Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

>That's simply not true! 2008 was the beginning of the trend toward energy self sufficiency; please look at the data [0]. The US was far from self-sufficient for most of the 20th Century.

Oh, good grief. The second sentence of your cite is "Up to the early 1950s, the United States produced most of the energy in consumed."

Let me repeat:

* The US was self-sufficient in oil until the 1960s.

* The US could always have been self-sufficient, or reasonably close to it, especially with Canadian supply. It would have been difficult/very expensive at times, but it could have been done.

* This is not true of the rest of the developed world. The Gulf War was fought to maintain supply to Europe, not the US (although the US benefited from the overall lower global prices as a result).

* Since 2008 or so fracking has brought about a second period of US self-sufficiency without most of the difficulties that would have been necessary in the second half of the 20th century.

>This is hard to follow

You know exactly what I meant.

You wrote:

>the US Federal government subsidized your gas (ever wonder why US gas is cheaper than Canada/EU?)

Even if you weren't trying to insinuate with the word "subsides" that the US wasn't actually giving out huge handouts to oil companies, that's what 99% of readers would take away from your statement.

>Again, pricing externalities does not work that way. It's not a "pay to solve the problems" thing, it's a "make the true cost apparent to the consumer" thing.

"Pricing externalities" implies that there is some sort of closer relationship in other countries between the price of gas and its "actual" cost (in terms of long-term environmental impact), including solutions for same. As I said, we both know that this is almost never the case.

As for affecting behavior in the here and now, higher gas taxes in, say, rural France or Ireland does not mean that French or Irish farmers are less willing to use gas-fueled trucks to carry produce to markets, because they have no alternative (at least right now; maybe this will change in the future with EV trucks). It means that they pay more per gallon to do so than their American counterparts. Period.

>This is the most wildly incorrect part of your comment. Subsidies skew supply/demand curves, both of which have slopes.

I would never deny that subsidies skew behavior. My point was that said "subsidies" were, even in the EESI paper you initially cited, relatively small compared to price per gallon or the overall petroleum market's size and behavior. This was true with the $0.34/gallon figure I initially erroneously calculated, and is certainly true for the correct ~$0.03/gallon figure (again, a "worst case scenario") I provided later! Feel free to tell people about how the US government distorts the gas market at three cents a gallon. I fear that the scale of their reaction will disappoint you.

>And again, circling back here, all I'm trying to say is that the US meaningfully subsidizes energy, which they do. I honestly think it's a good thing! It's been the economic engine of growth for the US. I don't think we should stop! (notice how you assumed I had an agenda just by trying to state facts, maybe examine that a little...)

This is you rapidly beating a retreat.

You began your first reply to me with

>Oh fun! I love when people Dunning-Kruger themselves on accounting (I literally just sat up straight in my chair!)

Basically, you saw the chance to unleash your superior accounting skills. Nothing wrong with that; I've certainly enjoyed doing so many times for things I know more about than other people.

You then said

>Let's go through your argument (would you believe I did both read and understand the document I linked!?),

Based on your missing the second sentence of the EIA document you cited above, the answer remains "No, I do not believe that you actually read the EESI paper before citing it the first time".

You are, of course, by now realizing that although you know more about accounting than me, all you have done is to "prove" that US gas is "subsidized" by the munificent sum of three cents per gallon. I thank you for doing so.

That's clever. We also have a central smart meter in the house. It has a standard port (I believe it's called "P3") that allows you to read out usage. There's devices on the market that plug into this port, connect to your Wifi and then make it available to a mobile app. It reports total power usage in real time and gas usage with a delay of 15 mins.

I would recommend anyone to do such tour of the house. You're very likely to learn a lot and be in for a shock here and there. Totally agree with you that most people are far away from a state of micro managing energy, there's big wins to be had with little sacrifices in convenience.

And yes, that was the background of my question: If I'd save 210$ in electricity per month, my very first question would be why I even use that much in the first place. Could be valid reasons for it, of course.

> Oh, good grief. The second sentence of your cite is "Up to the early 1950s, the United States produced most of the energy in consumed." Let me repeat: The US was self-sufficient in oil until the 1960s.

