James Pethokoukis gives Al Gore the benefit of the doubt and assumes that the costs are linear. I don’t think they would be. Worth reading just for the first paragraph.
Only $5 Trillion
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Inflation or not, I really hate when "trillion" is thrown out nonchalantly.
To avoid all the problems associated with government political decision making (rewarding friends but not solutions to problems), the best solution is a $100/bbl oil tax and a 75$/ton carbon tax (as carbon — not carbon dioxide) and a revenue neutral corresponding decrease in payroll taxes. That would drive the innovation to avoid the taxes, and since taxes seldom decrease, investors would be sure that OPEC couldn't cut "their nuts off" by dropping the oil price to there production cost (< 20$/bbl) and driving the alternatives into chapter 11.
Did you fail to notice that Pethokoukis claims to know the cost of plan G because he knows the cost of plan P, where there is no necessary connection between the two plans?
Is this how you reason?
Why on earth would China lend the US $5 trillion to do this? I mean, if they were so inclined, why wouldn't they just build the windmills and solar panels in their own country instead?
The only other conceivable source of this level of funding might be a consortium of all the Gulf oil states, but why on earth would they finance a plan that weans their biggest customer off their product?
Why waste time debating the merits of something that basically cannot ever happen?
"Why waste time debating the merits of something that basically cannot ever happen?"
Profit motive?
It's always been there. And in the current market there will be an acceleration of funding, but unlikely an acceleration of results.
The pot at the end of the rainbow has always been "big enough".
I read elsewhere that Gore's people estimated a greeen grid would cost 1.5-3.0 trillion over 30 years.
That is actually not that unreasonable at current wind energy costs.
To do it over 10 years it would certainly cost more because we less than a tenth of the capacity to make wind turbines that would require. Costs of wind power have already been spiraling upward of late as high demand has taxed existing capacity, and raw materials costs have been increasing.
The enormous flaw in Gore's goal is that there are diminshing marginal returns to adding wind to the electric grid. Issues of intermittiency and peaking would make it far more reasonable to get some of your power from natural gas, and find equivalent carbon savings elsewhere.
Achieving the purely symbolic goal of 100% renewable electricity is far inferior to a general carbon tax that eliminates the same amount of carbon but lets people optimize where the carbon is saved.
Assuming there's value to saving carbon to being with.
Why bother?
I hate when the word *only* is used next to the word *trillion*.
The enormous flaw in Gore's goal is that there are diminshing marginal returns to adding wind to the electric grid.
Posted by: diz
There are destructive margins adding wind to the grid. Building these fiberglass turbines is very environmentally hostile. But Al will never tell you that, because he’s stupid, and a liar.
Why do you think T Bone Burnett Pickens dumped all that cash into GE turbines? Out of the goodness of his heart?
Bullshit. He’s bolstering his size position in GE, and stands to gain significantly from every increased government wind subsidy under the Obama administration, of which there will be very many…