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TreeHugger:
Yesterday, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his intention to make the city entirely coal-free by 2020, and turn to clean and renewable energy instead. Inspiring? Yes. Possible? Maybe not so much.
Now is the time for all good greens, rednecks, social entrepreneurs, hellraisers, Repower America and Al Gore to come to the aid of their fellow citizens in the Appalachian coalfields.
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Now maybe more will jump on the band wagon.
yes, turn out the lights
yes
it can be done
and
should be done
but probably wont be done
because politics will get in the way
we should make changes ourselves b4 mother nature forces changes upon us
but i believe nothing will change until we are forced into it through a crises
the flip side of not burning coal, or i should say, hydrocarbons in general, is that life as we know it will be over, because our current infrastructure was built for cheap fossil fuels.
and a non-carbon future would most-likely, be more expensive
but eventually we will have no choice but to make a switch anyway due to depletion.
Obama isnt getting us cheap NG.
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All this is going to do is export coal power plant pollution elsewhere.
How? LA buys natural gas to run power plants instead of coal. Price of LNG goes up. Price of coal goes down.
In some other area they're deciding between gas and coal. Coal is cheaper. They go with coal.
It's got to be a nation wide effort to clean up coal plants. Its expensive but it CAN BE DONE.
All LA is doing is shifting the problem elsewhere, like the 4-Corners.
Good point.
CA will do what it has always done...refuse to build plants of it's own, shut down it's own coal plants, and buy up all of the renewable energy (charging it's customers more) inevitably forcing other states to turn to the excess coal capacity.
It's more of a feel good marketing ploy than a reality.
The mayor of L.A. recently announced the replacement of 144,000 street lights with LED street lights. His nex major announcemnt should to tell DWP taht the city has decided to go solar and wind via feedin tarrifs at 20-30 cents per Kwh. Couple this to the current investment tax credits and L.A. will be coal free with in 2 years. Utah and Arizona are awash in sunlight and this would send a strong message that it is time to start shutting your coal fired power plants down in favor of wind and solar via feedin tarrifs. Connecticut passed feedin tarrifs on May 27, 2009. Unfortunately they put a cap in at 50 megawatts. Perhaps, when they see how well the program works, they will eliminate the cap.
It is time to deregulate the regualted utility monopolies in the remaining 48 states and allow everyone to compete by paying anyone who puts excess capacity into the grid from clean renewable energy to get paid full market rates. We will then see if king coal and nuclear can compete renewables.
According to "source watch", California is already among the lowest of the states in terms of how much of its electricity is generated by coal, less than 1%. A recent law signed by the Governor mandated that new contracts for out of state electricity meet the laws for in-state production.
I do not understand how the article came up with the figure of 40% for coal-generated electricity in California, as it does not seem to be substantiated by the literature that I have read.
Lead the way cali. If you can think it, you can achieve it.
LA uses 6GW peak. Summer air conditioning.
LA has about 1 Billion square meters of usable solar roof. (est half of 20% roof area)
at 100 watts per square meter, that's
100 GW peak SOLAR versus 6GW LA total use.
At 6 hours equivalent full sun per day, that's 25GW AVERAGE from solar.
And rooftop SOLAR IS THE CHEAPEST ELECTRICITY SOURCE at 3 cents per KWH BEFORE incentives. See my profile for proof.
That's great, for a mere Trillion dollar investment, they could power their light bulbs-.. during the day...
Hey I have some nice magic beans you may be interested in!
For 12 billion dollars, LA could completely replace all other electricity generation with rooftop solar, cheaper than any source they have now.
PEAK LOAD IN LA PEAKS AT THE SAME TIME SOLAR DOES.
THINK! do the math, grow up!
Please, read my profile. I know solar used to be expensive, that has changed in the last year!
1.85 per peak watt! retail!
http://www.atensolar.com/14.html
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm
Bad news, the cost of this insane fantasy will drive every last business which can move out of LA out and guarantee no new business move into LA. The good news, no need for the last person to leave LA to shut the lights out!
money is better than life! oink oink!
Let those businesses leave then, they can go to some red state where they will fit right in, good riddance. Los Angles is a big market, smart businesses there will survive, smart businesses will move there to fill the gap left by the greedy Reaganistas who left for "greener pastures."
2020? Good luck with that.
I read somewhere that the State of California gets only about 1% of its electricity from coal fired plants. Was the article I read wrong?
Where is the change?
{/sarcasm off}
in between the cushions of the couch.
The question to ask is why, a year after AB 811 passed, and allowed cities and counties to use the property tax system to guarantee repayment of loans for efficiency and rooftop solar, has LA REFUSED TO FUND ANY LOANS? Not one. Home and business owners are GAGGING to put solar on their roofs (and there is very high insolation in LA), but the up-front money is stopping them. AB 811 solved that, all LA had to do was fund the loans (via bonds, private lenders, VC, whatever) and get panels on roofs.
the problem is that DWP wants a monopoly, and the LAST thing they want is for Angelenos to have a large measure of energy independence. it is what all Big Energy mercenaries fear most, and is why Slovenia, Iran, Albania and MOngolia even have feed in tariff programs, but America doesn't. Because they WORK.
We are heading towards another enslavement to Big Energy with this bull**** Big Solar, Big Wind Supergrid Boondoggle, and it will permanently destroy millions and millions more acres of pristine land instead of using the built environment, where the energy is needed. all to prevent us from becoming (mostly) energy independent. Think about what you want, and push for feed in tariffs and loans. they are the only hope for the economy or the environment.
As a 45 year old experienced businessman, start up entrepreneur, general contractor, founder owner and seller of several enterprises, and now a sophomore @ OIT for a BS of Renewable Energy Engineering studying solar,wind,hydro,and fuel cell system design, integration, and engineering - I firmly believe that today's economic "collapse" and dragging of feet on environmental and energy progress has more to do with the investment strategy of Goldman Sachs than it has to do with the capabilities of today's technology.
Sheila has it right. Technology that is available NOW creates independent and autonomous energy for business and consumers. But, like health care, if business and consumers get something without big biz control....well then big biz no longer controls. And ain't THAT what good ole free America is all about?
We are all being herded towards monopolized utility energy with homes and businesses andsoon for travel and freedom to move about when we all become dependent on the electric car. But follow the investment money. This will not happen until GridPoint and ExxonMobil consolidate their power to control your electric utility bill just as Big Oil controls your fuel bill today.
The crap in congress today that we're being sold as the environmental law of the century is LOCKING IN CONTROL of centralized energy corporations and Goldman Sachs.
Its a BOONDOGGLE and a SCAM.
We've been enslaved by electric technology and now the need for the electricity is about to be used as leverage to make us all serfs.
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First Posted: 07-10-09 06:21 PM | Updated: 08-10-09 05:12 AM