Energy costs are in line with efficiency factors or the energy coefficient.
Costing around 3 cents per kilowatt hour to make, coal fired power, i.e., has a coefficient of just 20%!
Meaning, only 20% of the calories consumed arrive as usable energy at the consumers residence/shop/factory.
Furthermore, 50% of the carbon created by coal-fired power is created as transmission losses, in the wires!
Piped gas powering an in-house stationary engine, has an energy coefficient, of around 40%.
Moreover, given the lower carbon levels in the molecular or covalent bond, NG/biogas/methane produces 40% less carbon than most other hydrocarbon fuels.
Replace the stationary engine with a ceramic cell and the energy coefficient nudges 60%, the best and lowest costing energy provision in the world?
Replace NG with locally produced and endlessly sustainable biogas, created onsite, by utilising instead of wasting waste, to provide virtually costless power on demand; and endlessly available free hot water.
I believe, we would spend far less, even where current costs of ceramic cells for average households are around forty thousand, the odourless two tank digester system, thirty thousand, and the storage bladder another two thousand dollars?
Look, people buy and pay off a couple of cars for more than that, in the same time frame!
[My son's current hand-me-down car is over twenty years old, been three times round the clock; and given regular maintenance, is still running reliably!
If we were wisely led, we would start right now, building gas/ceramic cell powered electric cars; given the much lower service requirements and vastly extended longevity!
Gas/electric vehicles would therefore, cost less in the long run!
We have copious gas, the Middle East is becoming more volatile by the day, yet here we are still importing OIL!]
A gas/ceramic cell per household, would likely still cost less over a forward projected ten years? Than say, thirty thousand households sharing the cost of a wind turbine supplemented with gas fired turbine power, and the wholesale and retail providers profit margins, cost recovery, debt servicing, maintenance charges, shareholders dividends, and tax liabilities etc/etc.
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty I have had quite a bit to do with islands. Some where people just lived, some where they grew things like copra & cocoa, & some where people just went for holidays.

All these islands had a greater or lessor problem with electrical power.

Even with a large investment in generating capacity, & a perhaps greater investment in people who were really good at driving that capacity, the greatest problem in their lives was that power.

The problem was so great that I have seen investments into the millions abandoned, & more millions spent on bringing "town power" to these islands, where at all possible. The only thing that ever even slightly approached the problem of electricity supply was that of water.

Are you really suggesting that in this day & age, when 99.9% of people could not even start their car, if twisting the key did not work, we should ask the average suburbanite to start running their own electrical power systems?

If nothing else, such a system should solve the over population problem. I'm sure the death rate of these folk "just checking why the lights went out" would make the road toll look like a success story

I'd add to Hasbeen's comment: if the power goes out the vast majority of city dwellers would die within a week.

No power means:
- no water supply
- no petrol or diesel (the bowsers' don't work) so you can't get out of the city to get to water
- no banks or ATM's - so no money
- no food

In what might actually be a real -- as opposed to imaginary -- turning point for the climate change industry, the British Energy Minister has declared that 'enough is enough' when it comes to windmills:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9644558/Death-knell-for-wind-farms-Enough-is-Enough-says-minister.html

Hopefully Australia won't have to waste quite so much money for quite so long before our ministers wake up to the facts.

Mark Lawson here

I would second the comments made by Peter Lang and Hasbeen on Rhosty's post.. if individual consumers need to generate their own power for some reason then they won't get batteries, a windmill and solar panels, or those advanced things that Rhosty mentions.. they will get a diesel generator.. its cheaper and more reliable, but even a generator has its problems and so its better to outsource the problem of power to professionals - namely the state wide grids - if at all possible.

The problem with wind is that no only is it hitting major barriers in getting more farms built, it is unsuited to the generation of power on the scale that activists want.. As I shall point out in other articles there are real problems with the European systems taking on large amounts of wind..

Well according to the author, it appears that moving to renewal energy sources is just too difficult and simply not worth the trouble.

Let somebody else find a solution after the last drop of oil has been used up. We'll all be long gone by then and they will probably be smarter than us too, so let's party now, while we can.

Is that the correct attitude?