October 13, 2021
JUST MAKE CARBON TAXES CONFISCATORY:
When Can We Stop Having Energy Crises? (Mark Gongloff, Sep. 23rd, 2021, Fast Company)
Renewable energy sources can still help us avoid the worst climate disasters, and the faster we adopt them, the more efficient and cheaper they get, write Oxford's Eric Beinhocker, J. Doyne Farmer and Cameron Hepburn. Instead of studying time travel like I did at Oxford (I have never been to Oxford), they discovered Moore's Law and Wright's Law apply to green tech the same way they apply to computer chips and such. Fun fact: They do not apply to fossil fuels, which are just as inefficient and expensive as they were 100 years ago.So fossil fuels are bad, paleo fuels. But they are also highly available fuels. That makes them important while we transition to the greener stuff. This is where the time machine would come in handy. We could, of course, just transition more quickly, as the Oxford trio suggests and as President Joe Biden's spending plan would do. But that requires political will, and have you seen our politics lately?Meanwhile, relying on fossil fuel for the transition keeps exposing people to shortages and price spikes. This in turn causes politicians to do desperate, knee-jerk stuff to energy prices, the net effect of which is to make decarbonization even more difficult, writes Liam Denning. It's one of the few things California, Texas and the United Kingdom all have in common, aside from a (basically) shared language and love of fried foods.The latter country is suffering its own energy crisis, with high gas prices and vanishing supply just ahead of winter. It has responded by hunkering down over its precious price caps and supplier bailouts, as one does. Therese Raphael suggests the U.K. needs a more fundamental reboot of its whole energy metaverse. But that requires political will, and have you seen our politics lately?So at some point consumer bills will rise, and consumers will blame green energy, and time will move backward instead of forward. Liam suggests a better way is to subsidize the consumers rather than the gas suppliers, to help smooth this changeover and offer saner incentives.
The problem is not that prices are too high right now but that they are not high enough to reflect the externalities and force the inevitable transition to quicken and relieve us from the least efficient, most unreliable, most destructive energy sources.
MORE:
Volatile energy markets are here to stay, global watchdog warns (Pippa Stevens, 10/13/21, MSNBC)
The perils of an energy complex that's mismatched on the supply and demand side is playing out now as the global economic recovery from Covid-19 continues. Energy demand has jumped as businesses reopen and consumers return to pre-pandemic activities, but supply has remained tight with producers reluctant to bring new production online.Oil prices are up more than 60% for 2021 after plunging to record lows in April 2020, while U.S. natural gas prices have more than doubled this year. In Europe, spot natural gas prices hit an all-time high this fall, while coal prices are also rising amid preparations for the winter heating season.Higher fuel costs will be passed along to consumers and businesses, potentially hitting the economic recovery."As events in 2021 show, consumers are vulnerable when prices rise sharply," the report said. "Volatility and price shocks cannot be discounted during the transition."
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 13, 2021 8:01 AM