Green-loving California may dodge utility bill bullet

[jpak]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/11/california_power_bills_energy_summit/

California may get the last laugh standing firm by its tree-hugging ways.

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CEO of California power company Pacific Gas and Electric Peter Darbee said the state's aggressive approach to slashing greenhouse-gas emissions will help shield it from significant utility price hikes that will soon grip the country.

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"But the rates in California will be going up much less than the rates across the entire United States," said Darbee. "What we have learned from our discussions from other utility companies across the country is that they may be looking at between 20 and 30 per cent increases in energy bills in the future," he said.

Darbee believes California, in contrast, will only suffer rate hikes in the single digits. Guess Enron taught us a valuable lesson.

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[kestrel91316]

1. Can I, just for a few minutes, allow myself to feel

smugly superior to the rest of the country as a resident of CA?

[Howzit]

2. Not much to be smug about

We have been paying more than the rest of the country for a long time. Just because our rates will go up a smaller percentage doesn't mean we will be better off than the rest of the country - we will still be paying more.

[NNadir]

5. Well, given that you can't compare two numbers, maybe.

California is not a renewable paradise - that's a fantasy.

It's a dangerous natural gas hellhole.

The fact that California is a dangerous natural gas hellhole is reflected in its electricity prices. Only in fundie land are prices that the highest West of the Mississippi reported as "protection."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile5_6_b.xls

Last I looked, your state took a duly elected Democratic governor, threw him out because Enron raised your electricity bills using your dependence on natural gas, and then elected a steroid crazed movie star with a Hummer - a hydrogen hummer - Governor and declared him an environmentalist for pushing to double your electricity bills.


Quoth I in Life Cycle Analysis of Solar (And Wind) Power in Switzerland

Nor is solar electricity "free." As of this writing, the figures presented by the solar energy promotion site Solarbuzz report that the cost of solar electricity is now 21.32 cents per kwh. This compares with an average US electricity price for residential customers of 10.4 cents per kwh (as of 2006) - the highest price recorded in over a decade - and a price of 8.9 cents per kwh for all customers of the electric industry, including industrial customers. Note that the pixilated, volatile, quirky delusional voters of California were manipulated by Enron - which held a huge operating stake in the Republican party in California and Washington, D.C. - into recalling their duly elected Democratic governor, Grey Davis, and replacing him with a steroid laced, Hummer driving freak, because electricity prices in California surged to 12.2 cents per kwh. The steroid laced freak in question - Governor Arnie - was then re-elected in part because he was inexplicably declared an "environmentalist" by a credulous and often deliberately fraudulent media because of his support of a worthless poorly constructed, unworkable, unrealistic, and inflated "million solar roofs" bill, even though solar energy is almost double in price compared to the figures about which the Californians were so upset.

And what is the price of electricity in the State over which Governor Arnie now presides?

It's 14.36 cents for residential customers, higher than it was under Grey Davis - an unjustly maligned man - but still nowhere as high as the solar energy that Governor Hydrogen Hummer is pretending to install in California.

(The figures for the historical price of electricity in California can be found here.

Heckuva job California.

In case you're interested, the "environmentalist" governor of California likes to make a big show of pretending to care about climate change gas emissions, although it would appeared that basically almost all of the newly installed energy capacity in California appears to be dangerous natural gas capacity. Since Enron helped usurp the duly elected Governor of California, the capacity for power production using dangerous natural gas as a fuel has risen by 4,711 MWe, making it easily, by far, the largest form of newly installed power capacity in California. Note that newly installed capacity is a good predictor of the serious long term intent of the producers.

In the same period, under the allegedly "environmentalist" Hummer driving governor, renewable capacity - and it's "peak" capacity as we'll see, which is pretty much meaningless whenever we talk about renewables - has risen by 516 MWe in the same period - and is actually lower than it was in 1993.

You must be pretty provincial, which is not surprising.

If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[NYC_SKP]

3. BTW, we in PGE have a really low carbon energy mix.

Typically only one or two percent coming from coal.

[diane in sf]

4. The laws in CA were designed to pay the utilities for conserving energy ala Amory Lovins

rather than selling more and more of it

[NNadir]

6. Well Amory and his pal Jeff Skillings of Enron sure raked in the bucks off California.

Here's the two freaks, one more criminal than the other - with the lesser fraud in jail - yukking it up:

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2001/october/a3oct01.html

I wouldn't, of course, expect you to know any math whatsover, given the junk you heave out here - you are clearly a complete stranger to critical thinking - but, um, well, California isn't conserving all that much.

Apparently, you think that the electricity coming out of your wall socket isn't made burning vast amounts of dangerous natural gas.

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/ELECTRICITY_GEN_1983-2006.XLS

Into denial much?

Do I have to ask?