On May 4, 2015, at 10:10 AM, Michael Ross <[email protected]> wrote:
> Think decades. But that's just it. Power plants are intended to have a lifespan of decades, and to be profitable over that lifespan. Even if it takes 20 years to ramp up battery production...well, if you decided today to build a new nuclear power plant, it still wouldn't be online by then. So who's going to finance a new nuclear power plant that'll be overpriced and obsolete before you ever flip the switch? I expect our existing power plants to remain in commission until their end of life, but I really don't expect we'll see any new construction of...well, basically anything other than solar PV and wind. Even natural gas is going to have a difficult time competing with battery-backed renewables. Coal will be the last holdout, of course...but coal would already be unprofitable today if the plants were required to sequester all CO2 emissions, and the pressure to cut back on CO2 pollution from coal plants is only going to increase. Solar won't have to be cheaper than non-sequestered coal to win, once it's available at a scale to compete. And the _really_ exciting bit? You can do it at home! A lot of people would be thrilled to pay even a significant premium over their current rates to be entirely independent of the utility and stop being a part of the problem. And once the price to homeowners gets to the point that there's no longer a premium, but a discount? Bye-bye utilities. Why pay more (in this hypothetical hopefully-soon-here future) for something inherently less reliable that causes so much pollution and puts us at geopolitical risk? b& _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
