Gas Wants To Kill the Wind 479
RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."
Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginning (Score:5, Insightful)
if these jerkwads had any sense (Score:3, Insightful)
Successful???? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd only call it mildly successful when it can run at least 50% without government subsidies. and fully successful when it is >99%
I don't belive we'll ever be able to get back a US where there isn't government subsidies in everything.
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Insightful)
The only real problem with wind power is a land use vs generated power issue. The largest wind farm in the us produces less than 800 MW of energy (and remember this is potential generation, wind generation is still inefficient compared to other sources), and takes up 47000 acres of land. You can't just drop one of those everywhere the wind is good.
Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
region's wind power too cheap for its members to compete with, unless developers there are made to pay the costs of moving wind power eastward.
To whatever extent the generation companies pay to move the power, I fail to see why wind shouldn't pay its fair share.
demanding that the state's wind developers share the costs of backup natural gas generators
That's stupid. The correct solution is: raise the price of natural gas generation to compensate for the efficiency of scale difference.
proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.
Hey, if you want money from Uncle Sam, you gotta play the game the way it's played. You're always welcome to secure private financing and build it any way you please.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying out a small startup player and giving them your established name and relationships with other power companies seems like a big win
Re:Successful???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Successful???? (Score:2, Insightful)
"I don't belive we'll ever be able to get back a US where there isn't government subsidies in everything." ...You mean, like, including fossil fuels, right, because they pull in tons of subsidies? You do know that, right?
Also major co-conspirators (Score:2, Insightful)
Ted Kennedy and anyone with a backyard.
RTFA: Politics, not gas. (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary:
Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities
Article:
And last week, four senators representing New York, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.
"It is a no-brainer that stimulus funds should only go to projects that create jobs in the United States rather than overseas," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, pointing at a proposed Texas wind farm whose backers include a Chinese power company.
They had one paragraph about the natural gas generators complaining about being used as a backup for the unreliable wind farms and wanting to charge more money to act as a backup service.
The majority of the article is focused on international and stimulus politics: Should stimulus funds be spent on foreign technologies, or should they only be used on local (US) companies. How much of the company must be in the US before it is considered a local technology?
Another misleading summary intended to promote controversy.
Yet another conspiracy theory by idiots (Score:1, Insightful)
In other words, all taxpayers get it in the shorts to pay for these shibboleths. Wind turbines, even under favorable circumstances, don't produce even enough power to manufacture wind turbines.
Only the economically illiterate would want wind power to grow significantly while we still have (but not for much longer methinks) an absurd apocalyptic panic about carbon dioxide and fossil fuels. Eventually, the laws of economics trump sentimental rubbish about wind power, because when the winter comes and the winds die down, people will demand fossil fuel generation in preference to freezing to death.
Re:LED Light Bulbs (Score:3, Insightful)
Not likely to happen. We've already got legislation going the exact opposite way of what you predict, trying to ban incandescents.
The problem is that the favored technology (CFLs) contains mercury, so there is valid opposition to fighting such legislation. Plus fluorescents are bad news for epileptics... A friend of mine suffered a minor stroke and has since been prone to seizures. He is unable to spend more than a few minutes in any place with fluorescent lighting, and since nearly everywhere has such lighting, he is now on disability. Banning incandescents would make that problem even worse.
LEDs have potential, but right now they are a LOT more expensive than CFLs, and they are not as efficient as CFLs.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I know someone that works in the Wind Power part of a major utility company.
He spelled out the problem with wind for me very clearly.
"Companies don't care about carbon offsets because they don't believe that there will be a carbon tax".
"Followed by "Natural gas is dirt cheap right now."
Natural Gas is cheaper and more reliable than wind right now.
Trust me this utility has spent a bundle on wind and my friend is on the road many days a month trying to set up wind power and make deals for people to buy the power. In this case I wouldn't blame the utilities.
What it comes down to is dollars and cents. Gas is cheaper and works better than wind.
Of course I love this comment.
" Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past.""
Notice how in the summary the poster says that they have some valid concerns and then says that there are fixes for them.
