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California (specifically the CPUC, as servant of the for-profit utilities here) is choosing to make electricity extremely expensive, which is making it short-term economically less favorable than it could be to switch.

I have an EV, which makes sense economically especially because I can charge somewhere that power isn't produced or delivered by PG&E. But I burn gas to keep warm because my own home electricity is too expensive.

Municipalities are removing residents' ability to choose by banning gas. I expect this will accelerate the failure of companies like PG&E (and the grid) by driving new construction to be off-grid. I've been inching my way there on my own home. Cars as storage batteries is inevitable and will be game changing.

In about two years I will have an egregious excess of solar capacity. And hopefully no grid connection. I'd love to have a way to use that excess to suck carbon out of the air and ideally make a product I can use out of it. Pyrolitic graphite sheets would be fantastic, or liquid hydrocarbons I can burn in my legacy vehicles or a backup generator. But I would settle for something I can throw away and have buried in a landfill.

That's a total fantasy. New construction in urban / suburban areas is never going to be off grid. The only homes that can even potentially be off grid are detached houses in rural areas with enough space for large solar panels and battery storage. Denser housing simply lacks the space. In most cities I don't think you could even get a building permit or certificate of occupancy without a grid connection.

Since PG&E is a regulated monopoly it is too big to fail. The CPUC and other parts of the state government will simply change the rules to ensure that PG&E continues operating in some form.

The SFBA is, for better or for worse, largely zoned R-1 for single family home construction. At that density just about everyone gets enough sunlight to support their needs.

In my previous place - a townhouse where I owned much less roof - I still got enough sunlight to fully cover my needs.

PG&E is primarily a transmission company, and the demand for that is going to dwindle as the cost rises far faster than inflation. Distribution will fracture into smaller islands, potentially at the municipal level. We're already seeing the writing on the wall with new apartment complexes setting up "virtual power plants".

It's just not going to make sense to put a plant dozens of miles away from where the power gets used. The infrastructure is too expensive compared to local generation. That pendulum could swing back if Western cost disease were somehow cured.

If you’re going to have an excess of something valuable, why not sell it back to the grid?

Because it isn't valuable. Around here you get paid approximately nothing to put power into the grid. The asymmetry is comically large.

Sure, but you seem willing to instead get something high in carbon that’s economically valueless and pay to bury it in the ground. That seems unlikely to be more carbon-efficient than curtailing someone else’s use of the fuel of last resort.

Right, but I'm not trying to optimize carbon efficiency. And neither are the regulators. If they were trying to reduce GHG emissions, they'd keep the nuclear plants operational, try to drive down the price of electricity relative to everything else, and have better pricing to feed in to the grid.

As it is, the cheapest way for me to get electricity is to buy a turbine generator and burn natural gas myself. Which is completely insane.

You can electrolyze water and get hydrogen to use.

What's the round trip efficiency on that? What are the safety regulations on storing hydrogen in residential areas?

At present I have no use for hydrogen. That may change someday in the future, but it doesn't seem hugely likely.

There are options to reduce your carbon footprint but from my experience they've been captured by sleazy companies with deceptive practices.

I get a letter regularly telling me to switch my energy to green by signing up for this service where I'll pay more. But if you read the fine print you're not actually switching to green energy. You're paying more for the same energy and they're taking the money and doing something with it that is maybe green? Giving it to green companies? I don't know but it's not what I immediately thought when I saw the main claim.

Same is true with solar panels where they finance it through a senior lien on your property while all the calculations of savings are based on current subsidy levels. And they're budening people with senior debt that can prevent them from selling their home in the future without paying off the senior claim or passing it on.

You even see it with EV cars where the listed price includes cost savings from gas. It's just dishonest. You don't see that math on fuel efficient cars.

If a homeowner has an existing mortgage (as most do), I doubt the solar companies are getting a senior lien on the property. (How could they without the consent of the existing senior lien holder?)

Exactly what I'm talking about. Most people don't know this and get duped into thinking the solar panels are a personal loan.

