The Sunday Seattle Times headlines a Traffic Lab article “PSE customers hit with soaring electric bills”. It claimed , “Washington’s residential electricity prices, while still below the rest of the national average”. Yet the article includes a graph showing Puget Sound Energy charging $166 per month vs $144 national average. The high cost the apparent result of PSE “building a wind farm in Montana and severing ties to the state’s coal power”. That “Washington’s laws currently allow utilities to pass on the costs of complying with state’s climate goals on to customers.”
The Opinion section of the same paper headlined “Cities demonize data centers at their own peril” and Editorial opined, “State Lawmakers Should Regulate Data Center Development”. The first suggests cities should welcome data centers requiring lots of power and water. The second saying the state should regulate how they do so.
The increased electrical bills are presumably the result of PSE needing to comply with the 2019 Clean Energy Implementation Plan (CEIP) requiring they phase out coal power by 2025, be carbon neutral by 2030 and be carbon free by 2045. Yet any climate benefit from carbon emission reduction from Washtingtons CEIP is limited to the state only emitting 1.2% of the country’s 11% of planets, or ~0.12% of the total emissions.. A benefit dwarfed by the jet stream from China’s 30% of the planet’s total emissions. Another reason why only Washington and California are attempting this approach.
The bottom line is the “soaring electrical bills” will have very little effect on Washington’s climate.
No comments:
Post a Comment