I thought Steven Karels made a very good point on the Journal of Nuclear Physics in response to a question I put to Andrea Rossi there. My question to Rossi was about how long he estimated it would take for a power plant to achieve a return on investment it switched from coal power to E-Cat power.
Rossi did not answer the question, saying that calculation could only be made after the current testing was completed, but Steve Karels responded to me saying:
In my opinion, the conversion to eCat technology for coal-fired electricity production plants will be more driven by the need to upgrade the plants to meet carbon emission reduction requirements. These modifications are estimated to increase electricity costs by between 60% and 80% of current price.
So it is a complex problem and more than a simple cost of fuel saved averaged over so many years. The carbon sequestration technology is not mature and may not be so for another 10 or 20 years. Yet governments and consumers are demanding carbon emission reductions. I think this will be the driving force for LENR insertion into electricity plants.
If this is correct, government regulations putting heavy pressure on power producers to cut carbon emissions could turn out to be a very strong incentive for the power industry to adopt E-Cat technology in large power plants. I would think that would be very welcome news to all of us who rely on the grid for our electricity, as power companies are bound to pass on any increases in production costs in higher bills to energy consumers.
And once consumers realize that technology is available to produce cheap and clean electricity they will most likely put additional pressure on the power producers to switch over to the E-Cat. What possible objections could the power producers have? Of course, as Andrea Rossi says, this is all dependent on a positive outcome from validation testing.
