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StumbleLETTER TO THE EDITOR:
Alternative energy’s costs make it impractical
Monday, Oct. 27, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.
With more than 30 years of chemical engineering experience working with energy conservation and project economics, I can appreciate the difficulties solar energy developers are having justifying their expensive technology (Stephanie Tavares’ Sunday story in the Las Vegas Sun).
They are lamenting the difficulty in getting financing for their heavily subsidized projects, and are blaming Nevada for not backing these huge expenditures. But the reason nobody wants to finance these facilities is simply that the cost is too high to make economic sense.
The entire alternative energy industry exists only because of government subsidies. The result is many billions of taxpayer dollars going to special interests whose projects cannot stand on their own merits.
The first major recipient to benefit from the government do-gooders was the ethanol industry, and all we got were higher food costs, tens of billions of our tax dollars going to subsidies, and politicians with fat campaign war chests.
Now, especially, is the time to back away from these unaffordable goodies.
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Develop the alternatives. They will find ways to make them work. But in the mean time drill and build power plants. We cannot destroy the economy of the nation for a dream or a hope. Alternatives need to compete with $40 oil not $140 dollar oil or we will not be able to afford either. Why do Pelosi and Reid want to destroy our economy to "save the planet" while China and Russia build more every day without our approval or consent. Don't tear down America, she is hurting enough from Barny Franks experiment with sub primes at Fannie Mae.
America is already gone. America was built on dreams and hopes and without those, we are nothing. It is up to us to save the planet, not destroy it.
"Alternatives need to compete with $40 oil not $140 dollar oil or we will not be able to afford either."
Good luck neiman. Oil is days away from $37. per barrel. As long as the global economy is in the shape it is, the price of oil will be depressed, and so will you.
Time to get off the new drilling focus. It's no longer worth it and we don't need it now anyway.
The bring new state-of-art Solar One plant southeast of Vegas generates energy at a price that is 2.45x's the current market rate of energy
If we double the power bills for all then all the cost of goods will go up.
The quality of life will go down.
People will lose jobs because there will be a overall reduction in productivity because of the higher cost of energy.
The Dems Libs pushed the "give everybody a sub-prime loan so that more minorities can own homes" which blew up in our faces.
Now we are about embark on another forced social engineering experiment that also will be harmful to our economy.
The Dem Libs were not the ones that put the sub primes in place the Republicans that are now asking for the bail out so that they can save their "golden parachutes". I do however agree we need to get solar energy here it only makes sense and in an article the other day it was stated that Nevada could provide enough energy for the entire nation. Then we could buy time for further research on alternative fuels for our vehicles.
dems were also the ones that created "credit default swaps" on wall street which added to the implosion. specifically clinton.
Government almost ALWAYS makes bad investment choices. The result is only to take wealth from the poor and give to the rich. Renewable energies are one example.
As far as uddeobda's point. Wind turbines and solar power receive between $10-20 dollars in subsidies for each KwH they produce in America. Nuclear is somewhere around $3.
I would like to see how much subsidies are being thrown around in Sweden.
"My el, from wind turbines is only 6 cents per Kwh"
Prove this.........I think it is a load of crap.
It is either highly subsidized by the government and/or it is not including the high cost of running high power transmission lines to remote wind turbine farms.
If the farms are offshore then it does not include the cost the constant repair from high wind storms.
Also, in wind farms do not generate energy 24/7 which causes the utility companies to have an equal capacity of reliable 24/7 systems (coal, nuclear, natural gas) to backup those systems when they are down.
"I think it is a load of c...p."
You know that they say, you are what you think.
ethanol is one of the biggest government giveaways right now. it costs 3/4 gallon of fuel to produce one gallon of ethanol fuel.
this government mandate created jobs etc., courtesy of the generous taxpayer. get rid of
ethanol and fuel prices would immediately fall.
mccain has suggested doing this but of course if people don't understand it then how can it be popular.
Sweden gets about 98% of its utility power from Hydro and Nuclear.
jfnance "Sweden gets about 98% of its utility power from Hydro and Nuclear."
And the blonds?