What if we could break the grip of oil and gas companies, slash electricity bills, and unleash an American energy revolution that starts on our own rooftops?
Report from Colorado: Amendment 82 is likely to fail. It would require 55% to pass, and that is unlikely. Voters are wary of any new constitutional amendments after the mess created by past ones, especially TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights), a Prop 13 clone passed in 1992.
And a ray of hope. Most electric distribution cooperatives in Colorado rely heavily on renewable sources. The coops were mostly created under the Rural Electrification Agency beginning in 1934, the same year that Nebraska started condemning investor-owned electric utilities to be part of its public power district network.
Doesn't get much attention but the cost of solar and wind is already down to about 1/2 the cost of fossil energy, per KwH. About 1/4 the cost of nuclear.
The economics alone will drive the world to renewables as the primary energy source, with small modular nuclear as an emergency backup.
Solar and wind are THE CHEAPEST energy sources now, today.
And NATIONAL SECURITY, the supply of solar and wind cannot be disrupted by wars in Ukraine or Russia or anywhere in the Middle East or anywhere else.
As much as corporations try to disguise themselves as people in order to claim rights, voters can see right through this masquerade, even if certain justices refuse to. Corporations have no rights, because they are not persons, not animals, not in any way a thing of nature.
I think that we get lost in the weeds, or as they say can't see the forest for the trees.
The issue is control, control of a nation, nations, the world.
The tool of control is energy, control energy and you control society, a nation, nations, the world..
For those who watch Malcolm Nance's podcast on his substack (malcolmnance.substack.com ) aka Blackman spy, you have heard him mention the Globalarchy.
Their are oligarchies, broligarchies, petrogarchies, Russia's oligarchies, but above them is the globalarchy.
If that is the case, then control of energy is the key to control of the globe.
Trump is a fool and a tool, and thus a perfect instrument for control of energy, that is why he control Venezuela, is on track to control Greenland, wants control of Canada, Mexico and is dismantling and outlawing green energy. Solar and windmills besides cutting the oil companies out of profits, are decentralized sources of energy. Control of Russian energy is already centralized.
The centralization of energy and communications are essential to social control. and the various oligarchies play their role.
In America there is oligarchical control of oil, communications, information (the press) and increasingly transportation, and as of late government ownership, hence control of communications and the defense industry.
The latest directive to slow down the Ukrainian internet, which is provided by Space X, came from inside the White House
.Fom Just Security newsletter: "The order to limit SpaceX Starshield services used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, U.S. officials told Reuters. The officials said leaders in the U.S. Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed, but did not specify who in the White House made the decision or who was responsible for implementing the order. Erin Banco and Gram Slattery report.
I don't. IMO Trump is too stupid to think of anything, except his own needs and how to get it. Steven Miller is obsessed with one thing, immigrants, he is not at all strategic or concerned with foreign affairs.
We know that Trump listens to and acts on people whom his knowledge and influence (money) he respects.
Space X, slowed down the comms of drones and missiles that flew over100 mph, that takes a lot of technical knowledge . tactical and strategic thinking.
Question then is:Who inside the White House has this kind of knowledge and thinking, breathed into Trump's ear, or even Hegseth's ear.
The chain of info is from the Kremlin to the White House.or a rep inside the WH.
Power over people and their importance in dollars and cents is what it’s all about. These people are not interested in living as full and happy beings in a world filled with other happy beings. They are like cancer in that the more they gobble the more they need.
It doesn’t matter what their name is or their position in the hierarchy of government or corporation or organization because they all operate with exactly the same need for power over others in order to have more to gobble.
It will never be enough because their only goal is to have it all and to use as many “others” as they can in order to be the most powerful in their pathetic hierarchy.
They are playing a game with all of us as their players on a board game of their mind’s idea of greatness. The one at the top grabs any player under them for advice on their next move that will best whoever is in front of them, and let the “other” take the blame if it’s incorrect.
There is one war after another, and they have all become meaningless except to the poor individuals caught in the gun fire who are not powerful enough to make any moves in their board of life (that’s the vast majority of us).
No one takes responsibility in this administration. No one.
This administration hires and fires like crazy people (which they are). And, at this point, names really don’t matter. The WH is very sick from top down with individuals who have no real direction except staying in the game and somehow besting anyone who opposes. Pick a name—any name.
Ir isn't money, it is about control. Money is only a score keeping tool.
