This post was written last night, shortly after I received the document. It is autopublishing at 6AM EDT (3AM PDT) since I’ll hopefully be asleep here in California when the embargo time passes.
There were two documents provided to the press: a fact sheet/summary and the full plan. Both are available as PDF’s at the end of this essay. I see a lot of “pie in the sky” language in the plan document, with little in the way of concrete ideas. It seems just another expansion of “big government” bureaucracy with little tangible benefit to the American citizen.
This is by no means a complete point by point commentary, I’m just touching on things that caught my eye. Readers are encouraged to submit responses to specific points in the comments section below.
THE GOOD:
1. There is no carbon tax/excise tax increase on gasoline that I can find. Some people thought there may be a plan to tack on some sort of additional carbon tax for gasoline, or some pitch for the excise tax to be increased by congress.
2. The claim is made that “the President’s plan will help American families cut energy waste, lowering their gas and utility bills.”. A worthy goal to be sure, but, knowing that government doesn’t do anything well or efficiently, I seriously doubt we’ll see lower utility bills. I expect the opposite.
3. The plan “invests to strengthen our roads, bridges, and shorelines so we can better protect people’s homes, businesses, and way of life from severe weather.”. Hurricane Sandy would have had less impact if NYC had better sea defenses, so building up these long ignored issues is a no-brainer. But, at what cost and from what funding?
4. The plan “Commits to partnering with industry and stakeholders to develop fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles to save families money at the pump and further reduce reliance on foreign oil and fuel consumption post-2018”. On the surface this seems good, because better fuel efficiency is always a good thing, but at the same time this might translate into an unreachable draconian CAFE standard that automakers don’t even have technology for now.
5. The plan calls for “investment in a range of energy technologies, from advanced biofuels and emerging nuclear technologies – including small modular reactors – to clean coal.” Biofuels are a waste of effort and money IMHO, small modular nukes sound good, as does clean coal. I like the clean coal part if only for the irritant factor it will be for the greens.
6. They haven’t declared fossil fuels to be evil. The plan says “Spurring Investment in Advanced Fossil Energy Projects: In the coming weeks, the Department of Energy will issue a Federal Register Notice announcing a draft of a solicitation that would make up to $8 billion in (self-pay) loan guarantee authority available for a wide array of advanced fossil energy projects under its Section 1703 loan guarantee program.” Again, that will tweak the greens.
7. There’s no mention of the KXL pipeline at all, but there is this bit of language:
“In addition, when it comes to the oil and gas sector, investments to build and upgrade gas pipelines will not only put more Americans to work, but also reduce emissions and enhance economic productivity.” The document then goes on to mention the Bakken Oil field as an example, but seems not limited to this.
My take on this: I think what is going on here with this document is that Obama is throwing environmentalists a bone, especially with coal power plant restrictions mentioned, while at the same time telegraphing that KXL is likely to happen. As I’ve said before, the Canadian Tar Sands oil will get burned someplace, and the USA may as well take advantage of the opportunity.
8. Launching a Climate Data Initiative: Consistent with the President’s May 2013 Executive Order on Open Data – and recognizing that freely available open government data can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, scientific discovery, and public benefits – the Administration is launching a Climate Data Initiative to leverage extensive federal climate-relevant data to stimulate innovation and private-sector entrepreneurship in support of national climate-change preparedness.
This sounds good, but I’m not sure it will do anything to improve the already shoddy surface temperature data. For example, NCDC spent millions on the Climate Reference Network, but has yet to even mention it in their monthly State of the Climate Reports.
9. Many of these things will take years to implement, and by then we might have some sanity in the White House. What can be done by executive order can be undone by executive order.
10. This plan is likely to put backlashes in place on Democrats from the citizenry, thus perhaps enabling a power shift in the Senate.
THE BAD:
1. More hand-outs for an already bloated climate science culture.
Developing Actionable Climate Science: The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget provides more than $2.7 billion, largely through the 13-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program, to increase understanding of climate-change impacts, establish a public-private partnership to explore risk and catastrophe modeling, and develop the information and tools needed by decision-makers to respond to both long-term climate change impacts and near-term effects of extreme weather.
Apparently Obama never got the memo that climate models aren’t working.
2. More regulations on existing power plants, as if they don’t have enough already. This will translate into higher electricity prices everywhere.
President Obama is issuing a Presidential Memorandum directing the Environmental Protection Agency to work expeditiously to complete carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. This work will build on the successful first-term effort to develop greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks.
