{"id":12118,"date":"2015-02-02T09:38:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T14:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=12118"},"modified":"2015-02-02T09:46:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T14:46:34","slug":"fixing-climate-change-is-profitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/fixing-climate-change-is-profitable.html","title":{"rendered":"Fixing climate change is profitable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nBatteries are just one of many reasons,\r\nincluding electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power\r\n(including\r\n\r\npass HB 57<\/a> and you can profit by getting financing\r\nfor your own solar panels),\r\nplus massive savings on health care and electricity bills;\r\nbatteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will\r\nsave us all money, clean up our air and water, expand our forests,\r\npreserve property rights, and make some people rich:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn fact, a recent report suggests that revenue from the distributed\r\nenergy storage market — meaning battery packs and other\r\nstorage devices located directly at homes and businesses (many of\r\nwhich now generate electricity through solar) —\r\n\r\ncould exceed $16.5 billion by 2024<\/a>.\r\nAnother report predicts\r\n\r\n$68 billion in revenue in the same time frame from the grid-scale storage market<\/a>.\r\nThis includes large-scale battery packs, hydro-storage systems that\r\nuse cheap abundant electricity to pump water uphill to drive\r\nturbines later on, or even solar thermal systems that store energy\r\nas heat in molten salt.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd it’s all happening fast,\r\nso fast your jaw will drop<\/a> if you’re not paying attention.\r\nSo let’s stop talking about the costs of fixing climate change.\r\nIt’s not just\r\n\r\nno-cost and free<\/a>, not just in the future but right now;\r\nwe’re all actually going to be better off through fixing climate change:\r\nhealthier and more prosperous.\r\n

\r\nSami Grover wrote\r\n\r\n the above quote for mnn 31 January 2014,\r\n\r\nWhy everyone is talking about energy storage:\r\nRenewable energy is already growing rapidly. But these recent developments in energy storage could prove to be a game changer.<\/a>\r\nSee also\r\nSami Grover, treehugger, 29 October 2014,\r\n\r\nGigafactory schmigafactory: $1BN “stealth” energy storage start-up moves to NC tobacco plant<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nTesla’s plans for a\r\n\r\n$5bn “gigafactory” battery manufacturing plant<\/a>\r\nhave been making headline news for some time now. Alongside the\r\npositive potential to drive down costs for energy storage,\r\n\r\nthe $1.3bn in incentives the company will receive from Nevada<\/a> have\r\nraised eyebrows in some quarters.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nSo its interesting, then, that \r\nAlevo<\/a>—a new energy storage\r\nstart-up backed up by $1bn from anonymous Swiss investors—has\r\nsought no state incentives for moving to a former Philip Morris\r\nplant in Concord, NC. Alevo says it will be producing hundreds of\r\nits “Gridbank” utility-scale energy storage and analytics units\r\nwithin a year, and is planning on creating up to 2,500 jobs within\r\nthe first three years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNo state incentives, unlike Southern Company’s nuke boondoggle\r\nat Plant Vogtle\r\nwhere\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power can’t even get a schedule from its own contractors<\/a>\r\nwhile \r\n\r\nratepayers get charged every month<\/a>\r\nfor power they aren’t getting from Vogtle\r\nand \r\n\r\nGeorgia Power can keep charging for shutdown even if it’s cancelled<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe bar chart above is from\r\n\r\nDistributed Energy Storage Revenue To Exceed $16.5 Billion By 2024<\/a>\r\nby Joshua S. Hill, Clean Technica, 13 January 2015.\r\nAnd that graph is way too conservative, being more linear than exponential.\r\nEconomies of scale will drive batteries up faster than that,\r\njust like they’re\r\n\r\nalready driving solar deployments 66% more each year<\/a>\r\nwithout batteries.\r\nSo conservative that the same day in the same venue James Ayre wrote\r\n\r\nGrid-Scale Energy Storage Is Expected To Generate More Than $68 Billion In Revenue Between 2014-2024, According To Navigant Research<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd what happens when something like\r\n\r\nHarvard’s no-metal organic battery gets deployed<\/a>?\r\nA battery no bigger than a furnace you can grow in your basement….\r\n

