For the sixth time this year, California has run out of power. The US state which so epitomizes the brave new world of high technology has had to endure a new wave of power cuts, which rendered everything from the humble electric light to all the sophisticated gadgets with which an ultramodern society equips itself, absolutely useless.
There are two principal causes for this embarrassment. The first is that the power companies are making a point. Deregulated five years ago, the California electricity utilities knew that they were selling into a market where demand was generally greater than supply. Far from providing cheaper electricity, as legislators had intended, the cost of electricity went up. Consumers were enraged and last year legislators again intervened, this time to cap electricity prices. The problems have, however, been compounded by the fact that not a single new power plant has been built in the state for over ten years. Unlike elsewhere in the country, where there is excess capacity, California has been bumping up against the ceiling of supply. When overheated consumers turned on their power-guzzling air conditioning systems this week, demand went through the roof. The only thing the utilities could do was shut down parts of the system in a pre-planned program.
The showdown between the electricity utilities and the legislators is only a part of the story. There is a second, deeper malaise underlying the California power famine which threatens, sooner rather than later, to hit elsewhere in the United States. The problem can be summed up simply. Americans have for generations been spoilt when it comes to the cost of energy.
US fuel prices are low. Electricity prices too have historically been kept low, because generators were able to profit from low margins on high volume sales. The superabundance of cheap energy has lain at the heart of US economic power. There is an in-built reluctance to countenance any real increase in the cost of that energy. Indeed, deregulation in California was expected to lower the cost of power even further.
Unfortunately, times are changing. Americans who are quick to worry about their diet, fitness, looks and lifestyle, have still not woken up to the hidden costs of profligate energy use. The Bush White House has general public backing for its repudiation of the Kyoto Agreements on global warming. Americans see the deal as a threat to their economic position. They are right. Their country is the dominant economic power and it is also the greatest polluter, the greatest producer of greenhouse gases which is geneally accepted as the main reason behind the climactic changes that have been taking place ever more dramatically in the last 20y years.
If Americans had to pay more for their energy, they might use less of it. A US dedicated to real and persistent energy efficiency would probably not impair its economic performance and ultimately, by making savings, would also improve its bottom line. If US citizens worried as much about the real cost we all are paying for their energy addiction, as they do about disease and smoking and aging and their psychological well-being, they would be helping themselves, as well as the rest of us, live in a healthier world.
