Green New Deal sinks its claws deeper into the General Assembly, our wallets
The authorization of something called (CPACE) in the North Carolina Senate the other day likely flew below most people’s radar. Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (CPACE) was hailed by the Governing Class and the ever-so compliant drive-by media like THIS:
The legislature advanced a new financing program Thursday that aims to make clean energy upgrades more accessible, including rooftop solar, energy efficient HVAC systems and LED lighting.
Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (CPACE) financing allows businesses to borrow money for upgrades and pay it back over time through a small increase in property taxes. [….]
You may remember, at the end of the Tillis era on Jones Street, Republican coddling of solar and 
wind energy interests took off like a shot. (So did campaign contributions from those interests to key GOP legislators, as well.)
Property taxes, eh? Most of the employers who move to the state with the assistance of the state Department of Commerce end up paying little to no taxes as part of their incentive package. Neither do many folks who move into long-abandoned manufacturing facilities. So, how would this scheme work with folks like that?
The Biden Department of Energy LOVES CPACE. They’ve even provided a list of lenders — mostly venture capital types — to help get potential customers started. Soooooo — the government will be acting as the accounts receivable operation for these lenders? They are saying the “loans” get paid back over the years in the form of “small property tax increases.”
If the clean energy agenda is such a good thing, WHY does it require wrapping yourself and your business up in a sketchy financing deal with the government and lenders you don’t know for years to come? (*Why not just go grovel to that guy Vito down on the street corner?*)
This also looks like it dovetails nicely with the so-called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) method for determining a business’s standing / credit-worthiness. The folks who LOVE DEI will do cartwheels over ESG.
MORE:
[… ] Clean energy advocates, including Matt Abele with the North Carolina Clean Energy Association, applaud the move.
“It’s a monumental step in clean energy here in North Carolina,” Abele said.
More than 38 states have already passed legislation for CPACE programs and more than $2 billion in projects have been financed nationwide, according to the Department of Energy.
“This is going to help those businesses put more money back into their pocket, be able to pay their employees more money and continue to reinvest in the communities that they are already invested in,” Abele said.
State Treasurer Dale Folwell has strongly opposed efforts to introduce a state CPACE program in recent years.
“CPACE is a form of predatory lending,” Folwell said. “It manipulates the free market to incentivize small businesses to be offered loans that will have higher interest rates and a higher rate of default.
“It’s also particularly concerning that when used for so-called green energy projects, that by the time the borrower has a problem, the lender is far removed from the transaction and has no liability if the project never meets its cost savings targets, leaving small business owners holding the bag to keep paying for something that isn’t working.”
[…]
Gambling. THC gummies. medical marijuana. Green energy. It appears the legislature’s Republicans 
are moving right down the list — during this short session — to pay back each and every one of their major campaign contributors. What will it take to refocus things on Jones Street from whoring-for-cash to actually serving the people who sent them to Raleigh?
Handing the majority over to the other party likely won’t make much difference. Calling out the weasels and shaming them sometimes works. But there are so many of them and so few of us.
We need a massive infusion of good character into that legislative building. The system, itself, needs to be reformed away from all-too-typical, all-too-frequent whoring and back-scratching.
Can it actually be done?
Berger is North Carolina’s Biden when it comes to the “green energy” scam. He is a Biden Republican, pushing the Biden – Cooper agenda on green energy and other issues like Obamacare. Berger is like Mitch McConnell, a “fifth columnist” who is working for the enemy.
Why do we have so many cowards in the state Senate GOP caucus unwilling to stand up to this Benedict Arnold traitor Phil Berger? It almost makes you want to leave your ballot blank on state senate races.
North Carolina needs someone with the brains and vision of Ontario’s leader Doug Ford on this green energy nonsense. In the Canadian province of Ontario’s last provincial election, Ford had just taken over leadership of the Conservative Party, which was behind the LIberals in the outgoing provincial legislature by a 2 to 1 margin. Ford made ending the Liberal’s green energy mania his top campaign issue, and when the votes were counted, the Conservatives won by a landslide, with a 10 to 1 majority over the Liberals. Ford’s first act as Ontario’s premier was to cancel every wind and solar permit that was still in the pipeline. Then his new supermajority repealed Ontario’s Green Energy Act, and his administration went after wind energy companies for polluting the groundwater, something the Liberals had swept under the rug. Under the Conservatives, three major wind energy companies were indicted on multiple felonies of polluting the groundwater. North Carolina needs a Doug Ford, not a liberal Phil Berger who has sold his soul to the far left.
What is Berger’s gambit on his leftie green policies? Is he trying to get a date with Greta Thunberg? Maybe he ought to take a look at the massive farmer protests across Europe over what the farmers aptly call “climate communism”. The recent EU election shows voters souring on this climate crusade, as green parties took a huge beating while populist right parties that campaigned against the EU Green Deal made major gains.
And let’s not forget what climate crusader Phil Berger did to us on NC’s Green New Deal, which is more radical than the EU Green Deal.
https://www.beaufortcountynow.com/post/48970/ncs-green-new-deal-the-anatomy-of-a-betrayal.html
Maybe Phil Berger is just Greta Thunberg without the skirt.
Republicans BADLY need a change in Senate leadership.
I’m sure he has the skirt too.
With Berger pushing repeal of HB2 several years ago which had kept the men out of the ladies restrooms and locker rooms, that is indeed a serious possibility. I wonder which restroom Berger himself uses? Why does Berger want to allow men in the ladies room?
Other than being lured by Big Money, it is impossible to see why “free market” Republicans keep digging us deeper and deeper into the green energy insanity. Berger needs to be reminded that after betraying his party responsibilities in the last election and endorsing a Democrat judicial nominee, then pushing for a casino which the religious/traditional conservatives in Rockingham vehemently opposed, then pumping a ton of outside, even out of state money into his son’s reelection campaign to the Board of Commissioners (which he won by only 3 votes) he is facing a lot of unhappiness in his own home county of Rockingham. His Democrat opponent in this year’s race is posing as a good guy and a moderate (much like Josh Stein is doing), and it could easily happen that enough GOP voters are sufficiently angry at Berger that they will refuse to vote for him even if it means risking his seat to a Democrat. It might amount to cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face, but how many times can Berger betray his constituents until it is too much?