Comments on: The Economist on Britain’s Electricity Situation

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:15:43 +0000

It seems like Sarah Palin has made a major contribution to the energy problem in the United States, with her natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states.

By: ElamBend

ElamBend — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:44:16 +0000

Agreed on the need to not be overly dependent on it, particularly since even though we supply mostly the domestic market, it’s still subject to price pressures from the outside market (I think).

You’d be interested to know I used to work for a guy who’s 81 year old father (who still came into the office) started a heating oil distribution company back in the 40′s and sold it when he saw the gas writing on the wall.

By: Carl from Chicago

Carl from Chicago — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 03:17:33 +0000

Ah… natural gas. I have been involved in this industry for 20+ years… long enough to remember when we stopped natural gas hookups for housing across the country due to a natural gas shortage.

The issue is that as we move towards more and more natural gas we unbalance the US heating market and we have put much of the natural gas drilling areas off limits. Recent price hikes have increased drilling but this will probably fade away as prices fall.

In general, natural gas should be part of the US fuel solution, but to make us overly dependent on it is a mistake. Agreed that we have lots of resources and import from Canada.

By: ElamBend

ElamBend — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:11:03 +0000

One minor quibble, the US is fairly secure in it’s NatGas position. The great majority of our gas comes from domestic sources and a few huge new fields have been opened up by new drilling tech. Of the stuff we import, I think around 80-90% comes from Canada.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/data_publications/natural_gas_annual/current/pdf/figure_06_07.pdf

Otherwise, I echo your call to the wilderness in terms of generation. I was never for the stimulus, but when it was first proposed I thought, “Here’s Obama’s chance to do something big and building a grid like the Interstate system and ramping of new generating plants would be one way to do it.” Unfortunately (and really unsurprisingly), we got what we got and we are where we are.

By: Fat Man

Fat Man — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:08:58 +0000

I am sanguine. There is lots of natural gas in the US, and Americans are rich and can afford their own generators. I have an extra garage bay and could buy a diesel generator for it. This does nothing to help the environment, but that is not my problem.

By: Carl from Chicago

Carl from Chicago — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:50:07 +0000

Duh I meant 4 items not 3… like I said over at LITGM it is like the Monty Python sketch r/e “The Spanish Inquisition”

If anyone is interested in power and electricity here I have a bunch of articles under energy and power generation on this site and many over at http://www.litgm.com too (where I have been talking about it for much longer).

No one listening, though. Sigh.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:03:44 +0000

Richard North at EU Referendum, on the blogroll here, has been pounding away at the point,for years and been ignored for his troubles. The culture there has gone bad. It’s not just the working class-the political/ chattering class is every bit as stupid and worthless. This won’t end well

The Economist-for them Economics is an intellectual game,but nothing sensible follows because basically,they are as gutless as the rest of the commentariat there. Not surprisingly they endosed Obama. THAT gives it all away.

By: david foster

david foster — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:00:02 +0000

Well, Quebec is heavily French-influenced. Maybe they will build a lot of nuclear plants and sell us some of the power.

By: kurt9

kurt9 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:11:26 +0000

Speaking of the U.K., my impression is that the U.K.’s white working class is about as dysfunctional as the black underclass we have here in the U.S. and that it is actually a majority of the U.K.’s population. And I hear that Scotland’s even worse. If this is true, energy generation is a fairly minor problem in comparison.

Can anyone from the U.K. comment on this?

By: kurt9

kurt9 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:07:36 +0000

The French have a lot of nuclear plants and do not share the U.K.’s (and Germany’s) aversion to nuclear power. They could build more plants and sell the electricity to Germany and the U.K. for a handsome profit, of course.

Can transmission lines be run underneath the English Channel? If not, I guess the U.K. is SOL.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:31:23 +0000

Point of order: That’s not actually a ‘byline’. Rather, it’s a ‘subhead’. ‘Byline’ indicates by whom a piece was written. Economist is famous for never using bylines other than pseudonymously.

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:20:48 +0000

Nothing the current generation of leftists are doing will do more lasting damage than their war on electricity. An advance economy is basically a means of using electricity to turn dirt into useful things. Without electricity, we’re materially poor and powerless.

Of course, they don’t see themselves as crippling us. As always, leftists are according their fantasies as much validity as proven reality. They believe that their fantasies about “alternative” power are every bit as proven and practical as “non-alternative” power.

By: Daran

Daran — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:01:22 +0000

The Economist is solidly in the Global Warmenist camp and this affects their analysis. Funny to see a magazine that used to be fairly pro-capitalist now stating ‘Companies must be cajoled or bribed into building gas storage’.

Excessive regulations have made it almost impossible to expand generation capacity and there is the ever present threat of additional carbon taxes. Power companies seem to have realized this and are willing to stick to their second best alternative: reap increasing profits from their existing facilities as electricity becomes scarce.

As the currently very popular quote puts it: “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”. My hope & expectation is that the East block EU members will be the first to value prosperity over ‘Climate Change’ and start building capacity, probably with an eye on exporting power to the West. Poland seems to make some noises in that direction and is preparing to build a nuclear power plant: http://www.petroleumworld.com/story09081204.htm.