Hard for us who have to buy groceries, fill the tank, pay rent, mortgage and utilities to understand. For us money is survival, but for them it is simply score keeping.
The way to measure their social status against their peers, in other words "whose got the biggest, metaphorical; penis"
Over 60 years ago I read that Mao Tse Dung, was so egalitarian that he only got a monthly allowance of $300. Which he didn't need, because he commanded the resources of a country of billions of people. What do you need money for when you can command the resources of an entire country at your disposal, including people.
For a year I lived under the roof of my uncle, a Southern Baptist Preacher, who received a small allowance, however his congregation provided him with a car, insurance, medical care, a place to live, fully furnished, and at Xmas and on his birthday he was showered with expensive gifts, and he would visit a member of his flock every day at Supper time, in the south that was the middle of the day and the main meal, dinner was leftovers from supper..
He didn't need money, so all of it went into savings or investments, as well as food and clothing for my aunt and cousin.
I have long thought that every new subdivision should have solar on every roof during construction. It would save in the long run. But, here in Florida under Ron DeSantis, FPL and the other utility company was allowed to stop paying homeowners for the extra electricity they generated. GOP good for the people 🤣😀😀
We need to go back in time!!! We need to trust the first warnings!!! But we are here now, and we have to fight like hell to stop the corrupt way of doing business as usual. I haven't stopped shouting from roof tops that there are solutions to the gas industry. And most of the world has listened. The USA was headed in the right direction under several Democratic Presidents. But BIG OIL has too much to loose if we all turn away from them. I proposed that they re-tool, re-design and learn and invest in alternative energy, over 20 years ago. They turned a deaf ear and planted their feet. At my age now 76 I still have hope, that people can turn this around.
Many of the people of this country live in a cave where the sun cannot be seen, truly informative books are seldom read, and knowledge is thought of as something that will harm people or offends God. The wool can be pulled over the eyes of millions of people, convincing them that developing clean energy at scale for everyone is somehow unnecessary, too expensive, or for a distant future. The most sensible and logical advances are freakishly vetoed by special interests, depriving and cheating the majority out of what is available elsewhere. Without profound changes in leadership and in the Supreme Court, and especially in schooling, we will be stuck and going backward. It would be nice if one or two elections could change all that. We can hope. But I would not count on that being nearly enough. Fox Noise and the many other reactionary and superstitious purveyors of ignorance will still have a huge audience until much more fundamental changes are made.
It truly seems extraction of fossil fuels is at the root of so many evils - air, water, food packaging, pesticides, herbicides, other chemicals that directly cause illness, and the shocking power of oligarchy enabled by the support of right-wing activist judges.
We need clean energy for our survival! The dinosaur idiots like trump and his ilk are literally killing the planet and that means us. We are being dragged away from sanity by a career criminal in our White House. Money for the rich only helps the rich. This so called leadership is crazy! Enough is enough.
I hate to rain on your parade of hopefulness Thom because you make a lot of sense so that means it will never be addressed. Our species is doomed to destroy itself. Indeed, it's well on its way. And this observation is not new. Jean Baptiste Lamarck, the inventor of the species classification system in use today, observed in his last book written in 1820 in which he dwelled not only on the destructive results of human activities such as large-scale deforestation but on the dangers of ignoring the warning signs: "It looks, he wrote, as if man is destined to exterminate himself after making the globe uninhabitable."
The Republicans this election cycle are running on illegal wars, murdering American citizens, corruption by gaming the system for personal profit, taking away healthcare, authoritarian rule, and building a tech oligarchy that would be the envy of the late 1900’s robber barons taxing the middle class while giving tax breaks for billionaires. That’s a crazy policy list to run on.
No wonder they have nothing to say and avoid debates.
And it's Vietnam all over again but now in plain sight as to the origins of the war and the political machinations that were not visible in the late 1960's and early 1970's until revealed by Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers in 1971. Now it's for everyone to see and evaluate. No deception but eventually the same outcome. Another stupid military expedition illegally done by a demented feeble minded shamefully "elected" fascist leader. Vote these Republican fascist dolts out of office. They don't deserve to run for dogcatcher.
Have they no shame? Of course not. They have been hypocrites for 50+years. Remember Mitch?
Thank you so much! I will read the sources you referenced in order to learn more.
Climate Change (caused mainly by burning fossil fuels) is here, happening right now in the year 2026! Climate Change is the MOST IMPORTANT issue.