Good Greif to me?!?! You're saying that America making enough oil for the 70mn registered cars in 1960 [0] is evidence that it could make enough oil for the 225mn cars registered in 1999? [1] Don't even get me started on miles driven!

Aramco began Saudi nationalizion in 1950, and you claim that the US chose to up its reliance on them during that period? You have a very interesting understanding of O&G, my friend.

>You know exactly what I meant.

Lol. Ok. I guess I do, then.

>Even if you weren't trying to insinuate with the word "subsides" that the US wasn't actually giving out huge handouts to oil companies, that's what 99% of readers would take away from your statement.

Lol. Ok. I guess that's true, then.

>"Pricing externalities" implies that there is some sort of closer relationship in other countries between the price of gas and its "actual" cost (in terms of long-term environmental impact), including solutions for same.

Again, my entire point is you have no idea what you're talking about here. All that consumption taxes do is disincentive consumption. Per my last comment, often to make the taxes more popular, proceeds are used to "address" the underlying problem, but that's theater/bad governance that ignores the fungibility of tax revenue.

>As for affecting behavior in the here and now, higher gas taxes in, say, rural France or Ireland does not mean that French or Irish farmers are less willing to use gas-fueled trucks to carry produce to markets, because they have no alternative (at least right now; maybe this will change in the future with EV trucks). It means that they pay more per gallon to do so than their American counterparts. Period.

Boy I love a good binary. You don't think higher fuel costs encourage them to sell to more local distributors with lower transportation costs? I mean, we ship roses on airplanes from Ecuador en masse because of cheap fuel! [2]

>Feel free to tell people about how the US government distorts the gas market at three cents a gallon. I fear that the scale of their reaction will disappoint you.

Again, it's amazing to me that you think that these subsidies are direct consumer-facing price supports and I don't know how to explain more clearly that they are not.

>This is you rapidly beating a retreat.

What? Where's the contradiction? I don't care about your politics, I just want you to understand the situation better.

>You began your first reply to me with

Oh fun! I love when people Dunning-Kruger themselves on accounting (I literally just sat up straight in my chair!)

Yeah, because you made false claims about accounting? Are we just entering the "who is going to win" mode? Because then, by all means you've won if that's important to you, but please don't let it cloud your ability to incorporate new information (even if that new information goes against claims you made earlier. That's OK! That's learning!)

>Based on your missing the second sentence of the EIA document you cited above, the answer remains "No, I do not believe that you actually read the EESI paper before citing it the first time". You are, of course, by now realizing that although you know more about accounting than me, all you have done is to "prove" that US gas is "subsidized" by the munificent sum of three cents per gallon. I thank you for doing so.

This is tough to follow too, but again, small brain over here. I guess once I see the light about how (in your opinion) small subsidies aren't subsidies and subsidies to suppliers are best understood in consumer-facing terms, then I'll understand.

BTW, if corn is subsidized by like $5bn/year in the US, what's that per kernel? I bet a really small number!

[0] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf [1] https://www.bts.gov/content/number-us-aircraft-vehicles-vess... [2] https://www.routesonline.com/airports/7699/corporacion-quipo...

Before I owned it, our house had an old oil/wood burner. And our heat pump doesn’t need help from an electric heater until it goes below -15C or so. But then it is a 20 year old heat pump.

TL;DR you're probably right :)

Ah, I see what you mean now. Sure, I can't absolutely confirm that, from a physical point of view, all locally-generated power is sent out and comingled with grid power. Rather, from an _administrative_ perspective, it's the case that I don't have any "exclusive claim" on the power that I generate, and my house's power is not independent of grid outages. It's quite possible - likely, I agree! - that the power that I generate is locally consumed; but, from an administrative and practical perspective (esp. lack of independence from the grid), the system "behaves as if" that is not the case.

So - yes, you're probably right!

> would seem to be a terrible deal for homeowners now that net metering is being phased out

Whether you're right or not from a physical perspective, this is absolutely the case from a numerical perspective - which is why I'm extremely glad that I got mine installed in the grace period during which NEM 2.0 pricing is still in effect despite NEM 3.0 being approved (and becoming active in April).