\r\nElectric utilities have mostly been slow to adopt solar and wind because\r\nthey have a hard time figuring out how they can profit from distributed\r\npower generation.\r\nBut even Southern Company and Georgia Power\r\nare now\r\nbragging about the four 30MW-each solar farms\r\nthey installed at military bases in Georgia in 2014<\/a>,\r\nplus all the other solar projects in gear.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWhat happens if\r\n\r\nSouthern Company’s underground pressurized air storage project<\/a>\r\nworks for utility scale?\r\nI don’t want it in our fragile limestone here in south Georgia,\r\nbut there’s plenty of granite in north Georgia.\r\nAnd Georgia Power would suddenly have utility-scale\r\nstorage for massive solar and wind generation: profit for Georgia Power,\r\nand savings for the rest of us.\r\n

\r\nSpeaking of profit, \r\nheat waves back in 2012 already saw smart grid deployment<\/a>\r\nin states outside Southern Company’s territory.\r\nWhen Southern Company decides to get off its duff and smarten up\r\nits own grid, they’ll see more profit.\r\n

\r\nIf you want to profit directly,\r\n\r\nhelp pass HB 57 in the Georgia legislature right now<\/a>\r\nso you can get financing for your own solar panels.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIf you have some spare cash to invest in stocks,\r\n\r\nsolar stock prices went down with oil prices last year<\/a>\r\n(Travis Hoium, Motley Fool, 11 January 2015),\r\neven though\r\n\r\noil prices actually don’t directly affect the solar market<\/a>\r\n(Travis Hoium, Motley Fool, 31 January 2015)\r\nbecause to date oil is mostly for transportation while\r\nsolar energy is for electricity.\r\nSure, natural gas also generates electricity, but it’s not directly\r\ncomparable because solar power doesn’t require fuel or fracking or\r\npipelines.\r\nEventually investors will catch on to solar deployments continuing\r\nto boom while oil and gas prices plummet,\r\nwith\r\n\r\nthe solar industry adding workers almost 20 times faster than the overall economy,\r\naccounting for 1.3% of all U.S. jobs created in 2014<\/a> (National Solar Jobs Census, The Solar Foundation, 2015).\r\nLet’s not forget\r\n\r\nsolar already accounts for more jobs than in production and nonsupervisory\r\noil and gas extraction<\/a>.\r\nOnce investors catch on to these simple facts,\r\nsolar stocks will skyrocket again<\/a>.\r\n(Disclosure: yes, I own some solar stocks; also Southern Company.)\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLet’s not forget the\r\n\r\nStanford study that shows every U.S. state can power itself\r\nwith sun, wind, and water<\/a> and nothing else even without<\/em>\r\nbatteries.\r\nAs I wrote\r\n

\r\n

\r\nFor Georgia<\/a>, that’s 40% solar PV plants, 35% offshore wind, 13%\r\nrooftop PV (6% residential and 7% commercial), 5% concentrating\r\nsolar plants, 5% onshore wind, and 1% each wind, tide, and\r\nconventional hydro power. Plus 210,200 construction jobs and 101,000\r\noperation jobs. And saving $14.3 billion per year or 4% of Georgia’s\r\nGDP saved by avoiding illness and mortality, including avoiding\r\n1,580 air pollution deaths each year. Oh, and costs per\r\nkilowatt-hour would drop by more than half.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat’s right, stop poisoning people through air and water pollution\r\nand save $16.8 billion per year just in Georgia.\r\nFor comparison\r\n\r\nthe total<\/em> 2015 fiscal year budget for the \r\ngovernment of the state of Georgia is $20.8 billion<\/a>.\r\nThat’s right: save 80% of the amount of the state budget in health care costs alone.\r\n

