“What happened in Denmark was similar to the experience in Georgia, where the state’s legislature voted to end its nation-high EV incentive program of $5,000 per vehicle, and to add a tax to EVs to account for road wear and tear. After the incentive was eliminated effective July 1, 2015, car dealers couldn’t give EVs away.”
“It appears from all the EV data we have examined worldwide that no country has crossed that gap from early movers/EV advocates to mass market appeal. It is all about battery costs, range anxiety, and subsidies. Until there are significant technological breakthroughs, government subsidies cannot be abandoned.”
Norway is approaching its next election on September 11, 2017, when the 169 members of the legislative body, the Storting, will be chosen for new four-year terms. One of the issues at play in the election campaign is the cost of the country’s generous electric vehicle (EV) subsidy program, which has been a central tenet of the government’s efforts to shift its transportation sector from fossil fuels to electricity.…
Continue Reading“Rather than adopt costly regulatory measures that serve to suppress energy use and economic growth, policy makers should seek to eliminate government interventions in the marketplace that obstruct emission reductions and discourage the adoption of lower emission technologies. Such an approach is a ‘no regrets’ strategy….”
“A true ‘no regrets’ approach to climate change is not greater government controls on economic activity, but fewer. Economic growth, market institutions, and technological advance are often the most effective forms of insurance that a civilization can have.”
– Jonathan Adler, “Greenhouse Policy Without Regrets: A Free Market Approach to the Uncertain Risks of Climate Change,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, July 14, 2000.
MasterResource from time to time reprints free-market-oriented energy/climate analysis that was bold for its time and still resonates today. Unlike the neo-Malthusians, our side’s work has held up well.…
Continue ReadingThe much touted benefits of wind come with a fatal caveat: industrial wind turbines–suffering from intermittency, low average-usage factors, remote siting, relatively high (and all-up-front) costs–are uneconomic. So the fact that the Wind industry creates jobs and can piggyback on consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral, baseload power is no consolation.
The starting point of economics is that wants exceed resources. Market prices are therefore needed to allocate resources. Out of a wide range of technical possibilities (including wind-produced electricity), only a small subset is economic desirable as well. Think of a bullet train from Los Angeles to New York City–technically possible but uneconomic when compared to air travel. Only freely acting consumers in a government-neutral marketplace can decide the difference.
The new study cosponsored by the American Wind Energy Association, Electricity Markets, Reliability, and the Evolving U.S.…
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