{"id":48,"date":"2008-07-03T19:28:23","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T02:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=48"},"modified":"2010-09-07T09:40:24","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T16:40:24","slug":"songs-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/?p=48","title":{"rendered":"Songs of Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of the really strange things about today\u2019s renewable energy market is that some utilities are complaining that there is a lack of renewables to meet their government obligations to purchase green energy, and they certainly don\u2019t want to compete with counties like Marin who want to buy their own green power. The way they are talking sounds remarkably like the excuses the utilities gave in the 1930\u2019s about not providing rural electrification and development of power for the southern and western states.\u00a0 In response, Roosevelt started our climb up out of the great depression with massive federal power programs from Tennessee to Washington State, all funded by local and regional bonds and guaranteed loans repaid out of power revenue.\u00a0 We could do the same today. We could even call them \u201cIndependence Bonds\u201d, considering that the U.S.\u00a0 borrows approximately $700 billion per year to pay for our oil imports.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt saw that there had been a market failure of the utilities to provide power to the country, much like the current failure of the private power generators to switch to renewable energy in a timely manner.\u00a0 There was a huge pushback by the utilities, who cried \u2019socialism\u2019 and claimed the government was competing unfairly with private industry.\u00a0 Roosevelt said he was only doing what private industry had failed to do, and pointed out the role of the collapse of the utilities trusts in bringing about the great depression. The parallels to our current situation are striking, especially considering how the Bush administration stripped virtually all the regulatory oversight of utilities which had been put in place to protect both investors and consumers.<\/p>\n

Looking to stimulate employment, manufacturing and irrigation for farming, Roosevelt launched massive power generation projects all across the country, such as the Tennesse Valley Authority (TVA).\u00a0 He asked Congress to create \u201ca corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed with the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise\u201d, charged to deliver electricity to the people, not for profit but at the cheapest price commensurate with production costs.\u00a0\u00a0 Roosevelt\u2019s federal power projects such as TVA and the Bonneville Power Authority succeeded in provided depression jobs for tens of thousands of workers and supplying all the massive amounts of hardware led to a resurgence of American industry.<\/p>\n

The Federal Power systems stabilized electricity prices, especially in the west, for half a century until the extraordinary deregulatory foolishness of the late 90\u2019s and the rise of Enron.\u00a0 Dozens of industries who had previously generated their power with small dirty coal plants switched to federally supplied electricity.\u00a0 The Rural Electrification Program, created in 1935 when Roosevelt signed Presidential Order 7037, brought power to thousands of farm communities with the capital cost paid back by the users at the rate of $1 per month, admittedly in 1935 dollars.\u00a0 The REA default rate on bonds for these projects, which paid an attractive return backed by the federal government, was less than one percent.\u00a0 (Eat your heart out, all you clever Wall Street complex derivative folks\u2026you should have been investing in infrastructure)<\/p>\n

We could do the same today, starting with a massive federal power program to generate renewables using utility grade solar thermal power plants across the southwest, some of which are already being built to supply power to more enlightened utilities.\u00a0 The peak demand for electricity occurs on hot, sunny days when people turn on their air conditioning, right when the electricity output from solar plants is highest. In this market, accounting for as much as twenty percent of the electricity in the southwest, solar power is more than competitive with fossil fuel peak load plants. There is an interesting National Renewable Energy Lab study that shows how this would reduce power costs, prevent gaming of the electricity markets, and minimize the use of fossil fuel burning power plants.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s federal power programs show that the Government can do things right, contrary to decades of propaganda from the free market true believers in Washington.\u00a0 Especially in the western states, we still rely on these projects for much of our power and water. Roosevelt\u2019s programs even gave birth to some really great music.\u00a0 Pete Seeger\u2019s classic paen to the American working man, \u201cRoll On Columbia\u201d was actually commissioned by the Bonneville Power Authority and became the official state song of Washington in 1987.\u00a0 Perhaps Bruce Springsteen could give us a modern renewable version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the really strange things about today\u2019s renewable energy market is that some utilities are complaining that there is a lack of renewables to meet their government obligations to purchase green energy, and they certainly don\u2019t want to compete … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somewhatlogically.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}