My regular readers know it, I’m a Treehugger. Actively proclaiming the end of the fossil fuel era because I have seen CO2 levels rise from 320 to 400 ppm during my lifetime, and coal and oil are to blame.
Most denyists think Treehuggers want massive government subsidies so those beloved windfarms can kick coal plants out of the energy market. This is not true for me at least. I just ask for a level playing field, where the full costs of using fossil fuels are payed by the fossil energy producers. This carbon tax is totally out of the question as long as oil companies run our governments of course. That’s what fires my passion for change.
Of course direct subsidies are given to renewables, and this is very visible in budget reports. (As opposed to the lung diseases, rising seas and forrest fires that are nicely decoupled from the cause). “This money is wasted” the doubt brigade keeps shouting so I have a better plan. We’re going to generate Negatwatts with that money.
What is a NegaWatt? It is a Megawatt removed from the energy equation for ever so no windmill is needed to generate it. It’s a 5 Watt LED bulb replacing a 50 Watt incandescent bulb. It’s a hot fill washing machine using sun heated water that only uses a few watts to tumble the wash. It’s a heatpump dryer. It’s an OLED TV. It’s a well insulated house needing no external heat, or cooling. The fun thing is that generating a NegaWatt is up to 10 times cheaper than creating a Reneweable MegaWatt
The potential is really incredible. If we replace petrol cars by EV’s and burn the saved petrol centrally in power generators we save HALF of the energy that would be wasted in the exhaust pipe. Not one windmill needed.
If we replace fridges by high efficient ones we can save half of the energy used now, even compared to fridges just 5 years old. This is where subsidies should go because a dollar or euro spent on saving is 10 times efficient than a dollar spent on a windmill or solar panel.
Look around you, as long as you have old appliances, bulbs, petrol cars, air conditioners in use you would be insane to invest in renewable energy.
Once that has been done the small amount of energy needed can be created (and stored) with renewable sources, with or without subsidies.
“But Apple and Google will just build data centers in places where massive saving leads to low energy prices”……..maybe, but I’m willing to take the risk, these companies look ahead and see the fossil power generation slowly dying.
And companies like aluminum factories that try to benefit? They find this treehugger on their way 🙂
My best friend in Mexico has an interesting calculation example
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