But you yourself admit you don't:
These units may be sold at the existing market price, or at a discount, which would give an implicit return on capital. The market would decide what, if any, return that would be.
Unless I'm mistake, the "return" on capital is a "cost" of capital.
These "units" would be redeemable against energy consumed, and therefore comprise what is essentially an undated and ungeared futures contract allowing a "hedge" against energy price rises. ie if prices fall, the investor loses on his units, but pays a lower energy bill to compensate him.
You assume, again, that investors are interested in lower energy bills. They are not. They are interested in a return on capital, and the sale of the natural hedge you mention to outside parties is not so simple over the very long term required for capital-intensive investments like wind farms. That wasprecisely the point I was trying to make in my diary above.
Provided that the asset produces enough energy to redeem the units sold forward (an "Equity" risk for the investors, requiring the services of investment bankers and so on), then the project has been "self-financed" at zero cost.
That "provided" is the biggest project risk, and you just push it aside casually. It doesn't work like this. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Investors are interested in a return on Capital for sure: but it's a "Real" return on Capital after inflation that they are after.
Whether bankers choose to recognise it or not, it is the deficit basis of Money as Debt which is one of the direct causes of inflation - whether it is created ex nihilo by governments or by the banking system itself.
Why do people buy gold? There is no "return" on that other than the fact that it may offer a "Real" return by holding its value.
The same applies to energy, commodities and all the rest: Exchange Traded Funds invested in energy and commodities are a rapidly growing asset class, as are Real Estate Investment Trusts.
What I am proposing is simply a new take on the vehicles which "frame" these asset classes, through the creation - inter alia - of "Energy Pools" and "Land Rental Pools" structured in a way which, I believe, may eliminate conventional conflicts and complexity.
Such a "Flight to Simplicity" in asset classes, would of course be resisted by those who profit from complexity and conflict, but they will not be able to stop a phenomenon which builds "from the ground up", and moreover one where those of their number who "break ranks" will profit at the expense of the later adopters.
I certainly do not push aside the risk of major projects: I believe as you do, I think, that the public - collectively (and that need not mean the Jacobin "State", but something more participative)- should be involved in sharing that risk through a rational Public/Private enterprise model.
I believe that the future of banking lies not in credit intermediation but in service provision. A completely new architecture is not just needed, but is evolving as we speak as an inevitable consequence of the "Telluric" shifts driven by "Peer to Peer" connectivity.
I'm not saying I have all the answers: but I do think that I have identified a possible new architecture which between us we may be able to use to build the necessary new system.
As NBBook's latest shows, the (deficit-based) system is fucked, and IMHO the answer is an (asset-based) alternative - "Debt/Equity swaps" on a massive -indeed national and global - scale. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Tying this in with NBBrooks' excellent diary, how would one go about calculating the "actual profits" made by investors asking for their 10%+ as inflation rises higher--I'm thinking: if you are right then about now is a good time to produce figures showing that ALL investments will run behind inflation (inflating away the $1 trillion--have I got that right? That we're now all paying our part of the debt via an across-the-board rise in prices starting with food, now raw materials, and then items produced using said raw materials?)--
Not sure that makes sense, but it would be a useful graph for investors if one existed showing that their actual 10%+ extra money was now lagging behind (systemically) the necessarilyl over 10% rise in costs.
Then two points:
