate). Except fuel taxes are actually primarily meant for road funding in the US. And the diesel taxes we have have severely discouraged purchases of more efficient diesel engines for anything besides commercial vehicles Many aspects of road maintenance don't change at all no matter how many vehicles drive by. For example, repainting bridges and other structures that need protective paint, maintaining lighting and signals, fixing stuff after disasters. And maybe you really didn't notice but dumb heavy SUVs already use less gas than they did in the 90s while incurring the same maintenance costs on the roads. It's really odd of you to characterize transportation funding as "the general fund". Do you think buses don't need to use roads? You avoid fuel taxes by not using the fuel. Who is more able to afford to move to somewhere conveniently located to transit and have a job conveniently located, a rich dude or Terry the person who works 2 jobs to keep food on the table? And outside that, who's currently better able to afford a newer fuel efficent car versus having to make due with a 20 year old inefficent one? Phanatic posted:
That's why the entire idea is flawed. It worked ok back when two things were true: 1) Minimal advancements were made in fuel efficency 2) Most public transportation was still being handled by private entities, often using their own infrastructure Now however the efficiency has increased a lot, and non-fuel vehicles are even practical for some users. And nearly all public transit has rightly shifted onto governments, who now need to pay for it. Smaller vehicles barely have anything to do with it, and you can't make the trucks smaller who are doing the majority of the damage on every road. And we already have one of the lowest usage rates of road trucks for freight and shipping in the developed world thanks to a robust freight rail infrastructure. We already have tracking on the vehicles that cause the majority of the damage - truckers are required to keep logs, that poo poo goes to the government. Frankly, getting the money as income taxes is the easiest, fairest, and most reliable way to fund just about everything. This doesn't mean fuel taxes should go away, they just can't be relied upon to continue to provide necessary funding. If we had perfect combinations of public transit and energy efficient vehicles using centrally generated power, we'd still need to spend tons of money on the underlying infrastructure, including roads.
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
What the hell does someone's income have to do with paying their share of transportation taxes?
|
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 22:08
|
|
|
MrYenko posted:What the hell does someone's income have to do with paying their share of transportation taxes? The same as every other public service out there, what you have to spare is what's important to real share in funding society bub. Maybe you haven't noticed that poo poo's falling apart and that trying to raise the money with increases to fuel taxes would way disproportionately hurt poorer people, especially because of the patterns of adoption for higher efficency vehicles/alternatives. We have similar issues with electricity too (who can afford better insulation and more efficent newer appliances easier?). Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jan 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
Phanatic posted:How does one avoid a fuel tax, no matter how rich you are? If I'm Eric Schmidt and I fly around everywhere in my private jet, there's still taxes on that fuel. How does your statement there not apply similarly to income taxes? The rich don't have more leeway to avoid income taxes than poorer people do? Also Eric Schmidt is a really bad example because in fact he got his private plane charted to do one "scientific" flight for NASA a year, and thus can part it at a military airport next door to Google HQ and pay not only no tax for his fuel, but the government's internal rate. This only stopped this October after people got outraged: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323864604579069730686941454 quote:In total, H211 has bought 2.3 million gallons of jet fuel since early 2009, according to Pentagon records viewed by The Wall Street Journal, paying an average $3.19 per gallon. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jan 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 10, 2014 23:10
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:The same as every other public service out there, what you have to spare is what's important to real share in funding society bub. Maybe you haven't noticed that poo poo's falling apart and that trying to raise the money with increases to fuel taxes would way disproportionately hurt poorer people, especially because of the patterns of adoption for higher efficency vehicles/alternatives. We have similar issues with electricity too (who can afford better insulation and more efficent newer appliances easier?). I'd be curious to know where the funding for Amsterdam and Coopenhagen's extensive bicycle infrastructure comes from - as far as I know, as a cyclist I don't pay a fee to ride these world-class bicycle infrastructures, and yet at the same time they have to be maintained (albeit at a much lower cost than regular vehicle traffic.) They do, however, get a *lot* of bicycle traffic.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2014 00:53
|
|
|
Jeffrey posted:If we want the users to pay the taxes, I'd rather we tax vehicle purchases at the time of title transfer and parametrized by fuel efficiency, vehicle weight, and income of the title holder. That would at least force higher income people to do it in their own name if they want to own their cars, whereas the same thing for gas wouldn't work since you could have a lower income friend go fill up your car. Ok, here's an article relating car use to income: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002666-how-lower-income-citizens-commute Commute time to income: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/income-upshot/behind-data-commute-time-income-bracket Kind of overlapping with car control. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 11, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2014 05:05
