It Sounds Good, But It Doesn’t Work

Spain went ‘green’ a few years ago. They began heavily subsidizing solar and wind energy projects in the early 2000’s. Last Thursday, the Daily Caller posted an article updating us on the results of this program.

The article reports:

“For years, President Obama has pointed to Europe’s energy policies as an example that the United States should follow,” said IER (Institute for Energy Research) in a statement on their new study. “However, those policies have been disastrous for countries like Spain, where electricity prices have skyrocketed, unemployment is over 25 percent, and youth unemployment is over 50 percent.”

This really does not sound like an example we want to follow.

Not only did Spain’s green energy program hurt the Spanish economy, it didn’t help with the carbon footprint.

The article reports:

The IER study also notes that Spain’s green agenda was not able to keep its carbon footprint from rising. Between 1994 and 2011, Spain’s carbon dioxide emissions grew 34.5 percent, despite the country’s green push which began in the 1990s.

“While the renewable policies themselves were likely not the cause of the emissions increase, the upward trend does prove that renewable energy policies were insufficient to reduce CO2 emissions over a roughly twenty-year period,” according to IER.

“is anything but the model for American energy policy,” reads the IER study. “The country’s expensive feed-in tariff system, subsidies, and renewable energy quotas have plunged a sizable portion of Spaniards into fuel poverty, raised electricity bills, all while having almost no meaningful impact on curtailing carbon dioxide emissions.”

Green energy may eventually provide better ways to fuel the world’s economy, but we are not there yet. We need to allow the free market to determine our steps forward. Government subsidies are obviously not the answer.

The Cost Of A Scientific Hoax

I guess I am a global-warming denier. I am convinced that climate change is an ongoing thing that is not necessarily related to man’s activity. I really don’t think we are important enough to have a major impact on the climate of the earth. However, I do support clean air, clean water, and recycling. I just don’t support global warming as an excuse to make everyone (except the people who profit from it financially) miserable. Well, that is happening again.

Investor’s Business Daily reported today that the price of electricity is soaring due to government regulation.

The article reports:

In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ Electricity Price Index hit 202.284, an all-time record and nearly 20% higher than just six years ago.

This might strike some as strange, given the private-sector shale-fracking boom going on in the Midwest, Northeast and Texas, which has led to soaring new domestic supplies of natural gas and oil.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as recently as 2008 the U.S. produced 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Today, it’s 12.3 billion cubic feet and growing fast — truly astounding growth.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is on the verge of producing more oil than it ever has, and domestic sources now outstrip foreign ones. Thanks to fracking, more’s on the way.

But as energy booms, electricity prices are going up.

…Electricity is now one of the most regulated goods in the U.S. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping powers to regulate C02 — a power we can’t find anywhere in the Constitution — electricity is becoming a very expensive commodity.

And it’s about to get even more so. According to the Institute for Energy Research, EPA rules put in place to please environmentalists will remove 34,705 megawatts of coal-based energy capacity off our market.

Think about it: That’s equal to about 10% of what we now produce with coal being removed from the grid.

The new regulations are forcing coal plants to close and be replaced with less efficient and less reliable green energy–wind and solar–that are more expensive to generate. The increased cost is then passed on to the consumer–us. As the Obama Administration forces Americans down the path of green energy, our European neighbors are abandoning that path due to unreliable energy and the cost of green energy. Unfortunately, it may take us a while to learn that lesson.

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Exposing The Lies In The President’s Energy Speech

Yesterday Investors.com posted its fact check on President Obama’s recent energy speech. They noted five lies and posted the relevant facts.

Here is the summary:

1. The President claimed that he was focused on production. Actually, the current increase in production is due to the actions of the Bush Administration before President Obama took office. President Obama has closed down exploration and slowed down the issuing of permits for offshore drilling.

2. The President stated that America has 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, but consumes more that one fifth of the world’s oil. Actually, the U.S. has a mind-boggling 1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to “fuel the present needs in the U.S. for around 250 years,” according to the Institute for Energy Research. The problem is the government has put most of this supply off limits.

3. The President stated, “Because of the investments we’ve made, the use of clean, renewable energy in this country has nearly doubled.” According to the Federal Energy Information Administration (EIA), production of renewable energy increased 12% between 2008 and 2011.

4. The President stated, “We need to double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising.” According to the EIA, renewable energy will account for just 13% of U.S. energy production by 2035.

5. The President stated, “There are no short-term silver bullets when it comes to gas prices.”

The article reminds us:

Obama could drive down oil prices right now simply by announcing a more aggressive effort to boost domestic supplies. When President Bush lifted a moratorium in 2008, oil prices immediately fell $9 a barrel.

President Obama’s nose is growing.

 

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