#ncga: NOW the solar goons are AGAINST getting themselves PAID?
Oh how the worm turns.
The solar goons fought so hard to buy off just enough politicians to get HB 589 — a sweet, sweet payoff courtesy of the taxpayers — through the NC House. Now, it appears they want it killed. Here’s the Queen of The Solar Goons herself:
Wait. She and her fellow goons WANTED this just days ago. What could have possibly turned things so dramatically for them. Here’s a clue:
A comprehensive revision of North Carolina’s energy laws, crafted over nearly a year of discussions with various interests and overwhelmingly approved in the House, has picked up a controversial provision in the Senate to ban wind energy projects for four years.
The rewrite of House Bill 589 came Tuesday in a Senate Rules Committee meeting, where Sen. Harry Brown, a Republican from Jacksonville, added the moratorium to provide time to ensure wind towers don’t interfere with military flight training.
Brown tried to accomplish that last year, using maps to plot out zones where tall structures would be allowed or prohibited, but the House didn’t take up the bill before the session ended. […]
The N.C. Sustainable Energy Association issued a statement Tuesday saying the moratorium provision had been rushed through without any input.
“NCSEA strongly opposes the Senate’s version of House Bill 589, and we call on all Senators to abandon these reckless and short-sighted changes in favor of passing the bill in its original form,” Executive Director Ivan Urlaub said.?
These people passed out a lot of money, twisted a lot of arms and expended a lot of sweat equity to make this bill happen. Now, they’re going to throw the baby out with the bath water because wind energy stuff is getting delayed? (They’ve got an extension on their solar mandates. The money train will keep on rolling their way.)
Everyone is starting to see that the emperor really has no clothes. What has been passed off as “caring about the environment” is being exposed as a lot of wheeler-dealers trying to squeeze cash out of the state treasury.
So the goons and goonettes were for it, before they were against it.
These guys have ‘stakeholder meetings” and include the utility monopoly special interests and the money grubbing solar / wind parasite special interests, but leave out the most important stakeholder, the utility ratepayers. This sounds more like something one would expect the Democrats to do.
It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s comments about two wolves and a sheep voting on what was for dinner, but in this case, the sheep, the electric ratepayers, were not even invited to the meeting. They are the ones for dinner in this case, as they will have lots of their green hoovered out of their pockets and into the pockets of the special interests if this bill passes.
Who should represent the electric ratepayers in these “stakeholders meetings” ? I would submit that both Civitas and Locke have been doing a darn good job in their newspaper and websites promoting the ratepayers’ interests and both of them should sit in these meetings representing the ratepayers.
How about we create a real free market in energy? Any customer can buy from any supplier who will sell him power, and there is no state aid, including mandates, favoring any seller of power. Get rid of the monopolies, the mandates, and the subsidies. That is the Republican thing to do.
I am not sure this isn’t a head fake. The amended bill is still terrible –
I know you all know this, but just in case: Duke wants just a few things out of this bill which are actually good for all of us. They are scared that if a bill that only contains those items (in other words, good government), which will help especially the poor, is passed at the GA – that Cooper would veto it, and because of some of our so-called GOP members, the veto could not be over-ridden.
So, they allowed the solar lobbyists to fill the bill up with rent-seeking garbage to get both Copper’s and the GOP members’ support.
Remember, there was no one at the stakeholders meeting who represented the residential rate payers.
The GA should strip the garbage out and pass the bill – then show Cooper to be what he is – the poverty-crushing solar/Duke schlep.
I wonder about some other stakeholders who may not have been invited, and that is the small electric coops (the EMC’s), Electricities, and other smaller players. I recall some earlier comments on this site about some of the smaller players who were mandated by the state to buy a certain amount of renewable energy, and did so, but there was no way to actually bring the power to their systems, so the money was just thrown away and that waste was passed on to their customers in their rates.
Much like Obamacare, NC’s electric laws are straight out of classical fascist economics..
Here is the real issue that needs to be in ANY bill on solar power, and that is decommissioning of the solar panels after their useful life, with financial reserves required to prevent this cost falling on the taxpayers. Taxpayers in other states are already having to eat the costs of removal of hazardous wastes from defunct solar farms. Here is a good article on the huge amount of hazardous waster solar farms generate and the lack of capacity to deal with it:
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2017-06-29-286839.112112-Solar-panel-hazardous-waste-crisis-may-be-on-the-way.html
Our legislature needs to stop falling all over themselves to do the bidding of this arrogant and demanding special interest and instead look out for the people of North Carolina, which they are currently NOT doing on the renewable energy issue. I am sure the stakeholders are happy to stick the taxpayers with the ultimate cost of their cleanup.
Here is the man who should be invited to the stakeholders meetings to represent the electric consumer – John Droz – and here is the latest from Droz on what is going on with this bill:
http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-NEWS-and-COMMENTARY-c-2017-06-30-286843.112112-Latest-update-on-the-Big-Sellout-on-energy-policy.html
Pitiful. We had a total sellout in the formerly conservative Senate. Not a single GOP Senator gives a damn about the electric ratepayer. They are all in bed with the special interests. And Phil Berger? He is the new Renee Ellmers, totally unacceptable as a nominee for any office.
We will see if Civitas has the guts to rate on this issue. It should be a minus for every Republican Senator.
It is time for payback to these scoundrels in the primaries.
I told you that our green left would own your state Senate, too, and they would help advance President Obama’s green energy legacy, and they did just what I told you they would do. You see, when the choice is our green money or your Republican principles and platform, they choose our money; The average voter, whose electric bill will ”necessarily skyrocket” from our bill, to use President Obama’s own words? They could care less. Timmy Moore has been our bitch for a long time and Phil Berger is now our bitch, too.