“PURPA has been the most effective single measure in promoting renewable energy.”
What if Congress passed a law that forced you to buy intermittent energy for the same price as reliable energy? What if, in an attempt to promote “alternative” energy sources such as wind power, Congress passed a law that enabled wind to crowd out reliable resources? Congress actually passed that law in 1978, the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA). Its role has changed and its scope has narrowed, but “PURPA is still alive and kicking.”
Background
President Jimmy Carter, working from the viewpoint that the federal government had to intervene in markets to reduce demand and increase supply, formulated PURPA as part of a five-part National Energy Plan.
Oil and gas were seen as wasting resources relative to plentiful coal, so public policy needed to transfer demand from the former to the latter.…
Continue Reading[Ed. note: This is the second in a continuing series at MasterResource, the first of which was published November 21st.]
The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations who are interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that energy and environmental issues are technical matters that should be addressed by genuine science.
Instead of a science-based approach, our energy and environmental policies have become a playground, even a cookie jar, for those who stand to economically or politically profit from them. As a result, anything genuinely science-based in these policies is usually inadvertent and accidental.
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, we send out a newsletter every 2-3 weeks in the interest of balancing what the mainstream media too often conveys about energy and environmental matters.…
Continue ReadingMasterResource, which turned four last month, recorded its best quarter in history with 116,877 views, a 20 percent increase from 4Q-2011. We reached as high as #7 of 9,984 “green blogs” tracked by Technorati in the quarter and currently stand at #40.
With one in-depth post per workday, with occasional weekend fare, MasterResource is the leading voice for free-market, science-of-liberty thought in energy and related environmental issues.
MasterResource features many different writers, some academics, some think-tank analysts, and others citizen-activists. Some areas of emphasis and impact may be mentioned.
Inconvenient Truths of Industrial Wind
Literally dozens of our writers have made MasterResource a leader of the windpower educational movement. Turning wind into electricity is wholly government-enabled; even NIMBYSM that might be criticized in other contexts is justified given that government mandates and special, outsized subsidies enables the rural invasion of wind machinery.…
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