Deloitte survey of consumers and utility regulators

Posted by David Roberts at 2:34 PM on 20 May 2008

On Monday, consultant firm Deloitte released two new surveys, one of consumers and one of utility regulators. There's some fairly interesting stuff in there.

First off, some 87 percent of utility regulators expect the cost of producing electricity to rise next year. Why? Here's what they attribute it to:

Fuel prices (35 percent).
Environmental compliance (23 percent).
Capital costs (21 percent).
Inflation (11 percent).

Asked to rate options by their ability to feasibly reduce GHG emissions, this is what regulators said (click for larger version):

Guess the people in a position to actually commission "clean coal" aren't as enamored of it as some politicians.

Interestingly, when asked the biggest barrier to expanding renewables, the most common answer, with 26 percent, was "transmission constraints," followed by high prices with 23 percent.

How about consumers?

I always find these consumer surveys a little less interesting, since most consumers don't know WTF they're talking about and their answers can easily be affected by framing and phrasing.

The one relevant question, to me, was this: "How much of an annual increase in electricity rates would you accept to stop greenhouse gas emissions from electric generation sources in your state?" Survey says:

Consumer willingness to pay more to reduce emissions

So we're left with what we already knew: Almost everyone is "concerned," but no one is willing to sacrifice.

For story: Deloitte survey of consumers and utility regulators
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And yet the ignore the biggest option!

Note the way Deloitte framed this. Our options with respect to GHG reduction are limited to:

Renewables
Carbon capture & storage
Nuclear
End use efficiency

This follows the overwhelming bias in the majority of the media, and implicitly assumes that driving up the efficiency of power generation is technically impossible. And yet it is the single biggest profitable option we have to lower greenhouse gas emissions, largely by virtue of the fact that our regulatory model has never provided an economic incentive to do so. Let's be clear: we have not increased the efficiency of conversion of fuel into electricity in 50 years. Even worse, we're less efficient today than we were when Thomas Edison built the world's first power plant in 1880. Every other technology we use has improved by leaps and bounds during the last 100 years - while electric power generation efficiency has fallen. How much longer do we ignore the elephant in the room?

by Sean Casten at 3:26 PM on 20 May 2008

elephants in the room

So we're left with what we already knew: Almost everyone is "concerned," but no one is willing to sacrifice.

Looking at this post, there's nothing that shows concern by anyone (other than sponsoring a survey) and nothing shows no one is willing to sacrifice for global climate.

What is the 11% inflation from industry? Fuel price increase is already considered in a cost increase. Is inflation code for additional profit factored in? Is that the sacrifice grist is disappointed with that consumers are unwilling to make, to dirty power? The elephant in the room- grist knows nothing.

by ids at 8:11 PM on 20 May 2008

centralization is lame

The survey, like the media, also ignores the importance of decentralizing our power supply. They touch on it only in a very indirect way, when they mention "transmission constraints". Well, it would be a lot more efficent if we had solar panels on rooftops and little wind generators and even mirco-hydro and geothermal generators spread out across our landscape. We wouldn't lose most of the power while it was send to us, and the grid would equalize the power flow.

But, then the big power companies would be all obsolete, which scares the poop outta them, which is why no one ever talks about it.

It seriously is our best bet though.

by redambrosia99 at 8:35 AM on 21 May 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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