|
|
|
Guigui posted:I'd be curious to know where the funding for Amsterdam and Coopenhagen's extensive bicycle infrastructure comes from - as far as I know, as a cyclist I don't pay a fee to ride these world-class bicycle infrastructures, and yet at the same time they have to be maintained (albeit at a much lower cost than regular vehicle traffic.) They do, however, get a *lot* of bicycle traffic. In case of Amsterdam (Netherlands) the infrastructure is not limited to the city but country wide so it really depends on what bicycle path you are talking about. Inside Amsterdam all infrastructure is planned by the municipal "Dienst infrastructuur verkeer en vervoer" DIVV (Infrastructure, traffic and transportation service). They get their budget out of various sources such as parking permits and tickets, allocation of municpal funds. For specific projects they might get government subsidies. The municipal council and responsible alderman determines their priorities and allocates their budget accordingly. Bicyclists don't pay for bicycle paths any more than pedestrians pay for use of the sidewalk, it is considered a public good. This video explains how wide public support for bicycle infrastructure was developed in the first place making it possible to fund the infrastructure in such a way.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2014 12:53
|
|
|
Jeffrey posted:Fuel prices themselves already serve as a deterrent to driving more miles though. You are correct that fuel taxes are more of one, but they disproportionately tax low income people relative to how much driving they do. I'd be fine with ending fuel subsidies for drivers filling up at the pump as long as the cost savings were used to provide gas vouchers for low income people who are again disproportionately affected, but I don't think a fuel tax is a very good way to fund highways in general. Why not just approach it as a revenue neutral device? There are obvious efficiency benefits to taxing fuel, and the regressive parts of it can be offset by adjusting income taxes in a progressive way. So the multi-millionaire who travels everywhere by private jet probably sees his tax burden goes up, the lower income person who drives his F-150 100 miles each day may or may not see a difference in tax burden, but a lower income person who drives a small car or uses public transport would see his tax burden go down. Tax policy is a legitimate and effective tool for influencing behavior, let's not throw that out so easily.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2014 14:59
|
|
|
AreWeDrunkYet posted:Why not just approach it as a revenue neutral device? There are obvious efficiency benefits to taxing fuel, and the regressive parts of it can be offset by adjusting income taxes in a progressive way. So the multi-millionaire who travels everywhere by private jet probably sees his tax burden goes up, the lower income person who drives his F-150 100 miles each day may or may not see a difference in tax burden, but a lower income person who drives a small car or uses public transport would see his tax burden go down. In a larger sense, I think it's fairly easy to make the case that fuel taxes are not yet at the point of capturing all of the externalities associated with fuel consumption. While Pigovian taxes have never really seemed to get much traction from a policy standpoint, one would hope that a proper philosopher king would be happy to implement them. I think there's a second point that our most readily available example of high fuel taxes, Europe, also tends to better about progressive taxation as a whole. This is to say: if we're in a place where we can address one, it's not unlikely that we can address both.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2014 07:07
|
|
|
http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/renewable-energy-now-cheaper-than-new-fossil-fuels-in-australia/ New wind farms can generate energy cheaper than new coal or gas plants in Australia.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2014 09:54
|
|
|
Frogmanv2 posted:http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/renewable-energy-now-cheaper-than-new-fossil-fuels-in-australia/ Problem: you need like 3-4 times overcapacity at least to get reasonably secure base load power, and you need to add storage to do that. That's going to increase wind/solar costs quite a bit if they are to be the backbone of your power grid.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2014 10:04
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
blowfish posted:Problem: you need like 3-4 times overcapacity at least to get reasonably secure base load power, and you need to add storage to do that.
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2014 10:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 00:22 |
|
|
West Virginia Declares State Of Emergency After Coal Chemical Contaminates Drinking Waterquote:Residents of nine counties in West Virginia have been told not to use or drink their water after a chemical used by the coal industry spilled into the Elk River on Thursday. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency as more than 100,000 customers, or 300,000 people, are without safe drinking water. So basically West Virginia's water supply is hosed and is only suitable for use as toilet water, per official recommendations. It will be interesting to see whether this gets any real attention, since it's the coal industry and everyone just kind of expects coal to be lovely (but god forbid we even consider using nuclear power)
|
|
#
?
Jan 12, 2014 10:30
|
|