The guts of this webinar is very strong ... but there ought to be another elephant in the room. Americans have a lifestyle that is driven by GDP and material consumption and are catastrophically unhappy on top of materialism and inefficiency. There is a huge opportunity to rethink the source of happiness based on a low consumption model rather than a socio-enviro-economic world that equates more and more with better! ???
I am an old engineer / economist / accountant. I was the CFO in a company manufacturing switchgear fo the electicity transmission and distribution system more than 40 years ago. My impression is that there is so much in the grid system that should be in a museum. Why? Is it the regulatory (utlity) business model that is no longer fit for purpose, but still guarantees profitability no matter how bad the management and decision making?
The METRICS that we use in the modern socio-enviro-econmic system are dysfunctional. Profits (ROI) and GDP built on top of improving productivity has been very impressive over the past 50 years, but social impact and environmental impact totally ignored. Bottom of the pyramid workers need to be paid a whole lot more ... like 3X more ... and people at the top should be taxed in a meaningful way and the world's cash deployed in ways that are going to be good for society and the planet as much as the money owners invest for profit ..........
Bob Wyman 12:09 PM
Beneficial Electrification of vehicles, heating, cooking, etc. will increase electricity consumption (kWh) and demand peaks (kW). We may need to double or more the capacity of our electric grid. But, most plans seem to focus only on displacing current generaiton capacity with renewables. How will we double, triple or more the production and distribution capacity over the next several decades?
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Matthew Wittenstein 12:23 PM
What is your view on CAISO’s proposed Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) for the western interconnect? Is it an alternative to a western RTO, a stepping stone to one, or a detour?
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You 12:37 PM
The guts of this webinar is very strong ... but there ought to be another elephant in the room. Americans have a lifestyle that is driven by GDP and material consumption and are catastrophically unhappy on top of materialism and inefficiency. There is a huge opportunity to rethink the source of happiness based on a low consumption model rather than a socio-enviro-economic world that equates more and more with better! ???
Juho Lipponen 12:50 PM
Hi Melissa - great to see you virtually... and greetings from Paris!..:) A question to anyone in the panel who feels like answering..: Do you think that gas (or coal) with CCS/CCUS is going to take off seriously in the US? The new 45Q tax credit system is currently the best in the world to kickstart the next wave of CCUS projects, but alone it won't be enough to drive gas-CCUS in large scale. How do we bridge the cost gap in a decarbonising power market? Thanks to everyone for a great discussion!
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Gary Krellenstein 12:51 PM
Richard Kaufman corretly points out that system capacity factor in NY is only 54%. But given the physical constraints on usage such as seasonality and weather, won’t using more renwables further decrease system capacity factor? More reliance on intermitant renewables implies lower capacity factor and higher capital costs.
Richard Kauffman 01:15 PM
I agree that if we don’t change the regulartory and utiity business model, average capacity utitilzation will indeed go further down. We may not like flying but the industry have moved from 50% to 90% average capacity utilization as a result of technolgy adoption, business model change and flexible pricing. This has resulted in much lower costs for customers. The same lessons are true for the chemical and other manufacturing industries. We need to adopt these lessons to the regulatory utility sector which has been protected by the golden cage of regulation.
Noah Rauschkolb 12:54 PM
Most of the complaints I have heard about cost-of-service regulation is that it doesn’t work if loads are stagnant. If utilities are actively growing/investing to accomodate electrification, then their incentive to build infrastructure is (roughly) aligned with society’s to decarbonize. Under these circumstances, what is the objection to cost-of-service regulation?
Richard Kauffman 01:20 PM
Two quick thoughts in reply: 1) Most of IT isn’t capital for utilities and therefore provides no profit opportunity or where it is, it can displace the quantity of traditional capital that would otehrwise be deployed 2). decarbonization also requires much more energy efficiency—the approach to energy efficiency isn’t a business for utilites . It doesn’t fit into the business model.
You 01:02 PM
I am an old engineer / economist / accountant. I was the CFO in a company manufacturing switchgear fo the electicity transmission and distribution system more than 40 years ago. My impression is that there is so much in the grid system that should be in a museum. Why? Is it the regulatory (utlity) business model that is no longer fit for purpose, but still guarantees profitability no matter how bad the management and decision making?
Clifford Krauss 01:05 PM
What will be the source of hydrogen in the future -- natural gas?
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Claire Warshaw 01:07 PM
Not a question. More a comment: I think your poll could be opened up to a larger, more public audience, not as connected to academia, and perhaps more blue collar, and see possibly different answers/lack of understanding. Consumers are the largest U.S. audience (guessing - I have no research citation or anything to back up that assumption). It seems having the consumer buy-in, might motivate and drive better purchases - including personal vehicles and and wants for more decarbonization of energy/transportation they purchase. There is going to be a larger retired audience too, if there is a larger baby boomer population as always stated; some of these are motivated to help drive future improvements and might show up more and become more involved in trying to understand academic perspectives in the near future.
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You 01:16 PM
The METRICS that we use in the modern socio-enviro-econmic system are dysfunctional. Profits (ROI) and GDP built on top of improving productivity has been very impressive over the past 50 years, but social impact and environmental impact totally ignored. Bottom of the pyramid workers need to be paid a whole lot more ... like 3X more ... and people at the top should be taxed in a meaningful way and the world's cash deployed in ways that are going to be good for society and the planet as much as the money owners invest for profit ..........
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