Renewables Are Cool, But Using Less Energy Is Far Better

Frequent Commenter John F. Robbins writes this marvelous response to the 2GreenEnergy survey on renewables:

The most missing question or comment in your survey and most of this blog is how to move away from the current energy-guzzling nature of our culture. Almost all the old-wave renewable energy discussion (prior to 2000) was heavy and serious on how to use less prior to or while trying to convert to renewables. Yet now, under the mantra of “creating jobs” or “increasing profits and tax collection” or just “new-wave RE advocacy”, RE is being pushed with almost no inclusion or demand that energy guzzling be actually reduced.

If we cut energy use first, that would be the most cost-effective solution ranked according to $/energy. That first step would also reduce how much and what scale of RE and storage are needed, thereby lowering those costs substantially.

As long as we allow, tolerate or are part of a culture of ever-increasing energy demand and use, both the futures of conventional and renewable energy are diminished, even bleak. The current energy model cannot exist ad infinitum, simply because it is based on infinite supplies at perpetually low prices.

Even if we didn’t move more quickly to RE, the price of future conventional will certainly be erratic and inflationary, especially as certain sources like oil become more depleted sooner. Natural gas will likely be second to deplete or become super-expensive to deliver in the current scale of demand.

Deceased thinker Donella Meadows often wrote about how our culture was operating beyond its physical limits. We need solutions which go beyond specific technologies and deal with our culture, how to change it so we can use and demand far less energy. Then the prognosis for energy futures gets better faster.

Thanks, John. All this is completely true, and you’re right; I most definitely fall into a faulty manner of thinking re: conservation and efficiency.  There is no doubt that, as a culture, we simply hog far too much energy.

This is why Vaclav Smil says, as he contemplates the effect that two billion more people will have on the Earth, “It depends. Will they use energy at the rate of the North Americans, or the Japanese?”

What I’ve noticed living here in the good ol’ USA is that virtually no one does anything that doesn’t benefit himself or his immediate friends and family. We’ve been programmed to ignore the needs of others, and that programming has been enormously effective. (It wasn’t always like this, btw. When we really became a consumer society after World War II, the idea that economics was an indifferent and often cruel taskmaster controlling all of us was vigorously drummed into our heads.)

Be this as it may, we live in a society in which the vast majority of people will not even consider sacrificing a pleasure for the good of someone else – regardless of how trivial the sacrifice or how enormous the benefit to the other.  In the main, we turn off our lights, replace our incandescent light bulbs, and install low-flow showerheads (when we do), because of our utility bills.  We buy more fuel-efficient cars because of the objectionable price of gasoline.

At the end of the day, if you want to save energy, you have to make it expensive. However, here in the US, we make it artificially cheap. If we had any sincerity about weaning ourselves off coal and oil (which we don’t) we would simply begin to force the producers and consumers of energy from those sources to pay the true and comprehensive costs. If we were to do that, you’d see an enormous change in people’s behavior – not next year, but this afternoon.

Here’s a start. Just take this list of subsidies we give the big oil companies and make them go away.

  • Construction bonds at low interest rates or tax-free
  • Research-and-development programs at low or no cost
  • Assuming the legal risks of exploration and development in a company’s stead
  • Below-cost loans with lenient repayment conditions
  • Income tax breaks, especially featuring obscure provisions in tax laws designed to receive little congressional oversight when they expire
  • Sales tax breaks – taxes on petroleum products are lower than average sales tax rates for other goods
  • Giving money to international financial institutions (the U.S. has given tens of billions of dollars to the World Bank and U.S. Export-Import Bank to encourage oil production internationally, according to Friends of the Earth)
  • The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve
  • Construction and protection of the nation’s highway system
  • Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid – apparently, we get about 40% of revenues from oil on public land vs. 60% – 65% in most other countries

Then get the oil and coal companies to pay the increases in healthcare costs caused by aromatics, absorb the cost of the long-term environmental damage. All of this garbage would be gone in a heartbeat.

Again, thanks for your comment.

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One comment on “Renewables Are Cool, But Using Less Energy Is Far Better
  1. Craig,

    What abt “progressive energy pricing”? That is the norm up and down the West Coast for electricity prices, from Seattle to San Diego. If you buy electricity in San Francisco, an electricity guzzler pays more than 3x for the last monthly kWh than the first. In Seattle, the last kWh costs less than 2x what the first cost.

    This concept is like progressive income taxes, where a higher rate is paid the more you earn. When it comes to electricity, an old Ohio survey in the 1980s, commissioned by Ohio PUC, studied energy use in many thousands of households. Regarding electricity, it stated that the normal indicators for high-use were (1) high household income, (2) high household education level and (3) large-size homes. From my own experience as an energy consultant for 27 yrs, there’s no doubt that the more repeatingly large electricity consumption is in large homes occupied by wealthy people. This is not a negative statement, just a fact.

