Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Brian H]

Lerner wrote: It’s a political decision. If people let the utilities reap a windfall, they will. But people can decide that every dime of savings from FF is passed through to users. The question is how “sunk costs” are treated–you can wipe them out, or preserve them. And ,by the way, small investors hold like 1% of untility stocks.

Of course the cost of electricity will not fall overnight because as FF is phased in we will still be burning a lot of fossil. But the speculative premium will get wiped out fairly quickly. Oil would fall to around $10 or less.

You also have to take into account that things will change far more rapidly over the next few years due to the crisis, before FF can be a factor. The depression might already have bankrupted most of the utilities, we don’t know.

Stranded costs and similar considerations are relevant only when dealing with comparable quantities. The “wipe out” option is very much on the table here.

Implementation will take time (though only the blink of an eye in comparison to the usual lead times for power projects), but I hold that the simple EXISTENCE of the new economics and the new source changes everything. Despite what bureaucrats and regulators might attempt to impose and assert.