Editor note: The advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), the American Energy Alliance (AEA), has launched a new analysis and advocacy program, The American Energy Scorecard. A description of the new initiative from AEA follows.]

Energy is the lifeblood of modern society. It touches every aspect of American life— fueling our transportation systems, powering our offices, and heating and lighting our homes. Affordable, abundant, and reliable energy empowers us to grow and prosper. In fact, energy is the single most important mechanism for alleviating poverty and promoting prosperity.

It is in the spirit of promoting energy prosperity that the American Energy Alliance has launched the American Energy Scorecard, the first and only free-market congressional energy accountability scorecard.

The American Energy Scorecard educates lawmakers about the most important energy votes of the year and empowers the American people to hold their elected officials accountable for the decisions they make in Washington.…

“Before Americans are asked to pay more billions for an energy resource that still, after 23 years, cannot stand on its own two feet, Congress should ask DOE to get out of the vision business and report on the practicality of wind energy reaching even 10% of the U.S. power market.”

The Department of Energy, has once again buddied up with its friends in the wind industry to release an updated vision of how the United wind energy can achieve a 20% market share of the electricity (not total energy) market by 2030. This time, DOE went a step further to claim we could get to 10% wind by 2020 and a whopping 35% wind by 2050 (wind’s current electric-market share is 4.5%).

A quick review of the report suggests it suffers the same flaws as DOE’s last attempt from 2008.…

“All solar power plants examined in this study show electricity costs two or more times conventional sources of ‘reliable’ electricity provided by coal, natural gas, or nuclear power. Overly enthusiastic promotions of solar energy by government officials, environmental groups, and those selling solar energy has led to grievous losses to taxpayers in the Southeast.”

A recent report by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA), “Filling the Solar Sinkhole: Billions of Bucks Have Delivered Too Little Bang,” found:

In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition. American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular. 

“While political capitalism as an economic system has barely been recognized, the building blocks that form a theoretical foundation for political capitalism are firmly in place and well-accepted. In political science and sociology, the ideas of elite domination and biased pluralism are mainstream concepts that are a fundamental part of political capitalism.”

Political capitalism is an economic and political system in which the economic and political elite cooperate for their mutual benefit. While the essential idea of political capitalism has a long history, it has not been recognized as a distinct economic system.

In part, this is due to the 20th-century vision of economic systems as capitalist, as socialist, or a mixed economy that contains elements of both capitalism and socialism. It has also been due to the frequent vision of government as an institution that acts in the public interest, corrects market failures, and controls the activities of business.…