Today, President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposed rule to require states to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants with an overall reduction goal of 30 percent by 2030. The states can pick their poison, with cap-and-trade emission reductions or increased renewable-energy mandates. Energy efficiency mandates are in the mix too.
This is the latest and most aggressive battle of Obama’s War on Coal, which is really a starter-program in a war against fossil fuels in electrical generation.
Such is all pain, no gain; fire-ready-aim; a solution looking for a problem. It is ratepayers last, politics and cronyism first. It is a wealth transfer from Joe and Jane to climate-connected lawyers, consultants; the Department of Energy; alarmist scientists; and crony capitalists in the renewable-energy and energy-efficiency business.…
Continue Reading“But the truth is that Ohio’s renewable energy mandates have largely benefited only one group: entrenched monopoly fossil utilities like AEP, Iberdrola, and corporate behemoths like GE.”
Senate Bill 310’s attempt to freeze Ohio’s renewable energy mandate has elicited the typical partisan howls from Ohio’s green energy profiteers. They have been quick to paint the supporters of SB310 as slavish supporters of the much maligned Koch Brothers, FirstEnergy or other “dark fossil corporate profiteers”.
Curiously, these environmental group’s normally exquisitely tuned “corporate conspiracy radar” appears to have developed a massive wind-turbine-sized blind spot.
Consider:
“Even with carbon emissions valued at $50 per metric ton, nuclear, hydro and natural gas combined cycle generation plants have far more net benefits than either wind or solar.”
The recent paper by Charles Frank of the Brookings Institution, “The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies” provides a reasonably broad, detailed analysis of the lack of value in pursing policies of implementing wind and solar industrial-scale generation plants to reduce carbon emissions. This analysis, however, while on track, misses some very important considerations that strengthen the already negative verdict.
In summary, the paper finds:
