Yes, a carbon tax would go a long way, but I think a broader view is to look for ways to use taxes to shift externalities back onto the organizations that created the problem. For example, data centers (a popular demon). The two main externalities are water consumption and power consumption. The tariffs for providing those services to a data center should be high enough to compensate the rest of the community for the impact the data center has on the community.
For example, tariffs could be used to subsidize non-data-center power users. Higher tariffs could also be used to fund community solar and community BESS, helping provide greater local grid resilience. For example, the tariffs should be high enough to subsidize everybody else so they don't have to pay more for their electric service, roughly speaking.
I would also advocate closing the on-prem generator loophole by classifying on-prem power generation services as belonging to or leased from local utilities, and setting the tariff for locally generated power to match the tariff they pay for drawing from the grid.
> I would also advocate closing the on-prem generator loophole by classifying on-prem power generation services as belonging to or leased from local utilities,
Congrats, now all power generation is owned by the power company, including your own solar, wind, and fossil fuel generation.
> They kinda do via net metering tariffs and curtailment.
They don't own your system through net metering. If you have net metering you are using the grid as a battery, which has a cost - the infrastructure to support net metering isn't free. For a long time residential solar customers (like me) were being subsidized for the upstream load we put on the grid.
> Now if one could get spot prices and sell your power then...the system gets more interesting.
That's why I said kinda. Strictly speaking, you are right. They don't own your system. However, to me if somebody controls what you do with your electricity I.e export or curtailed, you don't own the the work product of your system.
Virtual power plant model you've described doesn't exist here in New England. National grid has some sort of thing where you can make a grand or two a year if they can use your battery during times of high demand. If I could do it standard off-the-shelf components, I could put together such a system for $6,000 installed but the payoff is in the decade range since we have flat rate power through municipal buying co-op.
> However, to me if somebody controls what you do with your electricity I.e export or curtailed, you don't own the the work product of your system.
They are controlling/charging for the use of the infrastructure. If you want to export power to, for example, the AI datacenter down the road, that power has to flow through the utility's lines, transformers, substations, etc. all of that incurs a cost to that infrastructure, including additional maintenance and faster depreciation and replacement times.
It's like the roads leading to your house - you pay for those also, via some form of tax. And if they are congested to an unsafe level, your access to them can be similarly metered or curtailed.
Also like roads, electricity distribution is a natural monopoly - you aren't going to have tons of companies stringing up independent power lines - for safety reasons at the minimum, which is why it's good if it's run by an accountable municipal agency, rather than an unaccountable for-profit corporation.
good points, using the grid as an export sink, incurs externalities. the choice is to pay them by accepting the net-metering rate or avoid them by running a zero export system.
I don’t know what the comment you responded to said, give it is flagged. But really, the time for carbon taxes was 15y ago. It’s not such a small bandaid compared to the size of the problem
