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Re: E-M:/ alternative energy industry
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Enviro-Mich message from "David" <david@sunward.org>
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I will repeat myself and then ask that you go to the national renewable
energy webpage.
New renewable energy is cost competitive in the sense of heating and
illuminating your home now. The costs for the nation's top ten voluntary
renewable energy programs can be found at the following web page.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/resources/tables/topten.shtml
The last table on this webpage shows the cost premiums for the programs in
cents per kw-hr. The first premium is negative that means that renewable
energy is cheaper than fossil fuels today. The first program is the one
that the Ecology Center and Ann Arbor are asking the Michigan Public Service
Commission to mandate for voluntary green power customers of Detroit Edison.
Because renewable energy is cost-competitive with fossil and nuclear power
now (go back to the table if you still don't believe me) - it will be
cheaper to replace the existing infrastructure with renewables than to waste
untold quantities of money to try and figure out some way to fix fossil and
nuclear problems.
The transition will be easy, learning to believe that we can make the
transition is the hard part; and, while we debate if it can even be done,
Europe and others continue to build wind turbines and solar panels, enhance
their products, invest in production capacity and extend their market
leadership.
It will be difficult to catch them, and definitely impossible as long as we
say it's too expensive or it can't be done.
David Wright
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rane L Curl" <ranecurl@umich.edu>
To: <enviro-mich@great-lakes.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: E-M:/ alternative energy industry
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Enviro-Mich message from Rane L Curl <ranecurl@umich.edu>
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On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, David wrote:
...snip...
New renewable energy is cost competitve with new fossil or new nuclear
energy.
Not in the conventional sense, of heating and illuminating your home now
Neither fossil energy or nuclear energy can tell you what their costs
will be because we do not how to deal with reducing carbon or safely
storing nuclear waste for the thousands of years required.
Which is certainly true, but the fact is that we also have to deal with
the problem now. It will take a long time to adequately address the global
problems of CO2 and fossil fuel depletion. Whatever is the solution will
probably be much more expensive than what we have now, which means a
difficult economic transition.
--Rane L Curl
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