[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by pshrynk

I'm not sure if this is in every state, but many states allow the energy companies to buy back electricity if you have photovoltaics that exceed your usage, so you can actually run a negative bill if you have enough capacity.

Which most electric utilities will be happy to do. Anything that reduces their need to build new generating capacity...

That takes quite a load of photovoltaics, but those thingies that Ralph showed us might end up being just the thing.

It will, and the issue is the cost. There were proposals back when to use government funding to subsidize photo-voltaic production. Photovoltaics are like any other semi-conductor device: they are capital intensive, and the biggest cost is the financing to build the factory that can make it. The more you make, the wider you can spread the overhead, and the cheaper you can price the product.

And T Boone has a great idea, as well. Wind energy to replace natgas generation and use natgas to cut improt dependence.

Assuming you have a good place to put a wind farm.

And wind farms will reduce the usage of using natural gas to power electrical generating facilities.

There are lots of things that are coming along or waiting in the wings that will eventually be cheaper than oil.

That's been true for years. The hangup has always been that using oil was cheaper.

Oil was one of the drivers of the tech boom that makes it possible to go back to renewable without going back to the dark ages. We just have to have the sense to go for it.

Here's where I'm a hybrid: Let's develop stuff and see what happens and make new things. We should agree to change what we're doing because it's leading to a bad place. But ferghodsake, let's open up the gates and let things go forward. Hold back becasue there might be an environmental problem? How about just keeping an eye out for environmental problems as we're froging ahead. We've learned a lot about monitoring in the past century. Let's use it and progress, rather than holding back.

I'll concur.

The big environmental problems may not be so easily monitored. Nancy Pelosi is curerntly shooting back at President Bush, since she was the one principally responsible for blocking offshore drilling off the California coast. she points to things like the Exxon Valdez incident as reasons why offshore drilling and the California coast can't co-exist.

Environmental monitoring can't handle the case of a super tanker having an accident.
______
Dennis