Yea sure... But at what price? Read some of the "fixes" and then ask who is going to pay for them? Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
Don't bother saying that they can just take the money from the Military since we know that will not happen. Are you willing to pay more in taxes and pay more for goods produced in the US by US companies? China and India will not pass a dime of the costs on manufacturing so if you increase the cost to make goods in the US you will be pushing more manufacturing to China and India so in effect you will be shifting the carbon production from US plants burning natural gas to Chinese power plants burning Coal.
Oh and Window power in China? Unless forced to that is just for export. They will produce a few token sites and then sell Windmills to western countries until it becomes economical to replace coal with wind.
So the west will subsidize even more manufacturing jobs going overseas.
I fear this isn't as simple as the summary or what most people on slashdot think it is.
What it all comes down to is that Natural gas is cheap, efficient, and thankfully pretty clean.
While not carbon free it has the lowest carbon foot print of all the fossil fuels. It is MUCH lower in carbon output than coal so it isn't terrible that it is displacing wind. It could be worse, they could be building coal plants instead of wind.
Re:Successful???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any economist will tell you there needs to be ways of moderating the natural boom-bust cycle of capitalism.
No, some economists would say that government attempts to moderate the boom-bust cycle of capitalism (such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's through deflation) have often proven to be worse than letting the economy alone. Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well, because even if it works in one's theory, in practice governments never save during good times, and when spending happens it is inefficient, slow, and corrupt.
This rap video [youtube.com] provides one viewpoint along these lines.
Now keeping the banking system intact is a separate issue - although I think it will be many years before we know if saving "too big to fail" banks was better or worse than letting them fail.
Re:Successful???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, no. That's completely backwards. Unregulated markets result in boom and bust markets, as is taught in standard economics. If left to it's own devices, markets will suffer from both natural forces and human emotion, which is generally irrational. The free market is why the stock market shoots up and down on 'news' every day but the SEC puts in curbs to keep it from fluctuating too wildly.
Complicated! (Score:1, Insightful)
Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved
I work in the industry on these two specific problems, and I can say that they are NOT easy to overcome. Wind power integration is not nearly as simple as one would think it is, and it is much more problematic than traditional power production. There is a lot of active research going on right now, but it is really coming out that mitigating the power quality and transmission issues are adding substantially to the cost of wind farms; often to the point where they are not viable, even with subsidies. There is certainly some protectionism from traditional energy companies, however this is not the major roadblock to wind adoption. The technical issues are still very much an impediment to large wind farms, not some massive anti-wind-power conspiracy.
Indeed... let's move forward with the current plan (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Cover our eyes and let companies do whatever they want.
2) Suffer from energy spikes, speculative bubbles, piss poor infrastructure and a ruined environment.
3) Shovel billions into corporate coffers so they can sock the money away in offshore accounts while simultaneously failing to develop energy alternatives
4) Failure!
You have to subsidize new technologies because corporations cannot justify R&D to their shareholders. BP and Exxon cannot manufacture solar panels unless they can demonstrate higher profits, which one can't do until the technology is sufficiently developed, which one can't do without huge investments.
Technology has thrown the entire paradigm of free market economics for a loop. The amount of technology and science that go into an average product make information asymmetry astronomical. This requires more government regulation, not less.
Re:Successful???? (Score:2, Insightful)
It used to be that fossil fuel production was subsidized because encouraging development would improve the local economy.
Now we won't remove the subsidies because the producers will leave and favor other locations, hurting the local economy.
At least, that's what the ads say on TV whenever the issue comes around. True or not, it's a vicious cycle.
Re:Yet another conspiracy theory by idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
You say "standby fossil fuel generation has to be provided".
Fossil fuel companies hear "less fossil fuel generation has to be provided".
The fact that wind farms cannot replace all other forms of power generation is immaterial to people on either side of the issue. More renewable power is better than less renewable power to environmentalists, and less fossil fuel burning is worse than more fossil fuel burning. The "can't provide base load" argument is just a talking point used by the anti-wind-farm crowd who are hoping their audience will be unable to distinguish between "some" and "none".
