Who Is Launching The "Negawatts" Campaign?
With so much emphasis on "Renewable" generation to minimise greenhouse gases, where is the pressure to save energy?
Saving Energy is a much more cost effective approach than building new power stations - be they conventional, nuclear or renewable. One of the first to realise this was the state of California in the USA. James Martin, in his book "The meaning of the 21st Century " uses the phrase "Negawatts" to represent megawatts saved. The Phrase was coined by the public utility commission of California.
The profits of power companies in the US are regulated ( unfortunately this is not the case in the UK see "Unfailing Touch" ). Generally the more electricity they sell the more profit they are allowed to make. This, at a time when there is growing popularity in the belief that mankind is making the planet warmer by our activities, is precisely NOT what we want them to do, because this will increase those oh so bad emissions. Firstmistke takes an intelligently sceptical view of the "Climate change" disaster now put forward by the industrial-political complex.
So, the Califonian power regulatory authority calcaulated how much cheaper it would be to save megawatts than to "create" new megawatts. Of course energy is neither created or destroyed according to the conservation of enegry principle of Physics - just moved around from somewhere we can't ge at it to somehwere where we can harness it to do what we want. Notice how the phrase "do something useful" was avoided in the previous sentance? Of that more later.
They calculated for example, that if every household in California replaced four ( only four Mr Gore ) incandescent bulbs with flourescent ones averge of 27 wats burning five hours a day, it would save 22 million kilowatt hours per day. This was enough to close 17 power stations.
California also did calculations involving fridges, showers and various aspects of everyday modern life. They figured out that if the state of California paid for the efficient bulbs, showerheads and household solar water heaters, it would cost less than building one new power station. They realised the power ( excuse the pun ) of saving energy. If you can satisfy demand by saving power at a cost of one cent per kilowatt hour it beast hands down building the new powerstation with a cost of 10 cents per killowatt hour.
The saving was now up to 67 Power stations! Why is this argument not applied to the generation of power in the UK? There is "the Carbon Trust" and the "Enery Saving Trust " Arguably if a sustained and efective campaign of energy saving was put in place, Britain would meet it's self imposed false targets without destroying the last remenants of precious heather moorland and the last vestiages of wild landscpe in their country. But these government funded organisation, laudible though their aims are, do not have the teeth of regulatory authority. The Carbon Trust is, to quote their own website, "The Carbon Trust, a government-funded independent company, helps businesses and the public sector to cut carbon emissions...". These organisations are a favourite of Blair as they look good but do nothing. Just like him really.
Martin goes on to relate how, around 1980, The Pacfic Gas and Electric Company planned to build between 10 and 20 new nuclear power stations every few miles along the coastline of California. But then, as Martin says, the rules of the game changed and the power stations were not built. The power company decided to fulfill demand using negawatts rather then new generation.
How had the rules changed? Well, the state of California reformed the regulations and provided incentives to reward power companies for lowering electricity rather than increasing it. The commission worked out formulas for letting utilities keep as extra profit part of whatever they saved their customers. To use Martin's pithy phrase "in this way an era of wanton waste of power could evolve into an era of saving power".
Why do we not hear of such regulatory innovation now? We hear about the need for renewable energy sources, the need for "green" taxes, the increase in the congestion charge. All punitive measures against the individual. Yet at the same time the regulatory frame work still reward the power companies with "excessive profits" according to OfGem.
Surely even someone stupid enough to have bought the "Weapons of Msss Destruction 15 minutes" claim as true, or even thought that it would fool the p
ublic, can see that the most effective way to reduce emissions is to reduce energy consumption. After all, this way you don't have the massive emmissions involved in making tonns and tonns of steel in high temperature blast furnaces, you save the energy needs to build hndreds of turbines standing 400 feet tall, the energy and emissions taht would be created shipping the turbines across the seas to Britain are not expended, you save the energy and fumes, wear and tear on the roads hauling them to the remote spots where they are being installed, you save the emissions and energy used to build the access roads to the turbines, and all the effort for the cabling and pylons to get the power ( after a massive transmission loss ) to the places you need.
All because you don't have the balls to force businesses to stop lighting empty offices in our cities, or are too stupid to realise the monumental idiocy of the scheme. It is like the craze for "fad" diets, the Atkins being one. There is no silver bullet to getting thin - eat less and do more excercise - simple. What we are doing with onshore turbines is reminiscent of the side effects of "faddy" diets brought on by unbalanced eating. There is no silver bullet for cutting emissions - use less energy
We need politicians of all shades to do the job they are handsomely paid to do; Design intelligent regulatory frameworks to address our problems. Unfortunately the only tool that the current crop of idiots can master is Taxation. Taxation is them passing the buck to us without any thought or addressing the major mechanisms that will have the greatest effect.
The rest of the up and comming articles in this section will address how we can inject some common sense into the "race for renewables" feeding frenzy. Except why do I feel we are like lemmings racing towards a cliff edge?
