Reply #7: i've explained this to you a couple of time before, what is it you fail to understand? [View All]

[kristopher]

If we take the amount of energy used globally and assign a current value to it of 10 cents per kwh (overall electricity is the least expensive form of energy), we can get a rough approximation of the total value of energy over the next 50 or 100 years at today's rate of usage.

I worked it out as about $1.3 quadrillion dollars. That is money/resources that WILL BE spent on energy. The 100 trillion you are fixated on is a DIVERSION of a part of that cash flow into a different set of technologies over time. We don't just save up $100 trillion dollars and then go out and buy a new solution; we manipulate policies to change the flow of money so that it stops going to the people who own the technologies we deem harmful and to the people who are willing to put in the technologies we believe will solve our problem.

So I cannot understand WHAT you are carping on unless you are upset that the owners of existing fossil generation are going to be force to view the money they invested in abandoned coal plants as sunk costs.

Initially the typical person will do little than write a check to a different entity. Over time as renewable manufacturing infrastructure matures the dynamics will change and we will no longer pay a price determined by energy output in relation to the current structure where prices are dictated by fossil fuels but by the cost of manufacturing a solar panel - a state which is not as far away as some might imagine.

So don't weep for the value lost by owners of fossil fuel interests and assets; they've profited mightily and it is their turn to take one for the team.