Great, I can just see the warning sticker on my next new car. Warning: This vehicle emits dangerous carbon pollution known to the Federal Government to cause bad weather. A tax is paid at purchase to mitigate your contribution to bad weather by daring to own this vehicle.
3. Pie in the sky savings.
Establishing a New Goal for Energy Efficiency Standards: In President Obama’s first term, the Department of Energy established new minimum efficiency standards for dishwashers, refrigerators, and many other products. Through 2030, these standards will cut consumers’ electricity bills by hundreds of billions of dollars and save enough electricity to power more than 85 million homes for two years. To build on this success, the Administration is setting a new goal: Efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings set in the first and second terms combined will reduce carbon pollution by at least 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030 – equivalent to nearly one-half of the carbon pollution from the entire U.S. energy sector for one year – while continuing to cut families’ energy bills.
Yeah, people are going to just rush right out and buy new appliances in this economy. That’s the ticket. Better efficiency is a good thing, but I think the adoption rate will be slower than they think.
4. Outright lies. (from the fact sheet)
“In the President’s first term, the Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development completed efficiency upgrades in more than one million homes, saving many families more than $400 on their heating and cooling bills in the first year alone.”
Really? Where? In the greenest state of the union, California, my electricity bill has increased since 2008. I recently put solar on my home not as a climate hedge, but as a hedge against skyrocketing electricity rates.
5. The trucking industry is going to get hit again. This will translate into higher cost for goods.
During the President’s second term, the Administration will once again partner with industry leaders and other key stakeholders to develop post-2018 fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles to further reduce fuel consumption through the application of advanced cost-effective technologies and continue efforts to improve the efficiency of moving goods across the United States.
6. Fast-tracking green energy – more pie in the sky since just about every green initiative and handout in Obama’s first term has ended in failure.
Accelerating Clean Energy Permitting: In 2012 the President set a goal to issue permits for 10 gigawatts of renewables on public lands by the end of the year. The Department of the Interior achieved this goal ahead of schedule and the President has directed it to permit an additional 10 gigawatts by 2020. Since 2009, the Department of Interior has approved 25 utility-scale solar facilities, nine wind farms, and 11 geothermal plants, which will provide enough electricity to power 4.4 million homes and support an estimated 17,000 jobs.
Green jobs aren’t generally like real jobs, there’s usually a handout or subsidy tied to them, and they tend to be transient, because after the solar field or wind farm is built, what then?
7. No comprehensive nuclear power plan, no mention of a Thorium reactor initiative, much like China is doing. A Thorium power initiative would go a long way to having safe, clean, and reliable electricity infrastructure without this nuclear waste issues that plague Uranium based reactors. Instead, they are chasing after wasteful biofuels initiatives which will do little. Have a bad crop year? Sorry, you can’t fill up with biodiesel.
8. Giveaways.
Mobilizing Climate Finance: International climate finance is an important tool in our efforts to promote low-emissions, climate-resilient development. We have fulfilled our joint developed country commitment from the Copenhagen Accord to provide approximately $30 billion of climate assistance to developing countries over FY 2010-FY 2012. The United States contributed approximately $7.5 billion to this effort over the three year period.
9. Higher prices at the pump.
President Obama is calling for the elimination of U.S. fossil fuel tax subsidies in his Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 budget, and we will continue to collaborate with partners around the world toward this goal.
This will of course get passed on to consumers.
THE UGLY:
1. Multiple citations of the crazy idea that carbon dioxide is “carbon pollution”, when it is essential to almost all life on Earth.
The phrase “carbon pollution” is mentioned 21 times.
2. Equating carbon dioxide to mercury and arsenic, which is just nuts.
Cut Carbon Pollution in America: In 2012, U.S. carbon emissions fell to the lowest level in two decades even as the economy continued to grow. To build on this progress, the Obama Administration is putting in place tough new rules to cut carbon pollution – just like we have for other toxins like mercury and arsenic – so we protect the health of our children and move our economy toward American-made clean energy sources that will create good jobs and lower home energy bills.
3. Elevating a fake crisis.
While this progress is encouraging, climate change is no longer a distant threat – we are already feeling its impacts across the country and the world. Last year was the warmest year ever in the contiguous United States and about one-third of all Americans experienced 10 days or more of 100-degree heat. The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 years. Asthma rates have doubled in the past 30 years and our children will suffer more asthma attacks as air pollution gets worse. And increasing floods, heat waves, and droughts have put farmers out of business, which is already raising food prices dramatically.
