Except tax cuts and hating the poor and minorities, that is:
Trump administration officials are making plans to order grid operators to buy electricity from struggling coal and nuclear plants in an effort to extend their life, a move that could represent an unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.
The Energy Department would exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws to direct the operators to purchase electricity or electric generation capacity from at-risk facilities, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The agency also is making plans to establish a “Strategic Electric Generation Reserve” with the aim of promoting the national defense and maximizing domestic energy supplies.
“Federal action is necessary to stop the further premature retirements of fuel-secure generation capacity,” says a 41-page draft memo circulated before a National Security Council meeting on the subject Friday.
The plan cuts to the heart of a debate over the reliability and resiliency of a rapidly evolving U.S. electricity grid. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and renewable electricity. As nuclear and coal plants are decommissioned, regulators have been grappling with how to ensure that the nation’s power system can withstand extreme weather events and cyber-attacks.
They’re gonna make you pay more to use dirty energy to prop up their plutocrat buddies in the coal industry. This will effectively make coal miners, you guessed it- “welfare queens.”
Baud
A slippery slope to the broccoli mandate.
rikyrah
That pesky free market.
Knew it was just bullshyt?
TenguPhule
Communism is here and brought to us by the Russian backed traitors.
TenguPhule
Surely you mean Kale.
debbie
Five bucks says Trump’s got investments that would benefit from this “emergency.:
chris
In case the wind and the sun disappear?
ETA They are preparing for a war of some kind aren’t they?
mad citizen
This is my job area. One of the grid operators, PJM, already issued a statement against this stupid idea. I’m hearing that there will be a line of lawsuits trying to stop this. It is not needed.
MomSense
Oh brother. Republicans were outraged when Obama invested in solar. ‘Government shouldn’t be picking the winners and loswrs’ blah blah blah.
MobiusKlein
Would they take a Friday or two off from evil, just once in a while?
Chyron HR
Gosh, when the guy from Vermont said the country must burn for denying his holy glory, I didn’t think it would be in the literal sense.
JPL
What areas of the country are hurt the most? The first thing I did was google GA Power and more than half of their energy comes from coal and nuclear, so I should be okay. Other parts of the country use hydropower.
NotMax
Next up, force the Post Office to use horses and wagons. Strategic Cavalry Reserve.
JPL
@mad citizen: That’s what I think. It’s going to be tied up in court a long time.
Ruckus
@chris:
They don’t make money off of the wind and sun. They invested hugely in coal and nuclear a while ago and are going to lose a bundle because their timing is horrible. They always get in at the end of a run, a short time after the smart people started to sell. Just about the time things got cheap, just like they are. I mean who do you think bought into coal and nuclear when the smart money got out, other smart people? It was the fake rich, like drumpf.
elm
Doesn’t even stand on its own alleged logic. If weather or cyber attacks or other vulnerability could interfere with natural gas flow or wind or sun, it could fuck up power distribution too.
Sure, you can keep a pile of coal or fuel rods on site at one of these plants, but the wires that deliver power to homes need continuity.
Coal and nuclear are too expensive, period, even without considering the pollution they produce.
M4
Wow, that is some next-level shit.
MobiusKlein
Since it’s going to court, and will be blocked, this is the conservative version of ‘Virtue Signaling”?
NotMax
Is hot water in the gaudy Tower provided by a coal-fired boiler?
No? Hypocrite.
Patricia Kayden
I thought Republicans were all about respecting business decisions. This is not normal. Nothing about this regime is normal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I for one welcome the broccoli mandate.
Ruckus
@MobiusKlein:
You mean “Non Virtue Signaling”?
Corner Stone
I think this is a pretty sound national security decision. In order to secure our continued march toward energy independence we need to be ready to make a few sacrifices and it seems the Trump administration is focused on doing the right – BWHAHAHAHAHA! Can’t even finish. This is too good.
Although, I will say that I think subsidizing Ag farms and the auto industry is an actual national security imperative. This, however, is just crony payback pandering bullshit.
mad citizen
A question I heard, though, was whether the policy could be enacted and in place before any lawsuits. That could suck bad.
