Pundits, at least pundits of a certain stripe, have long decried the fact that the United States has no energy strategy. Without a strategy, the argument goes, we are left at the whim of forces we cannot control and that will whipsaw the economy and the nation.
And so, one has to be a bit
As I tried to describe in part one of this article, Washington has some structural challenges that impair its ability to develop distributed energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuel-powered electrical power generation. The regulatory system that has been built up over the last 100 years has powerful constituencies that it must protect.
In a two-part post, I’ll look first on what makes encouraging distributed energy such a conundrum, and then at the steps the WUTC is proposing to take. For part two, please click here.
The Early 20th Century Bargain With Investor-Owned Utilities
Electrical companies are natural monopolies within their service areas. It would make no
Do you believe in magic? There is a certain sense that is what it takes for the Seattle City Council to do what it did on October 3, 2011, when it passed Resolution 31312, which puts the City on the path towards reducing Seattle’s net green house gas emissions level to zero by 2050.