The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

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

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Examining the Economic Effects of State RPS Programs

Feds End “Unjust” Exemption for Wind Energy

Germany Votes To Abandon Most Green Energy Subsidies

Excellent Discussion of Wind Turbines and Infrasound

Wind Turbines Killing Tens of Thousands of Bats, Many Endangered

Blinded By The Sun

Best Alternative Energy Source is Nuclear Energy

How Renewable Energy Is Blowing Climate Change Efforts Off Course

Britain’s New PM Drives a Stake Through the Heart of the Green Vampire

Global Warming Skepticism is Not Fraud

Good short video: Do 97% of Scientists Agree?…

“The divestment activists’ rhetoric and policy prescriptions are morally questionable because they imply no sacrifices on the part of consumers and will hurt primarily poor people, futile because achieving their goals will have no impact on the value of corporate stocks and the production of carbon fuels, and misguided because drastically curtailing their use in the absence of better alternatives will harm both human society and the environment.”

“As a direct result of greater use of carbon fuels, in the last two centuries every indicator of human well-being–from overall number, life expectancy, income per capita, hunger and infant mortality to child labor and education–has improved, very often dramatically.”

By 2015, students and faculty at more than 1,000 college and university campuses across the world (including nearly 30 in Canada) had pressured academic trustees and administrators to divest their institutions’ endowment holdings in publicly held fossil fuel companies (i.e.,…

“Politically-directed billions of dollars of subsidies for wind and solar power invite corruption and will likely drive energy prices higher, debt-loads deeper, and allow heavily-polluting older coal factories and power plants to continue operation when they would otherwise be replaced by cost-effective natural gas combined-cycle power. This is surely an unintended consequence for consumers, taxpayers, and the environment.”

Wind and solar power subsidies jolted and damaged European economies, especially Spain and Italy. China’s economy received a similar jolt in 2015. But did U.S. trade policy encourages Chinese government subsidies for not-quite-ready wind and solar power projects?

Consider this 2010 article on costly Spanish solar subsidies passed during the administration of socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero.

Zapatero introduced the subsidies three years ago as part of an effort to cut his country’s dependence on fossil fuels.

“Nearly 50 percent of the states in India will experience surplus power …. [This] is a significant leap for a country that has been reeling under an energy crisis, and where 280 million people don’t have access to electricity at all.

What has brought about this transformation? Not surprisingly, it is the country’s energy backbone—coal.”

India is a big player in the global energy market. Along with China, the country’s energy policy came under heavy scrutiny at the Climate Summit in Paris last year. The climate change obsessed West wants to strike a deal with the two giants from Asia for conversion from fossil fuel to renewables.

But the pressure from the West is almost laughable compared to the benefits of fossil fuels. For the first time in its history, the Indian government announced that the country will not face an energy deficit in the year 2016–2017.…