New legislation is a positive step toward solving looming energy problems.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
By Kevin Bullis
A new bill passed today by the U.S. House of Representatives could bring big energy savings, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. The bill could face a battle in the Senate, and President Bush has threatened to veto it.
According to the press release, the bill could save three times more energy than a 2005 bill.
More than half the energy savings in the bill come from the biggest increase in vehicle fuel economy standards since the 1970s plus initiation of a program to develop fuel economy standards for medium and heavy trucks.
The bill also includes major savings from new efficiency standards for lamps, appliances, and other products (accounting for about 20% of the 2030 savings); extensions and enhancements of tax incentives enacted in the 2005 energy bill; a new commercial building program designed to dramatically reduce commercial sector energy use over several decades (about 8% of the savings); a new tax incentive for combined heat and power (CHP) and recycled energy; and a Renewable Electricity Standard that includes energy efficiency.
Comments
inventeer on 12/06/2007 at 8:55 PM
2
devassocx on 12/07/2007 at 1:28 AM
22
stuff.
The free market automatically sorts out economic issues every time. Gov't action not required.
Those that are happy about this gov't move should
just stop using all energy(and stop breathing) to
leave more energy for the rest of us.
franquellim on 12/07/2007 at 9:49 AM
10
The free market usually sorts out these kinds of things at the expense of those that can least afford to deal with it. Personally, I believe that I, and society in general, have a responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate.
I'm happy about this move, as it does indeed help all of us to stop using as much energy and help ensure more "for the rest of us".
dmm on 12/10/2007 at 4:51 PM
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Reply: To a free market advocate, the obvious answer to this comment is that the gov't should NOT be subsidizing the oil industry. Nor any other industry.
You said: What this bill does is divert some of these wasteful subsidies from industries which provide lesser benefits, to those which (potentially) will provide much greater benefits to society as a whole.
Reply: ALL gov't subsidies are wasteful. The gov't should not spend money on anything that the private sector could do. This bill enshrines and subsidizes certain forms of energy efficiency at the expense of others (either current or future) which may actually be MORE beneficial to society.
You said: Kind of the definition of government, isn't it.
Reply: Yes, to a socialist.
You said: The free market usually sorts out these kinds of things at the expense of those that can least afford to deal with it.
Reply: I contest the truth of that statement. That is socialist dogma, disproven by experience.
You said: Personally, I believe that I, and society in general, have a responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate.
Reply: I believe that also. However, whenever gov't is used as the means to carry this out, it does so very inefficiently, it creates ever-expanding entitlements, and it creates voting blocs of permanent underclasses. The less fortunate should be taken care of by religious groups and private charities. This is NOT an essential gov't function (and therefore not a proper gov't function).
You said: I'm happy about this move, as it does indeed help all of us to stop using as much energy and help ensure more "for the rest of us".
Reply: I sincerely hope you enjoy living in your dream world. This legislation is at best a meaningless feel-good political stunt. More likely, it is a boondoggle that will ultimately cause more harm than good.
My last word: Something that the private sector cannot do (at least not effectively) is to assign a cost or penalty to actions that cause widespread but dilute harm, especially if this is not immediately obvious. Second-hand smoke and various forms of pollution are the most obvious examples. For such things, gov't SHOULD step in, and make the action costly, either by taxing it or by requiring some kind of remediation measures. (Only in the most extreme circumstances should gov't ban a practice entirely. Gov't should always strive to interfere as little as possible.)
In the particular case of carbon emissions, gov't should limit itself to taxing the emissions, and refrain from prescribing specific, favored solutions. Let the marketplace respond, and let the consumer decide. 300 million consumers are collectively MUCH smarter than several hundred legislators.
ChuckInReno on 12/11/2007 at 1:55 AM
14
What about highways? Aren't those a subsidy of trucking and transportation? Doesn't that provide a subsidy to petroleum consumers?
There are subsidies everywhere you look. I think we can agree that most of these subsidies play a useful role.
The world is not black and white...
dmm on 12/13/2007 at 3:00 PM
137
Reply: No. Whatever made you think I was?
