The Folly of Plug-in Hybrids in many places.

[Physics Guy]

I didn't mean to encourage using a private gas-powered generator to beat high electricity prices. My point was that if it's cheaper to buy gas and run a private generator than to buy power from the grid, then that's a big problem.

I don't want to rely on moral suasion to get people to go electric, with grid power, even if it's more expensive. That won't work unless most people can be persuaded to pay more for clean power voluntarily, and if most people can be so persuaded, then that must mean that we have enough consensus to enact pricing policies to make cleaner energy align with individual self-interest, and then can we rope in the moral defectors as well as the goody-goodies. So we should be making clean power cheaper than combustion for everyone and taking self-interest off the table.

Whether as fuel or electric current, delivering energy is a weird industry that seems sure to be oligopolistic. It takes a lot of investment to get into the business at all; past a certain threshold the marginal costs of operation are low so opportunities for profit are high; and there's no way for niche suppliers to proliferate by meeting specialised needs because octane is octane and no-one can offer artisanal free-range electrons. A few big sources will dominate the industry and market competition won't do a good job of redirecting consumption.

Oligopolies are often easy to regulate, however. If necessary the state can cut pipelines and power lines until corporations cough up. So taxes and incentives should ensure that clean electricity from the grid is cheaper than buying gas and running a generator. If that's not how it is, that's the thing to try to change.

Another issue is that grid electricity is not necessarily so much cleaner than gas-powered generators. Electricity always has to be generated somewhere, and a lot of it is still generated with diesel engines.

In particular I believe it's hard to cope with the few hours of peak demand for electricity without firing up some diesel. It was twenty years ago that a state utility employee told me about that problem, so perhaps batteries have now improved to the point where they can deliver the 7 a.m. surge instead, but I'm suspicious. It seems in character for human society to get all enthused about saving the planet by going electric without putting much attention on how all that current gets made.