I’m not happy about front-loaded costs dumped on us. I can’t blame Ameren, given the hostility of the public toward them. Would any of us risk a technical / costly project that may never have an ROI b/c some pile of lawyers throw sand in the gears?

As for retro’n homes, I doubt the claim you make. California choked off sources and look where they are - ready to suck our treasury dry. Woops, it is already dry.

I am not from the area but I am personally interested in electricity usage and generation.
As I have watched this story and others develope I see people on one side or the other.
In my opinion, it seems both should happen. Develop energy programs to help business and residents make energy efficient measures on thier buildings and build new power sources like nuke plants, or hydro, or wind, or solar.

We really should get away from fossil fuels. Not to mention your rate in the MO area is really a great rate per kWh. In NY we are paying on average 21 cents in the city and 15-19 cents in the rest of the state.

I am not saying that means you should pay more because we are, I am just pointing out you have an opportunity for clean nuke power at a reasonable consumer rate.

Claire, I’d like to see the data to support your claim “Ameren has an excess capacity for power now and may never need more power plants”. However, even if that were true you can’t have it both ways. Bring it on line and look at all of the Coal generated electricity you could take off line. Starting with the oldest plants first. Cleaner Air. I agree with egoist. California refused to provide it’s own electricity and now they can’t understand why they have rolling brown outs and black outs.

Ameren is still trying to recover their money they spent paying for the reservoir debacle that wiped out Johnson Shut ins.

Wind and solar, wind and solar!

Wonder what ‘A. Patriot’ has in store for calm cloudy days in mid January or July? And Claire, you forgot to suggest sweaters as part of your retro-fitting. Jimmy Carter’s idea first, but knitting may be a good paying job too. This letter makes some remarkable claims that I can neither refute nor believe. The risk weighting need be known though. But the folly of windmills and sweaters as the core energy strategy for the century ahead is something that we can all see.

I live in Illinois, where electric rates are higher,and retrofitting our 115 year old home cut our electric and propane costs substantially compared to the previous owners’ costs.We undertook a ten month renovation(this place was a dump!) before we moved in almost three years ago that included spray-foam in the attic, caulking and insulating the existing double-pane(but not low-E) windows, and a radiant-barrier paint additive that allows us to stay reasonably comfortable with our heat set as low as 60 in the winter.I retrofitted the low-E with a window film I bought online and applied myself.Whatever we did needed to be cost-effective and have a short payback period, and most of it was DIY projects,except the foam. While many others were experiencing incredibly high costs for heating and cooling,we cut propane usage by about 50% the first winter we lived here, and our electric usage stayed fairly stable when the rates went up dramatically here.I have found other ways to be more efficient with electricy since then, so while rates went up, our costs didn’t as much.

Conserving energy is the cheapest way to cut costs, but we as a nation don’t have to sacrifice comfort to do so, just make better choices.I recently learned about a cold-temperature air-source heat pump that we are looking into (depending on tax incentives)that will cut our heating and cooling costs substantially.As for air-conditioning, which causes many electricity bills to sky-rocket, we generally use AC for less than three weeks cumulatively during the summer because our house was built to take advantage of passive cooling, and the improvements we made. My family is learning to live more sustainably and self-reliantly as a hedge against increasing utility costs,and I think many others are realizing the same need.It seems that trusting the utility companies to look out for the best interests of anybody but themselves is like letting a weasel guard the henhouse.I have had experience with weasels and henhouses, and it was a disaster.As consumers, we need to become educated about all the options and potential downfalls instead of trusting the monopoly utilities to do the right thing.As soon as it becomes affordable to do so, I will be investing in wind, solar, or both.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy way out of high energy costs. Most of the providers are publicly traded and are concerned only with the bottom line. If everyone reduces consumption, less energy will be produced and delivered, keeping prices high to appease shareholders. Just look at gasoline, the world as a whole decreased consumtion big time and what did the refiners do? They cut production to manipulate the prices and keep them artificially high. Not $4.00, yet, but $1.99 is not where $35.00 oil dictates it should be.

Utility: the TAum Sauk rebuild is being paid for by insurance. SoCoboy, you’re on the right track. Not just Ameren, but nationwide, the dirty little open secret of the Utility business is that the existing fleet of power stations are wearing out. Most were built based on a 35 year design life, and the average age right now is around 30 years. There are some 50 year old plants out there that are still running. Want to see on? Head south of St. Louis along the Meramec River.

Replacing that fleet is going to be a huge expense, and nobody knows where the money will come from to do it.

By the way, yes, conservation is part of the answer. Did anyone see a recent article that stated that if going to wind/solar is to supply 20% of the nation’s electric supply in 10 years, that to modify and build the grid to support all that solar will cost at least $200 Billion dollars? Who pays for that?

Everybody assumes that the costs to take action are invisible. When, in fact, the costs are the problem. Everybody wants a better system, and nobody wants to be stuck with the bill. Here’s the REAL cost question for Ameren and the other coal utilities that are looking at Nuclear: Which is smarter? That the next generation of plants need to be built is a sure thing. Which is the smarter thing to build? Nuclear, which has all the emotional baggage of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, or an unproven, “clean” coal plant with carbon capture? Or maybe put up thousands of windmills? No matter what, it’ll be expensive. What’s the best way to pay for it all? Kind of like the old Fram ad: pay me now or pay me later.

I must correct myself. My intent wasn’t to discourage conservation. It was just to point out that publicy traded providers will manipulate prices, based on less consumption, by reducing supplies. They are already doing it.
Kind of a crappy deal, I hope I am prooved wrong.