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Comment by jbellis | Hacker News Reader

In related news, German electricity is 30% more expensive than French, and 300% more expensive than American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#Global_elec...

In related news: American electricity is artificially cheap.

The United States has an abundance of cheap natural gas and the will to drill it. Incidentally, substituting gas for coal has allowed the US to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions[1]. Yes, that's right, the US has reduced its emissions more than any other country in the last five years, thanks to technical innovations that have lowered the price of natural gas.

[1]http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/05/americas-f...

Reduced. In absolute terms you still lead. Negatively.

It's not gas, it's coal. Coal accounts for half of US electric production, versus a negligible amount of French production.

Coal, however, is only seemingly cheap. Most of the actual costs of coal are externalized, and not seen at the meter. Rather, they show up at the doctor's office:

http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_ful...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/hiding-the-costs-of-c...

The Princeton professor in the second article estimates that accounting for the externalities of coal would more than triple the meter price of coal power. The Harvard study in the first article estimates a somewhat greater cost based on looking at a wider range of factors.

Read the link. The fracking revolution has led to a substitution of gas for coal in the US. Meanwhile, pressure from green activists in Europe has led to obstacles to fracking and nuclear power and an increasing reliance on coal imports. Renewables still suck as an energy source.

The biggest piece of good news for the environment in Years is being driven by a "brown" industry in cowboy America, who woul have predicted it?

Wait a few years before proclaiming it good. And keep a good eye on the water table. Everything has a downside, and this one might be more costly than you suspect. Might be fine admittedly, but the US is not doing this because it has found the secret to everlasting energy, it is doing this because currently it's options are very limited and domestic fuel plays extremely well politically compared to most of the other options, which haven't been going that well.

Coal did account for half until about four years ago. Due to the explosion (no pun intended) in natural gas development and the increase in environmental regulation, its down to about a third now.

Do you have a better link? The Economist talks about reduced emissions in the past 5 years saying "much of the credit" should go to natural gas. Then it cites numbers going back 15 years that would give half the credit to natural gas and half the credit to renewables. I'm curious how those numbers change if you look back only 5 years.

(There was twice as much increase in natural gas as there was increase in renewables, but renewables produce approximately 0 carbon while natural gas produces 56.25% of the carbon coal produces: http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp )

In other news German electricity is heavy taxed and Germans consume half the electricity than an American.

I'm curious to see how much of that difference is actually caused by environmental factors.

Most of the continental US gets down right hot for 2-5 months out of the year. So hot that air conditioning accounts for the largest share of commercial and residential electricity usage. This is probably becoming an even bigger factor when you consider there has been a mass migration from more temperate climates of the upper Midwest to areas such as Texas, Florida and the Southwest. This migration began in the mid 20th century with the advent of reliable central air conditioning.

My question is are Americans consuming more electricity than the average German because of environmental factors or because we're really guzzling power like gasoline in the 1960s and 70s?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_air_conditioning

> Superior energy efficiency can be designed into new construction (or retrofitted to existing buildings). Since the U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977, their Weatherization Assistance Program[25] has reduced heating-and-cooling load on 5.5 million low-income affordable homes an average of 31%. A hundred million American buildings still need improved weatherization. Careless conventional construction practices are still producing inefficient new buildings that need weatherization when they are first occupied.

Compare that with German standards for energy efficient buildings.

Yes, since efficiency is the other (oft neglected) half of the sustainable energy equation. A better average measure is the cost per unit of work performed, rather than the cost of the energy input. For example, higher energy prices might make me buy a more efficient refrigerator, meaning the end result, keeping my food cold, still costs about the same.

I don't think the purpose of going renewable is to save money -- it is more about energy security.

New plan:

Make renewable energy by burning regular energy. Mark it up a bit and sell it for 300% of what you paid for the regular energy.

That's basically how biomass energy works anyway. Wind and photovoltaic energy also have a huge amount of regular energy usage hidden in them.

If the electricity really costs so much I'm not really impressed. However any chance that number is taxes?

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