I’m reminded of a discussion I had in an engineering class about clean energy technology back in grad school.
They were saying “oh wouldn’t it be cool to have a smart energy grid with surge pricing, to spread out the load on the grid”
And I’m like “no”
And they’re like “WHAT”
And they didn’t seem to get that poor people who absolutely can’t afford surge pricing, and also would be in danger during a heat wave, exist
And deserve to live
They’re like “but it would be GOOD for poor people because they’d be able to lower their energy usage at peak hours and save money overall”
But like
That’s not how being poor works?
Poor people don’t have as much control over their schedules as non-poor people! They can’t just cook their dinner two hours later because electricity is too expensive right now, they just worked a twelve hour shift and need to get to bed!
Poor people are more likely to be chronically ill and really not able to “tough it out” during surge pricing times!
The whole “if we all make little sacrifices here and there, we can Help Save The Earth™” thing is making some big assumptions about what sacrifices are possible to make, and enforcing it with pricing doesn’t actually help the environment, it just hurts the poor
I know this is a tangent and not what the above post is actually about but it’s a similar kind of thing
“spread out the load” does not work in a society where systemic inequality exists
