Closing Coal-Fired Plants Quickly

This is a comment I posted under the post Closing coal-fired plants quickly a fairy tale, by Jos Lesscher, in the Daily Times of Farmington, New Mexico, in reference to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declarations.

First posted on the GMH Blog on April 12th, 2009

Closing coal plans quickly is not a fairy tail; it is a must to confront a human made tragedy of the commons. What is a fairy tail is doing it with just wind as silver bullet. Many means are available to confront the tragedy by closing coal plants quickly. To close them we must first reform the energy policy to enable Demand Side Innovations (DSI).

Such reform transforms regulated utilities into regulated transportation (physical transmission and distribution) only utilities that sets the limits available while keeping high system performance. The varying time and space capacity available defines a market which may be limited from time to time at given locations. The development of DSI will help develop transactions in an open market, where innovation emerges just as in the information technology industry. Carbon taxes will help in the solution to the tragedy of the commons.

For more details, please look at the EWPC Blog at the Internet address http://www.energyblogs.com/ewpc