{"id":1933,"date":"2008-10-22T01:19:42","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T01:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-10-22T01:21:22","modified_gmt":"2008-10-22T01:21:22","slug":"california_prop_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1933","title":{"rendered":"California Propositions – No On 10 And No On 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Propositions 7 and 10 are energy propositions; each of them intends to “do something” about our reliance on fossil fuels. Each of them is too expensive, counterproductive in detail, and overly benefits third parties at the expense of the California consumer – so I’m against them.<\/p>\n

Prop 7 mandates that all California utilities purchase 20% of their capacity from renewable energy sources by 2010. In 2000, renewable energy amounted to approximately 11.8%<\/a> of the electricity production, and in 2006-7, electricity amounted to 25% of the total state energy budget – meaning that renewables amounted to approximately 3% of the state energy budget.<\/p>\n

This bill mandates that 20% be from those sources in 2010 – basically in 15 months. So the suggestion is that we will raise the level of renewable energy generated in the state by a fact or of 6x in a little over a year. Even if we say that it’s by the end of 2010, and that it’s a little over two years, it’d ridiculous. <\/p>\n

It will lead to a landrush of half-baked energy projects that we’ll pay for in our utility bills for the next 20 years.<\/p>\n

I’d firmly support an initiative that did 3 things – set aside funds to restructure the state electricity transmission infrastructure; do environmental clearance and preplanning for two to three nuclear plants; and budgeted funds to bring renewables online subject to certain economic criteria (i.e. seed equity for renewables projects). <\/p>\n

This isn’t that initiative.<\/p>\n

Prop 10 is the T. Boone Pickens-supported initiative that will provide $5 billion in GO bonds to a) incent consumers to buy NGV and other alt-fuel vehicles; b) provide research grants for energy R & D and education.<\/p>\n

Pickens is betting big on natural-gas powered cars. I like NGV’s – they are far greener than my hybrid, for example, and if you’ve ever read Amory Lovins’ “Soft Energy Paths<\/a>,” they offer a potential roadmap to a hydrogen-based transportation system.<\/p>\n

But subsidizing the purchase of NGV’s to help Picken’s investments in the natural-gas business seems like a little much. I do think the state can act in some ways – by subsidizing public natural gas pumping stations as well as the purchase of home devices that compress residential natural gas into CNG. But this seems like a stretch, particularly in a time when the state is having trouble servicing it’s current obligations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Armed Liberal says “No on 7” and “No on 10” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}