We need to educate the layperson on what is happening and why.
We need to pressure our government representatives to take this seriously and pass legislation (as you point out) to wean us off fossil fuels and onto other safe sources of electricity.
This issue is now my top concern, and I will produce ripples which, hopefully, will contribute to our country making the necessary changes.
The main reason I do not have solar panels on my roof is hurricanes. I have a heavy tile roof strapped to the concrete walls of my house on the Florida barrier islands to keep it from blowing off in wind storms. Attaching solar panels would not only weaken the tiles the panels are attached to, they would actually help capture wind, helping to tear the tiles and underlayment off the roof. Florida Power and Light is expanding the number of its solar farms which helps to dampen electric costs. However, getting free electricity would not compensate me for losing my roof and all my furniture, artwork, and decoration - curtains too. In addition, because the roof enables me to weather tropical storms unscathed, I save about $16,000/year in insurance premiums. My electric bill is only about $4,800/year. Moreover, tile roofs insulate the house from wildfires, as burning embers landing on the roof just burn themselves out or blow off onto the ground. So, ironically, living where the sun is 365, solar is not as economical as perhaps in Oregon, where storms do not rip off roofs and totally destroy homes.
Electricity is going up every year. My home is like yours, tile and block, so is my neighborhood . I lost part of my roof in Ian, and some of my neighbors had ceilings collapse due to tiles blown off. Now, several of my neighbors have placed solar panels on their roofs. We haven’t had another hurricane here, so I don’t know what effect they will have.
Four solar panel salesmen have tried to entice me to buy their product. Each has admitted that their product is a roof risk for tiles because they have to drill into the tiles. That often causes cracks. If you have tiles blowing off in storms, it sounds like you might need to re-roof. Tile installation, quality, and undelayments have improved over the decades. My re-roofer pointed out that my south wall tiles overhung too far, making them vulnerable to blow off. So the new tiles were installed correctly.
Roofers are at the bottom of the construction food chain. Most are non-English-speaking immigrants. Thus, supervision is critical to ensuring quality installation.
Also, I saw on TV last night the California wildfires. Sure enough, I watched as burning branches landed on the roofs, setting the flammable cheap asphalt shingles on fire and burning down the entire luxury wood-frame structures. These were multi-million-dollar houses. I never bought or rented a wood dwelling in my life.
I live on an Island in the Salish sea, all of our electricity is delivered by undersea cable from the mainland, Puget Power Gas and Electricity is the provider. We pay a lot more than those on the mainland, because of the cable and upkeep, our local utility is a co op, and I bought in to their solar bank. I paid 3,000 last year for electricity, and my house is full of vampires, a wifi and TV at least 12 hours a day, 2 computers, and too lazy to keep turning off the lights, I guess I could reduce the bill, but that would be a full time job.
I have a white metal roof, cost me $16,000 7 years ago, white to reflect the heat.
Do you have 2600 sqft to AC? Do you have a commercial-size pool in the backyard (our pump is huge) and a pool heater? We also have a car to recharge. Our juice also comes from the mainland too, but it is distributed via huge power poles. Once the juice gets to our neighborhood on A1A, it goes underground for house2house distribution. Lastly, about the same time you reroofed, so did we. A hailstorm chipped the slurry coat on our concrete tiles. I took FEDNAT to court and won because I convinced the judge that the cosmetic damage would affect resale value. The new heavier terracotta tile roof cost $80,000 - including removing the old tiles and installing new underlayment. However, it only cost me $15K - the deductable. The next year, we cancelled wind mitigation, which cut premiums 90%.
A caller this morning mentioned Nancy MacLean, professor at Duke U., and author of "Democracy in Chains", who has this recent speaking engagement and Q&A on "Why the right is Laying Siege to US Institutions":
"While Donald Trump dominates the headlines, a project much deeper—and in the long run more menacing—is underway in the United States. ‘We are laying siege to our institutions’, the notorious US right-wing activist Christopher Rufo has said."
She speaks of key familiar organizations like those of Charles Koch, and some new to me - like the Atlas Network, a world wide network of 500 groups in 100 countries with ultra rich oligarchs laying siege to democracy, and replacing it with what some scholars coined as Fossil-Fascism.
