Energy Efficiency

Its no accident that there is a world-wide energy shortage; its because its too cheap; by this I mean it doesn’t reflect the environmental impacts of over-use.

With climate change being seen everywhere around the world, resulting in changing weather patterns, many countries are re-evaluating existing generation and looking for ways to reduce infrastructure costs, be it promoting wind or solar or other more extreeme choices (like geothermal and tide).

What we need in Australia is a Hugo Chavez (Venezuelan President) who has declared a national emergency in the electricity sector as the country’s worst drought in 50 years dries up water supplies in hydroelectric dams.

Despite the continued USA’s inteference which has some opposition parties blaming the government for the lack of rain in more than a year, Chavez has more popular support than most any other American president.

El Nino – through climate changes – is now hitting the world harder and the Venezuelan government is scrambling to avoid a power-grid collapse by buying generators from Brazil to China after nationwide rolling blackouts failed to prevent dam-water levels from dropping. Chavez fired his electricity minister and retracted an electricity conservation plan for Caracas last month after the measures left traffic lights without power, prompting protests.  The Guri dam is 46% full down from 60% at the beginning of the year (according to the National Administration Center, which operates the power grid) and its waters are used to generate more than two-thirds of the South American country’s power.

A state of emergency has been declared and Chavez announced measures to penalize households and businesses that consume more than a certain level and provide incentives for them to cut energy consumption; electricity companies will charge a surcharge on households that consume more than 500 kilowatt-hours an hour a month and don’t reduce their usage by 10% whereas those that cut energy use at least 10% will get a discount and those reducing consumption by more than 20%will see their bill halved.

Those that increase usage by 10% will see their bills double and those increasing consumption by 20% will receive a 200% surcharge. Chavez said ‘this is a motivator; we don’t want to charge anyone; what we want is for you to be more careful and save energy; this is a punishment to be imposed upon the people who waste’.

Failure to comply with the cuts will prompt a notification, followed by short-term suspensions of service and then an indefinite cut.

The government plans to add 4,000 megawatts of power into the national electrical system this year to resolve ‘the basic crisis’ and Venezuela will add 15,000 megawatts of power generation by 2015 at a cost of $15 billion. Venezuela hired a Chinese company to build power plants over the next two years, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said yesterday after returning from a trip to Russia, China and Japan to sign energy deals and seek financing. The plants have generating capacity of 2.7 gigawatts. 

The down side – for the environment – is that new plants will be powered by diesel, natural gas or fuel oil, which Venezuela has plenty of and they will help resolve electricity crisis with allies including Cuba and Argentina. ’We will be unrelenting’ Chavez said.