Political YouTube Clips Thread

This is largely true. I live in an area where we can chose our own energy supplier. The utility company is responsible for the lines, but that doesn't mean they own the right for you to get your energy from other sources. As it turns out, I'm allowed to, if I so chose, get my electricity from a company that generates electricity through the use of wind turbines instead of using the standard utility company's coal plant to generate my electricity.

I stuck with the coal plant. Why, you ask? Well, it turns out that I'm like just about everyone else in my area. While anyone CAN get their electricity through wind energy, no one really wants to, because to do that, you'll have to spend and extra 3.3 cents per kilowatt hour for your electricity. As someone who averages about 2500 kWh of electricity usage monthly, that works out to about $82.50 per month for the same service by getting my electricity from coal. Or an annual cost of about $1000 MORE to get the same electricity.

So there is the cost issue. But here's the other thing - the wind energy company is a subsidiary of the same company that provides my electricity through the coal plant. The companies most heavily invested in alternate energy ARE the oil companies! You bring up BP, and that's a perfect example. BP isn't going to stop drilling for oil anytime soon, but in the next three years, the company plans on earning about $5 billion in revenue by expanding their already extensive services in the renewable energy market, including things like solar, wind, ethanol, biofuels, natural gas, and hydrogen cells. It should also be pointed out that BP is the 3rd largest producer of solar panels in the world. Now alternative energy is still a small (but by no means insignificant) part of their revenue stream. Yes, they think they'll make $5 billion over the next three years on alternative energy, but at the same time, they think they'll make about $20 billion from oil.

They're getting your money either way. It's not hard to find this info. It's understandable if you don't trust the message from the horse's mouth and maybe you don't believe their annual report that they deliver to their share holders about where they're spending their money, so try wikipedia even. Alternative energy = oil companies making money. Sorry.

 

Sure, but as you said, look at the difference in profitability. If governments got serious on climate change and demanded a fast transition to these sources it would be more expensive to the consumer and hence usage would go down, lowering the bottom line for these companies even if they are the ones producing it. Not to mention solar panels and such don't exactly come with repeat purchases the way things like gasoline do. You can plug some electric cars straight into an outlet with a charger that comes with it. It's not hard to see why they wouldn't want to seriously change buisness models at a pace that is on scale with the problem.

 

Just because they make less money on it doesn't mean it's less profitable. In fact, my guess is that on a per customer basis, alternative energy is MORE profitable than oil. It's simply that so many more people use oil than use things like biofuels, solar, wind, etc.

I wouldn't use more energy if the cost went down, so I find it hard to believe I'd use less if the cost went up. On a typical week, 90% of the miles I put on my car (if not more) are driving to and from work. I do not consider going to work to be "discretionary" driving. As for the house, I do not view things like heating it in the winter, cooling it in the summer, having the water be hot when I want to take or shower, or having the lights on so I can see at night to really be "discretionary" usage either.

Sure, if you flagrantly waste energy then you may want to cut back if the price of that energy goes up, but there aren't many people like that. Most people already limit their energy usage because the cost already is expensive to a lot of people. So there's not much to cut back on. They'll just have to eat the increased cost, and make cuts in other areas.

And now I really don't get it. True, you don't purchase solar panels frequently, but given that the cost of installing solar panels on your house probably exceeds the amount you'll spend on gas in the life of your car - seriously, solar panels on a typical house cost around $30,000 - even at $4 per gallon, that's 7,500 gallons of gas, which at 30 miles per gallon is 225,000 miles worth of gas.

Not to mention that companies producing solar panels aren't looking for repeat buyers. How many people in your neighborhood have purchased solar panels at any point in their life? I imagine it's less than 1% of the population. The other 99% of the population hasn't. So my bet is that BP is much more focused on getting FIRST TIME BUYERS of solar panels, and it looks like there's a potential market in that for decades to come.

While I do agree that if everyone purchased an electric car, gasoline use would drop (it wouldn't eliminate the need for gas stations, but you'd obviously be purchasing much less), you're forgetting that as of now, an electric car costs a lot more than a standard gasoline powered car. It's the same reason why everyone didn't run out and purchase hybrids. You're looking at several thousand dollars more for the car. So how much are you really saving?

 

I know most of the political stuff has died here, but I saw this and had to necro this old thread. Western culture and Islam will never mix in my opinion. I hate to say it, but war is the only answer.