Corner Stone
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I, for one, denounce Stalin.
But not broccoli. Fuck the haters.
JPL
@MobiusKlein: It will convince his supporters to vote for more wingnuts who agree with the asshole.
I believe Manchin likes this approach.
rikyrah
Guess who is paying for the NK hotel??
https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1002683577861980160?s=20
Baud
https://youtu.be/IyjJbhuwGkU
arrieve
I can’t even. It’s not the venality or the hypocrisy or the crony capitalism — well, it is. But mostly it’s that they are so fricking stupid it makes my eyes water.
Another Scott
@chris: I haven’t read the story, but I assume Donnie’s minions are scouring things like the Defense Production Act – Title III to justify everything they want to do.
(Emphasis added.)
The President has a lot of power to do things if he can (credibly) argue that they’re related to national defense. As long as Congress goes along and gives him funding to do so.
Of course, there’s no credible argument that we need more coal and nuclear electricity as opposed to solar and wind and hydropower and all the rest. Electrical machinery doesn’t care how the AC power is produced…
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Similarly with the national defense arguments that we need to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum…”)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That would be awesome from daytime Milky Way pics.
ETA: IR pics, no so much…
JPL
@rikyrah: I guess Mexico
NotMax
OT.
Gonna try chicken cacciatore in the Instant Pot tonight.
Cross your paws, jackals.
Oh, and a reminder – fewer than 10 shopping days until Kamehameha Day.
:)
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
You’re starting to think like a true capitalist.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: Yoi mean the Trump steak mandate. That’s what he used to sell, after all.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
This is just completely silly. The reason the law was written as it was is presumably that fuel was primarily coal at the time. We no longer use only fuel sources that can be carried on trains.
ETA: Coal and oil, I guess.
NotMax
@Another Scott
AFAIK, we’re still subsidizing wool and mohair, some 50 years after the Pentagon removed them from their list of strategic materials.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
I’m thinking that my work as a machinist is going to at least have a hiccup or two at the higher price of metals. We make a lot of stuff out of aluminum and tool steels but most of that is imported. Right now we are swamped but things can change pretty quickly.
It always amazes me that people like drumpf have no real clue how things work, that so many things are connected in many ways. So he does tariffs on metals and countries do tariffs on our food exports. Or our medical device exports, something we make with the metals….. Of course drumpf just has no clue about anything except his blimp sized inflated view of himself. And he gets that 100% wrong as well.
Mnemosyne
@MobiusKlein:
Yes. As usual, conservatives accuse everyone around them of doing exactly what they do themselves.
mad citizen
I hate hate hate how much military shit bleeds into our country.
There are a couple 1950s vintage coal plants in the Ohio valley built to provide to enrich uranium. They still operate. Ohio Valley Electric Corporation, co-owned by ten or so utilities. It takes a unanimous decision for them to do anything.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: (rubs hands together…)
Chris T.
@MomSense:
That’s not what they meant. They meant “Government should only be picking winners and losers when I’m the winner and you’re the loser.”
scottinnj
This really does read like something out of Atlas Shrugged. Though I think Paul Ryan et al thought they were John Galts, rather, they are James Taggarts and Wesley Mouch.
NotMax
Who needs a quick laugh?
The Jeopardy! you don’t see at home.
(Blue language warning.)
chris
@Another Scott: Yup. Fits right in with declaring Canada a national security threat. Got some weird laws down there.
NotMax
@NotMax
And … screwed up the linky.
The Jeopardy! you don’t see at home.
kindness
I’m curious how your typical non coal mining region Republican is going to run on Trump’s directive in the fall. Will they play deaf and not hear the question? Will they just say they disagree with the President and just elect me I’ll help (do nothing at all)? See. I don’t see how actual voters are going to be silent or sit still for such shenanigans. We’ll see.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Jeez…
They really don’t believe in anything. Well, anything but Cleek’s Law.
rikyrah
Waiting for the doors to open. Going to see a play-Having Our Say, based on the book of the same name about two Black sisters that lived past 100.
