This is actually still done in many large cities with time-of-day electricity prices. The cooling is done using typical cooling equipment, but instead of directly cooling the air in the building during the day, ice is built up thoughout the night when electricity is cheap and the outdoor air is cool. During the day, the air in the building is cooled with melting ice and the normal refrigeration equipment is used as a daytime backup only.
StrongTowns has a great article on this, "The Growth Ponzi Scheme," describing the effect that debt-fuelled, suburban city growth can have on municipal finances: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
I strongly disagree with the core claim that the reason is "unproductive growth". That's not the reason. The reason is municipal debt and gross mismanagement of the townships at every level. The municipalities are taking on debt by the truckload because they have failed to 1) manage their resources and personnel properly and 2) tax accordingly to what they need to actually maintain all services, which is why they take on the debt.
If they instead were unable to take on the debt they would be forced to either raise taxes, cut services, or some combination thereof. The past ~40 years have seen an ever decreasing interest rate environment, which allows municipalities to borrow money by issuing bonds, pay only the interest, then when the principal comes due, they roll it into a new bond that borrows even more. That new bond pays the old one off and then they have some more borrowed money to work with. And because interest rates have gone down more in the years since the previous bond issuance, they can pay the same interest. Basically, they just keep rolling debt over so that the principal is never paid down. Example - in 2000, bond rates were around 6%. In 2010 they were around 4%. In 2000, if a municipality took out $100M to build schools or whatever, they need to pay $6M a year in interest. Ten years later it comes due. Uh oh, they now need $106M this year but only budgeted for 6 of it. Our bureaucrats spend every penny of tax revenue over the last decade and never made allotments of $10M a year to pay back this loan. So what do they do? Thankfully the rate is 4%, so they can borrow a whopping $150M and still pay the same interest! So that's exactly what they do. Now they get to pay the same $6M every year and also have an additional $50M to spend on "growth" and "sustainability". This has happened across the board in nearly every municipality (city, suburb, etc.) across the nation. This is why the Fed hasn't raised rates. It's the same reason why Japan is in the situation they are in...for 30+ years.
They mention using the byproduct oil to reconstitute the pellets, but that oil could come from another source. I would picture a system where the pellets are shipped from alberta to houston etc., and the light oil produced by the process is used as fuel within alberta or transported to local refineries by smaller pipeline or train/truck. The balls would be reconstituted using oil available at the houston refinery, or using oil produced at that refinery in the oil upgrading process.
Do you or somebody else have an idea on where I could explore this idea further, in terms of books, websites etc…? Having semi-recently graduated University and moved out on my own, I am having quite a few personal issues related to an achievement-obsession that I have been socialized into but which is holding me back from much day-to-day happiness.
No, I never researched this, mostly because I had to cope with too many little problems to really deal with things calmly and I don't even know if there's a term or idiom about this. I mentioned it a few times on the web and you're the first to actually discuss it. At least you seem to be aware of it and ready to reflect.
