“Two recently approved solar power plants in California ranged from $100 to $200 per megawatt hour, compared to the $16 consumers will pay for natural gas generation. That’s six to twelve times the cost of gas–and for an intermittent supply that must be backed by natural gas to even be usable.”
As states across the nation ponder what to do next on energy policy, there is no case study more important than California. One of the world’s largest economies, with nearly 30 million inhabitants, California for decades has lived on the progressive edge of American energy policy.
The state’s renewable energy mandate of 33% by 2020 has served as a beacon for anti-fossil fuel advocates nationwide. But as I have written elsewhere: “California isn’t a beacon of progress; it’s a lighthouse, showing the path to disaster.”…
The Sierra Club’s war on coal, since joined by its war on gas, is really a conflict against industrial progress. Reliable, affordable energy is a ‘commanding heights’ of the economy, and the enemy has wanted to take it ever since Paul Ehrlich et al. got going in the 1960s and 1970s.
The irony is that an honest Sierra Club executive back in the 1980s gave windpower its most infamous nickname, the Cuisinarts of the Air. Sierra Club members have resigned over the organization’s pro-wind policy, and grassroot environmentalists have tasted wind only to spit it out (here and here). And the Old Mare refuses to address devastating criticism about industrial wind, such as from Jon Boone here at MasterResource. [1]
Many examples of Sierra Club policy against environmentally superior dense energy can be chronicled.…
As part of its effort to create dialogue with the American people on environmental issues, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently launched a project in conjunction with SMITH Magazine, Six Words for the Planet.
The project, officially housed at this site, invites all citizens of the world to submit a six-word essay describing their feelings about Earth.
“Healthier families, cleaner communities, stronger America,” writes EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in her own offering. Other submissions from within EPA include the existential (“Many Nations. One Planet. Our Home.”) and haikuesque admonishment (“Breathe; A Moment in Nature. Breathe!”)
Catalyzing conversation about environmental topics is certainly not out of bounds like a lot of other things the agency has been doing–and caught doing. But most people have concerns that go beyond the (improving) environment.…