The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science. It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which has a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Greed Energy Economics:

Senate Committee Report Details Environmentalists’ Inner Workings

Senate Report: How Billionaires Control the Environmental Movement

The hidden persuaders of the environmental elite

Blowing Our Dollars in the Wind

Do Some Energy Math…

The words “environmental justice“ were coined years ago to help stop low-income living areas from being selected for unwanted property additions such as landfills and industrial plants. Now, this term is used by environmentalists to enlist minority groups such as African-Americans and Latinos to help them in their goals to stop fossil fuel use.

The claim is that minorities suffer more from health effects due to fossil-fuel use because they live closer to power plants or refineries. Thus we need to replace such facilities with renewable energies such as solar and wind. No thought is given to higher priced electricity from these energy sources and how this impacts minority communities. And concerns about sprawl are forgotten since this solution is really a call for energy sprawl.

Based on faulty science, environmental movements have called for banning the following with disproportionate effects on minorities:

1. …

At Breaking Energy, a blog site posting U.S. Department of Energy feed, an (unnamed) intern wrote a post last Friday, “How I Energized My Summer: An Intern’s Inside Look at the Department of Energy.”

“In Public Affairs,” he or she said, “our job is to help explain the work of the Department, the Secretary and, ultimately, the President.” Continuing:

Whether it’s making an announcement on improving efficiency standards for furnace fans or releasing information on new carbon capture technology, my office is working to craft and deliver these messages. We also answer press calls coming in from across the country, helping the media disseminate our information to people near and far from the nation’s capital.

“Internships are often thought of as a career vehicle, meant to lift you into your post-graduate life,” the conclusion began.…

Last month, GE’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Bornstein,  complained that IRS rules defining ‘begin construction’ were still too vague and holding up delivery of 400 to 500 turbines. “We expect that clarification to come from the Treasury in the next week or two,” he said. “We’ve seen that clarification and we think it is helpful.”

And sure enough, GE got exactly what it wanted. Last week, the IRS delivered its third guidance document–and it’s troubling.

Despite eking out a one-year extension of the wind production tax credit (PTC) last year, only 836 MW of new wind was installed in the first six months of this year, the second lowest since 2008 (in 2013, a single two megawatt turbine was erected in Q1/Q2).

Yet surprisingly, with the PTC nominally expired not unlike in  2013, the industry is advertising 14,600+ MW of new wind under development, including 2,000 MWs added to the pipeline this year, after the PTC expired!…