Consumer Spending Up — To Pay for Energy!

The Los Ange­les Times is report­ing today that con­sumer spend­ing rose 0.7% in Feb­ru­ary with most of that going to cover ris­ing costs for food and energy. At the same time, the Times reported that gaso­line prices in Cal­i­for­nia now top $4.00/gallon for self-serve reg­u­lar — an increase of more than 94¢ per gal­lon from one year ago.

While over­all infla­tion remains low, infla­tion in the volatile energy sec­tor is tak­ing off. Oil prices remain above $100/barrel, while the price of nat­ural gas is expected to climb sub­stan­tially over the next year. Given that so much of the elec­tric­ity used in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia comes from gas-fired power plants, it is clear that elec­tric­ity prices will con­tinue to climb, and likely higher and faster than they have in the past. Com­bine that with the need to address anthro­pogenic cli­mate change, and the urgency of find­ing alter­na­tive energy sources that are not sub­ject to extreme price fluc­tu­a­tions becomes ever more apparent.

But evil Dogbert’s imag­i­nary press releases aside, it is not nec­es­sary to dream up some “new green energy tech­nol­ogy break­through” to meet our needs.  Solar power is a tried and true tech­nol­ogy that pro­vides build­ing own­ers with a sub­stan­tial return on invest­ment while reduc­ing the building’s car­bon foot­print and pro­vid­ing a true hedge against run­away energy costs.

Today the Cal­i­for­nia Assem­bly finally got over the hur­dle imposed by some of its less vision­ary mem­bers and passed SB 2X which pro­vides for a 33% Renew­able Energy Port­fo­lio Stan­dard for the util­i­ties in the state. Presided over today by solar cham­pion Mike Gatto (D-Glendale), the debate on the Assem­bly floor was lively and, for the most part, enlight­ened. The bill now goes to Gov­er­nor Brown who is expected to sign it.

There are many more pol­icy steps that the leg­is­la­ture needs to advance — none more impor­tant than a statewide feed-in tar­iff to replace the exist­ing patch­work quilt of “now you see ‘em, now you don’t” rebates — but today was a good start.  As solar becomes more com­mon­place, we will see the day when con­sumers don’t worry about their energy costs because they are locked-in for the next 25 years.

Now if we could only do some­thing about food prices!