[Editor note: Marita Noon is the Executive Director at Energy Makes America Great Inc., the advocacy arm of the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy. CARE works to educate the public and influence policymakers regarding the role of energy in freedom and the American way of life.]

At least 18 states have legislation proposed or pending—44 bills—relating to renewable energy mandates, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council. Within the last couple of weeks, I have had wary legislators from two different states ask me about such mandates. I have spoken to energy groups opening with, “How many of you know what an RPS is?” … Nothing…. “It stands for Renewable Portfolio Standard.” … Still blank.

The RPS is a silent little killer of the American economy. “Silent” because, despite widespread activity, its presence is nearly unknown.…

“Energy is the master resource, because energy enables us to convert one material into another. As natural scientists continue to learn more about the transformation of materials from one form to another with the aid of energy, energy will be even more important.”

– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 162.

Energy is the master resource, as Simon says. Even anti-energy zealots have admitted as much in their more sober moments. “A reliable and affordable supply of energy is absolutely critical to maintaining and expanding economic prosperity where such prosperity already exists and to creating it where it does not,” Obama’s science advisor John Holdren once said. (1)

UK Energy Trouble

The indispensability of affordable, plentiful energy has come to the fore as anti-energy policies have collided against human needs.…

A new study from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School, Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal, estimates that the negative externalities of coal-fired electricity generation are two-to-three times as great as the actual price of the electricity itself. Wow–so much for the cheap price of electricity from coal itself being a social good. And forget that decades of ever more stringent air and water regulation has internalized the so-called social cost of coal-fired power plants. And forget that carbon dioxide (CO2) has positives, not only negatives, for the biosphere.

So forgetting all this, and taking the report’s analytics at face value, it is concluded that the FULL COST of coal makes “wind, solar, and other forms of nonfossil fuel power generation … economically competitive.”…

Congress is rightfully concerned about closing the huge, systemic budget deficit. In this climate, eliminating Section 1603 grants for politically correct renewable energy should be considered an easy target.

By way of background, this particular subsidy came about due to persistent pressure from lobbying groups like American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Their main argument is that these grants will promote jobs and economic benefits. Of course, as lobbyists this is what they are paid to say. But in these times of more focused financial prudence, we need to critically look at such expenditures in a more objective light — especially since we are talking about some five billion dollars.

The 1603 Grants should be cancelled entirely. In my view the best way to see how ineffective these expenditures are is to consider what the alternatives are for this same money.…