The Midnight Lurker
@#$%!!
mark
I read earlier today that the Buffoon want’s to keep German cars out of the U.S. Wait until your only choice is from one of the big three. I see 1970’s quality vehicles coming to a showroom near you.
mad citizen
It continues to amaze me how mythic saving the coal miners has become. In Indiana there are many more people working in the hospitality industry than in coal. You don’t hear crap about them from politicians.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@rikyrah: Diamond and Silk?//
NotMax
@rikyrah
Know I’m going to catch holy hell for this, but it’s an honest inquiry.
What’s up with capitalizing black? Afro-American, correctly, is capitalized (as is Asian, or Latino),. Would you write Brown? Or White? Or, for that matter, Albino?
khead
This is never going to happen.
mad citizen
@mark: K cars coming back. This is America.
NotMax
@mad citizen
Stanley Steamers. Run on coal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mark: I drive a Japanese car, Madame drives a Korean car; they haven’t done anything with them yet.
NotMax
@NotMax
Should add that I don’t perceive it in any manner offensive. Am honestly curious.
mark
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’ve got a Mercedes, and an old Chevy S10. The wife has a Honda Accord. Who knows what he’ll take aim at next.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
Full disclosure: I’m so white, they call me “sharkbait” when I visit the state you live in. ?
It’s capitalized because it’s a cultural reference and not a simple descriptor of skin coloration. You can talk about Black culture, but not brown culture or albino culture, because those things don’t exist.
There’s some debate about whether or not “white” should also be capitalized since it also refers to a specific American culture.
But that’s why, when I refer to Black people from other countries, I refer to them as “Black British,” “Black Canadian,” etc to differentiate them from Black Americans.
NotMax
@mark
Wonder if he knows that VW owns Bentley?
(SATSQ: No, of course not.)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mark: Also Ford’s pretty much getting out of the car business, just trucks and SUV’s.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@NotMax: So essentially a usage question. Hm. Dictionary (dot) com shows it lower cased when referring to a racial group. Ex. “a black teenager of Jamaican descent.”
ETA. but that’s ex is an adjective. Let me check my CMS
So Chicago Manual of Style says “designations based loosely on color are usually lowercased, though capitalization may be appropriate if the writer strongly prefers it.”
So in a publication there’d be a style sheet and a mean editor. Here at BJ, we wing it.
The Midnight Lurker
I apologize for my earlier comment. It’s just when I get to thinking about coal and how our government is loathe to support renewables, and Energy Secretary Dick Perry (it is dick, right?) telling us that it is “immoral” not to use fossil fuels, and the administration floating the idea that we’ll help a criminally corrupt regime revamp their power grid which runs exclusively on coal, and now my tax dollars are going into Don Blankenship’s campaign coffers, I just… just… @#$%!!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Also, what Mnem said.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Thanks for that. It’s just that the inner editor consistently finds it jarring enough to interrupt eye movement when scanning a sentence.
smintheus
@rikyrah: Trump is adding Kim Jong Un to the US welfare rolls. There must be something in it for Ivanka, that’s the only explanation.
schrodingers_cat
We have solar panels and sell electricity back to the power company.
Baud
@The Midnight Lurker:
You better be sorry. This is a grawlix-free blog.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Trump stiffed both on the steel and aluminum tariffs, in addition to others.
I expect Trump will remember they make cars too, eventually.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
No, “sharkbait” refers to people who fly here from landlocked states and think that the ocean is a giant swimming pool.
They just happen to usually be very white.
oatler.
Hard to imagine the next civil war being anything other than neighbors stabbing and shooting each other in a screaming frenzy. No Blue and the Gray.
?BillinGlendaleCA
OT: I’ve been re-processing some of my IR pics, here’s one from The Japanese Garden.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Using TPM’s Razor rule, one of his offspring (or one of their close acquaintances) probably got stuck with a lemon from Mercedes-Benz and endlessly bitched about it.
