There have been a run of encouraging reports over the past week amid the big picture market turmoil and electoral attention. There is an encouraging acceleration of solar install activity on the horizon.
Spire Corporation is cited as a growth engine here. Soon after come announcements from National Grid, and an echos in Pittsburgh. New Jersey is weighing in on wind. Vermont has expansion plans for bio-gas production in dairy farms.
The best thing about all this and a likely factor in accelerated growth is the install costs when compared with proposing, designing, permitting, insuring and building a conventional power plant and I imagine the decentralization is pretty appealing too.
There is also a likely advantage in cost overrun relief, surely a welcome thing here in Massachusetts, where cost damage from the horrific Big Dig has cast a blight shadow over the entire remaining infrastructure as it leaves a crippled economy in the State Government sector.
So, as the finance world chokes on its own mess and the media pummels us with drivel about the election, may we take comfort in the likelihood that these decentralized adaptations may have a useful impact well before the 700 billion dollar bailout does, if it does.
The Oil Drum featured an essential paper on the relations between gasoline and heating oil prices and the role that demand destruction plays in each.
Gasoline prices can be impacted by use reduction by motorists as they cut back on driving. This is called 'elastic' demand.
A significant part of oil demand is 'inelastic'. Essential operations of oil fueled power plants or home heating have less room for demand reduction and need to be offset by efficiency enhancements or alternative fuel swaps.
In the colder populous old regions of the US such as New England, there is still a vast energy loss from legacy housing stock, particularly in urban areas where thousands of structures remain uninsulated.
This suggests an urgent need to identify housing stock that still isn't up to 21st century potentials and follow with a crash program of subsidy and tax incentive to reach readily attainable efficiencies.
The other side of addressing inelastic demand turns on swap outs and switch overs to post fossil fuels. The city of San Antonio, Texas is an early adopter of using methane capture technology to substantially augment it's fuel mix in a closed loop utilization of its waste water plant.
The movement out of the fossil fuel past wants a mosaic of coordinated efficiencies swap outs to substitute for the expedience of running systems on an unrenewable and increasingly costly option.
