Solar mandates = um, free market ??????
Lobbyists and other assorted solar goons are passing around a News & Record op-ed on how important solar mandates are to — get this — *preserving the free market*:
This election year, many issues are the subject of active debate across North Carolina and the nation. Job creation, our economy and national security top the list.
But did you know these issues also are an integral part of our clean energy economy right here in North Carolina?
From an economic standpoint, clean energy has helped strengthen North Carolina communities through job creation, increased tax revenues to use for schools and investment and reliable energy choices.
So why are recent energy debates in Raleigh and other communities taking aim at key clean energy policies such as the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, or REPS, law that actually encourages choice and market competition in our monopoly-controlled electricity system?
Before I get going, you need to know who is writing this op-ed. Not a businessman. Not an economist. But a retired US marshal and deputy sheriff. (Oh, and “a lifelong Republican” too.) Let’s get back to his piece to see how government MAKING public utilities buy X-amount of product from alternative energy providers involves “choice” and “the free market.” (I’m curious.) :
Because I am a life-long Republican, market competition is one of my core values.
Our state is home to nearly 1,000 clean- energy companies that innovate how we produce energy and ways to use it more efficiently.
In terms of projects, Guilford County has three installed utility scale solar projects, 82 residential rooftop solar customers and a total installed capacity of 16 megawatts.
Guilford is also home to 59 EnergyStar buildings, including two schools and 29 grocery stores, as well as 46 geothermal installations.
In Forsyth County where I live, we have more than 75 renewable energy projects, including biomass and solar on corporate, residential, educational and government properties or projects producing power that’s sold directly to a utility. We also have 45 EnergyStar certified buildings and 27 LEED-certified buildings.
Clean energy is an engine to create jobs and generate much-needed investment in all 100 counties of North Carolina.
Currently, policies such as the REPS law are creating opportunities for market competition and choice.
Isn’t that a core belief for us all — Republicans, Democrats and Independents?
Meanwhile, in Nevada, the solar goons are laying off workers and abandoning ship in the wake of the state cutting off the flow of freebies to them. Seems like they just aren’t interested in hanging around if the government won’t keep the freebies coming:
In contrast to comments by some critics that clean energy eliminates jobs in our state, a recent report cited renewable energy and energy efficiency has created over 26,000 jobs in North Carolina, with 3,159 of these added last year alone.
Clean energy is now a $7 billion industry in our state, according to North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association’s 2015 Industry Census.
North Carolina consumers have seen $162 million in bill savings since 2008 due to our state legislators passing the REPS law, plus nearly $3 billion invested in renewable energy projects, two-thirds of which are in rural counties in need of new property tax revenues.
It would appear that the REPS law is working in North Carolina.
And most legislators do recognize the positive economic impact of clean energy in our state. But why don’t all?
It is a free-market and strategic business issue. Just ask Apple, Facebook or Google.
All operate data centers in our state and have cited North Carolina’s clean-energy policies as motivations for being here.
Next door in Forsyth County, 11 businesses have installed solar projects and two have installed biomass projects as part of their efforts to generate their own power and save money long-term.
This clean-energy debate is only set to intensify as we head towards the N.C. General Assembly’s legislative session, which starts in late April.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) held a “Free the Grid Tour” event in Winston-Salem last week about the “power struggle” in North Carolina, inviting the community to “return power to the people.”
However, they’re also calling for the repeal of the REPS law — and the resulting market competition.
Competition is NOT at play here. These people are making money selling their product to Duke Power. Duke is being FORCED by the state government to buy from these people.
As a free-market issue, how can AFP and other clean-energy critics want to return power to the people, but strip them of our state’s limited market competition and choice?
Choice is power.
That’s right. No one is offering Duke a choice on whether they want to buy this stuff for their customers. No one is offering Duke customers a choice as to whether they want to subsidize monied solar panel owners on their power bills.
This is all about keeping the government cash spigot open for a select politically-connected few. If a business can’t stand on its own without government support, it needs to go.
