> The FTC just found evidence that American oil companies colluded with the Saudi government to hike gas prices, costing the average family $3,000 last year. The question is, what can we do about it?
Electric cars and heat pumps.
This is why people paid a premium (until about a year ago) for electric cars. Fixed costs are better than variable costs.
Doesn’t work if you’re in most of California unless you have solar. Price fixing oil is bad, but you can switch to electricity for some uses. If everything is electric and electricity is a monopoly, it’s the worst possible situation.
There's a state monopoly on hydroelectricity in Québec and we pay the lowest rates in North America while Hydro-Québec pumps a billion dollars into provincial government coffers every year.
I’m not sure of the other two provinces mentioned, but in Ontario we pay artificially low rates for hydro (aka electricity) because the rates are subsidized.
I always thought it to be a ridiculous policy; show people the true cost of their usage and stop hiding taxes all over the place for everyone to make up the difference.
You can brag about low rates via monopoly, but someone else might be paying for em
As best I can tell[1], BCHydro isn't subsidized, unless you count the land usage grants from the province (but the water flow stability is useful for irrigation, so it has other benefits)
Either you generate it yourself or you pay. PG&E is not paying the third party electricity suppliers exorbitant rates, they're just charging enormous amounts for distribution. Without a political change, electricity will continue to be monopolized and extremely expensive.
So make or buy your own generator. Or better yet startup an energy supply company. That's the point of it never beeing monopoly. The market is ripe for entry.
So... the electric company can't become a monopoly because you can spend the money and effort to create your own electric company? How can that not be said for anything anywhere that becomes an obvious monopoly?
I think there are legal prohibitions on just putting up solar panels and going off the grid in CA. Like I said, it's the same cartel behavior over a different resource. You cannot start an energy supply company in California, only PG&E can supply power to people in California
So fix California's absurd energy policy. They "deregulated" by giving PG&E a monopoly, paid Enron an absurd ransom when Enron did what should have been considered fraud and made Californian's pay the state back, routinely harm individual solar owners, and refuse to give PG&E any reason to actually maintain their century old infrastructure that sits in a dry forest etc.
People repeatedly point at California fucking up "X" and then say "look how bad X is" ignoring that the other 48 states in the union (Texas also likes to find innovative ways to fuck things up) are doing various amounts of "alright" to "quite well actually" at "X".
For example, Maine also "deregulated" it's electricity sector in the 90s, and is only recently facing problems from the state sanctioned monopoly doing bullshit, and they have an actual excuse that we haven't built out new generation capacity since deregulation, and climate change means we have had an entire year of windstorms destroying the grid, including multiple storms taking out distribution to 1/3rd of the state.
Where I live, heat pumps suffered insane price hikes because production couldn’t keep up with demand during the Russian gas scarcity scare. I‘m talking increases of €10+k.
And electricity prices are especially sensitive to gas/oil prices due to how European energy market prices are set. We still haven’t fully recovered from the insane gas price hike that caused all electricity to 2-4x in price (with huge downstream effects on overall inflation).
I have an electric car, and I'm starting a hugely expensive remodel that will involve migrating to a heat pump and electric tankless water heater, but even with solar, it's a laugh to say that my PG&E rates are a fixed cost!
I live in the Bay Area, and candidly my choices for solar, inverters, batteries, heat pumps and any thing that will make a home eco friendly are abysmal.
I have a fairly unique roof for the area. There has only been one solar installer who did not run when I explained what I needed. They all have a cookie cutter approach to minimize costs and maximize profits. There is no variance or selection. It's a onesie fits all solution to a dynamic problem.
Electric water heating is interesting. You should look to install a tank and a tankless heater. It's called a booster configuration. Set the tank up to run during the day when you have free power and then only hit the tankless when it runs empty (or your variable costs are low).
Good luck finding a plumber who knows how to set it up.
- electricity can be generated many different ways
- many generation sources aren't dependent on resupply. Spiking the price of lithium doesn't prevent existing batteries from working, it only makes new ones more expensive. Solar, wind, hydro and nuclear (to a lesser extent)
- electricity supply is heavily regulated, for better or worse.
What does matter though is if you can affect the distribution with your vote. I would guess it is harder to affect oil companies, that are often located in other countries than your own.
It's not that it currently is immune, it's that there's a compelling story for the energy sector to become immune from it as we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
And guess what the fossil fuel lobby is pumping millions upon millions of dollars in propaganda against.
It's been utterly nuts to watch in Germany - our local tabloid rags and their relentless campaign against heat pumps (as well as a botched communication regarding an energy-efficiency law from the government) actually worked good enough to put local manufacturers into a serious crisis [1]. Electric cars are in a similar bind - barely any government subsidies combined with falling gas prices, a lackluster / too expensive offering by everyone but Tesla and Tesla focusing more on the Cybertruck (that can't ever be certified to European standards) than on boosting Model 3 quality combined means that the % of electric cars on new registrations went downhill from 16% to 12% [2].
On top of the fossil fuel lobby spending comes heavy smear campaigning from Russia and its 5th column (aka, parts of the far left, as well as the most popular far-right party), who have identified anything "green" as a fracture point of society.
What to do about it - hit these oil companies, including the Saudi ones, with a huge class action law suit. Additionally US government must fine heavily instances of collusion and oligopoly so that others thinking of following path will be deterred.
Except, last year electric prices were so high in Europe. As in 10 times higher. If it wasnt for thr government stepping in, our family business would've been decimated.
Depending on how much you drive a day, a propane powered generator pack for a few thousand bucks (chinesium ones start at ~1000 $ [1]) in your shed should be enough to charge during the night and keep your home powered as well, and unlike gas/diesel, propane doesn't go bad during storage.
Because you'll only need the grid backup like, what, a week or two in the worst case every two or three years? A LPG-powered vehicle will incur all the typical ICE vehicle costs during these three years.
So us renters who drive long distances every day - when can we expect to come home to a 1k mi range EV and discover our landlord installed an EV charging system and new heat pumps? Because that sounds like a pretty awesome day.
This is me, I'm a renter and my complex will never install chargers. I've tried, it's a no-go.
That said, 50MPG vehicles are common these days. My '07 Prius gets 48, measured, a newer Camry/Accord/Sonata hybrid will get ~50MPG as well. Add an openpilot driving system and it's almost like a private train car.
I drive 80 miles round trip, 5x a week for work. That works out to ~$2000/yr for gasoline. That's really not that bad at all! Just don't drive a crossover or truck as your daily.
I'll probably never buy electric, because I don't want to buy a house (just not for me) and I don't think apartments will install a charger-per-spot (personal requirement). That's OK, hybrid is pretty great.
On the heat pump side, I only have to heat 700 sqft - it requires little energy and is so little cost-wise I don't even track it.
Ban oil exports. Why are we selling our oil overseas?
I would also be OK with tariffs on exports, but they are not legal (it's in the constitution: concession for southern states, protecting their cotton exports).
Electric cars and heat pumps.
This is why people paid a premium (until about a year ago) for electric cars. Fixed costs are better than variable costs.