Don't be that person.
Re:Successful???? (Score:3, Insightful)
So its bad for the government to help support clean energy.
A fairer way to do that would be a carbon tax instead of a ton of special cases.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural gas is free as well. It's just stuck in the ground ready for you to go tap into it. Plug your USB socket into a likely hole in the ground and go for it.
Did you forget your sarcasm tag or are you just horribly confused?
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
This just sounds hokey. The wind is free. How much cheaper is gas, according to your friend?
Wind is free. If what you want is to have your hair ruffled, you pay nothing.
If, on the other hand, you want to build an energy grid based on wind power, it costs far more than you might imagine. The post you're responding to has some salient points in this respect.
The problem of replacing or upgrading the single most important piece of our national infrastructure has always loomed as the greatest problem with converting to energy alternatives. Wind and solar power have radically different properties with respect to the national grid, and you can't just plunk them in and go on. Doing that leads to unpleasant things like brown-outs that kill the elderly during the height of summer or depths of winter.
These aren't unsolvable problems, but they cost a LOT of money to solve, and no one is yet willing to step up and pay for it, as the advantages are not easily recognized.
The problem with wind is simple (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they would NOT (Score:3, Insightful)
The incumbent suppliers, gas/coal/oil-fueled generating utilities, have NO, repeat NO incentive to encourage a competitor. And every incentive to prevent the entry to market of viable competitors such as wind, solar, etc.
I'm not trolling, nor am I just trying to be contrary. This is a business fact. Show me a business that has a good case for encouraging their competition. I have one, too, the exception that proves the rule; retail. Clustering retail outlets together, such as clothing or even convenience stores, can increase business by concentrating traffic. But even this is intended to deny their remote competitors opportunity.
Just be honest about this. Their businesses are under incredible pressure - costs rising, alternatives becoming viable and either cheaper or not significantly more expensive, social pressure to change their processes at great expense and diminishment of profits, government regulation that is threatening to become puntitive and eventually literally drive them out of the business. They will want to hold on as long as possible. And use every means available, that they can survive, to stop or slow down their competitors.
It is naive to state, for instance, that "they'd embrace the new tech and get in on it, rather than trying to fight it". The reality is that they also know that their competitors would have every reason to denigrate any such attempts as failed and futile attempts for these incumbent industries to plot their survival and continued monopoly, soley for the purpose of denying entry to new competitors. These new competitors would petition our government to tax or regulate the existing players to 'level the playing field', as well as ask for breaks and grants to 'encourage alternatives'. The petroleum industry is locked in this no-win situation, and is being stufffed into the pre-defined role of evil lords of power and control. And they deserve that position, largely if not entirely due to their own past acts.
I have NO sympathy for them. They have massive capital available, and if they would bear down and exercise their immense leverage, they could do the research, snap up smart minds to solve problems, and bring to market their future products that are now being developed by the nimbler competitors. They have their chance still, but are squandering the opportunity, or perhaps see that this is a fight they just don't have the stomach for and will milk the world for all it's worth. The Third World may be their growth market for the next 40 years. Then again, Africa for example might decide to choose wisely in advance. That leaves China and India, who might just do their own thing. A gamble, and the hand has not yet been called.
To repeat, while the current powers should indeed be making the investment, they are not idiots to not do so. They could adopt that strategy, but they have other options, which are not, from a business viewpoint, entirely without merit. Just risky, and perhaps not serving us the citizens of the world as well as it might, but these are profit-centered organizations. They do not exist to protect the environment. If you think this is 'wrong', then you need to work to change the nature and regulation of corporations worldwide. And I'm with you. We need to do that. Soon. Now.
And we do have a right, indeed a duty, to compel them to be less evil. This is not limited to the petroleum industry, and may be even more important in other sectors.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's
It couldn't be that everyone had over leveraged themselves... if that were the case, something like the Glass-Steagall Act would have keep the markets free from similar crashes. Oh, that's right... it did for nearly 70 years until it was repealed in 1999.
Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well, because even if it works in one's theory, in practice governments never save during good times, and when spending happens it is inefficient, slow, and corrupt.
Then why are all states at the top of GDP per capita Keynesian or sitting on top of valuable natural resources?
Now keeping the banking system intact is a separate issue - although I think it will be many years before we know if saving "too big to fail" banks was better or worse than letting them fail.
The sound Canadian banking system holds the real answer: do not led greedy investors lurk in the shadows. Never take cops off the beat. Government oversight and transparency are the only realistic methods to preventing speculative bubbles, among other things.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like a reasonable expenditure for the federal government, to me. And a proven effect economic stimulus.
But we'll have to wait until half the country grows up or at least until they're not so scared of there being a black man in the White House.
Re:Successful???? (Score:2, Insightful)
Robert Heinlein said it best... (Score:5, Insightful)
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
- Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)
Re:Indeed... let's move forward with the current p (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
You can also supply the power grid by rigging hamster wheels. The question isn't what we CAN do, but what is the most economically viable.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, if only there were a bunch of people who needed jobs who could do this for us.
Nuclear > Gas+wind > coal (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent makes a good point. We need infrastructure upgrades either way -- wind or nuclear. The thing is, conventional nuclear is here today, and mini nuclear is just about ready to go. Either has substantially better near-term carbon-reduction potential than anything else. Beyond the initial carbon savings that come directly from power manufacturing, given some grid investment and a surge in nuclear output, fully electric cars would actually be practical much sooner than is the case now.
If catastrophic, carbon-fueled global warming is seriously an imminent reality, I don't get why "...Environmentalists are not happy with the President's new trend" on mini-nuclear reactors (as this article [consumerenergyreport.com] asserts, anyway). If environmentalists were clamoring for nuclear power, I would probably believe that they believed catastrophic, carbon-fueled man-made global warming was real. As it stands, I can only think that those who actively oppose nuclear power don't really think so.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
It couldn't be that everyone had over leveraged themselves... if that were the case, something like the Glass-Steagall Act would have keep the markets free from similar crashes. Oh, that's right... it did for nearly 70 years until it was repealed in 1999.
I'd definitely rank this as one of the major contributing factors to the financial collapse. Hindsight proves what a stupid decision that was.
Then why are all states at the top of GDP per capita Keynesian or sitting on top of valuable natural resources?
You still fail to address the point that you're attacking here. All those governments (with the exception of China, should it make that list) are massively in debt. Sooner or later it's going to catch up with them (see Greece) and no amount of Keynesian economics will save their collective asses.
The sound Canadian banking system holds the real answer: do not led greedy investors lurk in the shadows. Never take cops off the beat. Government oversight and transparency are the only realistic methods to preventing speculative bubbles, among other things.
I agree with this 100%. There is a balance between too much and too little regulation. Now, if there was only a party in the United States that was actually moderate. Rather than a Crazy Liberal/Neo-Con masquerading as one.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Insightful)
Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.
Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast? Let the East coast electricity get more expensive, and the Midwest electricity get cheaper. People and business will naturally migrate from expensive areas to less expensive areas, not requiring any expenditure at all. Remove the subsidies and tax credits on building anything but pilot projects and research. Provide loans for valid business plans that show a reasonable chance of success to help give a leg up to an industry.
Letting economics drive power sources is a lot more natural than having the government do it and creating tons of regulatory systems that only provide jobs in the legal and political arenas.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost of a new nuclear power plant [wikipedia.org]
But then when the wind farm is built, the fuel costs nothing, there is no cost associated with storing and disposing of spent fuel rods, and there's no possibility of a nuclear meltdown and the inadvertent release of radioactive material into the environment.
Re:Gandhi (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with this verse is that sometimes (more often, in fact) stage #4 is actually "Then you lose". The reason why people so easily forget is that losers usually don't write witty verses about their experience.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:3, Insightful)
Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
While I agree with gas as a "bridge" fuel, that makes me laugh. Why don't we stop subsidizing nukes, oil, gas and coal? We can start by forcing them to pay market prices for the mineral leases on Gov't. lands.