Thanks Thom for addressing this sustainable clean energy issue. You should connect with Bill McKibbin and his Third Act movement. Solar is a prime focus of Bill’s work (now and lifelong) to reverse the damage done to our climate by our reliance for so long on fossil fuels as an energy source.
Over the next 20, 30 years, I am sure renewables will replace oil, gas, coal, except for non-fuel non-energy uses. Why?
Already, SOLAR AND WIND are approx. 1/2 the cost of fossil fuels per KwH, about 1/4 the cost of nuclear per KwH,
The only impediment is the time it takes to build out the infrastructure, unfortunately it can't be done overnight.
But the fossil fuel industry cannot compete against the economic. Sunshine is free, wind is free, the sun shines and the wind blows almost everywhere much or most of the time. Felon Musk wrote that as I recall making solar farms of 0.2% of Texas' land mass would produce enough energy to power 100% of America's energy needs.
Google HOW LONG WILL FOSSIL FUELS LAST?
Independent studies from BRITISH PETROLEUM, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford, reached similar conclusions, that at current usage we'll begin running out of economically recoverable oil in the 2050s, gas in the 2060s, and coal in the 2090s.
Unfortunately I do not see a single politician from any party asking that question in public, sad, it's an issue that should drive public policy to transition to renewables as fast as we can.
Not even Conservative Republicans, as insane as they are, can argue with price.
No sane Capitalist would pay twice as much for fossil fuel if he can pay 1/2 as much for renewables.
And DEEP RED TEXAS already produces more renewable energy than any other state, Texas has the sunshine and wind to rapidly transition from Big Oil to Big Renewables, and if Big Oil Execs weren't wearing blinders they'd have jumped on that 30 years ago.
If it had better foresight, EXXON (for example) could now be the bigger producer of renewable energy, renewable technology, renewable infrastructure, and EV's in the world, but as Conservatives always do, looking at the past to predict the future.
Report from Colorado: Amendment 82 is likely to fail. It would require 55% to pass, and that is unlikely. Voters are wary of any new constitutional amendments after the mess created by past ones, especially TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights), a Prop 13 clone passed in 1992.
And a ray of hope. Most electric distribution cooperatives in Colorado rely heavily on renewable sources. The coops were mostly created under the Rural Electrification Agency beginning in 1934, the same year that Nebraska started condemning investor-owned electric utilities to be part of its public power district network.
Yes! Solar and wind. I am Leary about nuclear- a follower of Helen Caldecott!
Doesn't get much attention but the cost of solar and wind is already down to about 1/2 the cost of fossil energy, per KwH. About 1/4 the cost of nuclear.
The economics alone will drive the world to renewables as the primary energy source, with small modular nuclear as an emergency backup.
Solar and wind are THE CHEAPEST energy sources now, today.
And NATIONAL SECURITY, the supply of solar and wind cannot be disrupted by wars in Ukraine or Russia or anywhere in the Middle East or anywhere else.
As much as corporations try to disguise themselves as people in order to claim rights, voters can see right through this masquerade, even if certain justices refuse to. Corporations have no rights, because they are not persons, not animals, not in any way a thing of nature.
I think that we get lost in the weeds, or as they say can't see the forest for the trees.
The issue is control, control of a nation, nations, the world.
The tool of control is energy, control energy and you control society, a nation, nations, the world..
For those who watch Malcolm Nance's podcast on his substack (malcolmnance.substack.com ) aka Blackman spy, you have heard him mention the Globalarchy.
Their are oligarchies, broligarchies, petrogarchies, Russia's oligarchies, but above them is the globalarchy.
If that is the case, then control of energy is the key to control of the globe.
Trump is a fool and a tool, and thus a perfect instrument for control of energy, that is why he control Venezuela, is on track to control Greenland, wants control of Canada, Mexico and is dismantling and outlawing green energy. Solar and windmills besides cutting the oil companies out of profits, are decentralized sources of energy. Control of Russian energy is already centralized.
The centralization of energy and communications are essential to social control. and the various oligarchies play their role.
In America there is oligarchical control of oil, communications, information (the press) and increasingly transportation, and as of late government ownership, hence control of communications and the defense industry.
The latest directive to slow down the Ukrainian internet, which is provided by Space X, came from inside the White House
.Fom Just Security newsletter: "The order to limit SpaceX Starshield services used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, U.S. officials told Reuters. The officials said leaders in the U.S. Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed, but did not specify who in the White House made the decision or who was responsible for implementing the order. Erin Banco and Gram Slattery report.
