“As our nation’s first Green president, my mandate won’t be just to ‘create new jobs.’ My mandate, if elected, will be to end mass unemployment … through a Green New Deal … which will create 25 million jobs through direct public works programs and support for cooperatives and community businesses.”
– Jill Stein, USA Today, October 4, 2012.
Last week, the energy view of Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson was reviewed at MasterResource. The wish was that the Republican ticket of Romney/Ryan would take to heart the fundamental free-market approach of Johnson for the benefit of consumers, taxpayers, and the general economy.
Then there is the Green Party, whose government planning approach to energy and the environment lurks in the hearts and minds of Obama science advisor John Holdren and no doubt others deep inside the Administration.…
Continue Reading“The federal PTC should expire since it has morphed from an ill-designed temporary subsidy for a purportedly ‘infant industry,’ into an inequitable tax hand-out for what is clearly a well-established industry that distorts markets and allows wind to compete unfairly with both conventional generation resources and even other types of renewables.”
– David Dismukes, “Removing Big Wind’s Training Wheels: The Case for Ending the Federal Production Tax Credit,” November 2012.
The federal wind Production Tax Credit (“PTC”), first enacted in 1992[1] to “jump start” a nascent, but promising industry,[2] provides wind producers with a subsidy of $22 per megawatt hour of electricity generated.[3] The PTC has been extended seven times, [4]but is scheduled to expire under current law on December 31, 2012. Extension of the federal wind PTC has become the “stalking horse” in the debate on government’s role in picking energy “winners and losers.”…
Continue Reading“Households in 29 states are and will continue to see higher electricity rates, lower economic growth and, subsequently, lower standard of livings without outright repeal of these crony capitalist policies.”
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the nation’s largest non-partisan association of state legislators boasting more than 2,000 members from all 50 states, recently adopted a firm stance opposing misguided government intervention into the electricity market which works against affordable, reliable electricity.
ALEC’s model bill for state legislators, entitled the Electricity Freedom Act, repeals a state’s renewable energy mandate stating:
“…a renewable energy mandate is essentially a tax on consumers of electricity that forces the use of renewable energy sources beyond what would be called for by real market forces and under conditions of real competition in generation resources…”
Due in part to pressure from environmental groups and the renewable energy industry lobby, a movement began in the late 1990s and continued through the mid-2000s to enact state-based renewable energy mandates.…
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