    Yet in all Ohio’s large utility territories, it is typical for the price of electricity to go down as monthly usage increases. In Cincinnati, Duke territory, for 8 months a year the last kWh costs abt 1/3 less than the first kWh. In Columbus Ohio, AEP territory, the last kWh costs 1/2 the first. In Duke’s SE Indiana territory, the last kWh costs 40$ less than the first. I worked a project in Nebraska a few years ago, where the last residential kWh costs 2/3 less than the first! Duke’s commercial rates are similarly regressive. For example, in Cincinnati a very small business buys kWhs for abt double the average cost as very large businesses. Fortunately where I live in KY, KY’s Public Service Commission prefers mostly flat prices for residential and commercial.

    My point is that while you say the price of energy is not representative of “real costs”, it is certainly not “real cost” to discount electricity guzzling. After all, I know that most utilities run their lowest-cost powerplants first and most. As demand goes up, more expensive power is brought online. Typically, the last powerplant to be turned on or the last kWh purchased is the most expensive. Therefore, it makes perfect “real-cost” sense to price electricity progressively. And as is demonstrated in California where CalPUC ordered this pricing reform, it is relatively easy to implement this kind of change.

    Right now these regressive pricing schemes forgive or benefit guzzlers. Switching to progressive pricing would change this, sending electricity users an immediate message that it is really untrue that energy price should go down the more somebody uses.

    I have proposed this in writing to both Ohio and KY. I am not a politician, so my writings are likely not written with political savvy. Even so, why do I not hear any response from my writings, not even acknowledgement of receipt? After all, both KY and Ohio have progressive income taxes, so progressivity in fees is not unprecedented. My suspicion is that there are many lobbying forces pushing the current energy policies, especially at state levels. For example, back in the mid-1990s when US-DOE recommended higher wall and ceiling R-values for new homes, Indiana to Ohio’s west adopted the new codes while the Ohio Homebuilders Assn and Ohio chapter of United Mine Workers successfully prevented the adoption in Ohio. Close examination of Ohio’s excise tax on electricity sales shows that even it is sharply regressive, going down as purchase volume goes up. Since most Ohio taxes are progressive, who lobbied to get that tax regressivity into Ohio energy tax? One thing for sure: it just didn’t happen accidentally.

    If I order a truckload of building materials, there’s an economy of scale to discount the last few extra pieces which I buy as long as they fit on the one truck. Needing a 2nd truck for a few extra pieces offers no economy. This same truth exists with energy. Holding electricity demand down so the fewest lowest-cost powerplants can supply what’s needed is the best economically. If a utility isn’t selling output of its fewest online plants, then it makes sense to discount. But it makes no sense to discount when additional powerplants or purchasing is required to supply the extra power.

    One of my solar students was upset last month at an editorial in Ohio which said it was not economical to keep coal-fired powerplants running to backup intermittent solar and wind power systems installed without storage or backup generators onsite. So I explained how my office has run all its plug-loads on PV power since Nov 2001, but with a large battery bank for backup. I explained that I could have avoided the batteries and bought a generator for when there’s no sun, or I could have done a batteryless grid-tied setup and used the utility company’s powerplants for backup. Both methods would dramatically increase the real cost of my solar power. Using batteries for backup, I am using 100% solar power in my business, night or day for almost 10 years. No carbon emissions. If I had relied on a fuel-fired generator or coal-fired powerplant, I’d have had CO2 emissions backing up my solar array. The student listened as I explained all this, was still upset about the editorial when I was finished.

    A lot of our current mess is how consumers have been poorly educated about their energies. My student was a solar advocate, so didn’t want to hear any negatives about solar. But his concept of solar was not as hardcore as mine, based in engineering rather than solar advocacy. Electricity users accustomed to regressive pricing have been similmarly miseduated. Yet facts are facts. A large part of our job in the green energy department is re-educating people about the real facts, weaning them out of the sometimes corrupting and confusing situations currently in place. Reluctance to change and institutionalization of special interests are 2 reasons explaining why I get no responses from Ohio or KY commissions in charge of utility energy pricing when I propose progressive pricing as logical relative to “real-cost”.

    I’ve also written about how to introduce progressive energy pricing for gasoline, propane and natural gas. This would be a huge change for most Americans. A long time ago when I was a young man, I thought we could move completely away from oil and coal. Nowdays, I wish we could just lower our oil and coal use a little. Obama recently cited a reduction in oil use, but that’s due to the recession and high prices. KY recently cited a reduction in coal-fired electricity output, but that’s due to the recession. I hope that some day before I retire, I”ll see a more real reduction in oil and coal because we changed to become lesser users, because we conserved, became more efficient, switched some of our use to renewables. This does not take sacrifice or pain. It’s no more complicated than changing how much and what we eat. A lot requires just wanting to change for the better.