.
I think we all have a good idea who.
I don't. IMO Trump is too stupid to think of anything, except his own needs and how to get it. Steven Miller is obsessed with one thing, immigrants, he is not at all strategic or concerned with foreign affairs.
We know that Trump listens to and acts on people whom his knowledge and influence (money) he respects.
Space X, slowed down the comms of drones and missiles that flew over100 mph, that takes a lot of technical knowledge . tactical and strategic thinking.
Question then is:Who inside the White House has this kind of knowledge and thinking, breathed into Trump's ear, or even Hegseth's ear.
The chain of info is from the Kremlin to the White House.or a rep inside the WH.
The WH might as well be called Kremlin West.
Power over people and their importance in dollars and cents is what it’s all about. These people are not interested in living as full and happy beings in a world filled with other happy beings. They are like cancer in that the more they gobble the more they need.
It doesn’t matter what their name is or their position in the hierarchy of government or corporation or organization because they all operate with exactly the same need for power over others in order to have more to gobble.
It will never be enough because their only goal is to have it all and to use as many “others” as they can in order to be the most powerful in their pathetic hierarchy.
They are playing a game with all of us as their players on a board game of their mind’s idea of greatness. The one at the top grabs any player under them for advice on their next move that will best whoever is in front of them, and let the “other” take the blame if it’s incorrect.
There is one war after another, and they have all become meaningless except to the poor individuals caught in the gun fire who are not powerful enough to make any moves in their board of life (that’s the vast majority of us).
No one takes responsibility in this administration. No one.
This administration hires and fires like crazy people (which they are). And, at this point, names really don’t matter. The WH is very sick from top down with individuals who have no real direction except staying in the game and somehow besting anyone who opposes. Pick a name—any name.
Ir isn't money, it is about control. Money is only a score keeping tool.
Hard for us who have to buy groceries, fill the tank, pay rent, mortgage and utilities to understand. For us money is survival, but for them it is simply score keeping.
The way to measure their social status against their peers, in other words "whose got the biggest, metaphorical; penis"
Over 60 years ago I read that Mao Tse Dung, was so egalitarian that he only got a monthly allowance of $300. Which he didn't need, because he commanded the resources of a country of billions of people. What do you need money for when you can command the resources of an entire country at your disposal, including people.
For a year I lived under the roof of my uncle, a Southern Baptist Preacher, who received a small allowance, however his congregation provided him with a car, insurance, medical care, a place to live, fully furnished, and at Xmas and on his birthday he was showered with expensive gifts, and he would visit a member of his flock every day at Supper time, in the south that was the middle of the day and the main meal, dinner was leftovers from supper..
He didn't need money, so all of it went into savings or investments, as well as food and clothing for my aunt and cousin.
I have long thought that every new subdivision should have solar on every roof during construction. It would save in the long run. But, here in Florida under Ron DeSantis, FPL and the other utility company was allowed to stop paying homeowners for the extra electricity they generated. GOP good for the people 🤣😀😀
Thanks for the info Joy ... FPL not paying homeowners back ... that's disgusting.
We need to go back in time!!! We need to trust the first warnings!!! But we are here now, and we have to fight like hell to stop the corrupt way of doing business as usual. I haven't stopped shouting from roof tops that there are solutions to the gas industry. And most of the world has listened. The USA was headed in the right direction under several Democratic Presidents. But BIG OIL has too much to loose if we all turn away from them. I proposed that they re-tool, re-design and learn and invest in alternative energy, over 20 years ago. They turned a deaf ear and planted their feet. At my age now 76 I still have hope, that people can turn this around.
Many of the people of this country live in a cave where the sun cannot be seen, truly informative books are seldom read, and knowledge is thought of as something that will harm people or offends God. The wool can be pulled over the eyes of millions of people, convincing them that developing clean energy at scale for everyone is somehow unnecessary, too expensive, or for a distant future. The most sensible and logical advances are freakishly vetoed by special interests, depriving and cheating the majority out of what is available elsewhere. Without profound changes in leadership and in the Supreme Court, and especially in schooling, we will be stuck and going backward. It would be nice if one or two elections could change all that. We can hope. But I would not count on that being nearly enough. Fox Noise and the many other reactionary and superstitious purveyors of ignorance will still have a huge audience until much more fundamental changes are made.
