<p>Poet–are you planning to balance the “windfall” profits by making up for the years when oil prices dropped below $30 and the companies made virtually nothing? The oil business is volatile and unpredictable. The good years carry the bad years. These profits will be used to find new oil in tougher locations and some will go into long-term research for producing a replacement. Even at today’s high prices alternatives still do not make much profit but at $5 a gallon they will.</p>
<p>“Increasing gas prices won’t affect me that much at all”</p>
<p>Wrong. There is very substantial use of petroleum products for heating and generation of electricity. You can’t just think of your direct use of energy but all the energy that is required for the production and distribution of all the food and products you use and are used in the business where you work. Don’t forget about the treatment and pumping of water and wastes or disposal of your trash. If you have a kid in school, you will soon hear about higher energy costs as another reason for tuition increases. The costs of your vacations or your kids flying home for the holidays will increase. Energy use affects virtually every aspect of your life. Cutting back on driving and switching to a lower wattage light globe may help, but are literally drops in the bucket when compared with what you indirectly consume.</p>
<p>Of course, you are totally correct, Edad. We are already feeling the squeeze of rapidly rising energy costs in our town budget. The higher energy costs are creeping everywhere.</p>
<p>Cutting back on driving, purchasing or driving more fuel efficient vehicles, taking more public transportation, not buying huge houses in the exurbs…these may be drops in the bucket just for me, but if individuals all did these things, the collective result would be quite impressive.</p>
<p>By oneself…a drop in the bucket, but together, we can move mountains…including doing something about both global warming and peak oil.</p>
<p>“Wrong. There is very substantial use of petroleum products for heating and generation of electricity.”</p>
<p>Edad, the cost of petroleum products does not have to analyzed as one monolithic element. It is not hard to differentiate the “pump” cost of transportation fuels, heating fuels, and electricity producing fuels. Most governments in the world accomplish that through applications of different tax rates or production subsidies. Further, the markets respond to different demands; our rising heating bills -and electric bills- have more to with the natural gas market pressures than with what we pay for crude.</p>
<p>For the record, I disagree that curbing our appetite to use gasoline represents a drop in the bucket. Price for crude are based on the supply of those hard to procure last gallons that represent the last 5% of the supply chain. That is why the slightest political disturbance in a remote area of the world translates into a surge in prices. Losing a refinery in Nigeria or having rebels blowing up a pipeline in an obscure xxx-stan country hits us almost immediately. The reverse is that reducing our consumption by 5 or 10% would soften the demand and eliminate some of the surges in prices. Operating at close to full capacity is far from an optimal situation as it creates huge peaks. This is also why a rather trivial event such as the change from MTBE to ethanol contributed to the rapid increases in prices. </p>
<p>Conservation is, by far, our cheapest resource. Simply stated, there are no cheaper killowatts or gallons of gas than the ones we did NOT use. When it comes to transportation, there are many families without a choice; they rely on their automobile for basic needs. However, there are many who DO have a choice. The US use about 21,000,000 barrels/day, of which about 60% is imported. Bringing that down to below 20,000,000 would help reduce our costs. Could be one lightbulb at a time. :)</p>
<p>“For the record, I disagree that curbing our appetite to use gasoline represents a drop in the bucket. Price for crude are based on the supply of those hard to procure last gallons that represent the last 5% of the supply chain.”</p>
<p>Exactly! This is why Presidential policy (jawboning or the lack thereof) can be so amazingly useful in enriching our Texas/Iranian brothers and friends. </p>
<p>Last time I looked, roughly 70% of the energy use in this country went towards the distribution of goods and services through the supply chain (most of it from abroad, and incorporated into prices), and in the defense of the supply chain (i.e. military and defense industry expenditures.) Oil consumption changes at the retail level would indeed impact short-term prices at the pump; but long-term energy prices are likely mostly heavily tied to needs at earlier points in the supply chain (i.e. China and India) or by natural resource suppliers (i.e. Iran, the Ukraine, Argentina, etc.) This is one of the reasons why Iran’s ability to produce nuclear energy would be a good thing for American consumers. </p>