A Ghost To Most
Working for the coal humpers broke me. Hence, retirement.
jl
‘ This will effectively make coal miners, you guessed it- “welfare queens.” ‘
I think coal industry titans and private utilities that don’t want to pay up to modernize their plants have higher priority than coal miners. They are just window dressing for political propaganda for the dupes, like the troops in the military. And, until the Trumpster can figure out how to bend the law so they can order companies to buy coal from a particular company, will mostly benefit open pit coal.
If there is a national security issue with power plants, i wonder how many alternatives they look at (ha ha, that’s a humorous rhetorical question). As some commenters above mentioned, there are more pressing security issues with electric power, the transmission grid is a big one.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl:
All of them, Katie(humorous answer).
eclare
@?BillinGlendaleCA: OMG that is gorgeous!
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Or that Bayerische Motorenwerke AG owns Rolls-Royce and the Mini?
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
I do not grok, though, how capitalizing the term adds anything about culture that not capitalizing it doesn’t convey.
Would not write the Poor, the Blind or the Highly Educated, for example.
Not a complaint, shall chalk it up to being an affectation and move on.
TenguPhule
Washington Post just realizes today that Trump is wrecking security and controls when it comes to confidential information.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@eclare: Thanks.
Amir Khalid
@The Midnight Lurker:
Depends. His name is Rick, and he is a dick.
TenguPhule
Rick Perry’s fifteen minutes of infamy in this shithole administration have come.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
APA capitalizes, FWIW.
TenguPhule
Jesus wept.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
My other thought is, if that’s what most of the Black people who comment here tell me they prefer, that’s what I’ll do, because I try not to be a jerk.
debbie
@TenguPhule:
First Energy is frickin’ Satan. It is as venal as a corporation can be.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: His middle name is Richard, so dick fits.
magurakurin
We watched, The Dark Knight last night (it was the first time for my wife…who likes Ben Affleck Batman) and it really struck me that The Joker is in the White House right now…
…except Heath Ledger has sadly left us and so it’s really just one of the Joker’s mental patient, clown henchmen taking his place.
so fucked, we are.
TenguPhule
@debbie: I’ll take your word for it.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@debbie: @Mnemosyne: Yeah. I used to edit a scholarly journal. I wasn’t the copy editor, thank god, but what we did was pick a style guide, adapt some options, and then stick to it. None of this is carved in stone.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
However, most people do capitalize Deaf, and for the same reason — it’s a distinct culture that has its own language and customs.
But, as I said above, I try not to be a jerk about what other people prefer to be called since it’s no skin off my nose.
frittingitallaway
@mark: Would that be the MBs made in Alabama and Georgia, or the BMWs made in South Carolina?
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I had to use different style guides for different clients. Sometimes switching back and forth between APA and MLA was dizzying.
NotMax
@magurakurin
The Joker had a method to his madness.
(And mention of the character is as good an incentive as any to revisit his boners.)
:)
@Mnemosyne
Have been scrabbling around this spinning rock for a long, long time and that’s the very first time I’ve seen that capitalized (outside of beginning a sentence or as part of the name of an institution).
I must lead a sheltered life.
Also, was not being a jerk, was attempting to remedy my own ignorance.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
Fixed out of respect for my culture.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
I edited a scholarly article on that very subject. The Deaf community was insistent about capitalization.
Millard Filmore
@scottinnj:
Just wait until a hidden video captures one of the cabinet critters say “I need wider powers.”
NotMax
@Baud
Touché.
LOL².
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Do the blind insist on the same thing?
Amir Khalid
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I remember that the house style guide at The Star was often willfully wrong. Bugged the hell out of me that I was supposed to write “percent” when I actually wanted to say “percentage points”. Also that you had to refer to the Cambodian group as “the Khmer Rouge” (singular) when its name was Khmers Rouges (plural) — just to save two letter spaces.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
One thing German publications probably don’t fret about is excess letter spaces.
;)
James Powell
@Another Scott:
The Cold War was one of the worst things the US ever did, or that ever happened, however you look at it. So many stupid, harmful, ridiculous vestiges of that “pay any price, bear any burden” mentality. We will never be rid of it until the American empire truly collapses.