Let's just end all subsidies, let market forces come into play, and then see what the real winner would be.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:3, Insightful)
If an employee can work from home, often enough he can also work from Bangalore. That's a serious limit to the growth of telecommuting.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes $7 billion dollars.
So... only the cost of about 3 stealth bombers, then?
And you guys bought how many of those? How are they doing in Afghanistan, by the way?
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:2, Insightful)
Your average nuclear power plant produces 2200 megawatts. ,construction, running power lines or the land required.
So in theory using these off the shelf wind turbines it would take $6,966,666,666 to replace one nuclear power plant.
Yes $7 billion dollars. Oh and if you only get half the rated power because the wind doesn't blow then the cost is almost 14 billion dollars.
And that doesn't include the cost of the towers,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants [wikipedia.org]
$7 Billion - you're not dissuading anyone except the people who haven't looked up how much a single nuke plant will cost. Hint - A single (decent) nuclear plant will be much more than $7 billion, likely more like $10-20 billion, and that's not including decommissioning and waste costs. Not to mention, wind might not be reliable, but nuclear isn't good for dynamic power requirements.
The powers lines and land are needed for either technology. No savings there.
Wind pros over nuclear - lots of redundancy. Dispersion over large areas (hard to take out), no waste, no radiation, safer. No one source. I really like having eggs in many baskets! A single nuke plant is billions of dollars, has major health/safety/terrorist risks associated, and currently no reprocessing or good waste disposal. And I suspect using land for nuclear plant is a one-way deal.
I'm not against nuclear plants (nuclear is a great base-load tech, and shows some great potential with new designs), but your cost argument sucks.
My opinion: Stop arguing about stupid stuff. Why not do both? They cover different needs. Neither is ideal.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that the OP you responded to necessarily meant the public when he/she said "America's ...problem". It might very well be American businesses problem, and the free(ish) market might very well drive the change.
But they are going to need incentive to change, and some guidance during the process. The cheapest solution to power generation right now is the status quo. And it most likely will stay that way for 50 years with oil, and hundreds of years with coal. There has to be an economic motive to change, and that can most easily be created by taxing what we don't like (coal/oil) and giving subs to what we do like (nuclear, wind, sun, etc..).
And as the OP pointed out, this is going to take multiple states, multi power companies, and significant investment in new infrastructure, that is much larger than any one company can handle. It will almost certainly require a 'smarter' grid, and a heck of a lot more power sharing between companies.
How do you think that the Federal Highway system would have turned out without central planning on a National level? We don't need a ton of new regulators or new federal jobs created. We need the existing regulatory agencies to step up and start mandating change, helping to plan it and negotiate the overall system between companies and states, and financial incentives to get the ball rolling.
Cap and Trade, by slowly ratcheting down the allowed carbon in the country, will squeeze companies into action, but I have a feeling that is only going to be passed directly on to customers for as long as humanely possible, until customers are screaming and electric companies are literally forced to start changing.
I'd rather not let pure profit motives drive the change. Lets get some laws in place with timelines and start getting the infrastructure built.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's why so many people "need jobs." There is "stuff that needs to get done" so that's not the problem, the problem is that "stuff that needs to get done" is being held up for reasons other than, "not enough benefit for the effort of the stuff that needs doing."
One of those things is financing, to be sure, but one of those things is the regulatory quagmire you have to wade through before you can even break ground on any new project of substantial size. Hell, it'll take you a year to get through all the hurdles (disclaimer:not all of which are regulatory) to renovate an unoccupied building into a restaurant where the former use of said building was also a restaurant.
I don't know what the answer is. One possible answer in this case to go full-federal and dissolve the states as independent bodies, so at least you'd only have to deal with a single monolithic federal morass instead of that plus forty-eight smaller but in aggregate hugely complex systems, but that comes with its own attendant issues.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:1, Insightful)
This site [otherpower.com] shows that a hamster has an estimated power output of 200 milliamps at 2.4 volts which equals 480 mW or just 200 mW if the text is unclear.
