Quote:
Originally Posted by Colin McKay
Two things spring to mind, neither addressed in the Beeb article (or the thinking that provoked it).
First, the tax on fuel is massive (58p per litre for petrol & diesel in the UK, plus the VAT of course) so it won't be long before a way is devised to add this to the 'cheap' electrickery, how else will we continue to fund the lifestyle of all those redundant oldskool humans?
Second, where is the electricity coming from? It takes many years to plan and build power stations/wind farms/solar farms, and decades for nuclear. Maybe Trump will open up a few more old coal mines, that will keep lots of the above mentioned retirees employed toiling underground.
Progress!
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For the first question I was recently told that business electricity costs (for large consumers who often contract ahead but the same sort of numbers probably apply to all consumer) currently carry an overhead of around 60% that funds costs that are not electricity actually consumed.
By 2021 it is predicted that this will become 90%.
It's paid by everyone of course. And twice over in effect since everything we buy carries an energy cost or costs in its manufacture or provision. Most of the cost is about providing the supporting infrastructure for the "green electricity generation revolution".
Once all competition or electricity generation revenue according to the economics of diverse technologies has been eliminated the government will gladly tax whatever the world will be left with with reasonable confidence that there is unlikely to be much development of new alternative options for some time to come - barring some totally unforeseen and dramatic discoveries that they could not possibly suppress.
As for question 2:
As I understand it the USA coal industry has had a recent problem of reduced domestic consumption but they have been seeking to expand exports with rapidly expanding countries like China and India presenting opportunities.
And unlike the UK, a lot of coal mines in the USA are somewhat more able to deploy better technology and, potentially, automation.
Much the same can be said for Australia.
Elsewhere in the world Nuclear facilities are being agreed, planned and built in far less time than it would take in the UK even if there was no resistance to the concept of "Nuclear".
The problem with Nuclear though is that in nearly all of the current forms it only make economic sense as base load - you have to run it all the time. In France there is some flexibility in the system - there has to be with over 70% electricity generated by nuclear - but the generation mix is very different to the UK.
If, in general, energy (all forms) becomes too expensive the economic activity we have become used to may collapse, probably globally.
At that point, when it occurs, most of the concerns that face the peoples of the world today will be of no interest at all to anyone.
I could see a huge boost for the food generation industry - which may be the only industry left and perhaps not so much an industry but an allotment of labour. Retirement will once again become a thing of the past for most people but that is little different to what is already happening today.
There are most likely some very "interesting" times ahead. Hopefully far enough ahead that I will miss being bothered by them too much.