> Lender Notification and Consent: Existing property lenders must receive notification and give approval for C-PACE financing in most states. This is important because C-PACE loans displace other liens. Normally, R-PACE loans don’t require consent from the mortgage lender. [0]

> One of the biggest risks of the PACE program is the risk for foreclosure. The contract for the funding will act as a lien on the property. If you fall behind on your payments, you risk losing their home or business to foreclosure. Even if you're current on your mortgage payments, the PACE program moves in front of it, and they can start foreclosure proceedings. [1]

[0] https://assetsamerica.com/pace-financing/

[1] https://www.mortgagecalculator.org/helpful-advice/pace-progr...

I’d certainly expect a commercial borrower (C-PACE) to understand what they’re signing much more than a residential (R-PACE) borrower.

Right. So commercial (C-PACE) require the original first lien to approve. However residential (R-PACE) don't require the original first lien's approval (the bank that gave them the mortgage). So if its a bad financial decision, the mortgage borrower can't interject. And residential PACE participants can be duped into taking a second lien on their property that they won't be able to discharge and will have to pay back in full if they want to sell their homes. You can go from a healthy loan to value to being underwater with the stroke of a pen.

And the R-PACE lender, being the junior lienholder, is the one at risk of losing money if the homeowner defaults and the house doesn’t sell for enough, which makes the system have a built-in limit.

The primary lienholder doesn’t get a chance to object because there’s no reason for them to be able to object. Their economic position is not hindered by a junior loan and as a homeowner, I’d be incredibly annoyed if my mortgage holder had a right to butt in to and potentially block any secondary financing I wanted to do. C-PACE requires approval because the current senior lienholder has to agree to give up their senior position.

The primary lien holder absolutely has a right object (practically not legally). Because its a lien senior to the original lien. So in case of a foreclosure, the PACE loans would be repaid first. No other loan can trump seniority of the primary lien. PACE is an exception by law

For instance, if someone buys a home for 100k putting down 20k (standard 20% in the US). Then the owner takes out a PACE loan for 20k, the loan to value for the bank is now 100% (as opposed to original 80%). In case of foreclosure, the 20k PACE is paid down first or becomes the obligation of the buyer. And these panel depreciate, so its unlikely the panels are worth 20k after a few years. So in case its liquidated for 70k, the PACE gets paid off 20k, and the bank gets 50k. Without the loan, the bank would get their back 70k.

The R-PACE loan principal is not senior to the senior lienholder's position. Past due payments (only) are treated as tax obligations, meaning that only past due payments are senior to the first mortgage holder. In your example the original bank would likely get well over $65K of the $70K sales price, and the new buyer would be on the hook for the remaining (not yet due) PACE loan.

> The R-PACE loan principal is not senior to the senior lienholder's position.

That's not correct. The loan is on the property not the person taking out the loan. And it is a senior claim to any other potential claim since its technically a tax obligation.

>> Potential resistance by lenders/mortgage-holders whose claims to the property may be subordinated to the unpaid assessment amount should the property go into foreclosure. [0]

>> For consumers, PACE type programs have several problems if programs are not properly designed and administrated. Because the financing is designed to stay with the property, eligibility is based primarily on property information rather than income and FICO scores ... A problem with PACE for both residential lenders and consumers is that the tax liens for PACE financing take priority over other lien-holders, and those lien-holders may not be notified or given an opportunity to object [1]

The buyer of a property would have to pay that loan down although, like you said, not immediately. That's because the loan is on the property, rather than the individual who took it out.

[0] https://www.energy.gov/eere/slsc/property-assessed-clean-ene...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PACE_financing

There’s also the moral hazard problem.

Yes it’ll be more expensive to remove carbon dioxide from the air in the future but i will be dead by then, so why do I care? Also this moral hazard is made worst by decision makers whose financial outcomes are tied to not adopting extreme climate measures.

Especially those without children, taking the long view of society seems to be very difficult.

We know people are concerned about what happens to their families after they die as inheritance taxes are so unpopular!

Inheritance taxes only apply to rich people. So, at best, that tells you rich people care about what happens to their descendents. Do you have any evidence rich people care about the descendents of poor people?

>Do you have any evidence rich people care about the descendents of poor people?

No, but people care about their descendants, rich or poor.

My answer is a response to the poster’s question as to why he might care. And I believe most people do care what happens to their descendants.