<p>One lightbulb at a time is good slogan (and a true one, too.) But there is likely greater impact in considering where the lightbulb is actually produced.</p>
<p>I don’t believe you can view gasoline separately from the total cost of energy. One of the reasons natural gas prices have increased is the increased demand due to the high costs of imported petroleum. I would agree that if you could instantly reduce consumption by 5-10%, then prices would drop rapidly. Unfortunately that temporary relief would soon vanish due to the growth in worldwide demand. This type of speculation is pointless. There is no way to rapidly and significantly reduce consumption. If prices continue to rise enough, then there will be some reduction. You can also count on massive impact on the US economy. The biggest impact will not be on the leisure boating industry or sno mobiles. The rich will be the last to give up their toys. The worst impact will be on the poor smuck who needs to drive to work and already has a hard time paying the utility bills. Around here electric bills are directly indexed to petroleum and natural gas costs and almost all homes are heated by oil.</p>
<p>AllMusic…do you buy groceries, do people in your neighborhood use abulances, do you take the buses, which use parts, which have to be delivered? Do you use paper, do you vote, do you watch tv, how did your computer get to your house? Do you all walk around naked? How does you D get her school books, how do they get the pencils to do work, do you carve them out of a tree in the back yard? Do you think the toliet paper that comes to your Ds school is carried on someones back?</p>
<p>EVERYTHING involves gasoline…everything- deliveries, emergency vehicles, buses, parts, construction, etc</p>
<p>if you lived in a cave, maybe, jsut maybe, you would see little effect from rising gas prices, but seeing that you are on a computer, I will make an assumption that you don’t…</p>
<p>When you go to the store, how does the milk get there?</p>
<p>The problem is, well, if it doesn’t affect me directly, at this very moment, it doesn’t matter…well, it does matter</p>
<p>And if you have an elderly person on fixed income, how do they get to their doctors appointments, get their food</p>
<p>How about this for starters: Everyone who builds a new home over 4,000 square feet is required to include photovoltaic electric panels in the house of sufficient generating capacity to offset 90% of the projected electrical consumption of the house. </p>
<p>What do you all think? A reaonable start? Government boondoggle? Fuzzy liberalism? Pragmatic baby steps? Sincere question here, soliciting all comments.</p>
<p>Sounds like something that might seem to make sense in California. We haven’t seen the sun for days. In the winter that can go on for weeks. Then again there is the issue of chopping down all the trees around my house so the sun can get to the PV panels.</p>
<p>I would call this fuzzy liberalism. Fuzzy because it does not make sense or accomplish anything. Liberalism because it involves big government trying to blunder through some attempts to make improvements and respond to the fad of the day.</p>
<p>Exactly, Eadad. One thing I know for sure: As consumers, we will henceforth and forever pay substantially more for energy than we currently do, no matter how much we conserve, or what alternative energy resources we adopt. Even if America breaks its dependency on foreign oil and takes ground-breaking action to curb our emission of greenhouse gases, China (along with other newly immerging economies) is waiting in the wings to overtake us as the world’s most gluttenous and polluting nation. I saw on a news program not long ago that China’s current break-neck paced automobile industry can’t keep up with the demand of its growing class of consumers with disposable income. All of the cars being turned out from these factories run on LEADED gasoline and the Chinese gov. currently shows no sign of concern over the impending ecological implications. </p>
<p>Of course, we must still do all that we can to break our dependency on fossil fuels and our importation of them from hostile and unstable governments. But accomplishing this will not lower our energy costs, nor negate the global ecological impact immerging economies will surly have in the future. If we continue to rely on oil and gas at current levels, we will find ourselves in an increasingly urgent competition with the aforementioned immerging economies. So I suspect that big oil and our own gov. can read the writing on the wall. But big oil will not endorse, and certainly not support the development of energy resources that it cannot capitalize upon. Neither will our government forteit the sizable tax revenues it currently realizes from the sale of oil and natural gas. These are the main reasons why technology that would allow vehicles to run 100 miles on a single gallon of gasoline was quashed long ago. Neither big government nor big oil is going to allow such a cash cow to be lead to the slaughter house without another to take its place.</p>
