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xssve -> RE: Japan to pioneer universal solar power (5/27/2011 8:00:49 PM)
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ORIGINAL: tj444
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ORIGINAL: Icarys
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Of course, as I said earlier, people will learn more about solar and electric vehicles, and other ways of doing things when there is a reason for them to, like when gas is $10/gal or whatever. People arent there yet. And really, the govt isnt doing much to encourage them to.
You're right of course for the majority but the fire is catching. People don't need the government but it would make things easier because in a sense..it would be people helping each other..I used to think that if enough people wanted a certain thing that the government would listen, they'd have to. Not so much. We'll have to do it ourselves if we want any real change to happen.
Its like any trend, there is a trickle from the early adopters and then eventually growing into the bulge of interest from the majority. No they dont need the govt, they need an incentive of some sort and for many its self-interest, as in forced to due to cost. And given that big oil has so many politicians in their pocket and push their agenda, of course whatever the govt does will be minimal (as now) and they only do that so they can get good PR sound bites and votes.
I do like solar but for me to do that, it would need to make financial sense for me. Maybe I will this year if the numbers actually do work for me and everything else lines up, I cant say just yet tho. The do-gooder part would be icing on the cake and certainly not the main motivation. I am being honest about it, since I cant do it if I cant afford to, most people cant either.
Renewable energy policy in this country has been plagued with red tape since Carter, it hasn't helped. Clinton Gores solar energy initiative made good sense, the "Million Rooftops"program, which was a one time Keynesian stimulus, that simply required all Federal building to install PV capacity.
When manufacturing increases, prices fall, it's called economies of scale - Siemans for example has a PV fab plant, but they only run it Three months out of the year - if demand were such that they could run it year round, prices would fall - starting up and shutting down drives up their costs.
A one time consumption stimulus would drop prices down enough to make it attractive, it basically turns the government into the "early adopter".
And really, to start with, you only need enough PV capacity to run your AC when the sun is shining, and you can phase in more capacity as need and your budget allow.
Half the electrical consumption in the US is domestic, if aggregate demand falls due to PV (or any micropower) from domestic supplementation, prices from coal plants fall, which cuts manufacturing costs for industry, jobs are created manufacturing and installing PV systems, and there is a huge global export market for all this - only a handful of countries have coal, or even significant hydroelectric potential, but they all need power, and when they get power, they'll want stuff that runs on electricity.
Anyway, Bush killed the Million Rooftops program, along with the automobile efficiency program, Freedom car or whatever it was, which was starting to show promise, and made noises about hydrogen, but nothing got funded.
A new program has been proposed, the Ten Million Rooftops program, but it's a different program, tax incentives, etc., not sure of all the details, other than there are details.[8|]
If it works, it could provide the consumption stimulus needed to kick in economies of scale, lets hope - could be the thing we need to kick the economy back into gear.
Typically, when alternative energy is debated, critics can be counted on to ignore the potential cost reductions due to economies of scale, which in the case of PV, are certain to be considerable - it isn't substantially different than manufacturing IC chips, but with much looser quality controls.
Nukes are being pushed hard as a pancea, because they need taxpayers to pay for decommissioning Nuclear plants since the utilities didn't save the money they were supposed to to do it themselves, and nukes are pretty much subsidized from start to finish anyway. Energy traders prefer nukes, because supply is easy to control, and that allows for optimal pricing, much like the oil supply is micromanaged, with a distributed grid, it becomes much harder to micromanage supply and create artificial shortages.
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