Europe faces an unusual problem: ultra-cheap energy - https://web.archive.org/web/20240620151949/https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/06/20/europe-faces-an-unusual-problem-ultra-cheap-energy
A power companies largest expense is maintaining the grid. If their only product has to be sold at negative prices, then there is no money to pay people to maintain the grid. An under maintained gridgrid can lead to very serious consequences, ref:Texas.
It’s almost like energy should be seen as a public service rather than a source of profits. Like education, health, water, etc.
You can have a system where the first few kWh free and then you pay the excess, or you pay it entirely through your taxes. Either way you’re obviously paying for it.
Having it as a public service doesn’t mean it’s free, it means that everyone benefits from it but not everyone pays the same price, and that profit is not the ultimate goal.
Yeah, like, just pay for it with your own money you poor fuck. And if you’re poor it’s probably your own fault, pull yourself up by the bootstrap like my CEO daddy did.
As a libertarian, I actually disagree. Natural monopolies should be a public service because the incentives to provide ethical service aren’t there. You can’t realistically have multiple power companies, so the city/state should provide electricity service.
Power generation could be a private service, since cities can choose their suppliers. They can also generate their own, and private energy would need to compete with that.
Sounds like a good reason for the state to sponsor some energy intensive environmental work. Like desalination plants or those ungodly carbon capture rigs that are super energy inefficient.
In Norway we pay a fixed monthy fee, a fee based on the maximum load we use during the month, in addition to a fixed fee per kWh to the company owning/maintaining the grid in our area. This is in addition to and completely independent of the price we pay to the “power company” based on for example the spot price.