You said: Even before the Iraq war, we were spending billions of dollars each year in the Persian gulf, to ensure a "stable" environment. Isn't that a subsidy? Shouldn't the oil companies provide their own security?
Reply: Yes, and yes (if by "provide their own security" you mean "pay a special tax for the military's protection" not "hire their own mercenary army").
You said: What about highways? Aren't those a subsidy of trucking and transportation? Doesn't that provide a subsidy to petroleum consumers?
Reply: Yes, and yes. And that's wrong. Petroleum consumers should entirely pay for all transportation projects via a fuel tax.
You said: There are subsidies everywhere you look.
Reply: Somewhat agree. Far too many.
You said: I think we can agree that most of these subsidies play a useful role.
Reply: You think wrong. We very much disagree. MOST of these subsidies are detrimental, distorting the market and hiding the true cost of things. The subsidies you give above -- the military protecting foreign oil sources, and gov't building "free" highways -- are perfect examples of how the gov't encourages people to waste energy by hiding its true cost and forcing people to pay for it whether they use it or not. Legislators SAY that they want people to conserve energy, but they are either too stupid, too cowardly, or too dishonest to confront these kinds of basic institutionalized subsidies of energy wastage. Instead, they pass asinine laws about mandatory lightbulb efficiency, call for Bush to sign Kyoto, and pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
You said: The world is not black and white...
Reply: Of course not. Who said it was?
jmaximus9 on 12/13/2007 at 8:01 PM
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dmm on 12/14/2007 at 2:56 PM
137
I would disagree about former recipients of subsidies being forced to pay them back. If they hadn't been subsidized, they would have had to charge consumers more for the product. I'd happily settle for forgetting the past and doing things properly from now on. Of course, thinking that there is the slightest chance that the entrenched interests will ever let that happen is probably delusional. :-)
frflyer on 01/07/2008 at 11:27 PM
1
There never has been and never will be this utopian free market that you think you're going to find in heaven. You are so materialistic that you not only worship money, you worship this idealistic free market you're always going on about.
There is no question that capitalism has serious faults but when anyone mentions them, you resort to the same old red baiting as always, except now you use the word socialism instead of communism.
I'd like a free market too, one where multinational corporations don't control the world and the U.S. govt. If I remember correctly the term is "by and for the people", don't remember anything about "by and for the corporations". And you who support this crime are the first ones to raise the flag and pull the patriotism card. To believe in that kind of America is not patriotic in any way shape or form.
Then you rant about welfare programs for the poor, when welfare for the rich and big corporations is about $450 billion a year.
Not to mention the benefits of power over legislation that may favor them.
The way I see it, the Republican party has the task each election year, of convincing the middle class that it is the poor to blame for their economic problems. What a joke! We have become the country in the developed world with the worst distribution of wealth. Trickle down economics? We have a tsunami of money flowing to the top and have had that for at least 40 years.
DaveL on 12/07/2007 at 8:41 AM
1
franquellim on 12/07/2007 at 9:50 AM
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javs on 12/09/2007 at 5:22 PM
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franquellim on 12/10/2007 at 11:24 AM
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I understand where you're coming from, but frankly, I just don't trust private enterprise anymore. The game is weighted too far in their favor and their interests clearly lie with maintaining their profit margin over serving the needs of their customers. Maybe if we had enough transparency and accountability, I'd go along with it, but recent history suggests otherwise.
javs on 12/10/2007 at 10:14 PM
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franquellim on 12/11/2007 at 12:27 PM
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javs on 12/11/2007 at 1:32 PM
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DJTal on 12/07/2007 at 12:30 PM
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javs on 12/07/2007 at 12:45 PM
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Late MIT professor Fred C. Schweppe led the development of Spot Pricing of Electricity (SPoE) in the 1980s and envisioned a regulated energy marketplace. EWPC is an extension of SPoE for a re-regulated energy marketplace.
Jason Black's MIT PhD theses envisioned demand and customer reliability integration, under the open transmission access (OTA) incremental extension of the VIUs paradigm.
