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Something like making the producer of the thing causing remnant environmental leftovers fiscally responsible for cleaning them up? That would price cleanup into
by kromem 7y ago
Something like making the producer of the thing causing remnant environmental leftovers fiscally responsible for cleaning them up? That would price cleanup into the sticker price.
Should probably be a thing for plastics, coal, natural gas, meat, etc.
But hey - that would undo the indirect subsidy of offloading pollution onto governments and future generations, and we can't have that now...
Man, the biggest con these companies played was dodging upstream responsibility by pushing PSAs of individual personal responsibility while lobbying frantically to avoid actual regulation. "Dear consumer, turn off your A/C when in the other room to save the environment, rainbows, and cute furry creatures" instead of "hey energy company, clean up your crap."
- acidburnNSA 7y agoYeah that would do it. Can you imagine fossil fuel power plants paying a cut of their electricity revenues into a "Climate Change Fund" that accumulated over decades to help solve the problem? I'd love that. In 1982 the Nuclear Waste Policy Act established the Nuclear Waste Fund which does exactly this, but for nuclear waste. Rate payers have been paying for nuclear waste disposal ever since, and it's up to around $40B! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Waste_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Fund#Nuclear_Was...
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoI can't imagine it, but that's exactly the sort of thing we need for coal, oil, gas and nuclear. Well everything really, to solve the incessant tendency to fail the business and let the state sort (or not) the cleanup adequately. Whatever way it's done needs to provide a level playing field to permit real comparisons of cost, environmental impact, and real consequences for not bothering to fix the pipeline leak etc. If you want to subsidise green energy (or fossil), it should be a visible layer on top, not baked in so you can't easily compare. Maybe then, markets could start giving the correct answers...
- mattmanser 7y agoIt won't work, as when it comes time to pay for the cleanup the parent company will go 'bust', and like a phoenix a new company will rise from the ashes with the same owners.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoI'm sure there's lots of fair and creative ideas could be dreamed up that can solve this, without destroying commerce, or leaving gaping loopholes. Do we want sustainable, or just the pretence of it? How about requiring some large percent of turnover or profit to be held in escrow until decommissioning? Set it at whatever level necessary such that all companies will eventually get a refund from it, only if they still exist, otherwise it goes to state coffers, or distributed to the population. Added bonus of encouraging some long-termism. Beats socialising all losses and cleanups via the state. Might not be quite so popular with the extremely wealthy. :)
- sgregnt 7y agoIt is always the consume who pays, never the producers, any proruction expenses are factored in the commodity price. The revenue margins do not change all that much in a competitive industry.
- tolien 7y agoThat’s not necessarily a problem — coal power being more expensive to run by virtue of a tax on production means there’s an opportunity for renewable energy to undercut it without having to be subsidised directly as the “good” option (c.f. how fracking has reduced the price of gas to the point that running a coal plant is economic madness).
- Tepix 7y ago40B will not be enough to clean up the mess left behind by nuclear planets AND take care of radioactive waste for 100.000+ years.
- moogly 7y agoYeah. The Fukushima cleanup has already cost almost half of that fund, and estimated to have cost upwards to 200 billion when it's done (but who knows). The total economic damage caused by Chernobyl is estimated to be 235 billion dollars (but who really knows).
- ceejayoz 7y agoThat's like comparing a car crash to an oil change, though. Cleaning up after a disaster isn't the same as cleaning up a plant's stored waste.
- bbojan 7y agoAnd you base that statement on what exactly? I could as well say that I've calculated that 42 dollars will be enough to take care of all the leftover nuclear waste forever.
- bildung 7y agoAround where I live a nuclear plant is being decomissioned - for over 20 years now. The labor cost alone is over €1 billion. I'd say it would be wildly optimistic to plan for €2 billion per plant for decomissioning and waste disposal. The fund has $40 billion, but there are 60 commercial plants in the US. Even with the optimistic $2 billion per plant and ignoring scientific plants and interim storage facilities and Fukushima situations, there are still about $80 billion that are not yet internalized into nuclear power production costs.
- belorn 7y agoI wonder what the ballpark cost to decommission existing fossil fuel plants and install and operate enough carbon scrubbers to undo the environmental damage from oil, coal and gas plants.
- credit_guy 7y ago> around $40B There are 90000 metric tons of nuclear waste in need of disposal in the US [1]. That’s half a million per ton, available right there. A pretty intriguing startup idea ... [1]https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_...
- acidburnNSA 7y agoI have to believe that's at least part of the pitch behind the new Deep Isolation company out of Berkeley https://www.deepisolation.com/ https://www.deepisolation.com/
- sawaruna 7y ago>Something like making the producer of the thing causing remnant environmental leftovers fiscally responsible for cleaning them up? That would price cleanup into the sticker price. There was a report estimating how much the "environmental leftovers" that fossil fuel industries don't have to pay for cost - https://www.vox.com/2019/5/17/18624740/fossil-fuel-subsidies-climate-imf https://www.vox.com/2019/5/17/18624740/fossil-fuel-subsidies...