On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Maryland’s new renewable energy subsidy program. There are a few problems with renewable energy subsidy programs. Many of the companies subsidized with taxpayer money go broke (Solyndra). Many of the people who profit from these programs oddly enough are the people passing the laws that fund these programs. Renewable energy needs to move to the free market where competition can freely find the best and cheapest way to develop and use it.
The article reports:
Democratic Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson is backing legislation to strip trash incinerations from the state’s renewable energy subsidy program — a policy shift that could directly benefit the solar company that now employs him.
Lawmakers are quietly folding the proposal into a broader energy package set for a vote before the legislature adjourns Monday. If it passes, millions in taxpayer-funded renewable energy credits could be redirected from waste-to-energy plants to solar firms like CI Renewables, where Ferguson took a job last year.
Isn’t that a surprise?
The article concludes:
Incinerator operators and labor unions argue the Wheelabrator plant provides union jobs — 65 jobs as of 2019, according to The Real News Network — helps reduce landfill waste and generates baseload electricity, Maryland Matters reported. Removing it from the subsidy program, the operators and unions say, could push the facility toward closure, eliminating local jobs and increasing trash exports to other states.
“[Incineration and solar] are both called renewable energy under the current paradigm in Maryland, but the waste-to-energy incineration issue has been something I’ve been very much against since it started,” Ferguson continued. “I was first elected in 2011 and it was one of the first bills I ever voted on against leadership was when incineration was added as a tier-one renewable source.”
Behind the scenes, lobbyists for waste-to-energy companies are preparing to mount a last-ditch effort to block the bill’s inclusion in the final energy package, according to Maryland Matters.
Politics as usual.