“Regulators who don’t approve smart stuff are by elimination reducing themselves to certificators of dumb stuff. When nuclear optimism peaked, backers said that its power would be “too cheap to meter.” The bill for the smart grid is turning out to be too confusing to meter, but like in the nuclear heyday, the momentum is irresistible.”
I have some kind words for the California Public Utilities Commission’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA), its in-house department charged with representing small consumers in rate proceedings.
DRA has long been agnostic about the benefits of smart meters. But with the release of “Case Study of Smart Meter System Deployment: Recommendations for Ensuring Ratepayer Benefits,” the issue of high costs relative to benefits is on the table.
Better late than never.
Complexity Unbound
DRA’s lightly redacted public version analyzes the gap between anticipation and reality in Southern California Edison’s “Advanced Metering Infrastructure” (AMI or SmartConnect) rollout program.…
Continue ReadingWhether it is a new fuel efficiency standard for cars, bans on incandescent light-bulbs, or those commercials touting businesses’ commitment to lowering their carbon footprint, the idea that we can reduce carbon emissions by using energy more efficiently is a mantra of our age.
In fact, energy efficiency is considered to be so important that it is sometimes said to be a “fifth fuel” along with coal, petroleum, nuclear, and “alternative” energy. And who can forget Amory Lovins’s term negawatt in this regard?
But as New Yorker staff writer David Owen details in his new book The Conundrum, the idea that we can reduce our energy use by buying the right products is based on flawed economic reasoning.
Background
Improving efficiency and related conservation are not unique to energy but all resources.…
Continue Reading“This notion that the environmental movement — or any other major play in the media landscape — is pushing non-stop apocalyptic messages like a broken record is one I debunked ….”
– Joe Romm, April 29, 2012
“CONCLUSION: Unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases threaten multiple catastrophes, any one of which justifies action. Together, they represent the gravest threat to humanity imaginable.”
– Joe Romm, November 15, 2010
“Now that [James Lovelock] has dialed back his doomism — alarmism is a wholly inadequate word for Lovelock’s (former) brand of unjustified hopelessness.”
– Joe Romm, April 23, 2012
“… the alarmists have ‘won the day’ scientifically.”
– Joe Romm, January 11, 2012
Confused? Even dizzy? It is not your fault.
The alarmists’ alarmist Joe Romm is trying to soften a bit to have it both ways. …
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