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: I used to have the book Having Our Say, loaned it out and didn’t get it back. It’s a great story, they were an endearing pair.
On another note, I’ve been busy and not around here as much as I’d like. So I might be skipping the threads he’s on but I haven’t seen efg lately — is he all right?
Gin & Tonic
@James Powell: A large percentage of the technology you rely on daily was developed as a direct result of the Cold War.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ohio Mom: He was in a thread earlier. He isn’t dead and is doing better (paraphrasing fairly closely).
ETA: As proof of life, he offered this term/phrase: Fuckemall.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ohio Mom: He chipped in on an earlier thread today, he’s been in the hospital but feeling better.
Gin & Tonic
@Ohio Mom: He dropped a one-line post earlier today, that he’d been hospitalized. I didn’t get from that whether he was still in, or had gotten released.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Almost as importantly, my learning to jump out of airplanes at government expense was a result of the Cold War.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Does it take much training to jump out of an airplane? I’d think that part is pretty simple.
raven
Here’s my deep sea group today.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I’m old enough to remember when goppers hated Big Government.
NotMax
@raven
Looks like a salty selection of scalawags.
How far out did y’all go for piscatorial pleasure?
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Looks like about two snappers each. Bon appetit. Although I bet they’re long gone by now.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: The “and survive” bit is trickier. The “are you dumb enough to want to do it” bit is baked in.
raven
@NotMax: Not that far, it was a six hour and we spent abut 1 1/2 per direction. I thinking about 20.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Yea that’s the limit. I’m going out again Tuesday so we can eat one-a-day until then if I don’t catch more pomp in the surf.
NotMax
@raven
Well, the group did their part to lower ocean levels by a smidgen.
;)
marduk
The miners will never see a penny.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Old friend of mine was a Ranger in VN. His knees are worthless now, courtesy of that.
Stuart Frasier
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s really a bit of a misnomer to call it “jumping” out of airplanes. It’s more like falling.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t know the answer to that.
Gin & Tonic
@Stuart Frasier: Closest I’ve ever come is this.
Omnes Omnibus
@Stuart Frasier: Depends on the aircraft, doesn’t it?
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Yup. The Internet, GPS, integrated circuits, etc., etc., all were greatly impacted by US government investments.
There’s an excellent case to be made that the US government should invest in basic research, and promising applied research. Bell Labs and IBM and GE and lots of other huge companies had great R&D labs for a while. They’re mostly gone now, for lots of reasons. That means that long-term, basic research has to be supported by the national government. Unfortunately, the easiest way to sell that was to relate it to national defense. While there is certainly research that needs to be done for defense purposes that won’t be done by industry because there’s no commercial market for it (e.g. stealth technology), there’s a whole lot of other research that takes decades to succeed but has a huge impact on lots of markets once it is mature enough (e.g. light emitting diodes, and the other examples listed above).
We need to be sending much, much more money to the NSF, but we also need to continue to be spending money on DARPA and ARPA-e and a whole host of other organizations in the US government that support research.
tl;dr – the problem with this proposal isn’t that the government is involved in supporting US industries, it’s that in this instance it’s a stupid policy choice for stupid reasons.
Cheers,
Scott.
Stuart Frasier
@Omnes Omnibus:
I suppose so. I like taking a leap out of the Skyvan, but I try to dive out of King Airs or helicopters.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Stealth technology + self-driving cars. Roadway roulette.
:)
Ohio Mom
@Omnes Omnibus: @?BillinGlendaleCA: @Gin & Tonic: Thanks for the update. Not happy to hear efg’s been in the hospital of course, and glad he is home, but strangely satisfied to learn my spidey sense is as functional as ever.
elm
@Another Scott:
Coal and nuclear plants are among the worst possible facilities to support via government intervention. This is like a government mandate that we all buy buggy whips.
Coal and nuke plants aren’t worth the concrete and steel needed for the steam-to-power turbines and generators.
Omnes Omnibus
@Stuart Frasier: We obviously jumped from different cultures.
