Electric Utility Companies- What do they deliver?

I heard the comment again last Saturday morning. "Electric Utility Companies are screwing us." Are they really screwing us? How exactly are they screwing us? Is it because they have failed to make good on the 1950's promise of electricity "to Cheap to Meter"? Was that ever a real promise? Nothing free, is.

I want to Blog in a kind way about real issues dealing the electricity generation. I want to talk about why many citizens feel like their electric utility is "screwing them" . I want to find out why utilities are not adopting renewable energy programs and energy conservation programs more readily, especially in Indiana, my home State for the moment. This debate has become such a "them versus us" debate and yet, it is "all of us" that create the demand for electricity, not the utilities. They are just responding to demand. The major brown and black outs experienced by the northeast were not accompanied by media reports demanding clean power. Headlines simply said, "Who turned out the lights", and the blame was clearly leveled at utility operations and policies.

I do not want this Blog to be a debate. The word debate implies winners and losers. I believe if any one loses, we all lose.

The opponents are not other people or utilities or big business. The opponents are energy resource depletion, skyrocketing costs due to scarcity, and a forced, unplanned and unwelcome decline in our standard of living. Lowering the thermostat and dimming the light campaigns have not worked. People do not want to freeze in the dark just to save a little money. They do not want to sacrifice comfort today for unclear savings tomorrow.

Yet, I believe if everyone really knew what utility executives know; and if utility executives knew what so called alternative energy homeowners know; that we would all feel better about the choices being made. We would feel better because we would understand each others point of view and have each others facts and assumptions.

So, the purpose of my Blog is to 1) provide a discussion forum about electric energy generation and consumption issues. 2) Insist that the answers offered in the forum be win/win answers; answers that increase utility share holder revenues while increasing sustainable energy choices and keeping costs in line for everyone. 3) Offer incremental recipes for solving electricity generation problems in which we can all participate.

The problem being that our current energy use practices are not sustainable. We can argue that one fuel has a 50 year life and another fuel has a 250 year life, but no matter how you cut it each hydro-carbon fuel choice will run out some day. It may be amusing to quote, " the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones", and hope for that magic technological solution undreamed of today. Yet, the promise of hope is best realized in action.

Many people think we have a win/loose situation. Either the economy wins by destroying the earth, or the earth wins by destroying the economy. A planet with an environment so degraded that everyone’s health suffers irreparable damage can not be good for business. Let us see if we can find answers that everyone likes. Let us see which facts and actions we can agree upon. Lets make our own energy policy.