Commentary—

Painful Truths About Electricity

By William A. Collins

You want power,

Nice and cheap;

Keep on dreaming,

You’re asleep.

Celebration here in the Collins household! We finally got an electric bill under 500 kilowatt hours. In the winter! That’s common enough in the summer since we lack air conditioning and use a clothesline, but winter is cold, wet, and dark. It probably stems from replacing our rickety washer and dryer with Energy Star models. The freezer goes next. And just so we don’t get cocky, last week I met a doctor with four kids who uses only 350 kw/h.

If you haven’t yet taken up such a frontier-style existence, get ready. Even in states with full electricity regulation, the die is cast. Power generation remains in the grasp of a hand-rubbing cartel (think Enron). Global warming has banished coal as a cheap fuel. Oil is $100/barrel and natural gas is worse. Wind is great, but regional. Sun is also great, but takes a big investment. And there’s still no feasible solution to nuclear waste or to the atom’s unquenchable thirst for subsidies. In short, there’s no way out.

For awhile it looked as though coal was our best bet. There was plenty, it was cheap, and the Environmental Defense Fund said that with just a little more engineering we could bury all that CO2. But now the feds have given up on burying CO2 and we’re back to square one.

It would surely be more constructive if Washington were to put its main subsidies into wind and solar, the real hopes for the future. Today, unfortunately, those subsidies go instead to oil, gas, and nukes. That’s where the dollars and the lobbyists are. The next election may or may not cancel that relationship, but long-term the future of US energy is no mystery.

Some New York friends are onto it even now. That state offers a generous credit to cover your roof with solar panels, which in many cases can take you off the grid entirely, plus paying you for any surplus. (Tip: buy solar stock.)

The other key federal battleground is wind. No, Congress needn’t worry about abandoning its oil buddies. They’ll soon buy up all the windmills anyway, and thus will lobby to get subsidized once again.

What’s plainly needed is a giant forest of spinning blades from Minnesota to Texas, and anyplace else where, unlike Connecticut, the wind blows annoyingly hard. It should also be a federal obligation to plan out the massive transmission lines needed to carry the juice from where it’s windy or sunny to where the light bulbs are. That’s too critical a decision to leave to corporate CEOs.

In fact, electricity overall is too important to leave to corporations. The whole climate is at stake. Government-run utilities seem to be a better prospect. Many cities and some regions have them now. Public agencies can be and are more creative and generous in promoting conservation measures, while corporate power companies have Wall Street to worry about and CEOs to overpay. Yes, they may greenwash now and then, but their bottom line is always on top.

Granted it does seem a little puny for us to be changing light bulbs while India and China are building new coal plants. Still, that’s how change finally comes about, incrementally. The US is far and away the world’s biggest CO2 waster, so until we alter our own personal ways we’ll have little influence over the rest of civilization.

Energy wastage gets personally expensive too. We’ve used up all our silver bullets, including war, to keep fuel prices down. That’s over. Get used to it. Eighty degrees is fine for A/C in the summer. By next year you’ll love 82. Either that or you’ll only be able to afford hamburger helper. If your town has a publicly-owned power company to help you with conservation, all to the good. If not, you’re on your own. In my youth Mom had clotheslines in our basement. They may be coming back.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)