Originally Posted by Michael (Post 11466724)

Wind power has come down in price and is competitive with natural gas power generation. If Oregon doesn't need the power, is competitively priced, and California needs the power, California would buy it.

Originally Posted by Michael (Post 11466734)

Originally Posted by Beaverstate (Post 11466740)

Michael' my claim was by California law the 'renewable' energy had to be supplied by California, it was understood to be from 'in' state sources.

Originally Posted by Michael (Post 11466337)

That's one of the advantages for Canada but refining Canadian crude instead of Venezuelan crude doesn't create any jobs in the US. However converting the refineries to process light crude may produce more jobs since more WTI crude can be processed which may be an incentive for more fracking production in the US. The US fracking producers also want a place to get world market crude prices instead of being bottled necked in the Midwest.

Originally Posted by Michael (Post 11466677)

You may not use natural gas but natural gas drives most power plants. Therefore natural gas prices are normally reflected in electricity prices.

The following is the comparison of different ways for heating for the Northeast. As you can see, electricity is the most expensive way to heat a home and natural gas it the cheapest. However the North east is one of the higher regions for natural gas so for California and texas, the price should be significantly lower at about the 2/3rds the cost for the same usuage.

As you can see the wellhead price is about the same as 15 years ago but residential prices are up in California.

Originally Posted by Jsmth321 (Post 11467284)

I know a lot of power plants rely on natural gas. However in BC natural gas is not a large player in the electric generation business, water is. 90% of our electricity is generated by water, but we do have some natural gas generation.

Luckily we have cheap electricity in BC, so heating by electric is pretty cheap compared to most places.

EnergyBC: Where British Columbia gets its Electricity

The LNG plants they want to build here is for exporting natural gas to Asian markets, and not for domestic use.

Originally Posted by Michael (Post 11467436)

Electric heating is never cheap. You may pay little per month for heating but you live in an apartment and radiant heat from other units, walls between units, and possibly units above or below make it so you not have to heat. When I was in Minnesota for about 6 months on business during the winter, we stayed in an apartment and we never turned on the heat. In fact the unit was so warm, we opened the windows to cool it down during the night. Minnesota is so cold in the winter that the complex heated it's hallways and that was enough to heat apartments.