So what happens if the economy turns around? Well then we’d all have more money to spend on things that would help us to save electricity right…right? Well sure we would, but the real question is would we? Weather stripping, energy star appliances, double pain windows, heat pumps, etc. Those things were available in the crazy hey days of the “good economy” era in the 90s. Did we buy them then? Well not really. They’re not really fun things to buy. Sure some people did buy them but for the most part there wasn’t a big enough need to lower the electricity bill compared to getting a new Hummer or a trip to Vegas. Do I think it will be any different in the future? Not really. Why? Because people aren’t suddenly more concerned about the environment now compared to the 90s. Sure everyone seems to have bought into the “Global Warming” idea, or it’s now much more friendly version “Climate Change”, but that doesn’t mean they’ve changed what they’re doing at all.
On my visit to Australia last year I noticed how utterly rampant the global warming craze is there. So rampant in fact that it is patently accepted as a fact of life and not a hotly debated scientific mess, which is what it really is. No, there everyone happily sings the global warming tune and how we should all pitch in to help eliminate the problems we’re causing the environment. But do they actually do anything about it? Not really. Car sales are still strong, pesticide and herbicide use is about on par with most other industrialized countries with similar farming, urban sprawl is still occurring, they still get the vast majority of their electricity from coal, etc. It seems that a side effect of everyone drinking the koolaid is that no one cares anymore. It’s a problem the climate changers know about and it’s one they’ve been trying to solve by making people think they can change things individually by making “smarter” everyday choices.
People aren’t driven by advertisements that make them think they should spend more money on intangible outcomes. People are driven by stuff being less expensive. Do you think that the hybrid and fuel efficient car sales boom was due to people thinking that they were doing good by buying these cars instead of Hummers? Not really. It’s because the hybrids and fuel efficient cars are cheap and they result in less money spent on gas. They are a smart choice for a car if all you care about is getting from one point to another and doing it cheaply (electric cars are unfortunately not a smart choice for this yet due to massive reliability issues) . So the only way to get people to spend money on alternative energy devices for their homes is to make them cheap and efficient. Well like I said before there is a huge problem with that.
Electricity is already really cheap. The raw materials needed for production, which for roughly 70% of our electricity is coal and uranium, is damn cheap. Natural gas is pretty cheap too although its share of the generation pie is actually pretty small, but rapidly growing. And not only are the materials cheap, but we put regulations and subsidies in place that force the electricity companies to keep the electricity cheap. So making alternative energy cheap is a massive uphill battle because of how ridiculously cheap electricity is already. To counteract this are the subsidies for buying and using the alternative energy sources, but like I said in the first part, nobody seems to be using them, and I have a feeling that it is because the subsidies can’t make the alternative energy sources cheap enough.
But what will we do from here forward? Next time on Crazy Uncle Ivans I’ll tackle the question: If alternative energy doesn’t seem to stand a chance, where will we get our electricity from?