It truly seems extraction of fossil fuels is at the root of so many evils - air, water, food packaging, pesticides, herbicides, other chemicals that directly cause illness, and the shocking power of oligarchy enabled by the support of right-wing activist judges.
We need clean energy for our survival! The dinosaur idiots like trump and his ilk are literally killing the planet and that means us. We are being dragged away from sanity by a career criminal in our White House. Money for the rich only helps the rich. This so called leadership is crazy! Enough is enough.
I hate to rain on your parade of hopefulness Thom because you make a lot of sense so that means it will never be addressed. Our species is doomed to destroy itself. Indeed, it's well on its way. And this observation is not new. Jean Baptiste Lamarck, the inventor of the species classification system in use today, observed in his last book written in 1820 in which he dwelled not only on the destructive results of human activities such as large-scale deforestation but on the dangers of ignoring the warning signs: "It looks, he wrote, as if man is destined to exterminate himself after making the globe uninhabitable."
Maybe AI will kill us before we kill ourselves and everything else.
Fascist Republicans: Not Even For Dogcatcher
The Republicans this election cycle are running on illegal wars, murdering American citizens, corruption by gaming the system for personal profit, taking away healthcare, authoritarian rule, and building a tech oligarchy that would be the envy of the late 1900’s robber barons taxing the middle class while giving tax breaks for billionaires. That’s a crazy policy list to run on.
No wonder they have nothing to say and avoid debates.
And it's Vietnam all over again but now in plain sight as to the origins of the war and the political machinations that were not visible in the late 1960's and early 1970's until revealed by Ellsburg's Pentagon Papers in 1971. Now it's for everyone to see and evaluate. No deception but eventually the same outcome. Another stupid military expedition illegally done by a demented feeble minded shamefully "elected" fascist leader. Vote these Republican fascist dolts out of office. They don't deserve to run for dogcatcher.
Have they no shame? Of course not. They have been hypocrites for 50+years. Remember Mitch?
Dear Thom,
This article is SO TIMELY!
Thank you so much! I will read the sources you referenced in order to learn more.
Climate Change (caused mainly by burning fossil fuels) is here, happening right now in the year 2026! Climate Change is the MOST IMPORTANT issue.
We need to educate the layperson on what is happening and why.
We need to pressure our government representatives to take this seriously and pass legislation (as you point out) to wean us off fossil fuels and onto other safe sources of electricity.
This issue is now my top concern, and I will produce ripples which, hopefully, will contribute to our country making the necessary changes.
The main reason I do not have solar panels on my roof is hurricanes. I have a heavy tile roof strapped to the concrete walls of my house on the Florida barrier islands to keep it from blowing off in wind storms. Attaching solar panels would not only weaken the tiles the panels are attached to, they would actually help capture wind, helping to tear the tiles and underlayment off the roof. Florida Power and Light is expanding the number of its solar farms which helps to dampen electric costs. However, getting free electricity would not compensate me for losing my roof and all my furniture, artwork, and decoration - curtains too. In addition, because the roof enables me to weather tropical storms unscathed, I save about $16,000/year in insurance premiums. My electric bill is only about $4,800/year. Moreover, tile roofs insulate the house from wildfires, as burning embers landing on the roof just burn themselves out or blow off onto the ground. So, ironically, living where the sun is 365, solar is not as economical as perhaps in Oregon, where storms do not rip off roofs and totally destroy homes.
Electricity is going up every year. My home is like yours, tile and block, so is my neighborhood . I lost part of my roof in Ian, and some of my neighbors had ceilings collapse due to tiles blown off. Now, several of my neighbors have placed solar panels on their roofs. We haven’t had another hurricane here, so I don’t know what effect they will have.
Four solar panel salesmen have tried to entice me to buy their product. Each has admitted that their product is a roof risk for tiles because they have to drill into the tiles. That often causes cracks. If you have tiles blowing off in storms, it sounds like you might need to re-roof. Tile installation, quality, and undelayments have improved over the decades. My re-roofer pointed out that my south wall tiles overhung too far, making them vulnerable to blow off. So the new tiles were installed correctly.
Roofers are at the bottom of the construction food chain. Most are non-English-speaking immigrants. Thus, supervision is critical to ensuring quality installation.
Also, I saw on TV last night the California wildfires. Sure enough, I watched as burning branches landed on the roofs, setting the flammable cheap asphalt shingles on fire and burning down the entire luxury wood-frame structures. These were multi-million-dollar houses. I never bought or rented a wood dwelling in my life.