It doesn't matter if rich people care about their own descendents. Everybody knows rich people will be fine. Poor people have minimal capacity to do anything about the situation.

No taxes ever apply to rich people.

It’s only ever something that holds the working and middle class down.

> Especially those without children, taking the long view of society seems to be very difficult.

Hey, that's me! But more importantly, I'm not super worried about it in general. I consider it mostly a number of engineering problems (making things more efficient, consuming less energy while doing the same, dealing with climate change).

At the same time, I see plenty of people who say they're super concerned about it hopping from one plane to the next. When questioned, they say that talking about their individual contributions would just deflect from talking about "the system". If you want me to get behind those ideas (and that's a pretty easy sell, tbh, I'd barely have to change my lifestyle), you (not you specifically, I don't know you) need to act as if you mean it.

So far it feels like the upper class saying the lower classes shouldn't travel, eat exotic food or meat, drive cars or heat their homes, while they obviously do all of those things. From my limited circle of friends, that's a pretty common perception, even among those with children.

How about you "get behind those ideas" because they are factual, based on widely accepted science and policy consensus and just generally a good idea. Why is that not enough for you?

Demanding people do stuff that they already told you they know won't help solve the actual problem before you agree with objective reality seems pretty childish?

The ideas are, from what I can tell, to further limit my quality of life while those making the demands are not. Why should that be enough for me?

And why wouldn't e.g. less plane travel help with the problem? Their demands are for people to travel less by plane ... it's just that it should be other people, not them.

So these people you know are, for no stated reason, wanting to abitrarily limit your quality of life and that of everyone else who isn't them, and yet you claimed you could be easily won over to their side if they just personally flew less themselves?

Those people sound terrible, and you shouldn't let them convince you, I'm confused as to why you would be so open to their arguments, they sound terrible.

I mistakenly thought you were talking about real people who actually exist, who know that systemic action is required to deal with climate change and called you out on your obvious concern trolling about their personal choices within the current system. Agreeing with those people would make sense, because they are correct, which is generally a good rule of thumb when deciding who to agree with, hence my assumption that you were talking about them when you said you nearly agreed with them (though still confused about why'd you'd hold back on that agreement based on things unrelated to the actual issue).

Talking about indidivual contributions is pointless without context. The richest 1% of humanity emits more than double the amount of CO2 as the poorest half.

Air travel could use alternative fuel sources (or even solar) and I'm sure other large carbon emitters like concrete will become more efficient. What I'm not sure is that the richest 1% of the globe are willing to live like everyone else to avoid cooking the planet and passing that cost onto everyone else.

I travel by plane once or twice a year, haven't had meat in years, own a car with good fuel efficiency, heat my home with gas, and it still doesn't register on the scale. If you want me to live like an ascetic to convince you that I am serious about the runaway consequences of increased average surface temperatures I don't know what to tell you. We are already seeing those effects, and it is doubtful that Miami, Dhubai, etc exist at the end of this century.

There is no way to adjust individual consumption fast enough to fully decarbonize industrial economies so as to avoid 2C+ increases. Hence the systems problem. Why is Australia and the US subsidizing fossil fuels? Who is served by firing up retired coalfire power plants to mine Bitcoin?

That's only looking at CO2, forget about our other biosphere limits (nitrogen, phosphorus to name a few) that we're rapidly approaching the ceiling of. Optimizing for profit means you have an incentive to gain today with tomorrow as collateral. Until companies and governments feel the full financial and human cost of their carbon economies we'll continue to get Chevron advertising about how it's all of our responsibility to turn off the lights when not in use, and that will somehow "turn off" climate change.

> There is no way to adjust individual consumption fast enough to fully decarbonize industrial economies so as to avoid 2C+ increases. Hence the systems problem.

I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors.

The problem is that everybody wants to keep using them (understandable) and somehow also make them produce less (also understandable, but wishful thinking). Feels like they're asking other people to stop in order to achieve that goal.

