If you want to keep your job as a porn star, every day will be a hard day.

Have you taken a look at fisheries yields and species declines lately? I see bullheads being sold in fish markets now. Is that because they are a new delicacy or because the other fish species have been depleted?

Oxygen is a known fire hazard. In high enough concentrations, it will cause anything to combust. That other stuff, dyhydrogen oxide, causes damage to porous materials and when it collects in high quantities, is proven to kill people.

What about coal? It's the new black!

My point exactly. In the system that I work in, the utilities are regulated to have a percentage of clean energy in their portfolios. Failure to do so results in nasty letters and heavy fines, not prison terms and firing squads. It is unlikely that non-compliance with green regulations will result in jail time or licence cancellation. It is more likely the shareholders will oust the non-complying management before that happens. The system represents a reasonable compromise to balance the need of the state to regulate pollution against the need of the corporation to show profit and the need of the consumer to not be coerced into purchasing expensive power due to monopolistic practices. I don't see abuse of power here any more than in other business practices and certainly less than in unregulated businesses such as drug trafficking in Mexico.

That level of progression is just silly. By your reasoning, a traffic ticket by a meter reader will eventually lead to violent seizure. Sorry, can't buy that. There are too many examples of far more serious violations that didn't result in violence to really believe that.

Like I said, give me an example or show me how this is possible in the present regulations. You claim there is the threat of violence. I don't see it so I'm asking for proof. Show me an example of violent coercion in RPS compliance, or even in any environmental non-compliance by a corporation and I'll concede that you are correct. Otherwise, you're just talking paranoid nonsense.

Maybe you could show me something in the regulations that state that violence will be the result of non-compliance. I'm not being obtuse. Violent punishment is usually reserved for violent crimes. If that's the case for non-compliance of what is effectively an environmental regulation, show me where it says so.

Really? If you can give me an example of jail time or state sanctioned violence to a director or corporate officer for violation of an RPS requirement, then I'll agree with you. I'm not seeing it in the USA. That is why I am asking where you are.

The demand for solar comes from government carveouts and feed in tariffs. In some areas, carbon trading would also create demand. There are also areas off the grid where diesel generation is expensive enough to create demand for other less expensive sources of generation. Worldwide, governments are backing off from feed in tariffs and increasing RPS requirements. There is usually several years of lag where older projects need to complete. In the absence of demand, new projects do not get financed and built but this is often not seen for a few years after the change in regulation. There has been a huge change downwards in the demand from utilities to buy renewable energy in the last two years. This is due to both the lack of escalation in government regulations and the massive decrease in cost of natural gas.

As for natural gas, it is better than coal (much less NOx and SOx) but still emits about half of the CO2/MWhr. Even though natural gas turbines combine well to take away power fluctuations when a cloud passes by, the backup capacity required by a solar (and wind) facility is usually estimated to be about the same capacity as the solar facility. If it costs 2x as much to operate a solar facility and there is a need for a backup NG turbine, what rational corporation would bother with the solar facility, except to comply with government regulations for RPS?

Sadly, renewable energy is considered to be a luxury in much of the world, including North America. A combined cycle NG facility operates 24/7 and provides a source of power that is not subject to intermittency. Compare this to a solar facility that only operates during the day, is subject to brownouts every time a cloud passes overhead and costs more money to operate when you factor in capital costs. Unfortunately, the economics of electricity today take precedence over the needs of grandchildren in the future.

This situation will change in the future but only when there is enough natural gas turbines to suck up the excess supply of natural gas. This might take some time because natural gas is being dumped on the market as a by-product by oil drillers in the shale fields. I don't mean to sound like a doomsayer but the economic situation is very unfavorable for clean energy at the present time. I'm glad that you have lots of enthusiasm about this but believing in it isn't enough. The best thing you can do is to put pressure on your utility and elected officials to get more clean energy.

The penalty would depend on the state. According to the regulations that I am aware of, the corporation gets fined an amount proportional to the amount they are short. In reality, they get an angry letter from the PUC telling them to comply with the regulation. I'm not sure what happens if the corporation refuses to pay the fine as I am not aware of any cases where they haven't eventually worked out a deal. My guess is that failure to comply, if it was serious enough, would result in revocation of a license to operate in the area because it is under civil law, not criminal law. So far, I haven't seen any violence inherent in the system. Do you live in Mexico?

