“If protecting my individual property rights and values makes me a NIMBY, then I wear the label proudly.”
I am a confessed NIMBY with strong feelings about government-enabled environmental degradation. I am not anti-windpower per se; I am, however, anti-bad ideas and anti-wasteful government spending of taxpayer money.
I am a NIMBY, but so is just about everyone. There are 314 million people in the U.S., virtually all of whom care about protecting their private property against intrusion, particularly unnecessary, wasteful, government-enabled intrusion. Critics are in denial of their own behavior when they criticize NIMBYs in the face of what some of us have faced with a proposed windpower development in our backyard.
“Quiet Enjoyment”
‘Quiet enjoyment’ is the legal right of a property owner to enjoy his/her property in peace without interference.…
Continue Reading“On-grid solar is a perfect storm for taxpayers: concentrated benefits for the industry, diffuse cost for ratepayers and taxpayers, and a strong positive public sentiment for solar created by energy Malthusians.”
I have been a passionate solar energy enthusiast since I was 13 years old. My 8th grade science project was a solar powered car. I read everything I could about fuels cells, solar cells, microwave beaming solar-powered satellites, battery chemistry, ocean thermal energy, wind power, and compressed gas storage.
In college, I studied engineering focusing on solar energy. I now run a solar company which I started 13 years ago in Tucson, Arizona. SunDanzer Development designs, manufactures, and sells solar-powered refrigerators for off-grid use and vaccine storage. My solar refrigerator design was recently selected as NASA’s Commercial Invention of the Year for 2011.…
Continue Reading“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up.”
– Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), p. 5.
The 20-year-old production tax credit (PTC) has not done its work yet, claims the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). It should be extended …. and extended … and extended.
The credit, now worth about 2.2 cents per kWh, or 40 percent or more of the wholesale average price of power, was first enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and has been extended six times, sometimes retroactively to cover the entire period without lapse.
What are the key facts regarding this subsidy to qualifying renewable energies, primarily electricity generated from wind and solar? This summary by the Institute for Energy Research (of which I am CEO) provides much good information for the ongoing debate given that the PTC is set to expire at the end of this year.…
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