In 1989, this story about an underground electrical transmission line spread across the early internet like wildfire. It had a big impact on me as a kid, and I wanted to share it with you! I think the Scattergood-Olympic transmission line is probably LA's most famous power line, although it has now been replaced with a more modern line since 2018.
Samuel Insull brought the world Commonwealth Edison of the greater Chicago area and the concept that monopolies were acceptable as long as they were regulated for the public good.
Commonwealth Edison made its profits two ways – by constant growth and by expanding the size of the generating plants so they could produce more electricity at a lower price per unit. After all, many of the costs of a generating plant are fixed – a larger facility can often put out more energy more efficiently.
With Commonwealth Edison and most large utility monopolies, prices are regulated by the government regulating agency on a cost plus basis. Capital projects like new generating facilities or additional lines are approved by the government, with the costs of construction directly paid by rate payers. Insull embraced this as it guaranteed his business would be profitable with little risk to himself.
The problem with this model is it shuns market forces to keep efficiency up and prices down. Regulators work to protect consumers but there is little incentive to economize or innovative in the grid. Why should a power company take a risk when they know they will get paid building the preferred government technology of choice?
I believe competitive markets are always a better idea than government monopolies. While everybody agrees that there has to be one owner of the physical wires that deliver power, there can be multiple companies that sell power and multiple companies that sell services to consumers. Competition can help hold prices down and give consumers the option to switch providers that meet their needs.
Most major oil companies have backed out of the retail business because selling gas generally isn’t very profitable.
According to IBISWorld, gas stations make an average net margin of just 1.4% on their fuel.
That’s far lower than the 7.7% average across all industries — and ranks beneath other notoriously low margin businesses like grocery stores (2.5%) and car dealerships (3.2%).
When the time comes, I think electric cars with fast charging will be vastly more profitable for gas stations. While there is costs to adding additional electricity capacity, and electricity is not free, it's actually a pretty inexpensive product when bought on open market. Combined with the longer times to fast charge, it's much more likely people will go into gas stations to buy food and other supplies while they wait for their electric car to charge.
With tens of thousands of people displaced by floods, wildfires and hurricanes this summer, researchers warn that the majority of untapped fossil fuels must remain in the ground to avoid even more extreme weather.
Fossil fuel producers should avoid extracting at least 90% of coal reserves and 60% of oil and gas reserves by 2050, according to a study published in Nature, to limit global temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Even then, that gives the planet only a 50% chance of avoiding a climate hotter than that.
Global temperatures have already warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels, which releases gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. As a result of the warming, droughts, storms and heat waves are becoming more extreme, causing a cascade of disasters.
Here's a sentence that's basically unintelligible to most people: Humans must mitigate global warming by pursuing an unprecedented transition to a carbon neutral economy.
A recent study that found some of the most common terms in climate science are confusing to the general public. The study tested words that are frequently used in international climate reports, and it concluded that the most confusing terms were "mitigation," "carbon neutral" and "unprecedented transition."
Just imagine the possibilities of politicians to lie on the left and right. It seems like people are claiming everything that is bad or problematic causes global warming. Likewise it seems like climate change is often blamed on individual actions rather than government policy, even though that's essentially a lie.