If you want a indicator of future trends, there is nothing better than large commercial investors because being large they have the time and resources to check the facts and the political contacts to tune into the real mood of the politicians and not the fake crocodile tears they offer to the public.
So, when large energy converter decides that the “proven technology” of pumping CO2 under the ground is not a commercial option for the future, that speaks volumes of what the smart money thinks will be the prevailing political environment for the next decade or so.
American Electric Power has decided to table plans to build a full-scale carbon-capture plant at Mountaineer, a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia, where the company has successfully captured and buried carbon dioxide in a small pilot program for two years. (New York Times)
Of all the people who have the expertise to differentiate between “noise” and “manmade trend”, there can be few who spend so much time staring at the “signal” of electricity consumption, trying to predict what is just “random variation” and how much is real “manmade trend” and then having to suffer the indignity of having those predictions tested in real time.
Electricity companies know that there is “random variation” that looks like trends, and then disappears, and real trends that look like random variation and end up with them having to shut down industrial consumers, to bridge the discrepancy between available supply and demand and consequentially loose millions with someone ending up with egg on their face. They know they can’t just jump to conclusions and they know they can’t just let fanciful interpretations take over from the cold hard facts that they often get it wrong.
UNLIKE CLIMATE “SCIENTISTS” ELECTRICITY COMPANIES KNOW WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW, and they know what they do know. And they do know that global warming is just a political fad that is near its end and is no longer an important consideration when deciding future investment in power plant.
Being fair though its because they may not be allowed to pass on the cost to consumers and make money…
“Company officials, who plan an announcement on Thursday, said they were dropping the larger, $668 million project because they did not believe state regulators would let the company recover its costs by charging customers, thus leaving it no compelling regulatory or business reason to continue the program. “
Chris, your comment is reasonable, but I think it is still right to interpret this as a company not believing that any time soon a government is going to compel them to implement this CO2 scrubbing. The other concern I had was whether it might be easy to retrofit .. as in “we won’t do it now because there’s no need … we’ll do it if ever it becomes government policy”. But the way the original is written it would appear this is a significant decision which suggests it isn’t easily retrofitable (which interestingly get’s rejected by my smellchecker which suggests “profitable” as an alternative!).