“The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.”
– Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss, “A Gold Rush of Subsidies in Clean Energy Search,” New York Times, November 11, 2011.
A recent article by Pete Danko, “Solar Power Hitting New Records in California” (Earthechling.com) documents the dramatic growth of solar energy generation facilities in California. Three large-scale solar PV installations recently on-line or underway are: California Valley Solar Ranch; Antelope Valley Solar 1, and Topaz Solar Farm, together representing a nameplate capacity of over 1,000 megawatts (1 gigawatt).…
Continue ReadingTo: Abraham Lincoln
From: Sherman Johnson, National Bovine Resources Defense Council; Harris Rutherford, Cowpeace International; William Oaks, Prairie Defense Fund
Dear Mr. President:
Of late, you have been asked to promote the construction of a massive transportation project connecting the East Coast to the Pacific and rumor has it that you are planning to embrace the technology of “railroads” which rely on steel rails and coal-fired steam engines. We urge you to reconsider this in favor of an approach which has many benefits: ox-cart transportation, or OCT, and implement a BTC or bovine transportation credit.
The advantages of ox-cart transportation include:
Sustainability: Railroads rely on steel and coal, both of which are finite, meaning that a peak in their production is inevitable. OCT uses only products (oxen, wood, oats) which are renewable.…
Continue Reading“The only good national energy strategy is one premised on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law. Not a central, government plan, but a decentralized we-the-people ‘plan’.”
Energy studies, energy plans. They are not new. We saw them in 1938, 1977, yesterday—and in years between.
Now, the smartest-guys-in-the-government-room will, once again, pontificate and propose more regulation and intervention on top of the tens of thousands of pages of directives that have built up in the last 40+ years. (The modern era of U.S. energy regulation began with Nixon’s wage-and-price-control order of August 1971.)
Usually, such studies come out with recommendations, which then turn into legislative proposals for a Congressional debate and a vote before reaching the President’s desk. But with President Obama legislating via Executive Order, expect the worst.…
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