<p>“EVERYTHING involves gasoline…everything- deliveries, emergency vehicles, buses, parts, construction, etc”</p>
<p>CGM, I am a bit confused about where YOU stand. On the one hand, you criticize people for disputing the science behind Global Warming. On the other hand, you seem equally critical of people advocating to curb our appetite for gasoline. </p>
<p>Are you really intimating that ALL transportation rely on gasoline? For the record, commercial vehicles DO have many alternatives to plain gasoline in the form of diesel, natural gas, biofuels, or even electrical batteries. </p>
<p>Are you also intimating that anyone without a car is unable to survive? </p>
<p>I’d be interested to see what YOU propose to do to reconcile the elements brought to the forefront by Gore’s movie and the way the US uses its finite resources. I hope it will be a bit more than … this is what OTHERS should do. For instance, the criticicism of people living in 6,000 feet mansions is a canard. They do PAY for that privilege. Even we decide they should pay MORE is a different subject altogether. They probably are used to pay more in the form of property taxes -unless they live in a state that actively support and subsidize large homes by “forgetting” to index their taxes. For the record, Mexico -the backwards country- does subsidize the cost of electricty for people who consume less than 300 killowats/hour a month (as low a 4 cents per kwH) but charges residential users who use more a whopping 20 cents for the same electricity. </p>
<p>Should we start rationing the gas by providing quotas to families based on the average use of 1.5 car per family? The basic quota would be based on market prices, but excesses at graduating rates all the way to $8 bucks per gallon. Nobody would be precluded to us more of the precious gasoline, but simply expected to pay more for it. What if we taxed each car $1,000 per cylinder per annum, but exempted the first FOUR? Wanna drive that 8 or 12 cylinder power car? No problemo … just send your hard cash to a fund that will support the humble drivers.</p>
<p>Well, edad, I do live in California 
Of course, you don’t need full sunshine for PV - San Francisco is hardly the sunniest place on earth and they’re going full out with a PV program. Germany and Japan currently lead the world in PV power generation, and they’ve been known to have a few cloudy days as well. </p>
<p>I’m a little non-plussed by
My suggestion - directed at new construction, which should be able to address siting issues such as trees - would result in a new home builder devoting about 2 1/2 % (or less) of his home building budget to a feature which would result in a electric bill savings at current (sky-high) California electric rates, after state and federal subsidies, equal to 9.5% - tax free. Remove the subsidies and the tax-free ROI drops to about 6%.</p>
<p>In return, over the course of each year that homeowner will not have to burn about 3 tons of coal, or 30,000 cubic feet of natural gas; will not emit 1500 to 3,000 pounds of CO2, (that’s the stuff which, if the majority of scientists are right, causes global warming), will not emit about 50 pounds of sulfur dioxide plus another 50 pounds or so of nitrogen oxides, plus a variety of other pollutants. </p>
<p>Thats each year. For each (large) house. To you that may “not make sense or accomplish anything”, but to me it’s one of those small incremental steps that, multiplied by every new house which is designed with pollution-free on-site electrical generation in mind, could actually start to relieve some of the pressure on our other sources of electricity. </p>
<p>What makes that “a fad”, as opposed to nuclear power, with it’s still-unsolved minor problem of the need for virtually eternal storage of incredibly toxic by-products?</p>
<p>Poetsheart - I actually know people who won’t be paying more each year for their home energy use, because they generate it on site for no additional cost after the initial installation.</p>
<p>Xiggi: A “whopping” $.20 per kilowatt-hour? Here in sunny California, at 200 percent of the “baseline” usage the cost jumps to $.22; at 300% it’s $.33! Baseline usage is $.11.</p>
<p>Regarding PV, should we not expect our government to take the lead, and have to install PV -or windmills- on EVERY federally owned building? While they are at it, maybe they should force every congressman or senator to install it in their homes and federally supported offices. The biggest handicap for PV is the lack of volume. </p>