Sure, each person can drive half as much, or we can ask half of the population to stop driving (or travel half as much, or buy half as much x, or use half as much y). Maybe not the top 0.1% (they don't seem to care at all), but these demands reliably come from the top 1-5%, who are also reliably unwilling to make substantial changes personally, with their much larger contributions to the problem. And yet, "the system" is a lot of individuals making decisions. If you won't make them, how do you expect everyone else to?

It's like someone promoting veganism but continuing to eat meat themselves. I wouldn't believe that person is actually worried about meat consumption.

Again, you don't need to sell me on the whole idea, I already have a much lighter footprint than you (barely any traveling, no air-travel, no car, very well-insulated flat and all that jazz). Yet if you want to convince me that you're serious and I should do more, you'll have to do more. If you're racking up 40k miles in a plane every other year, I have trouble believing you. And from looking at the average person, they're not reaching those numbers either, so I find it very understandable if they have doubts as well.

> I think there is, and it's trivial: don't use products from industries that are large contributors.

You have a weird definition of trivial.

It's a trivial solution, though it might not be easy to do for each person to give up their habits and luxuries. We don't need to outlaw air-travel or design complicated tax-schemes to disincentivize it, we just need to stop traveling by plane.

The complexity comes from "okay, but I don't want to do that, what other ways are there", and I don't think there are many.

>Well, it isn't the only thing that's required. What is also required is the alternative energy products to be available to consumers at attractive prices.

And before any wise ass says the solution is "just" to tax dirty energy I would like to remind everyone to stop projecting stupidity and apathy onto the general public. A couple percent here and there to incentive things at the margin may fly but if their energy bills double they're not gonna just roll over and take it. At the next opportunity they'll vote you out of office because that is the more direct and more effective way of solving their immediate problem of financial hardship.

If you want the super simple version that doesn't hurt wallets, then tax dirty energy but give the money back to people, evenly divided per-capita.

You could just nationalize these inefficient plutocratic utilities and provide free renewable energy, but that's communism

I don't know why the answer is always to make the serfs pay more when a more attractive and simple solution would be, I don't know, not having private jets and fossil fuel subsidies and ...

Even the kibbutzim had to introduce energy meters in their semi-utopian communities, because with no personal interest in keeping their bills low, some people would just waste communal energy.

There isn't any personal incentive not to waste a free resource, save individual conscientiousness, which many people score low upon.

Those fossil fuel subsidies are what's making the serfs (your word) pay less for energy than otherwise; removing them would increase the price of fossil fuels.

> You could just nationalize these inefficient plutocratic utilities and provide free renewable energy, but that's communism

This is a joke right? Using other people's money doesn't make it free. You have to pay for it with taxes.

Whether it's government or private is mostly tangential to cost. It's not like municipalities with utility co-ops pay tons more or less. The differences seem to mostly be around what the accountability looks like when the utility inevitably screws up (Flint, PG&E, etc, etc).

So what are you proposing exactly? Confiscate private aircraft? Force everyone to ride the bus?

Would you be willing to pay to offset your carbon usage sans the market pricing it into the price of goods and services you already consumed? Right now, there's no reason to suspect the market creators of the world WILL nor CAN force carbon offsets into market prices.

I'm not even sure what you're asking for here.

Just curious, what does that $700 buy exactly? My power bill and gas for my car combined never exceed $200. I assume it's a cost of living difference?

Not GP, but in a cold winter month in New England, I can easily be over $700 for combined electric and natural gas (not all of which is fossil fuel, of course; some is distribution, taxes, salaries of workers, capital recovery, etc).

It’s a 1920s structural brick house with limited insulation, 1950s boiler converted to gas. My year-round average is just under $500/mo for the house and around $80/mo for our 25mpg Honda CR-V (other car is a LEAF).

Retrofitting the house to modern insulation is not remotely cost-effective. (We’ve already done the low-hanging fruit.) Modern boiler conversion is on the schedule for next summer, but driven in large part by wanting to reclaim space in the basement. Economically, that project probably won’t pay for itself either (absent the value of the space reclaimed). Buying a 40 mpg car to replace our perfectly functional 25 mpg 2005 CR-V to save $30/mo in fuel is economically nonsensical as well.

Fossil fuels are incredibly cheap and their cheapness makes them attractive to continue burning. As long as they stay cheap, people will continue to extract the surplus value from them.