The Speaker has announced a requirement that all new power generated in Ohio would consist of 1/2 of 1% of it to be supplied by solar power installed in Ohio, another 1/2 percent can come from outside of Ohio. In the meantime, Ohio's constitutionally and ORC mandated and facilitated buring of coal continues, with permits being granted by the gutted OEPA for coal power plants.
COGEN , or Cogeneration, the use of waste heat from any coal burning facility to make electricity, will be used to make certain that NO solar installations of consequence will ever be built in Ohio.
Ohio is not seeing any increase in power usage, none. So all the coal plants you see getting permits, and the coke plants electricity making COGEN machinery, will all go to make certain that there won't be a market for solar or wind power in Ohio for another generation.
A real incentive for solar and wind and other truly renewables in Ohio would be for our coal fired legislature to make it mandatory, that all solar and wind power generated in Ohio would recieve priority in all power transactions over coal and nuclear generated power. Its the best answer I can think of.
The responsibility of our legislature at this time is to ignore the coal language in the Ohio constitution and Ohio revised code, and give power to the renewable energy industry in Ohio that will give rise to hundreds of thousands of jobs, while saving us from breathing soot, mercury, dying from it, and handing a world doomed to climate change to our kids.
The utility companies aren't building any of the proposed coal power plants because we need the power, they are building them to BLOCK solar and wind power generation from ever catching on in Ohio. The same is true for cogeneration facilities on new or old coal burning facilities, like the coke plant.
Again, the answer is granting an absolutely certain market priority for solar and wind used and/or sold to consumers and/or other utilities on the power grid. It must be made a state and national priority. Our kids' planet depends on it. Please speak of this to your elected officals.
The coke plant will make 150 jobs while poisoning an area that should become a tourist mecca, while dumping mercury into the walleye, possibly pushing walley over the levels of mercury considered safe for human consumption. Solar, on the other hand, could make scores of thousands of jobs right here in Toledo. The new wind maps for Ohio show that Ohio has far greater wind potential than was realized. Wind is another opportunity for making huge amounts of energy in Ohio, and a ton of jobs. Together wind and solar will dwarf the employment numbers in today's auto industry. Will Toledo sit on the sidelines and watch, or we just pay that heft carbon tax on our electric bill along with the huge charges for capital costs for new coal and nuke plants that we don't need.
Actually, P3E, there will be a market push for solar and wind power ... when electric rates climb outrageously in Ohio over the use of natural gas for summer generation. That's a similar effect to why exploiting tar sands for oil makes economic sense now -- since oil climbed over $50/bbl.
You may quake at the idea of huge price increases giving birth (finally!) to the renewable power industry in DUHio, but at least while paying huge amounts to continue making the utilities' investors happy, you'll STILL get renewables as a part of the deal. Too bad you'll still be poor. Har har!
Sorry to have my great dark laugh at your misfortune, but all this is a natural consequence of making money and corporations a priority in all government decisions. The investors in the utilities have far more rights than the consumers do. And when we point that out, the "Pwn"ership Society just tells us to suck it up and stick our money in the stocks of the utilities (which by then will just be pumped-and-dumped on us, further stealing our common wealth).
Until we change our worship of money and corporations, there is ZERO chance for involving renewable energy in DUHio in any meaningful way for the consumer. The current culture demands that we're just going to pay more money for what we get. PERIOD.
Of course, some of you wealthy types reading this could stop playing accounting games with your money, and instead use your investment money to create innovative businesses for all consumers to buy renewable-energy products from. We need cheaper solar panels, generators, and of course the battery/rectifier systems that convert and store energy from these input devices. The installed plant for one home is ruinously expensive and leads to far too long of an amortization period for the investment. We need cheap towers topped with cheap generators and cheap rotor blades, all generating into a cheap battery/rectifier system that feeds our homes. You fucking Capitalists already have the money. You claim to be investors, right? SO MAKE IT HAPPEN. You'd think that such savvy investors like yourselves could see the huge market that you'd be able to profit from. Well, you'd think.
posted by GuestZero on Feb 24, 2008 at 01:53:11 pm #