Oklahomo
@NotMax: The capitalization rules are easy, since all nouns are capitalized in German.
Platonailedit
Actually, a mix of conventional aka dirty energy sources and renewable sources makes a good energy security policy. Question is how you go about doing it without harming all stakeholders.
elm
@Platonailedit: Natural gas turbines produce reliable power much cheaper than coal or nuclear (both capital and operating costs) and pollute much less than coal.
NotMax
@Oklahomo
No love for e. e. cummings in Deutschland.
:)
Another Scott
@NotMax: You’d be surprised, maybe!
Some weird stuff there. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
@kindness:
All Republicans are pro-coal. Even the ones from non-coal regions.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Gadzooks. Enough to make the eyes cross.
:)
Robert Sneddon
@elm: Gas from modern gas-turbine plants still produces about three million tonnes of CO2 per GW-year of electricity generation. Coal is less efficient and releases about 4.5 to 5 million tonnes of CO2 for the same amount of electricity. New more efficient coal plants (so-called super-critical designs being built in China and elsewhere) run at much higher temperatures than older plants and release less CO2 per GW-year than older plants but still more than gas.
Right now in the UK which has invested heavily in wind power, with about 11 GW of installed generating capacity onshore and offshore, we’ve been getting between 50MW and 100MW from that multi-billion pound investment. Most of our power today is coming from gas with 2GW from the French nuclear reactors via an underwater link and a steady 7.7GW from our own home-grown nuclear reactors which don’t care if the sun shines or the wind blows.
elm
@Robert Sneddon: http://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2017-q4/detail/wind-power-grows-45
A regular 5-6GW of wind power output for the UK seems worthwhile and without the Sellafield/Windscale material releases.
rikyrah
@NotMax:
I capitalize Black, when referring to a Black person like myself.
I, of course, don’t capitalize black, like, the color of my car is black. For me, it’s about respect.
Raven Onthill
Trunt is declaring an emergency. I’m scared.
ruemara
@NotMax: Some people do, some people don’t. This is me, stepping off the ex blackthedra podium. yw
@rikyrah: Rather jealous
NotMax
@rihyrah
You garner my respect, Regardless.
;)
@ruemara
Thank you.
Tough to teach this old dog new tricks, that’s for sure.
Stuart Frasier
@Omnes Omnibus:
There was one time I was in the back of a Twin Otter and there was a leak of red fluid from the ceiling. I said to someone nearby, “I think we have a hydraulic fluid leak. Shouldn’t we tell the pilot?” He stared at me and said, ” You were never in the military, were you?” I think that’s the difference in culture.
trnc
@JPL:
Win win for republicans. They get to claim liberals are using the courts to stop real americans from pursuing their livelihood, in which “americans” are coal miners and “livelihood” means racing to acquire black lung.
trnc
@Another Scott:
I haven’t followed this thread back all the way, so this may already be understood, but the difference between this and propping up coal is also that Internet, gps, etc were brand new technologies that helped facilitate goals that otherwise could not be achieved. Coal is an older and generally worse way of doing something (creating electricity) that can now be done more efficiently with primary resources that earth will have until earth no longer exists. Investing in solar and wind actually makes more sense from a national security perspective because it will ultimately bring down the cost of producing energy that our citizens and military depend on.
trnc
@Another Scott: Yup. I think the line “DPA Title III incentives must be the most cost-effective, expedient, and practical alternative for meeting the need” might make his claim difficult in the courts since ramping up solar and wind is cheaper in the long run, and probably no less expedient than retooling old coal plants.
Robert Sneddon
@elm: That’s an average figure. Some days it doesn’t produce quite as much and the solution is to burn gas and dump the resulting CO2 into the atmosphere. From the article you quoted:
“During Quarter 4, wind farms spent 24 hours producing less than 1 GW, and 24 hours producing more than 11.7 GW (chart, below right).”
