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Except for food, gas, April inflation was tame
Sam Zuckerman, San Francisco Chronicle
Inflation was well behaved in April – as long as you didn’t eat and kept your car in the garage.
… Overall, the report suggested that the big jumps in food and gas aren’t spreading to other areas of the economy. The prices of a range of items, including motor vehicles, audio and video products, toys and hotel rooms actually fell in April.
“We’ve got decent evidence of a deceleration in prices outside the food and energy area,” said Kenneth Beauchemin, an economist with the Massachusetts consulting firm Global Insight.
That’s little consolation to those for whom food and transportation make up a big portion of their budget.
“Lower-income families are really getting hammered,” Beauchemin said.
(14 May 2008)
Great first line. -BA
McCain’s Gift to the Green Movement
Eric Pooley, TIME Magazine
… Environmental activists have been complaining for a year that the climate crisis has gotten short shrift in this election. McCain’s speech in Portland put it back on the agenda. The sight of a Republican standard-bearer stepping up with a solid plan for mandatory greenhouse gas reductions – the kind of plan Bush and the GOP Congressional leaders vociferously oppose – was heartening, even if McCain’s policy is less than perfect. And when Obama and Clinton pounced on the plan (Obama called it “breathtaking” in its hypocrisy, since McCain has voted against alternative energy subsidies; Clinton dismissed it as a compendium of “halfway measures”), it signaled that global warming would be a serious debating issue in the general election. That’s more good news – and if it happened because it’s smart politics for McCain, so be it.
Climate policy wonks – who try to explain this complex stuff for a living – admired the clarity and power with which McCain described the cap-and-trade system, which would set a declining limit on global warming pollution, then let companies sell their excess pollution permits for a profit. “For all of the last century,” he said, “the profit motive basically led in one direction – toward machines, methods, and industries that used oil and gas.” He praised the good that came from that growth but pointed out that there were “costs we weren�t counting. And these terrible costs have added up.” Now, he said, a cap-and-trade system would harness the profit motive to reverse that trend and usher in a cleaner, more vibrant economy. “Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy.”
Heady stuff. Too bad the details of McCain’s policy don’t quite match his soaring vision
(14 May 2008)
The Battery and the Charger B.C. and Alberta need each other’s power (PDF)
Martin Merritt, Edmonton Journal
About 14 years ago, Alberta began to restructure its electrical system, and it’s been quite a journey to the market-based system we have today.
Most people don’t understand what an important role British Columbia’s government-owned system plays in our market. From my perspective as head of the agency charged with making sure Alberta’s electricity markets are fair, efficient and competitive, I see our relationship with B.C. as mutually rewarding.
Alberta’s electricity market includes a host of buyers and sellers. At one end of the spectrum are small consumers like you and me who depend on electricity in our homes; on the other are huge industrial consumers mining the oil sands, operating pipelines and milling forest products.
On the supply side, generators range from wind farms east of Crowsnest Pass to huge coal-fired plants near Edmonton. The diversity of Alberta’s electricity supply has increased substantially. We now have more technology, fuels, locations, ownership, and maintenance diversity than in the past. Our system’s reliability, its cost structure and Alberta’s collective exposure to various risks are well-served by this diversity.
Less known is that Alberta and British Columbia are buyers and sellers of each other’s power. We Albertans buy from B.C. during our peak hours. B.C. buys from Alberta during the night.
There’s a misconception among some Albertans that the relationship between Alberta and B.C. is parasitic: we’re the host and they’re the parasite. According to this argument, our western neighbour is pulling a fast one by preying on a weakness in our market design.
The facts do not support those ideas. The power-exchanging relationship between the two provinces is symbiotic, and the symbiosis is based on geography. Alberta has lots of coal and natural gas, while B.C. has big mountains, long valleys and lots of rain. It makes perfect sense that B.C. based its system on hydroelectric power while we constructed one that primarily burns hydrocarbons. Because of these basic realities, over the years the two provinces have evolved a mutually beneficial relationship – somewhat like a battery and a charger.
The power we get from next door perfectly complements our own – and vice-versa. Alberta’s electrical demand varies substantially throughout the day and across the seasons. When we are fixing supper and using our home appliances our demand for power goes up, as it does during heat waves and cold snaps. It tapers off during spring and fall. Like other mechanical devices, generators fail unexpectedly from time to time. If they are wind-powered, their output is quite variable and difficult to predict.
(10 May 2008)