No mention or recognition of the siting issues and adjustments that lead to these temperatures:
The claim of “The 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 years.” isn’t supported by the state all time high temperature records, it only exists in the highly adjusted national average.
This graph by Alabama State Climatologist, Dr. John Christy:
![Christy-Number-State-High-Low-Temperatures-Aug-2012[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/christy-number-state-high-low-temperatures-aug-20121.jpg?quality=83)
It also isn’t supported in the general population of stations, this graph is by Greg Carbin of NOAA:
![updated-june-at-max-temp11[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/updated-june-at-max-temp111.png?quality=75)
And asthma attacks? Really? Pollution levels are down since the 1970’s. Unless you live in China, air pollution is now far less than what it once was.
Summary:
I’m not impressed at all with the Obama plan. It lacks real vision, and seems written mainly to appease activist groups. While there are some glimmers of positive things in it, the lack of a real way forward (solar, biofuels, and wind aren’t it) combined with new restrictions can only mean higher energy prices in our future, most of it due to government meddling in the free market.
Like most everything from this president, it is likely to be mostly lip service and tied up in legal battles for years. By that time Obama will no longer be President, and we’ll be left to wrestle with the consequences.
The documents: (Thanks to Marc Morano of CFACT for getting access to these documents.)
President’s Climate Action Plan (PDF)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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_Jim says:
June 25, 2013 at 7:03 am
There are similar issues with hauling propane around the country. Cold LNG introduces a new set of problems, we’ll see how the risk vs benefits (inflated by the Greens) work out.
I’m at work now, I’ll look at your videos later from home.
If this helps drive NG pipeline construction, that would be a good thing. Probably won’t help New Hampshire, as we’re near the end of the road, but we could use more pipeline capacity.
BTW, development is happening now. In http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/03/cheap-natural-gas-but-wait-theres-more/ I quoted
Mercury, arsenic and carbon dioxide, nothing new:
Statement by EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards
September 2, 2011 – Since day one, under President Obama’s leadership, EPA has worked to ensure health protections for the American people, and has made tremendous progress to ensure that Clean Air Act standards protect all Americans by reducing our exposures to harmful air pollution like mercury, arsenic and carbon dioxide. This Administration has put in place some of the most important standards and safeguards for clean air in U.S. history: the most significant reduction of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide air pollution across state borders; a long-overdue proposal to finally cut mercury pollution from power plants; and the first-ever carbon pollution standards for cars and trucks. We will revisit the ozone standard, in compliance with the Clean Air Act.
http://www.epa.gov/glo/actions.html
Speaking of Lisa Jackson, did she ever turn over the rest of FOIA Richard Windsor emails?
She claimed she needed the account for official business, then turned over thousands of news feeds, press releases and other junk emails.
With Asthma in Central Florida I can tell you… the ONLY things that trip my asthma are diesel exhaust and tobacco smoke. Not the diesel they use on locomotives though… This I see as a sign of one of the additives for road use being the pollutant.
Tar sands? I work directly here in Fort McMurray – and I have NEVER, EVER mined tar. Has this site turned into Greenpeace lately? Might I ask who exactly is buying tar these days?
So to counter the claims that the 12 last hottest years on record have occurred in the last 15 years you cite Dr. Cristy and Watts et al. as evidence? Isn’t that a bit circular in the logic department? What about the BEST project which confirmed the reliability of preexisting surface temperature records?
In somewhat limited amounts if you notice (in contrast to the *volumes* that will be consumed in motor fuel use) in a wide-ranging proposal to power the nation’s trucking fleet! (Examine the differences in VOLUME you will be dealing with for propane vs methane.) And, I might remind that we *do* have the occasional propane truck and/or rail tank car accident (which apparently you have no issue with? I’m sure that aspect was considered, right? Just asking here ya know … since that is part of the ‘flip side’ to this argument.) Overall, this LNG push looks to be another case of ‘pushing string up hill’, un-economical and ‘pushed’ by those with vested interests (T. Boone Pickens and his nat gas plans anyone?) in moving LNG to markets that will bear a higher profit margin, as methane cost per BTW vs diesel cost per BTU is a winner, but there are other considerations such as the form e.g. liquid or gas and cryogenic fluid and placing those materials in more possibly accident-prone ‘hands’. When you buy propane, do you fill your own containers? Delivery here for home heating is done via a truck and an operator who performs that task.
