Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   6/09/2015

     Costly bills for climate measures

Some of my habits might strike you as odd; they are, however, useful for my purposes. For instance, I actually look at my PG&E bills, apply a calculator to the figures and track the changes in what my electricity actually costs on a per kilowatt/hour (kwh) basis; I also figure how much I would pay if the baseline and rates from years ago were applied to today’s usage.

You needn’t be a math professor or savant to perform such calculations; it is not, however, easily done. You may glance at your baseline number of kwhs that are charged at the lowest rate; you might not have noticed the changes, announced or not, over the years. It works like this: Number of days in billing period x allowed kwhs x the baseline rate; a higher rate applies to the next number of kwhs up to 130 percent of the baseline; a higher rate then applies to those that fall between 130 and 200 percent, and the highest rate for those over 200 percent.

When they reduce the daily allowance for your baseline, they are moving more of your hours out of the cheapest rate; those same hours are now charged a higher or highest rate. Simultaneously, the cost per kwh is nudged up over time for each tier.

If you’re still reading, here’s the punch line to the sick joke that is what we pay for electricity from PG&E: I paid 30 percent more for the same electricity as I did 2 years ago, which means double-digit increases each of the last 2 years at a time when inflation has been in low single digits. My current cost was about $190; 2 years ago that same electricity would have cost about $145. Put another way: I then paid about 13.5 cents per kwh; I just paid about 17.5 cents per kwh, also a 30 percent increase over 2 years.

Another fun habit I have is to set articles aside for column-writing material. For instance, last November 15 a Daily News story titled, “US giving $3 billion to help poor nations with climate change,” made for a chuckle when I read, on January 28, “US green-energy blueprint, meant to help Liberia, fails.”

A November 18 Daily News piece, “Huge solar plant lags in early production,” described the epic failure of the world’s largest solar array, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in an ideal solar power location, the Southern California desert. “Epic failure” might overstate the case but the $2.2 billion project, with 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors designed to turn water into steam to run turbines, was supposed to generate electricity for 140,000 homes.

“So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014…Factors such as clouds, jet contrails and weather have had a greater impact on the plant than the owners anticipated…It could take until 2018 for the plant, backed by $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees to hit its annual peak target” (California Energy Commission). That amounts to almost $16,000 per each of 140,000 homes; over $31,000 for each home at half its reduced output. That price tag is, of course, spread over the life of the project, which will certainly require additional maintenance expenses.

It may be inconvenient to point out the obvious: It will generate no power at night, so those 140,000 or 70,000 homes will not in fact be powered as they would by a gas, nuclear or, “Gaia” forbid, a coal plant. All solar energy dies at night, so unless people revert to the pre-electric era, limiting their activities to when the sun is up, they will still need backup electricity from the aforementioned sources.

In addition to the 25-50 cent cost per kwh for solar (compared to 5 cents for coal power), I’ve read that solar and wind power plants only generate one-half of their rated capacity. Our electric bill in Bend, Oregon, is a simple calculation of 7 cents x kilowatt/hours used. Cheap!

Last June 3, 2014, an AP writer shared the happy news from on high, “Obama: Plant rule will shrink power prices.” Obama simply asserted that his policies to fight climate change by increasing the requirements for renewable energy “would both shrink electricity prices and protect the health of vulnerable Americans. He scolded critics…” Perhaps he refers to critics who took him at his word that under his policies “energy prices would necessarily skyrocket.” Of course, it is self-evident that reducing carbon dioxide will have zero positive affects on Americans’ health considering we all exhale the gas with each breath.

I guess PG&E didn’t get the message to “shrink electricity prices” as just 2 months later the Oakland Tribune told us “PG&E to raise residential rates 5.8 percent.” As I proved above, prices went up 30 percent in the last 2 years.

Perhaps you can get the big picture: Emperor Obama decrees, without any legislative support, what he wants the states to do…or else, I guess. The “EPA promotes global warming proposal to governors,” (AP 6/11,2014); then governors like Jerry Brown and Sacramento Democrats hop to and mandate more (and more expensive) renewable energy; then locals like our Board of Supervisors swing into action, “Greenhouse gas emission goals set—Reductions of 10 percent by 2028 targeted for county” (Rich Greene, July 24, 2014).

Rasmussen polling found that “2/3 of Americans are unwilling to pay even $100/year of additional costs to prevent global warming.” Californians are paying many times that in a futile attempt to reduce the Earth’s temperature. The Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, defeated in the U.S. Senate, would have cost each household up to $6,752 per year and reduced GDP by $669 billion annually. We—personally, collectively, economically—can’t afford alarmist policies.