Wow. $4.800 a year, in Florida.
I live on an Island in the Salish sea, all of our electricity is delivered by undersea cable from the mainland, Puget Power Gas and Electricity is the provider. We pay a lot more than those on the mainland, because of the cable and upkeep, our local utility is a co op, and I bought in to their solar bank. I paid 3,000 last year for electricity, and my house is full of vampires, a wifi and TV at least 12 hours a day, 2 computers, and too lazy to keep turning off the lights, I guess I could reduce the bill, but that would be a full time job.
I have a white metal roof, cost me $16,000 7 years ago, white to reflect the heat.
Do you have 2600 sqft to AC? Do you have a commercial-size pool in the backyard (our pump is huge) and a pool heater? We also have a car to recharge. Our juice also comes from the mainland too, but it is distributed via huge power poles. Once the juice gets to our neighborhood on A1A, it goes underground for house2house distribution. Lastly, about the same time you reroofed, so did we. A hailstorm chipped the slurry coat on our concrete tiles. I took FEDNAT to court and won because I convinced the judge that the cosmetic damage would affect resale value. The new heavier terracotta tile roof cost $80,000 - including removing the old tiles and installing new underlayment. However, it only cost me $15K - the deductable. The next year, we cancelled wind mitigation, which cut premiums 90%.
I have a heat pump for 2000 sq ft and an enclosed hot tub with heater and pump,
power runs via poles till it reaches the dirt road that leads to our home and 7 other, then runs underground/
It seems that ours might be more expensive than years, considering all that it services.
Our primary power source is the Bonneville Power Administration, Grand Coulee dam. Yours?
As I noted in my first post, our electricity comes from FPL, Florida Power & Light - the largest power company in the US.
A caller this morning mentioned Nancy MacLean, professor at Duke U., and author of "Democracy in Chains", who has this recent speaking engagement and Q&A on "Why the right is Laying Siege to US Institutions":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZq1zPCul8w
"While Donald Trump dominates the headlines, a project much deeper—and in the long run more menacing—is underway in the United States. ‘We are laying siege to our institutions’, the notorious US right-wing activist Christopher Rufo has said."
She speaks of key familiar organizations like those of Charles Koch, and some new to me - like the Atlas Network, a world wide network of 500 groups in 100 countries with ultra rich oligarchs laying siege to democracy, and replacing it with what some scholars coined as Fossil-Fascism.
Thanks Thom for addressing this sustainable clean energy issue. You should connect with Bill McKibbin and his Third Act movement. Solar is a prime focus of Bill’s work (now and lifelong) to reverse the damage done to our climate by our reliance for so long on fossil fuels as an energy source.
Over the next 20, 30 years, I am sure renewables will replace oil, gas, coal, except for non-fuel non-energy uses. Why?
Already, SOLAR AND WIND are approx. 1/2 the cost of fossil fuels per KwH, about 1/4 the cost of nuclear per KwH,
The only impediment is the time it takes to build out the infrastructure, unfortunately it can't be done overnight.
But the fossil fuel industry cannot compete against the economic. Sunshine is free, wind is free, the sun shines and the wind blows almost everywhere much or most of the time. Felon Musk wrote that as I recall making solar farms of 0.2% of Texas' land mass would produce enough energy to power 100% of America's energy needs.
Google HOW LONG WILL FOSSIL FUELS LAST?
Independent studies from BRITISH PETROLEUM, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford, reached similar conclusions, that at current usage we'll begin running out of economically recoverable oil in the 2050s, gas in the 2060s, and coal in the 2090s.
Unfortunately I do not see a single politician from any party asking that question in public, sad, it's an issue that should drive public policy to transition to renewables as fast as we can.
Not even Conservative Republicans, as insane as they are, can argue with price.
No sane Capitalist would pay twice as much for fossil fuel if he can pay 1/2 as much for renewables.
And DEEP RED TEXAS already produces more renewable energy than any other state, Texas has the sunshine and wind to rapidly transition from Big Oil to Big Renewables, and if Big Oil Execs weren't wearing blinders they'd have jumped on that 30 years ago.
If it had better foresight, EXXON (for example) could now be the bigger producer of renewable energy, renewable technology, renewable infrastructure, and EV's in the world, but as Conservatives always do, looking at the past to predict the future.