Lets then address the real issues like a _lower_ energy density compared to anything else, the need to distribute LNG/Methane ___to___ the truck stops (how? It’s a necessary logistics consideration … no?), and the issues I address later regarding ‘the handling’ by a public NOT used to “cryogenic fluids” (which LNG is) and the REQUIRED SAFETY HANDLING PRACTICES of same.
I just want the dirty underbelly (like in the ‘trvth’) out there before we get Lemming-like over the cliff embracing a new fuel technology without knowing the possible and potential down side. What is it you see as a shortcoming to the present liquid fuel delivery system(s) we have now, aside from the nutty enviros who have the ‘mental’ issues against their use?
BTW, did you watch or view the video titled: “Refueling your Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Truck”? Looks like a giant PITA compared to the present diesel-fueling ‘procedure’.
.
A speaker sweats when under stress like when saying something they don’t want to say or when they are lying, or when they think they what they are saying is completely unbelievable. Or? From oily wet Alberta, Canada
What happens to Canada when the US implodes and the dollar is worthless?
Why do greenhouse growers pump in 1,000ppm of this toxic stuff over their beloved vegetation? Is co2 now a plant fertilizing pollutant? Co2 is indeed a Satanic gas.
I mistakenly thought geologically speaking is Earth at the lower end of Co2 in the atmosphere?
Regulating the private lives of citizens is a slippery slope (think gun control, medical decisions, land control, etc). Regulating private industry soon follows (limits on how you sell what you grow, making light bulbs and making/selling transportation). Pretty soon what a person does or a business does, makes or produces isn’t our own anymore. Once that has been accomplished what one has is a castle surrounded by serfs who do the bidding of the lord, and are allowed to keep only a barely sustainable portion of our toil. Worse yet, many folks seem willing to serve as his slaves.
So how do we change this? How do we keep left-controlled metropolitan centers deciding what the entire state will do? How do we keep highly controlled states from dictating to the rest of us? The State and Federal reach into my personal life and bedroom has now surrounded our country and invaded everything. We have, in our sleep, reversed the individual, state, and nation freedoms my ancestors fought and died for!
Obama has endeavored to rewrite the consitution and is largely succeeding as a resurrected King George!
King Louis Obama the XVI
Nia says:
June 25, 2013 at 8:26 am
oh boy now Im kinda of worried – is Obama not aware of Europe’s failure post green fever
Yes, he’s aware of it as a very effective criminal scam which directs taxpayer money to his cronies in a reciprocating loop, clearly knowing that the money [or any “wealth” still available] will disappear in their quick bankruptcies, ~19 and counting merely as a result of his “green energy”, er, “stimulus”. Obama is simply more comfortable dealing with his own kind: criminals, dictators/any totalitarian, and parasites. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, he hasn’t won a realistic one-on-one debate, involving what’s best for the rest of people, yet – starting with Joe The Plumber.
I presume the refueling will be done by attendants, like the ones gs stations used to have in the past.
It was at 6 AM Pacific time and 9 AM Eastern. Anthony observed it.
The president is not a deep enough thinker and is far to lazy to have written this mess so it was written by other group and his name was place on it, Can we say plagiarism? The other issue is while this blog said no new fuel taxes, a great deal of money will have to be provided to pay for all the government “Help” and much will need to spent to buy the “New and Improved” products as we will not have the option to buy lower cost older designs. Can we buy 100 watt incandescent bulbs when we have an application that calls out for this type of bulb? We are looking at design by government and not design by market need.
The “good” is just there to mask and make the “bad” and the “ugly” more palatable.
Somewhat akin to spraying air freshener in an outhouse.
Re:Anthony’s reply to Stephen Rasey 10:48 am
By the way, Anthony, what’s the progress on Watts-2012?
REPLY: ..We got some very good feedback last year, and it required a complete redo of the metadata analysis to deal with the issue, and this required going back to B91 forms and the like to pull out the information we needed. Very tedious work. All done now, and hope to submit for publication soon. – Anthony
FWIW, I followed the 2000+ comments on the July 2012 draft. I thought the Time of Observation criticism was overwrought and the suggested remedy (i.e. applying fudge factor corrections) was misdirected. In a paper about how corrections to raw data are misrepresenting the signal, doing more corrections based on Time of Day seemed suspect to me.
