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159 comments on Off the Grid in a Liquid Fuel Crisis?
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Part of the problem with developing cogeneration or "local" power generation is the NIMBY factor. People want power for all their techno-toys but want the power plant "far, far away" - in someone else's neighborhood. California's energy crisis of a few years back was caused almost entirely because the state had been unable to build any powerplants - green or not - for over fifteen years and shuttered many of those it already had because locals didn't like having those big ugly things near their homes.
Doesn't matter if it's cleantech or not. Consider the failed offshore windfarm up in Senator Kennedy's neck of the woods. People are all for saving the environment but they want it saved someplace out of sight, out of mind.
I'm looking forward to the new generation of solar cells coming out this next year but wonder if some NIMBY is going to somehow convince local zoning councils that roof-mounted solar panels are unsightly and bring down local property values so these should only be allowed on "non-street facing" roof tops.
California didn't build power plants because the conservatives deregulated the utilities by promising people that the electric power companies were forbidden to raise prices for many years, and the electric power companies promptly split the power generation parts off the power distribution parts, with the power distribution parts assigned the guarantees. Then they didn't build the power generation facilities needed to cope with increased population, and sued to prevent competition bringing in more natural gas pipelines on the grounds that it was destructive competition and we didn't need any more gas transmission capacity.
If they had just waited a few more years they would have got off scot free, without having to corruptly game the system by block buying power and gas transmission rights and then not transmitting power.
Unfortunately for them, the Democrats won the governorship and started approving peaking power plants, since after all the utilities had been deregulated and couldn't forbid them anymore, though they did try to get them suppressed by lawsuits on the grounds of unfair competition.
The new power plants would have garnered all the profits if the old utilities had rigged the market. This forced the utilities to fake a crisis before the new competitors could finish building them.
Which they did.