When it’s your mission in life to piss off liberals for no particular reason, you denigrate things like renewable energy, social security, gun safety, teachers, and bodily autonomy.
But but only EVs catch fire.
We are just 30 years behind California.
California used to be the home of very conservative Reagonomics to encourage growth (businesses, people, development).
Texas copied their model exactly…all of the Texas cities mirrored sprawling freeway dominant Los Angeles putting growth over urban infrastructure.
California’s problems today, will be ours in 20-30 years…some are starting now.
She believes everything she says. The attention just provides her reinforcement she’s right.
FWIW, militaries will continue to use gas and diesel for most vehicles unless some exponential leap in technology is made.
IDC what makes my truck go. If it is convenient, efficient, and affordable, I’m in. We will end up with a mix.
My condo board has discussed adding chargers, but not enough EVs here to make the expense worthwhile.
And meanwhile back in the Lonestar state we have this problem. Article in Houston Chronicle:
Electricity prices in Texas get insane when the wind blows, the sun shines, and city slickers crank up the air conditioning. Prices in West Texas can drop to $20 a megawatt hour while Houstonians are paying $2,000.
The differential arises because Texas has not installed enough transmission lines to carry clean energy east, and fossil fuel generators want to keep it that way.
Since the 2021 freeze that killed hundreds of Texans, most of the attention on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid has focused on generating enough electricity. But power market insiders have been bugging me to highlight the equally important and more complicated problem of transmission.
I’m not talking about the poles and wires on city streets but the long-range, high-voltage lines on massive towers that some people incorrectly associate with cancer. Transmission carries bulk power from wind projects, nuclear plants, natural gas generators and solar facilities to local transformers that distribute it.
Understanding why transmission is a big deal requires understanding how the ER-COT grid is divided into three markets.
The wholesale electricity market is where generators compete to supply the lowest-priced power, and that’s where prices can range from negative numbers up to $5,000 a megawatt hour. Retail providers, like Reliant or city of San Antonio-owned utility CPS Energy, trade wholesale electricity contracts and sell power to consumers.
The Public Utilities Commission regulates the companies that provide the transmission lines between the generators and consumers. Commissioners decide which transmission lines are built and determine how much the transmission companies, such as CenterPoint and Oncor, can charge consumers for the service.
The media focuses on the average statewide electricity price, but ERCOT charges different prices at 11,000 locations around the state called nodes based on that location’s supply and demand. Often, wind and solar generate more power than the transmission lines can carry, which makes electricity cheap in the west while prices spike in cities east of I-35 when demand exceeds local supply.
Low prices in one part of the state are meant to discourage new generation facilities in that area, while high prices are supposed to encourage new power plants nearby. Transmission lines are intended to guarantee electricity can move around the state for reliability.
A new transmission line, therefore, can boost profits for renewable energy generators in one part of the state and hurt fossil fuel generators by increasing the supply where demand is high.
The Gulf Coast Power Association convinced Bill Barnes, a lobbyist for fossil fuel generator NRG, to wear a beard and stovepipe hat at the Austin conference. He argued that transmission lines hurt competition by discouraging companies from building natural gas power plants near cities.
Like many fossil fuel advocates, he wants to let high prices encourage new natural gas power plants.
Playing Lincoln’s rival was Mark Stover, who represents Apex Clean Energy. He argued that wind and solar projects need to go where they can access the cheapest land and generate the most electricity. Transmission lines enable cities to access clean energy that is cheaper than what new natural gas power plants can produce.
Both sides acknowledge that no one knows what technologies may emerge within the five years required to build a new transmission line or during its 70-year operating life.
The Public Utilities Commission and the Texas Legislature plan to overhaul Texas’ electricity market, and how much transmission to build remains a dilemma. Will Texas make clean energy from rural areas more reliable and fight climate change? Or will we encourage companies to burn fossil fuels closer to major cities?
The correct answer is a compromise that allows room for new technologies to compete, too.
Executives overseeing billions of dollars in fixed assets, though, made their case to the Gulf Coast Power Association audience for why their method of generation should win out. Attendees heard PUC Commissioner Will McAdams express his support for “dispatch-able” electricity, a code word for fossil fuels. New ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas was listening closely.
A phrase I didn’t hear at the conference was climate change. A lot of powerful people remain ready to sacrifice longterm sustainability for short-term profits if the public doesn’t stop them, and that is undebatable.
You don’t think Abbott knows? They are doing this on purpose to fleece us.
Oh, I think they all know. ERCOT and PUC are composed of political appointees that
are supported by entities that make large donations. ERCOT is mostly silent on building
out needed infrastructure and does not publish the data on curtailments of renewable energy
for a reason. The last time I looked in to finding info on their plans, the best I could find they were studying it and doing “testing”. Don’t hold your breath waiting on these guys.
Did you mean this second post for another thread?
No, just showing that gas stations catch fire too. EV haters like to throw up EV’s on fire, as if regular cars don’t catch fire either.
Ah…didn’t catch that. Nice one.
I’m not against EVs but see attached. They use oil etc to create the batteries behind the scenes so he’s saying emissions still happen in the build process.
It’s an interesting take on it
To me it’s not an interesting take at all. Fundamental flaw here…“there are no such thing as a zero emissions vehicle”…he “proves” this by pointing out it takes resources and energy that do have emissions to produce them. No $hit Sherlock. Nobody ever said it didn’t. That’s a complete strawman argument.
On the road an EV has no emissions. How is that hard to understand? It’s not. He knows the error he’s intentionally making.
We’ve talked about this already on this thread…Add up costs from production to operation and in a very short period time EV’s have less impact than ICE’s. Over their lifetimes, it’s no where close.
Will we have the resources by 2035…that’s another questions that the market can/will answer over time.
What the heck was that? 
My man! Generally reviews and repairs used cars
It’s a parody right? 