Hacker News Reader

Comment by tonymet | Hacker News Reader

We have a similar trainwreck of horrible utility policy in south Washington where the state is sunsetting hydro & solar power at the same time they are banning natural gas.

It makes me think that the goal is to reduce capacity and increase cost to reduce demand.

Policy makers seem to think the grid is like the freeway and if capacity is reduced, demand will be reduced as well.

View on HN

> is like the freeway and if capacity is reduced, demand will be reduced as well.

Reducing freeway capacity does not reduce demand. It just displaces people who can least afford to be on the road fully off the road. It's effectively just a form of regressive taxation.

It reduces demand in the long term but not without a reorganization. The rich people who work in the city move to the city, reducing traffic demand. The poor people who ideally don't work in the city move away from it, reducing traffic demand. The "inner cities" gentrify. Traffic demand is reduced though.

Look at real estate price patterns in Munich vs Berlin. Berlin's pricing is relatively flat, because it's spread out and has lots of public transportation options. In Munich, prices peak a lot higher in the center, then taper off more quickly.

Meanwhile PSE is throwing so many subsidies at homeowners for improving energy efficiency to try to delay building another dam. For a bunch of insulation and duct work I had quoted last year, I was eligible for a few hundred in subsidies, now it's a few thousand or more.

based on the gigawatts of reduced capacity i'm guessing these subsidies are a distraction. In the same way that recycling helped the industry avoid high redemption fees

You mean keep redemption fees? Isn’t the redemption fee built in to the purchase price?

US redemption fees are basically 0 when adjusted for inflation (they’ve been 5¢ for 40 years )

> south Washington where the state is sunsetting hydro & solar power

Golly. I am 8nterested in that.

Any links?

Not really , I just know the people who work at the utilities.

Incredible. The degrowth movement is really something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com