Happy New Year
Everyone of us here at TheEnergyState.com would like to wish our daily readers and visitors a very Happy New Year. This year has been a tough one for most so hopefully things will begin to turn around soon so that 2009 is better than 2008. Please be safe all during your celebrations and best of luck in ‘09.
-TheEnergyState.com
To Become Greener and Cleaner; Los Angeles Seeks Solar
Los Angeles has always been associated with the glamor of Hollywood, the congestion of it’s roadways, and it’s less than perfect air quality. However within the next decade there may be one more thing that is associated with the city of Los Angeles, solar power.
Just last month the mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa announced an ambitious plan that would require one-tenth of the cities electrical needs to be supplied by solar power by the year 2020. This breaks down to roughly 1300 Mega-Watts of electricity, and is the largest such plan of any city Worldwide. The city of Los Angeles plans to accomplish this through the installation of solar panels on commerical and residential buildings, along with expanding existing solar farms.
It is important to point out that there are many skeptics to this project out there who don’t believe it will be a financially viable alternative for the city. In large part solar energy is very expensive and takes many years if not decades to repay the initial investment cost. However by purchasing solar panels we can reduce our dependance on foreign oil, while at the sametime helping our environment become cleaner. I think it is about time for our society to overlook monetary costs in determining whether a project such as this one is worth being constructed. Certainly having a cleaner environment for all to benefit from far outweighs any initial capital cost.
Raising Gasoline Taxes to Control Consumption
Yesterday an article was written describing both the positive and negative impacts that the recent drop in gasoline prices can and might have on society. I’m glad that this particular article was published because just a few hours later one of our faithful readers here named Robert, sent us an email with his opinion on what can be done with this situation.
In Robert’s email, he expressed a strong concern that the significant drop in fuel prices will cause people to return to their previous driving habits. He also believed that public transportation ridership levels will decrease as people will move back towards driving their own vehicles, as this mode is once again affordable. Robert then went on to explain that raising the gasoline tax would help to control wasteful fuel consumption and also maintain the increases in public transportation ridership levels that was shown this past summer.
I must say that I totally agree with Robert. It may be a tough issue for some to stomach (having to pay more at the pumps because of increases in taxes) however an increase in fuel taxes will have numerous benefits. In addition to helping to promote smarter driving patterns, each state will see additional revenue brought in. This is of significant importance because most of the states are facing budget cuts and on top of this, the overall condition of the roadways and bridges within our nation are deteriorating. So this money can then be applied towards the maintenance and repairs/overhauls of this infrastructure.
Thanks again Robert for sharing your email with us.