Now some quick numbers
USA power useage: 3.34 TW
Required hamsters to power USA: 7-17 trillion
each hamster needs 2 sq ft for their cage
Resulting required space for a hamster power grid one hamster deep(they gotta breathe right?): 14 to 34 trillion sq ft
Total size of the USA: 82.7 trillion sq ft
So our hamster powered grid requires 17-41 percent of all the land area of the continental USA.
Answering the question you were scared, perhaps not man enough, to ask: no we CANNOT power the USA with hamsters.
Extra credit for estimating the effect on the climate from the heat output of 17 trillion hamsters.
Good day Sir!
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Insightful)
> Once the wind system is built, then you're talking marginal gains, rising as the price of oil and gas rises due to their increasing rarity. So there's an initial steep cost for wind,....
From the evidence to date there are also pretty huge ongoing upkeep expenses for wind turbines. There is no free lunch.
> I don't understand what part of of 'one day oil/gas will run out and we'll all die horribly,
Because people who actually have money are smarter than you. They understand economics and know that we won't suddenly wake up one otherwise normal sunny day and find ourselves out of dead dinosaurs to burn. It will happen slowly and the price will rise accordingly as supply declines, which will make alternatives become cost effective.
Conspiracy Theory (Score:2, Insightful)
In short, the Tennessee Valley Authority... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast?"
Because Utilities are a textbook market failure. Left to the market, water, power, waste and communication services thrive in the cities, but don't exist in rural areas. If you want power and telecom capabilities in the sticks, you need a government program like the TVA [wikipedia.org] to get it done.
Why should the government pay to get Midwest power to the Big Cities on the East Coast? Because the government paid to get East Coast power to the Midwest in the first place.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Insightful)
What you say is lovely... and for the most part, I totally agree. Sadly, in this "The best Government Money Can Buy" American reality, do you actually believe there is any way to actually pass anything resembling intelligent, progressive, meaningful legislation, when any bill that hurts someone with deep enough pockets can simply be killed by investing in the right representatives?
Our nation has just gone through a fiscal melt-down, a financial disaster of epic magnitude. If you look, and have to look, because not a single news source is talking about it, but if you look, you will find that Wall street, the Nations Banks, and all those greedy buggers who almost sunk the country, are now back at it, business as usual, in fact, they're pushing bad paper and derivatives harder and faster than ever before. Making insane bonuses. Taking the hundreds of billions of dollars we gave them to prop up the banks, and spending it on an army of folks in DC, fixing the laws, and ensuring that they won't have to stop playing the games they've become addicted to. Nothing has changed, other than nobody is talking about the new escalation, of the rate at which bankers are now digging the hole we will all eventually have to lay down in.
If our government can't stop the simplest and most obvious case of fiscal rape from happening, knowing full well, that when the dust settles, and the looting and pillaging is done, there will be nothing left of this country. What makes you think for even a moment, that the men and women who populate our centers of government, have either the will or the moral fortitude required to make a sane energy policy?
It is time for us to separate Church and State once and for all, and that must include the Church of the All Mighty Dollar. We need to remove the bankers from our system of government. We will support business. We will empower an environment in which business can flourish, but to do so, we must take the power for business to determine the future of being human away once and for all. Just as a child must be managed or it will eat candy until it is sick, business' only purpose is to make profit, and if it has to do that over the bleached bones of the society in which it exists, it will ultimately do just that (and in far too many cases has), it is up to us, to guide and control business, make it perform our bidding and not the other way. We need to eliminate the entity called Corporation. It was an interesting experiment, but if nothing else, it has proven that human beings have neither the requisite intelligence nor dignity as a species to manage such an entities without doing serious harm to the world and the life in it (including ourselves.)
I'm all for wind power, above and beyond gas and coal. I'm for technology which converts wind into forms of energy that can be stored and used later (perhaps hydrogen.) We need to come up with new ways to power the future without at the same time destroying it. At the same time, we need to overhaul this government, and we need to start by taking back our communication, and keeping the corporations out of our government, or it will not go well for any of us.