FERC has issued instructions to integrate demand under the existing OTA paradigm and the result is a large increase in complexity and confusion. The design mantra simplify, simplify, simplify is waiting to be applied to the system structure.
The EWPC paradigm shift adds the need for transportation (transmission and distribution) ultraquality open access. Ultraquality satisfies a criterion identified by Schweppe that enabled the discovery of the (system, not customer) reliability first economy second (R1E2) policy.
Applying the R1E2 policy a large reduction in complexity results in the separation of two interdependent markets:
1) A controlled transportation market and
2) An open market on the generation - retail - customer value chain, under prudential regulation, instead of price controls to the customers.
It is evident that energy efficiency potential under EWPC will slash a lot more energy use and sooner.
Please go to www.energyblogs.com/ewpc (hit the javs link above) for more details.
javs on 12/08/2007 at 3:04 PM
52
With all due respect, I humbly suggest you consider writing a post on the emerging EWPC. To see another angle of EWPC, I also added the following under your recent post about Google's plan to save the world:
For Google's approach to go forward, there is a need to break down a big barrier on the demand side of the electricity industry structure.
The barrier is known as "native load," in which the enterprise revenue side of the utilities is protected from competition by the less valued (by the utility itself) natural monopoly grid side. Such protection is extended to central generation by long term contracts, working against distributed generation opportunities that Google will be promoting.
Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC) is the solution to allow the development of the demand side of the power industry. EWPC is a market architecture and design paradigm shift of the power industry. The development of the demand side is mostly about information technologies, like Google strong know how.
For details about EWPC, go to www.energyblogs.com/ewpc
SVE on 12/09/2007 at 7:03 PM
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Imagine how your mom would feel if you just ate 1/3 of what she cooked you and slopped the rest of the food left over all over the floor where it went to waste.
To complete the analogy, it is entirely reasonable for us to go 3 times as far using just the energy we have now. And we should do just that.
Our moms expect it.
javs on 12/10/2007 at 10:30 PM
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EWPC is about letting each home buy (invest) in efficient products so as to minimize their total electricity costs.
lowilliams on 12/10/2007 at 3:59 PM
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The answer was not inacting laws to control the use of horses or from trading the right to pollute as is being practiced or suggested with regard to controlling carbon dioxide. The answer was the introduction of a new transportation technology, the fossil fuel powered vehicle. Cars and trucks were built. Governments at all levels subsidized building of roads for the vehicles. Within about 10 years, the problem of horse waste was under control and in 30 years it was eliminated. This control was achieved, not by passing laws concerning the use of horses, but by replacing that horse based transportation with a new technology that was better than the old. In implementing the RFH energy system, no laws or restrictions will be placed on the users of fossil fuels. The RFH energy system will be introduced as a replacement for the fossil fuel system and all will adopt it because it is better.
Passing restrictive laws simply doesn't work. Probition, some think, increased drinking. We pass laws against drugs. What do we get, rich drug suppliers, a lot of victims in jail and a huge bill for accomplishing almost nothing. Instead of supporting restrictive laws in an effort to solve the energy shortage challengs, help develop the will to implement the RFH energy system.
To review the RFH energy system see www.endtoglobalwarming.com
dmm on 12/10/2007 at 5:23 PM
137
1) There was no massive, gov't funded, "Manhattan Project" to produce the internal combustion engine (ICE) and automobiles. The need gradually arose over time, and a solution was developed.
2) In the cities, many of those roads were developed LONG before cars.
3) All those gov't-subsidized roads came at the expense of mass transport and liveable inner cities, to the benefit of (wealthy) suburbanites, with their huge cars and huger houses. Am I the only one who thinks that was not a good trade-off? Disregarding the social unfairness, consider the carbon emissions.
4) Many sectors of the economy did not adopt ICEs until the technology progressed to the point where ICE efficiency became overwhelming. There was no gov't mandate; it just happened. This was a good thing.
5) There was no gov't bail-out of displaced industries and workers. They adapted or died. Not surprisingly, nearly all workers chose to adapt.
jmaximus9 on 12/13/2007 at 8:56 PM
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javs on 12/21/2007 at 3:39 PM
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