Actually we’re in a wind lull at the moment here in the UK, in the second day where wind generation is running well under a GW. The demand for electricity is still there though, being met by nuclear (7.6 GW of local reactor output, 1.8GW of French nuclear supply), some solar (5.7GW, it’s a sunny day), a GW of Dutch gas-fueled electricity production and most of the rest of the demand, about 13GW or so is being met by local gas-fueled generators. There’s also some “biomass” electricity, wood chips shipped at great expense from the US to be burned in a reurposed coal-fired power station. It’s green and renewable unlike the bunker fuel used to transport it five thousand kilometres across the Atlantic so it gets all sorts of subsidies.
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
This is a real-time display of Britain’s electricity demand and generating capabilities. Right now as I type this the installed base of about 13GW of wind farms is producing 570MW or about 3% of what they are capable of. The demand is 31.75GW or 60 times as much as wind is generating right now.
Wind power would be great, assuming we built out ten times as much as we’ve got (approx. cost about half a trillion bucks) and accept a few days every year when there isn’t enough electricity to go around because of the weather conditions. Gas is cheap though and no-one really cares enough about CO2 levels in the atmosphere to stop burning it while figleafing it with solar and wind.
BoDiddleySquat
@Another Scott: Heck, the DoD is swimming in so much money now, they are seriously competing with NIH and NSF in funding research (certainly translational research).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@James Powell:
Oh come on WWI easy is just as bad. After all it set up the siege state mentality that enable the Win at Any Cost Cold War.
Zinsky
Drug test the rat bastard CEOs of the coal and oil companies on a surprise basis and execute those who don’t pass. It’s only fair…
Another Scott
@trnc: It looks like Truman didn’t use the DPA Title III to seize the US steel mills in 1952 steel strike, and he ultimately lost in the SCOTUS. But it took almost 2 months for the SCOTUS to rule that he didn’t have the authority to do what he did.
Agreed that investing in research for future knowledge and future products is different from keeping old industries afloat. But as NotMax said at #36, the US has subsidized lots of old products for nonsensical reasons under national security justifications. It can be used to justify just about anything. I recall a story about a ~ 30 page government contract in the late 1980s for some vacuum equipment that had a paragraph that said something like “if an precision jeweled movements are present in said equipment, then the jewels must come from Harvey Jones Industrial Crystal Company, Inc., 123 Main Street, West Overshoe, North Dakota…” (For those who don’t remember, “jeweled movements” were common in mechanical watches and clocks – small, hard oxide crystals (“jewels”) were used in critical points in the mechanism to reduce friction. Apparently that company had a powerful congressman and/or senator that got them an exclusive market.) I’m sure that was somehow justified under some “strategic mineral” provision of some DoD-supporting legislation. It might have made sense in the 1900s – 1950s, it made no sense in the 1980s.
I don’t think that Trump’s minions would be able to force much to be done to support purchases of electricity from coal and nuclear plants. He could demand that the US government buy electricity from such plants, but (it’s my understanding that) the grid doesn’t have the capacity to dramatically shift supplies on a big scale like that, and the USG is a smallish customer anyway (most of the USG is office buildings after all – “The USG is an insurance company with an army” – Krugman), and of course it is going to be challenged in court (assuming it actually goes into effect).
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@BoDiddleySquat: No links, but it’s important to remember that while DoD funds a lot of basic research, the huge amounts of money it is getting as a whole is mostly for equipment production and things like that. And the pots of money are different. Raytheon getting $10B (or whatever) for some new missile system doesn’t mean that DARPA has more money to give out grants for $75k post-doc salaries.
A huge amount of US government basic R&D funding (6.1 or BA1) goes to the NIH. For good reasons. They probably should get more, as should NSF and all the rest.
In constant dollars, and as a percentage of GDP, US R&D spending has been flat or falling for decades (at least as of 2016):
To be clear, I don’t think that R&D spending is somehow more valuable than essential spending on health and education and the like. But it’s important to support R&D because it creates knowledge and products that improve our conditions going forward. And R&D spending shouldn’t be falling when the economy is growing.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'll be Frank
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We’re still fighting the commie’s in Asia. We don’t need to prop up the German state anymore.