Going "green" isn't a new trend.
Every prolonged spike in the price of crude oil has spurred companies and individuals to try new ways to reduce their use of petroleum whether as a fuel or industrial raw material.
Still, experimentation with non-fossil fuels should be encouraged, especially if you believe that one day every country will be abiding by some carbon emissions cap.
But make no mistake, changing the carbon bootprint of the United States is going to be expensive. If there were a cheap, simple substance to replace oil, it would have been adopted long ago.
The electric power industry says it's willing to ride the green wave, but Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe gave a speech Tuesday warning about the cost. That's in greenbacks rather than greenfields.
At the Brookings Institution, Rowe had no interest in debating whether climate change is occurring. "Just as I must make billion-dollar investments on less than perfect knowledge, so must we as a nation now make a decision on climate change," said the head of the parent of Philadelphia's Peco.
He cautioned that utilities - which are the source for a little more than a third of all carbon emissions - will have to spend $400 billion on new electric generation by 2030 to address climate change issues.
I know, what's a few hundred billion among friends? But Rowe said the market capitalization of the entire investor-owned utility industry is $525 billion. And that new capital is ultimately going to come from you, me and that big factory or server farm down the road.
Rowe, who's logged 24 years as a utility CEO, believes that the current competitive wholesale and retail markets for electricity are working and have encouraged investment in "environmentally preferred" technology.
But he worries that new investment in cleaner power generation infrastructure will not occur if the nation retreats from a competition-based model.
"That will not and cannot occur if we are obliged to invest in expensive, unproven technologies, and then not allowed to recover our costs and investment," Rowe said.
Comments (2)
So glad we have spent $474b on the Iraq war instead of energy.
...and nuclear power is great, but can we put the waste in your backyard, because nobody else wants it around.
Posted by NP | February 14, 2008 2:38 PM
Posted on February 14, 2008 14:38
How about building some nuclear power plants???
Posted by SH | February 14, 2008 2:01 PM
Posted on February 14, 2008 14:01