“The PTC is the single most expensive energy subsidy in the federal tax code and is estimated to cost taxpayers about $40 billion from 2018 to 2027.” (IER, January 5, 2021)

“Special government favor to business–crony capitalism–can turn losers into winners. And the loser lobby can claim progress and even inevitability as if they really won. This is the postmodernism of energy policy today in regard to the two politically correct renewables: wind and (on-grid) solar.”

It does not end. What is not competitive and government dependent just continues that way. This is not only because the market picks winners and leaves the losers for politics. It is also because the market-driven, non-subsidized technology improves over time.

Recently, wind power federal Production Tax Credit received its 13th extension. Reported IER:

The U.S.

“Wrong, Roger Hallam. Weather is not climate change. Your professors at Kings College–did any question climate models and explain the benefits of CO2 enrichment and, yes, of warmer temperatures (think winters and nights)?”

The Climate Industrial Complex, the companies and their nonprofit allies, are flexing toward the middle. It is all about money and power, less about real human welfare re “saving the planet.’

This inconvenient truth has the true believers upset. Consider the latest from Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, where he works full-time:

Another disastrously pathetic response from “environmental campaigners” – who cares about the bloody “green new deal”. What needs to be communicated is that unless there is a drastic reduction in emissions – and that means including zero car emissions by 2030 – Europeans are going to starve to death.

“To turn the noun ‘resources’ into the verb ‘resourcing,’ to discard entirely the notion of a resource ‘glass’ that is somewhere between full and empty, requires one more analytic step—a step that Zimmermann failed to take.”

In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, a team of scholars from MIT published a 200-page book called The Limits to Growth. Using the emerging instrument of computer models, they created a worldwide stir by suggesting that science had now put numbers to a few self-evident truths. Non-renewable resources are fixed; the consumption of such resources must eventually end; any civilization based on such consumption must collapse. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the work “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age” (January 28, 1972).

Of course, the scholars acknowledged that they were dealing with variables.…

“New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. Higher energy prices are in effect a regressive tax that places low-income households in the state in peril.”

Energy policies that originate from a political or quasi-religious agenda—propelled by climate zealots, misinformation, and obliviousness to basic economic principles—are on trial in the new political environment. Such policies sacrifice the public good to benefit special interests wed to rent-seeking.

While this commentary focuses on New Mexico, its urgings are applicable to other jurisdictions that currently have or are considering government-driven energy policies featuring mandates and subsidies that encourage consumers to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Three Hard Truths

Three truths should determine energy policy in New Mexico.

1. No climate benefit. Whatever action the state takes to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has a negligible effect on climate change. …