<p>It would be nice to see a windbag flowing from the homes of Pelosi and Reid since they are expert in air movements … . Oh wait, I’m falling again in my cheap lib bashing. :)</p>
<p>“Xiggi: A “whopping” $.20 per kilowatt-hour? Here in sunny California, at 200 percent of the “baseline” usage the cost jumps to $.22; at 300% it’s $.33! Baseline usage is $.11.”</p>
<p>Kluge, aren’t there very precise reasons why this has happened in California? How much do you think Barrons or Mini pay? </p>
<p>I do not know how large the individual baseline consumption is in San Francisco but 10 KWH per day is not much as all (in Mexico) and the multiplier is 5 times.</p>
<p>Baseline varies by season and location, from about 7 to 18 kWh per day. For most people it’s around 12 or so. I’m not sure about the “precision” of the reasons for our high rates; we’re still paying the price for being raped by Enron, we have to rely on expensive natural gas for a lot of our needs because it’s cleaner than coal and we can’t afford the air pollutants, we need to upgrade our distribution system to move large quantities of juice around the state as needed (another advantage of massively distributed micro-generation) and we have paid for a lot of “peaker” plants to meet the peak demand which comes in the afternoon, particularly in summer.<br>
<cough> when the sun is shining<cough>
Peaker plants are less efficient than the larger ones, and run exclusively on natural gas. Our state agency which studied the problem identified peak usage ase the #1 problem.
<cough>when the sun is shining<cough>
But there are a lot of reasons why our electric costs are high. Rest of the country? Well, California usually is a bellwether. This probably is your future.
San Francisco actually is installing PV on all of its government buildings. The thing is, retrofitting is hard. Designing in is easy. That’s why I’m focussed on new construction.</cough></cough></cough></cough></p>
<p>Most estimates place PV payback (residential) at around $.20 per Kw/H. Most people are paying from $.03-$.12 right now. There are some exceptions. Until there is a monetary incentive, most people with access to a power grid are not going to go into their pockets to install a system that has a negative return.</p>
<p>My electric bill is so trivial I have no idea what the rate is. It’s usually around $40 a month or so. We have gas heat but rarely need much and no AC. I spend as much on propane for the grill. Now I do know what that costs–$14 a fill.</p>
<p>I think you’re right about people’s thinking, bandit. But one problem with the cost analysis is that you are comparing today’s daily cost of electricity consumption against the amortized cost of a one-time, up-front investment which will pump out electricity for twenty years or more (no one actually knows how long PV panels last; they were only invented about 50 years ago). If the cost of electricity goes up in the future, your investment in PV pays off better. If it goes down, you’ve overpaid. But that’s a pretty good bet on the come line. Plus you are factoring in a time value of your initial investment, which is an assumed rate of return which may change, too.</p>
<p>In my experience the real reason that more people don’t design PV into their houses isn’t that they’ve run the numbers and decided against it; it’s that they never thought of it at all. It’s kind of interesting to see how “conventional wisdom” is molded in an area where one option involves massive profits for one company (or relatively small group of companies) and the alternative only promises relatively modest income for a diverse number of businesses and local workers. Somehow sinking trillions of dollars into nuclear power with no plan for what to do with the spent nuclear fuel rods and building huge towers with high voltage lines shipping gigawatts around the coutry to where it is needed is assumed to make swaggering good sense, while letting a bunch of guys in jeans and T-shirts bolt a bunch of panels to the roofs of a million houses is fuzzy thinking. </p>
<p>And the problem is, once a house is built without PV (and trees grow up around it ) it’s not always that easy to retrofit. Sometimes getting the right thing done requires a little nudge.</p>
<p>Right now the return timeline is running 40+ years at $.20 KWH. Most people don’t plan on owning a home that long, and it takes even longer if you pay less. In the meantime, you have the sunk cost of the money invested, you’re betting that in the next 40 years, nothing better will come up, and your system will still function. None are good bets.</p>
<p>“My electric bill is so trivial I have no idea what the rate is. It’s usually around $40 a month or so. We have gas heat but rarely need much and no AC. I spend as much on propane for the grill. Now I do know what that costs–$14 a fill.”</p>
<p>Haha, after the King of the Hill, we now have the Baron of the Hill. He does know a thing or two about propane. :)</p>