Monday, More Miscellaneous -- April 13, 2015; California -- Back To Coal?

I know very little about desalinization but my hunch is I will be learning a lot more about it in the not too distant future. Three things I do know about it: a) it's very, very expensive; b) it uses a lot of energy; and, c) folks are starting to do more than just talk about it.

From The New York Times:

Every time drought strikes California, the people of this state cannot help noticing the substantial reservoir of untapped water lapping at their shores — 187 quintillion gallons of it, more or less, shimmering so invitingly in the sun. 

Now, for the first time, a major California metropolis is on the verge of turning the Pacific Ocean into an everyday source of drinking water. A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as November, providing a major test of whether California cities will be able to resort to the ocean to solve their water woes. 

Across the Sun Belt, a technology once dismissed as too expensive and harmful to the environment is getting a second look. 

Texas, facing persistent dry conditions and a population influx, may build several ocean desalination plants. 

Florida has one operating already and may be forced to build others as a rising sea invades the state’s freshwater supplies. In California, small ocean desalination plants are up and running in a handful of towns. 

Plans are far along for a large plant in Huntington Beach that would supply water to populous Orange County. A mothballed plant in Santa Barbara may soon be reactivated. And more than a dozen communities along the California coast are studying the issue.

Then this:

The plant will use a huge amount of electricity, increasing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming, which further strains water supplies. And local environmental groups, which fought the plant, fear a substantial impact on sea life.

There is only one source that can provide the electricity that will be needed.

It's a four-letter word that starts with "c" and rhymes with "foal."

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EIA Blurb For Today

The EIA blurb:

Households in different regions of the United States have similar average combined spending on gasoline and public transit, but the composition of that spending varies significantly across regions. In 2013, the most recent year of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), the average household spent $3,148 annually on gasoline and public transit, with only about a $200 difference between geographic regions with the highest and lowest travel expenditures. --- EIA

Another way of saying this: New Yorkers and Bostonians get all the expense of transportation with none of the fun. New Yorkers and Bostonians in subways; Californians in SUVs in the fast lane.

The EIA blurbs in general, and this one specifically, seem to be sounding more and more like Chinese fortune cookies.