The well-connected and well-to-do have the resources to avoid the onerous consequences of their policy. We don't. More detail on the CEO's "optimistic" utilities emissions report.
The well to do and the well connected are safe from the consequences of their policy. The rest of us ... well, I have some bad news for you.
The picture attached to this post came from Twitter. Someone had shared a tweet from VP Harris showing her and her husband at Thanksgiving.
The notable part with regard to this post is circled in red.
Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. Get your pearl-clutching hand ready because that is indeed a gas stove. Putting aside questions of whether or not our nation's VP is aware that gas stoves are the devil's workshop, and returning to seriousness, it got me thinking about how we ordinary people get stuck with the rules made by the well to do and the well connected.
How we, lacking their resources, find ourselves at the mercy of the policy they create. For you see, no matter what, those that have money can continue their lifestyle unaffected by the rules they and their friends put in.
A clear example is in the photo of VP Harris. Do you suppose that any rules re. greenhouse gas emissions for natural gas will slow her cooking down?
Want another? Consider the situation in the wealthy mountain enclaves. The governments up there are either instituting, or will soon institute, rules requiring owners of things like hot tubs to offset their wanton carbon emissions or pay a fee. See the link below and the relevant quote therefrom attached as another screenshot.
Either by direct payment or by installing solar panels, it's just money. If you have the juice to live in Aspen, are a few solar panels going to stop you from soaking in heated bliss?
Exactly.
For you and I, however, this is not the case. As requirements rise, so do prices and eventually, we're priced out of things that we otherwise might have had. I don't just mean complaining about hot tubs either. That's just emblematic of the problem.
What about cooking the way you want? What about driving the car that works for you, your family, your budget? What about a home you can afford? What about prices rising because of the regulations on business?
If you have the money, these are minor inconveniences. If you don't, they put definite (and ever-shrinking) boundaries on what you can do.
These same policymakers might then turn around and express sympathy for the expense by offering subsidies so those who struggle to live can afford to follow their rules. Say, they use our tax dollars to help those with low incomes to buy electric bikes in Denver.
Let me repeat the important part of that phrase, "our tax dollars". Not theirs. Ours.
For us in the middle of the road, neither rich nor low income, the end result is like a double hit in football where someone takes out your knees while his teammate hits you in the chest. We lose the ability to choose and pay more ... while at the same time paying more to soften the blow for those who have lower incomes.
https://coloradosun.com/2023/08/15/mountain-town-greenhouse-gases-hot-tubs-fire-pits-colorado/
I would say the Colorado Energy Office's (CEO) commissioned report linked first below is indeed "optimistic".
The CEO was also so jazzed at the results they got back, in fact, that they chose to go ahead and stop there. See screenshot 1 attached (from the report).
My question, as an unrepentant skeptic, is this: did they get the answer they wanted to hear and thus decided to stop looking?
I posted a bit back about the CEO's report on Clean Energy Planning for 2040. The reporter had characterized the draft report as "optimistic". I promised an update when a fuller version of the report came out. That time has come: I recently got a copy and have had time to look it over.
I will leave it to you to read the draft report** in more detail, but I will take the opportunity to abstract it and provide some of my own comment here (both to help in understanding and also to offer tips on how to read and assess reports like these since they are frequently used by policymakers).
Let's start by what the report is about. State law requires cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by electric utilities. As our state starts to wind down electrical generation by things like coal (now and the near future) and then by natural gas (further in the future) with the eventual endpoint of completely fossil-fuel free generation, those in charge want to start to plan. That is the genesis of plans and models like the attached.
The CEO hired a company to make a forecast for various scenarios Colorado could adopt to meet the legally-required greenhouse gas targets, making a note of energy needs, costs, and emissions for each. These different scenarios start on p 3 of the report, and the scenario that so enthralled the CEO as to get them to call a halt to further exploration is attached in screenshot 2.
These are the circumstances modeled whenever you see the words "Economic Deployment" referenced in the report (and the first screenshot).
A glance at the screenshot makes it pretty clear why the CEO would want this report out there: our state will, without any cost at all, without any real sacrifice, meet all the goals set for us by law. Yep, just by keepin' on keepin' on, we'll be doing great.
Optimistic indeed. I think the reporter I referenced earlier used the word as a dig on whether or not we'll hit the climate goals, but I would enlarge that to say that the idea we'll do this without any economic or lifestyle dings is just as hopeful.
To give a sense of why, as I've said before one needs to pay just as much attention to what you're told as to what you're not. I gave you a few different things to mull over in screenshots 3 and 4 attached (I put the page numbers where the various bits came from should you want to see them in their original context).
There are more in the report, of course, but these give you an idea of the things NOT included either in the report or in the modeling. Things like better estimates of costs to individuals, better estimates of reliability both of the equipment itself and in the face of weather, ideas about how this will proceed in the face of supply chain issues and competition for renewables. These things matter. They should not be something we easily gloss over.
As a quick side note too, I'd like to point out that demand-reduction and demand-management both figure largely in making this particular scenario work. This isn't necessarily something left out of this report, but it ain't shouted to the rafters either.
Lastly, I want to call your attention to something that is common to all models: they are internally consistent, but depend greatly on the inputs you use. That is, the machinery doesn't make mistakes once its set up. How it is set up and whether that setup produces relevant and correct answers is another question. This is related to something you've likely heard in other contexts: garbage in, garbage out.
This effect is particularly striking when you put competing ideas next to each other. To that end, I linked to the Independence Institute's (II) own commissioned modeling on our state's shift to renewables second below.
I daresay that their model, based on the same state but using different assumptions and numbers, would likely not be described as optimistic. It paints a less rosy picture. Take a look at screenshot 5. I realize that this is too small to see well, but I put the two graphs side by side with their respective page numbers so you could have a rough apples-to-apples comparison.
Skipping to just the top lines for each, the II model has renewable and storage capacity needing to increase by 259,966 MW while the CEO report has 44,474 MW in capacity across ALL energy sources (including the vestiges of natural gas that remain).
Quite a disparity.
Given that, what lessons can we take from this or any other modeling? I am past the point of thinking that forecasting will deliver precise results (i.e. that the actual energy need will be either 259,966 MW OR 44,474 MW). I think that past experience and common sense are the best guide.
Think about it this way. If you hired a contractor to paint your house, and she told you that they could do the job for price much less than others and on a faster schedule ... provided the stars all aligned and she didn't really need to paint the parts of your house that were in shade all the time, and the weather cooperated, and the price of paint was low when she bought it, and on and on and on, would you believe it?
It is possible, in other words, but is it likely?
It's the same here. If I had a huge differential in price estimates for the same job, I'd be skeptical of the lower number (and also, but perhaps less so) of the higher.
Both for the things not included in the modeling and for the GIGANTIC disparity in numbers to other models, I am inclined to say that the CEO accepting and publicizing this report is engaging in listening to the things that tell them what they want to hear.
I'm sure, however, that the political value of telling the voters that they really can have it all will trump reality so I expect the CEO and other elected officials (Jared Polis I'm looking in your direction) to wave this thing around quite eagerly.
**Notably this is a draft released for people to be able to comment on the process used and results the report's authors came up with. See "Introduction" p 2.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JkODkJ5c02ZBlsTPmI4LUCkLxbaNKBah/view
https://i2i.org/wp-content/uploads/IP-4-2023.pdf