That’s why I thought your presentation in the final hour of the Gore-athon 2012 where you only used data without a TOBS issue worthy of quick publication in itself, even if just the video.
Good luck with the peer-review and I hope it gets published before its lessons and conclusions are rendered politically moot.
Good to know he is compared to Mercury because Mercury isn’t pollution its a natural part of the environment- tonnes from natural sources every year- only if its in particular forms is it toxic namely metallic and methylmercury.
Yes, “clean coal” sounds good. But it isn’t. The language around climate has been corrupted. the explicit “man-made global warming” became the pliable “climate change”. Now, whenever anyone says “climate change” it is taken to mean “man-made global warming”, and anyone who wants to refer to real climate change has to qualify it. The simple “carbon dioxide” or “CO2” has become the pejorative “carbon pollution”. Now, anyone who wants to refer to real pollution such as particulates, and even NOx and SOx, has to qualify it. As MarkW points out above, they have done the same with “clean coal”. “Clean coal” doesn’t mean the use of coal in a power station with scrubbers and other pollution controls. It means carbon capture and sequestration.
So, Anthony, I have to take issue with your statement on “clean coal”. Like everything else now, it needs to be qualified, otherwise the corrupted meaning will be assumed.
Are you sure Obama isn’t a secret Taliban agent or No3 on Blofelds board at the European SPECTRE ready to deal the USA a financial beheading
Totally ‘unbelievable’ speach I dispair for the future of liberty ……
Maybe he feels another Nobel Prize coming on .. please remind me WHY he got the first one ?
We certainly do have a carbon pollution problem and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.should qualify as a superfund site. I honestly thought no one could be worse than Bush. I pulled a CMIP.
Ian W says:
June 25, 2013 at 3:20 am
It is essential to hit the ‘Carbon Pollution’ claim head on as it is the driver for all these insane policies. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is having any effect…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually Carbon Dioxide is TOO LOW not only for plants but for humans as well.
Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California Heading into another glaciation (when ever it will occur) without building up a decent level of CO2 is going to starve C3 plants. Humans have returned this much needed SCARCE nutrient to the biosphere.
Second increasing CO2 increases the water efficiency of C3 plants because they do not have to keep their stomata wide open. Elevated carbon dioxide making arid regions greener
And the one point everyone misses is CO2 is REQUIRED for healthy lungs and controlling blood pH (No CO2 and you stop breathing BTW)
CO2 Heals Lung Damage and Lung Injury
CO2, Blood pH and Respiratory
These are the points we need to hammer into the pointy little heads in Washington DC.
Refutations of 2 of the Liar in Chief’s speech points:
1. Asthma rates have doubled in the past 30 years and our children will suffer more asthma attacks as air pollution gets worse.
Medical Facts About CO2:
(1)”Health Effects of CO2 … Inspired air contains 0.03%, mixed expired gas 3.5-4% and alveolar gas contains 3-4%. Breathing of 5% of CO2 in air or oxygen is tolerable … Carbon dioxide stimulates respiration … .” [http://anesthesiageneral.com/health-effects-of-carbon-dioxide/]
(2) “There are numerous uses of carbon dioxide in modern anesthesia … To increase cerebral blood flow during carotid artery surgery. … To stimulate the respiration after artificial hyperventilation. … .” [http://anesthesiageneral.com/uses-of-carbon-dioxide/]
(3) “Classic Asthma Symptoms and Signs … Bronchoconstriction (narrowing of airways: bronchi and bronchioles) – caused by CO2 deficiency … .” [http://www.normalbreathing.com/diseases-Asthma.php]
… A bronchodilator is a substance that relaxes smooth muscles or airways … and improve airflow to the alveoli of the lungs. … CO2: the chief natural bronchodilator … hypocapnia (CO2 deficiency) in airways leads to bronchoconstriction.”
[http://www.normalbreathing.com/CO2-natural-bronchodilators.php]
[emphases mine]
******************************************************************************
2. And increasing floods, heat waves, and droughts have put farmers out of business, which is already raising food prices dramatically.
Facts about Higher Food Prices
1) — “Pump prices are now more than $2 higher than they were when President Obama took office.”
[http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/041812-608273-how-gas-prices-affect-food-prices.htm]
— “Energy and transportation accounts for about 8.2 cents of each dollar spent on food,… .”
