{"id":5801,"date":"2014-06-06T02:50:24","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T02:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5801"},"modified":"2014-06-06T02:50:24","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T02:50:24","slug":"here-comes-the-sun-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5801","title":{"rendered":"Here comes the sun … power"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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President Obama has decided to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions produced by power-generating plants.<\/p>\n

He has implemented federal environmental rules requiring a 30 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. Is the president the enemy of the coal industry, which produces a lot of energy to fuel these plants? Not according to Bloomberg View, which reports that the solar<\/em> industry is the biggest threat to the fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2014-06-04\/obama-isn-t-killing-power-plants-the-sun-is<\/p>\n

I’ve read the article attached here and it brings to mind something I’ve wondered for almost the entire time I’ve lived in West Texas: Why isn’t solar energy more prevalent here?<\/p>\n

I think I know one reason: natural gas. We have lots of natural gas here and it remains a large employer and is quite important to the electricity-generation grid. There’s little incentive, therefore, to move away from natural gas.<\/p>\n

West Texas is producing a lot more wind energy now than when we moved here in early 1995. Indeed, Texas and California are the two top alternative-energy producing states in the country — a fact that I’m sure drives the governors of both states, Democrat Jerry Brown of California and Republican Rick Perry of Texas stark-raving mad.<\/p>\n

West Texas also has a large amount of sunshine. The Panhandle has more than 300 days of sunshine annually. We can erect a lot of solar panels on new home construction here and have them heat and cool houses while using less fossil fuel that has limits on its supply.<\/p>\n

As Carl Pope, a Sierra Club activist, writes for Bloomberg View: “Solar panels — whether utility scale or residential rooftop — generate maximum power on exactly those hot afternoons when demand peaks. What’s more, they do so at no marginal cost; the sun is free. This reduces reliance on peakers, causing prices to fall across the board, including for customers without solar power.”<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting concept that ought to find its way to West Texas … eventually.<\/p>\n\n

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President Obama has decided to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions produced by power-generating plants. He has implemented federal environmental rules requiring a 30 percent reduction in emissions by 2030. Is the president the enemy of the coal industry, which produces a lot of energy to fuel these plants? Not according to Bloomberg View, which … Continue reading Here comes the sun … power<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540,1021,1607,1781,4305,5272],"class_list":["post-5801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-clean-air-act","tag-epa","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-solar-energy","tag-wind-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}