\r\nJustin Gillis, NYTimes, 16 September 2014,\r\n\r\nFixing Climate Change May Add No Costs, Report Says<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn decades of public debate about global warming, one assumption has\r\nbeen accepted by virtually all factions: that tackling it would\r\nnecessarily be costly. But a\r\n\r\nnew report<\/a> casts doubt on that idea,\r\ndeclaring that the necessary fixes could wind up being effectively\r\nfree.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nA global commission will announce its finding on Tuesday that an\r\nambitious series of measures to limit emissions would cost $4\r\ntrillion or so over the next 15 years, an increase of roughly 5\r\npercent over the amount that would likely be spent anyway on new\r\npower plants, transit systems and other infrastructure.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhen the secondary benefits of greener policies — like lower\r\nfuel costs, fewer premature deaths from air pollution and reduced\r\nmedical bills — are taken into account, the changes might wind\r\nup saving money, according to the findings of the group, the\r\n\r\nGlobal Commission on the Economy and Climate<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThat report adds even more benefits, such as more extensive forests,\r\npublic transportation, less urban sprawl.\r\nIt also mostly recommends new large-scale government incentives.\r\nBut as Alevo and the 66% increased annual solar deployment indicate,\r\nnew incentives will merely accelerate what’s already happening.\r\n

\r\nBut you want government action?\r\nPass\r\n\r\nHB 87<\/a>.\r\nStop the\r\n\r\nunnecessary, destructive, and hazardous Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline<\/a>.\r\nComment on the\r\nEPA’s proposed methane rule<\/a>.\r\nAnd stop the stealth corporate give-away treaties\r\nTrans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)<\/a>\r\nand\r\nTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TAFTA)<\/a>\r\nthat would add dozens of “free trade” countries and promote\r\nLNG export.\r\nBan fracking, not just in\r\n\r\nNew York state<\/a>,\r\nalso in\r\n\r\nOklahoma<\/a>\r\nand\r\nFlorida<\/a>\r\nwhere there’s\r\nalready a bill in the legislature<\/a>.\r\nStop giving BP a free pass to\r\n\r\npollute the Gulf of Mexico<\/a>.\r\nOppose the horrible idea of\r\n\r\nopening the U.S. Atlantic coast to the same kind of destruction<\/a>.\r\nOh, and\r\ndivest from fossil fuels<\/a>:\r\nVSU is right up there with Divest Harvard for advocating that,\r\nand may soon see success.\r\n

\r\nYou probably noticed most of this government action I propose is about\r\nstopping subsidizing fossil fuels, which get five times more\r\nsubsidies than solar and wind, even before accounting for the\r\nmassive destructiveness of fossil fuels, such as\r\n\r\nthe oil Exxon dumped all over an Arkansas neighborhood and won’t clean up<\/a>,\r\nnot to mention pipeline leaks, explosions, sinkholes, and property takings.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nStopping that destruction isn’t sacrifice: it’s common sense,\r\nnow that we already have the technology right now to replace it:\r\nsolar power, already increasing 66% in deployments each year.\r\nPeople who say it can’t be done or it will cost too much\r\nare like\r\nthe 1898 urban-planning conference in New York City<\/a>\r\nthat couldn’t figure out how to keep horse manure from piling up nine-feet deep.\r\nYet\r\n\r\nthe horseless age came<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd the smoke-less age without fossil fuels is already all around you,\r\nand soon it will be everywhere, much faster than the previous big shift.\r\nSolar power will win like the Internet did<\/a> as fast as you went from having a voice-only phone to having a supercomputer smart phone in your pocket.\r\nWithin a decade more U.S. electricity will be produced by solar power than any other source, as predicted by former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghof back in 2013<\/a>.\r\nAnd as batteries and other storage technology kick in, transportation will convert to\r\nelectricity.\r\nThe world is already converting to sun, wind, and water, with no fossil fuels.\r\n

\r\nFor profit, for health, for a clean environment, for property rights:\r\ngo solar, go wind!\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Batteries are just one of many reasons, including electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power (including pass HB 57 and you can profit by getting financing for your own solar panels), plus massive savings on health care and electricity bills; batteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will save us all […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,142,14,740,18,6124,104,559,6687,24,36],"tags":[8203,1124,2092,8719,8746,8704,8801,8701,8708,1300,8702,12,7,25,562,158,8737,8782,6076,218,7357,7857,8714,108,4604,7281,6,8716],"class_list":["post-12118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-cwip","category-economy","category-forestry","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","category-wind","tag-alevo","tag-arizona","tag-battery","tag-climate-change","tag-cwip","tag-economy","tag-forestry","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-harvard","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-moores-law","tag-natural-gas","tag-north-carolina","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-pipeline","tag-profit","tag-property-rights","tag-silviculture","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-storage","tag-tesla","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-39s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12122,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12118\/revisions\/12122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}