[http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-24/fuel-costs-plus-u-dot-s-dot-drought-equals-higher-food-prices]
2) ” … this year’s [2012] drought—the worst in 50 years—isn’t the primary reason for record-high food prices. The drought made things worse, but the leading driver of long-term increases in food costs is a deeply flawed federal mandate. In 2005, Congress enacted the Renewable Fuel Standard to mandate the use of corn-based ethanol in gasoline. The cost of food commodities immediately began to rise.”
(WSJ.com 11/28/2012) [http://www.montana.edu/ebelasco/agbe210/Homework/FoodPrices.pdf]
From Ian W: It is essential to hit the ‘Carbon Pollution’ claim head on as it is the driver for all these insane policies. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is having any effect.
This is the exactly the issue. Everything else is irrelevant if CO2 is not a pollutant and has no effect on temperature. All other debate about economic impact, adjusting to climate changes, etc is noise based on a wicked lie that has been repeated to the point where no one questions it. CO2 IS NOT A POLLUTANT. PERIOD..
beng says:
June 25, 2013 at 5:15 am
***
A worthy goal to be sure, but, knowing that government doesn’t do anything well or efficiently, I seriously doubt we’ll see lower utility bills. I expect the opposite.
***
You can be sure of that. In fact, it’ll be far worse than we expect.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I hope you are wrong because I am expecting a lot higher energy bills.
The EPA and Department of Energy drastically underestimated the effects of the new EPA rulings. Many more plants are closing than anticipated. This means electricity prices will sky rocket and the electric grid could become unstable New Regulations to Take 34 GW of Electricity Generation Offline and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming… According to EPA, …. these regulations will only shutter 9.5 GW of electricity generation capacity. OOPS, I guess the government miscalculated and now Obama wants to shut down even more according to Anthony’s point #2
That brings us to point # 3. Pie in the sky savings.
Anthony miss what point #3 is really about.
What the Obama neglect to say is wiping out coal plants and replacing them with wind mills and solar plants will destablize the grid therefore to make the plan work you HAVE TO INSTALL SMART METERS.
So expect to be required by
lawregulation to buy new household appliances or pay to have the old appliances retrofitted. It just needs a one word amnendment to an older law.And of course Smart Meters, [are] an attractive opportunity for Investors This theoretically allows residential electricity to be turned off so the system can be balanced as wind and solar power surges and declines. Of course with renewables bankrupting, smart meters not installed and coal plants closing at three time the rate expected, this put a real big kink in that plan. OOPS, I guess the government miscalculated AGAIN so we have rolling blackouts to look forward to. Heck they have already started.
As problems with an unstable grid due to Solar/wind becomes worst expect Smart Meters to become mandatory.
Smart Meter Deployment <a "Remote meter turn on and off – Smart meters enable Dominion to turn your electric service on and off without having to send an employee to your home or business."
Can BGE use the smart meter to shut off my electricity?
In 2013, the smart meters will enable BGE to remotely turn service on and off at customer premises. This feature will be used when customers move out of their current homes and start service elsewhere. This capability was mandated by Maryland’s Public Service Commission in their requirements for smart meters. This cost effective feature eliminates the need for a BGE field visit when customers move or start service. BGE’s policies for situations involving a disconnection will be the same as they were prior to the installation of smart meters. The remote connect feature will also enable BGE to place customers back into service more expeditiously.
Given how bad the government is when it comes to managing anything, I expect trying to manage a complete revamping of the US power system to blow-up in their face….
HMMMmmm may be that is why DHS is stockpiling Ammo. I do not want to be in a big city when instead of getting Obama money the sheeple have their TV, A/C and other electric toys shut off because the power is shunted to the nearest factory or public building and it not only happens with greater and greater frequency but you power bill doubles and triples or worse.
Pennsylvania and Ohio had the highest numbers of new unemployment filings just after the election with thousands of layoffs in the construction, manufacturing, and automobile industries. If you look at the following graph Ohio is closing 12 plants. This is the state that will be hit with ” a shocking $357 per megawatt” instead of the $16 per megawatt for the old plants.
The USA is closing 10% of our energy resources Graph and that is just those plants that have announced closures. In October 2011 it was 28.3 GW of generating capacity would close and by June 2012 it had increased to 34 gigawatts (GW) of capacity retiring because of the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Rule. The EPA modeling predicted the regulations would only shut down 9.5 GW of electricity generation capacity. The reality is that over 35 GW of power generating capacity will likely close. graph of closures.