Submitted by TurretLauncher t3_10z9ngv in newhampshire
If only we allowed those pipelines to be built
I have mixed feelings about this. IMO, it's complicated.
There's no doubt extra pipeline capacity would have greatly reduced or even prevented much of the electricity price shock we saw this past winter.
OTOH, New England has excess pipeline capacity for all but the 30-40 coldest days of the year. In the past, power generators have done a decent a job of covering the relatively few days of shortfall with oil and LNG imports. (More gas storage and also more hydro from Canada would have greatly strengthened this backup capacity).
So if we had built more pipelines, we'd basically have paid several billion dollars for pipeline capacity that gets utilized about 10% of the time. That's going to result in a permanently higher cost structure for ratepayers that's unlikely to produce enough benefit to offset its cost, especially over the long term.
In the next decade or two, much of New England's heating load is going to move from natural gas to heat pumps and this will result in significantly lower natural gas usage (even once the extra electric demand is considered). This coupled with the crazy amount of offshore wind and battery storage in the connection queue right now makes me think building more pipeline capacity would have provided just a short-term limited benefit. After that, it would have just saddled us with a seriously underutilized and very expensive capital asset to write down.
See page 11 of this report. It documents a dramatic shift away from natural gas for New England over the next decade. IMO, this shift is already well underway and will be very noticeable in the resource mix within the next 3-5 years.
Who is the sponsor of this advertisement?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if they had just put Seabrook I and II online
[deleted]
Its only economical because the government is subsidizing such programs which are funded by taxes ( theft )
That is by defintion a bubble
> taxes ( theft )
I'll never not mock people who actually believe this.
Does not make the statement any less true
Taxes are good actually, we should tax you more
The subsidies make them even cheaper, but even without subsidies, wind and solar are the lowest cost sources of power generation we have right now.
A well-respected investment banking firm tracks the unsubsidized costs of various power generation approaches for institutional investors:
> wind and solar are the lowest cost sources of power generation we have right now.
no they are not .. not without stealing from the taxpayer to subsidize them
Yes they are. Take a look at the chart titled "Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison (Unsubsidized Analysis)"
The company that produces this report is the go-to source for any professional involved in energy project finance (mostly investment bankers and institutional investors). People in the business know most of the numbers/ranges in this report by heart.
You've been badly mislead about the economics of power generation and energy finance. You can choose to remain misinformed or you can do some research so you don't continue to post incorrect things. It's up to you.
>Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison (Unsubsidized Analysis)"
That's a disengenuous chart. Nuclear is heavily taxed with expensive fees, but this shows it as being most expensive without taking that into account. And it shows wind as being extremely cheap, without accounting for all its subsidies.
This is just a chart of chosen winners from globalist bureaucrats who want you to eat bugs and soy.
> wind and solar are the lowest cost sources of power generation we have right now.
no they are not .. not without stealing from the taxpayer to subsidize them
google “negative externalities of coal and natural gas”
No such thing as externalities- https://mises.org/library/externalities-argument
lol an article from an org that touts the “Austrian school of economics” oh like the one no actual economist takes seriously?
Your inability to disproves what is sourced shows my statement to be spot on .. thanks
“Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and has taught legal and political philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and Tuskegee Institute. He received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University” lol the author is not even an economist - and I’m not going to debate with some guy who has drank so much of the right wing cool-aid that he would question whether or not a foundational concept of economics exists or not
But they're only interment power sources.
And if they were so economical and profitable there would be no need for subsidies.
First, the fact that renewables produce variable amounts of power intermittently creates engineering and grid planning challenges, but it doesn't change the end game.
Most grids use something called merit order scheduling to decide which combination of available generation resources will run during each time slot of each day (slots can be hourly, 15 minute, or more granular). Whenever renewables are available to power the grid, they're generally the cheapest to run so they get scheduled first, before more expensive generators that have to burn fuel to make power.
The subsidies will speed up the transition and whether you think they're needed/good depends on how you view climate change risk. But without the subsidies, we still get to the same place eventually, just maybe 10-20 years later. This is because renewables are the lowest cost way to make power and whenever they have power to "sell" someone will show up to buy it because it'll be cheaper than all the other alternatives. Again, basic economics.
When fracking changed the relative costs of generating power with coal and natural gas, it took 10-20 years for natural gas plants to drive most coal plants out of business.
The latest price drops in renewables and utility scale battery storage are causing an even bigger disruption that is happening as we speak. Grids are in the middle of a once-in-a-hundred-year transformation that hardly anyone realizes is happening and it's being driven primarily by economics, with some strong tail winds from climate activism.
It does change the end game in that it can't just be continually more intermittent sources...
That is without some other energy storage solution which negatively impacts the economics and most of which have their own environmental issues.
Meanwhile nuclear works day or night regardless of weather conditions...
The Lazard paper has solar with battery storage at around 6 or 7 cents per kilowatt hour all in, while nuclear power comes in around 14 to 20 cents all in. So even when paired with batteries, renewables are cheaper than nuclear power by a lot.
Also, we're a long way away from a mostly renewable grid and for the next decade or two, using some natural gas when we need to support intermittent renewables will give us a relatively clean grid at a very reasonable cost.
The other challenge for nuclear power is that it's not flexible enough to economically follow load. That means it can only satisfy around 50% or so of a grid's total daily load. So at most it can provide half the solution, and for around 2 or three times the cost of better alternatives.
I'm not anti nuclear and strongly support the generous funding for research on advanced designs that was included in the bills signed by President Trump and also President Biden in the past few years. I also support the new production tax credit for nuclear power that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Nuclear power should get credit for its carbon free output just like other clean energy sources.
It'd be great if one of the promising next-gen technologies works out. The trouble is that we don't have anything cost competitive right now and the promising designs on the drawing board are at least 2 decades away from mass deployment.
Can you name a single 1st world country that doesn't collect taxes?
They have volunteer military, police, fire, teachers for those that can’t afford them. You get to repair your own roads and runs on the honor system of not destroying the unmaintained public lands. Of course there aren’t many public lands as the companies that have the strongest militia took them over.
It’s a great place!
New Hampshire colony, masshole.
Oof swing and a miss. I am still waiting for an answer.
TurretLauncher OP t1_j829xk5 wrote
The EIA indicates that 6.2 GW of natural gas generating capacity is going to be shut down this year