“Probably more than anything, the legacy of past energy policies is advancing special interests – the energy industry, climate activists and environmentalists, governmental activists, and others – rather than the general public.”
“Why then do we even need an energy policy? After all, we don’t have a computer policy, a clothes policy, or a food policy. Experience has shown that the country would be better off without one.”
The Green New Deal is just the latest in the long line of despicable energy policies proposed or implemented in the U.S. One has to go back to the 1970s (when I first entered the energy-policy debate) to find energy thinking this far off the track.
Why the demand for aggressive governmental intervention given its counterproductive promise and results (supply/demand distortions from mispricing; subsidies; unintended consequences).…
“Waste-to-energy had a 15-year heyday, driven in part by the 1978 Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). The law essentially created the non-utility generating industry.”
“Many local governments had long incinerated garbage to reduce volumes flowing to landfills, but that provoked public opposition due to air pollution. With PURPA, developers began seeing a way to incinerate garbage in a technologically and environmentally sound fashion, generate electricity, and use the new law to force electric utilities to, reluctantly, buy the output.”
Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants turn the combustible content of waste to energy, capturing and recycling metals and other noncombustible waste. The biomass (“biogenic”) component—aka garbage—is made up of paper, cardboard, food waste, grass clippings, leaves, wood, and leather. Non-biogenic waste is composed of plastics, metals, and petroleum-based materials.
According to the the U.S.…
Editor Note: Captive customers of franchised, monopolistic utilities should decide for themselves whether or not to participate in so-called demand-side management (energy conservation) programs. Jim Clarkson of Resource Supply Management Company filed testimony to this effect as part of Georgia Power Company’s 2019 Integrated Resource Plan.
Comes now, Resource Supply Management and shows the Commission that participation in Georgia Power’s Demand Side Measures (“DSM”) programs should be voluntary: