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Global Norming
I’m very worried that with the current economic crisis we as a civilization are going to put global warming on the back burner. It’s hard for even me, a big fan of renewable energy, to justify the expense. However, if instead of Global Warming, we focus on Global Norming – which I’ll explain in a moment — we can still make the positive impact that the world needs in immediate terms.
Global Norming, in my terms, is the normalization of the immediate costs of pollution, and factoring those into our current energy production. For example, coal plants in the United States cause about 24,000 cancer deaths per year. Outside of the priceless value of each life to those families affected, economists have done various studies determining the value of each life between about $1m and $6.5m. Even if you take the low end of that range, that’s $24B per year. Coal plants account for about 49% of the electricity in the United States, or about 1,995 billion kilowatt hours. JUST the life lost from those coal plants, NOT including ANY impact on global warming, is about 1.2 cents per kwhr, on the low end, and 7.8 cents per kwhr on the high end. If we immediately taxed coal plants for the true negative economic impact they make on society, we would instantly have several things:
1. Huge revenues
2. Huge incentive for innovation to make electricity without that tax
3. Solar (and other alternative) energy that’s cost effective with NO government subsidies
4. Job creation to continue to innovate to make electricity that doesn’t pollute because it would be economical, at last, to fund that innovation.
This normalization of pollution impact would have the side benefit of positively impacting global warming, but even if you don’t believe that global warming exists, or is man-made, it doesn’t matter, because making this effort would have IMMEDIATE (i.e. same-year) payback, as opposed to next-generation payback.
We must do this not only for electricity, but across the board, for all pollution, and I believe that this will not only solve the economic crisis (by directing infrastructure innovation to the most efficient job creation) but also be the most cost effective way to achieve sustainability. I feel it is also more politically possible to tax something that has an immediate – this year – health and life payback than a suspect 50-year payback period. People are short-term thinkers. Governments are supposed to be long-term thinkers, but tough economic times make it harder for them to act that way. Global normaliziation of pollution costs into the energy expenditure and production side of our power plants and our cars would be the boldest, but easiest step to efficient job creation and innovation in renewable energy.
Nicely done! I would add that we need to replace our existing power grid. It was created in the first half of the last century and is an antiquated patchwork of unrelated systems with a one way communication to your home and office. As Thomas L. Freidman states in his book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, the next administration needs to create “a Green New Deal” on the energy front. Part of this “New Deal” would be to replace our legacy Power Grid with a “Smart Grid”. This new grid could communicate not only with other power stations around the nation but with the appliances in your home and office. In addition to slowing down global warming, the annual savings could be in the 100’s of billions of dollars. It would be a huge undertaking but might be the very thing to get out of our current mess.
Excellent content…keep up the good work!
A sound solution, but the operative words of “if we immediately taxed coal plants” make this an impossibility. Our company is the sole renewable energy business in Kentucky, a state driven by coal with the U.S. Senate’s minority leader at its helm leadiing the charge. Mitch McConnell is alternative energy’s biggest obstacle to Global Norming. But Freidman, B Pickens, and most politicians are missing the real opportunity, which is, to divorce ourselves from a grid system of delivering electricity and moving to a distributed solution, just as Bill Gates changed computing from mainframes to PC’s. That is, to produce electricity at the point of use, by solar, wind, geothermal, ??? This is where we have funded our R&D efforts. Unfortunately the national attention is on centralized production of energy, and that is where the resources have gone. Global Norming thru taxation or point of use electricty production, both are long putts!
Truer words never spoken! We’re finding a lot of people simply can’t afford to invest in renewable energy right now.
I wanted to hear your thoughts about leased solar, do you think it makes fiscal sense?
While individuals are finding they cannot afford to invest in alternative energy this will not be the case if the government takes the first several baby-steps in doing so. The lack of long-term stability in Congressional Bills regarding alternative electricity, most notably wind power, prevents long-term investment because capital investors can’t make safe investments.
I disagree with the commentator, Tom Colbert, when it comes to the Energy Grid. Wind, solar and other intermittent energy sources can be converted to a centralized grid-system if the grid is completely overhauled from its current state. The grid, wind, solar, other alternatives, and PHEVs must all come together to restore our energy independence AND our economy.