This guy is using the same argument ConnectNC proponents are using. *Be a good Republican and support MY government cash-grab.* Don’t fall for it. Don’t believe the hype.
Now that REPs and film incentives have been defunded, will our lawmakers continue this purge?
Jesus these people are stupid. If you want to offer a small tax incentive to install solar panels on your own house and reduce dependency on the electrical grid, sure, I can live with that. Should Duke Energy be forced to buy this from people? Unquestionably not. But in absolutely no way should we funding an industry that can only survive if the subsidies keep coming. That goes for all corporate welfare, solar subsidies, sugar subsidies, ethanol, etc. A Free Beacon report last year showed that we spent $39 billion on subsidies for renewable energy in 2014 that accounted for 0.6% of all energy produced. Unreal. If you need to reduce them over time to wean an industry off, fine, as long as after X amount of time you no longer receive them. Can’t survive without it? Tough sh*t. This is capitalism; find a way.
I’m with you! Beyond rediculous. Beyond stupidity… I could go on but my battery is abt gone.
Since when has ANYTHING energy related – renewable OR non-renewable been “free market”???
The whole Green Energy scam is based on classic principles of Fascist economics, not free enterprise. If government did not give them subsidies and mandates, the overly expensive and unreliable solar / wind schemes would be graveyard dead. The concept of fascist economics is to leave ownership of business in the hands of individuals but for government to control it through government diktat. That is precisely the style of economics that the environmental movement is shoving down our throats, with the help of some Obama Republicans like Nelson Dollar, David Lewis, Jason Saine, et al.
I want my economic freedom to demand that Duke Power provide me power without the overpriced wind and solar crap mixed in, or I want my economic freedom to buy from another supplier.
Obama himself said that his green energy policies would cause ”electric rates to necessarily skyrocket”. Those politicians in the hip pocket of this corrupt special interest are anti-consumer in the extreme and need to be run out of office on a rail, whether they are Obama Democrats or Obama Republicans.
The truth of the matter is that the green energy goons’ “wind & solar” Nirvana cannot be feasible without large government subsidies.
Yup, solar energy might be viable where the sun shines most of the time (ie: the southwest). And windmills only work where the wind blows all the time (that’s blocking most of the scenic views).
What we also don’t hear reported is the thousands of migratory birds that are zapped by solar arrays, or shredded by windmills (shhhhhhh………)!
While Obama closes the coal plants, we’ll stand on top of the hill and sing the Coca Cola song, and remain under the delusion that our country’s energy needs will be provided by magic fairy dust.
Same holds true with non-renewable energy sources, they require large government subsidies as well.
Bull. You have claimed that before. The only one you could produce on the state level was a tiny grant (which should not have been given, either) to encourage fracking.
On the federal level, you claimed things that were normal tax deductions available to all businesses PLUS the federal military budget. That is just laughable.
Conventional energy can and does stand on its own two feet. The scam of wind and solar cannot and does not. They claimed to be just a few years from being able to do so 30 YEARS AGO!
These still hold true:
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Yeah, the same old radical left bullshit I mentioned above, such as tax deductions availible to all businesses, and military spending.
You forgot American men and women in the military being killed or maimed overseas.
I know you mostly read sources like ”Think Progress” and the Daily Worker, but maybe you should try Locke and Civitas sometime. You might learn something.
Locke recently revealed NCDOR figures that show that the extended winddown of the solar subsidies – the so-called ”safe harbor” bill – will cost NC taxpayers almost a billion dollars. This is just extending the period to wind this Frankenstein monster down, not what full blown state subsidies would have been.
We can see the fingerprints of the corrupt special interest rent boys – Nelson Dollar, David Lewis, Jason Saine, Charles Jeter, and Tim Moore – on this debacle. That is money that should have gone for things that actually benefit the taxpayers like roads and schools, and perhaps even a tax cut, not into the corrupt pockets of the green energy parasites. Heck, it is even half of the amount of the Connect NC bond!
Conventional energy can and does stand on its own two feet. It does not have to buy corrupt politicians like the ones mentioned to get these massive state subsidies.