I'm not sure where the violence comes in. Failure to make RPS requirements in the states that I am familiar with involve monetary penalties, not death threats. This approach seems to be working. Are you suggesting that compliance be rewarded with cookies instead?

It is good that you recognize community responsibility as being important but this becomes difficult in situations where the liabilities (pollution in this case) can be offloaded elsewhere while providing benefits to those who don't pay for the liabilities. For example, there is a utility in California that has a coal facility in the middle of nowhere that generates power for use in Los Angeles. The Los Angelenos get cheaper power and the people in Utah get the pollution. Community responsibility can't regulate this situation.

By your analogy, any sort of regulation is a heavy handed tactic. A completely unregulated system will work with one man on a desert island but falls apart in a population center where competing interests exist.

That being said, if you have a solution that does not employ heavy handed tactics to get more renewable energy built, don't keep it a secret! The present system can certainly be improved.

I'm not sure if I would call an oversupply of solar cells an indicator of a thriving industry. The solar industry was growing quickly a few years ago but that does not appear to be the case today. I can't give you any facts on that other than anecdotal observations of changes in the industry in the last year due to the massive supply of natural gas that has come into the market.

I'd like to believe that solar prices have come down enough to compete against natural gas but they haven't. I've seen figures for natural gas plants operating at around $20-30/MWhr based on $2.50/MMbtu. This is roughly 1/4-1/5 the price of a solar PV installation. Even factoring in a carbon cost, there is still much ground to cover to make up the difference.

Believe me, I'd love to see green power be the dominant type of generation on the grid but the economics of cheap natural gas dictate that this will not happen in the near future without the help of subsidies or increasing RPS requirements.

Just to make things clear, the only type of free market that exists is the black market. All other markets have some sort of regulation in them that the participating parties recognize. In black markets, there really are loaded guns put against people's heads. As far as I am aware, there are no people holding guns to any consumer's heads forcing them to buy power. If this is happening where you live, you really should consider moving to a country.

The question you raise is valid but cannot be easily answered with the usual guns and butter theory from economics. Electricity is a more complicated market system than other industries because of high cost of entry and the semi-monopolistic nature of the business. The wholesale portion is regulated at the federal level and the retail portion is regulated by the states. The utilities, on the other hand, do face penalties in some states for not complying with that state's requirements for the purchase of renewable energy. As each utility is under the same constraints, there are not discriminatory practices or coercion. Participation in the market requires compliance with the rules. The RPS requirement is no different than the myriad other regulations that utilities have as a condition of operation.

The RPS requirements (renewable portfolio standard) are in place as a means to put a price on pollution. Without regulation, there isn't a cost to polluting and the ones who pay are those who must live in the polluted area. Attaching this externality within the confines of a market system is not easy to do fairly and not going to happen in the absence of regulation. This legislative mechanism is not the perfect way to do so but it does have the side effect of creating a market for renewable power where none existed thirty years ago. There are other ways to attach a price for polluting but they are political suicide to implement.

Thriving is not the word I would use to describe the solar industry right now. Just a few years ago, there was a boom in solar and other renewables when the price of natural gas was high and governments mandated carveouts in electricity markets that were reserved solely for renewable energy, and in some cases, just solar. In the last year or two, economic conditions have decreased the forecast demand for power and shale gas has made power from natural gas so cheap that other sources, fossil and renewable cannot compete. In an ironic twist of fate, coal power is on the decline because cheap natural gas makes coal an economic non-starter. Same goes for nuclear. However, government regulations that require a percentage of renewable power sold have carved out a market that is free of competition from fossil fuels. If weren't for renewable portfolio requirements, the renewable power industry would also be on death's door.

What this means is that there is a glut of solar cells on the market that will eventually be resolved when the weaker manufactures go under. However, cheap solar cells mean cheaper projects. This has resulted in PV becoming attractive in areas where there is plenty of sunshine and a strong RPS (California and possibly Arizona come to mind.) This works if you are a utility scale project developer or a homeowner with a high electricity bill. However, the demand is highly dependent on regulation, not market forces.