Future Power Generation Demands Common Sense

I listened to some the interrogation of the oil company CEO's that the simpletons in congress put on display for all the world to see and hear. I was totally astounded by the complete lack of understanding of how our free markets work.

One congress woman from Califorina admitted that she was a socialist, Marxist, advocating a government take over of the oil companies. She acturally said this on national television!! Is this possible? She admits that she is a communist, a liberal Democrat, a New Socaialist Progressive.

The whole fiasco was designed to have this thing on television to prove that the congress was on top of the problem and the idiots running the show were smarter than the oil company executives. If that was their idea, and I just knows it was, they failed miserably except in one instance - the congressional panel came off as bumbling and confused simpletons. The responses that they got from the CEO's wasn't what they expected.

The oil executives responses tore them apart. I still can't believe these government hacks are this ignorant about our economy and be willing to show the world that they truly have no clue of what they are doing.

I firmly believe you could take just about anyone off the street, in any city and get as good a performance as we saw and heard from these, our elected leaders. Little wonder we are in the mess that we are in today.

Here is more news from the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News Magazine, an excerpt, to shore up your arguments for a sane energy policy - It can't be done unless we all fight to make it happen - the alternative is a future that will resemble how we lived 50 years ago - in other words, no future at all for the next generation. Too dramatic you say, check you your electric bill and listen to what the environmentalists want for our country.

Let's all pull together and keep the faith, together we know the battle is joined!


Recipe for ReductionUtilities Eye Multi-ingredient Strategy To Cut CO2

Essential to plant life and making up just a fraction of 1 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, the gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is drawing the attention of public officials for the role it’s thought to have in warming the planet.

Human activity accounts for roughly 3.5 percent of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, with a bit more than a third of that percentage coming from burning fossil fuel to produce electricity. As a recognizable source, power generation is being targeted by lawmakers and regulators who believe cutting power-plant CO2 emissions will slow or reverse the 0.7 degree Celsius (1.2 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in global average temperatures measured over the past 160 years.
As providers of electric energy, electric cooperatives have a responsibility to make sure whatever restrictions policy makers choose to impose on the ways people produce and consume energy, they do not make it impossible for rural Americans to afford the electricity they need for agricultural production and lighting and heating their homes.

No Magic Bullet

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit, utility-sponsored consortium whose members include electric co-ops, is hopeful that carbon dioxide reductions can be accomplished without driving electricity prices beyond the reach of the American consumer. However, there is no single action that has any realistic chance of bringing about the total amount of prescribed reductions. Instead, EPRI has developed a multi-phased, technology-based framework to cut carbon dioxide emissions 45 percent over the next 22 years while continuing to meet the growing demand for electricity.

The plan essentially takes reductions sought in one of the more high-profile congressional approaches—getting to a level by the year 2030 that’s below the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by U.S. electric utilities in 1990—and applies an array of existing and developing technologies to hit that mark.

“Technology is what it’s all about,” notes Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, the Arlington, Va.-based service arm of the nation’s 900-plus consumer-owned electric co-ops. “It gives electric cooperatives the opportunity to address climate change and at the same time generate the amount of power we need to meet the needs of our members.”

Squeeze on Power, Costs

Even though demand for electricity is predicted to increase 18 percent over the next decade, capacity to generate electricity will increase by only 8.4 percent, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a non-profit organization charged with monitoring America’s power system reliability. This means unless new power plants and transmission facilities are built to generate and move the power, Americans will face the almost unimaginable possibility of being uncertain whether electricity will be available when they most need it.

And climate change legislation could have a dramatic effect on power generation and electric bills. Along with federal lawmakers, state and local officials across the country are considering measures that would add expense to the production of energy.

EPRI’s analysis recognizes this reality and encourages aggressive new action in seven specific areas: boosting energy efficiency, improving the operating efficiency of advanced coal-fired power plants, investing in renewable energy, expanding nuclear power capacity, capturing carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power plants and storing it deep underground, adding distributed generation resources, and putting plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road.