American Elephants

Democrats abandoned “Cap-and-Trade” back in July.  There was no support for the bill, and public enthusiasm for Congress was around 11%.  Although perhaps “abandoned” is too strong a word.  They just put it on the shelf temporarily and, as they do so often,  gave it a new name, and  will bring it back in the Lame Duck session as a nationwide renewables mandate, which will require utilities to source certain amounts of their electricity from “renewable” sources.  That sound innocuous enough, doesn’t it?

According to a Financial Times/Harris survey this month,  most Americans favor an expansion of renewable energy. But that support is very weak.  When asked if they would be willing to pay as little as 5% more for electricity, only 32% of Americans said yes.  A full 57% of Americans said they would be opposed to paying for more than a 5% increase in electricity prices for renewable energy.

The Administration’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects the cost for various sources of electricity per megawatt hour in 2015 (in 2008 dollars).

• Conventional coal power:  $78.10
• Onshore wind power:  $149.30
• Offshore wind power:  $191.10
• Thermal solar power:  $256.60
• Photo-voltaic solar power:  $396.10

The prices for alternative energy are, at a minimum, almost double the cost of electric power from a coal-fired plant.  And since so-called renewable sources require 24/7 backup from a regular power source (i.e, a coal-fired power plant) you can probably add the $78.10 cost for conventional coal power to the cost of the renewable.  (Perhaps I misunderstand this, but when you turn a light switch on, you expect the lights to go on — you don’t want to wait for the wind to start to blow again).

Administration ideas of what is renewable power don’t seem to include nuclear plants nor hydroelectric plants. It’s all about wind and solar — which are not really sources of energy.

A Heritage Foundation analysis of a requirement of 22.5% alternative energy found that 1) household electricity prices would jump 35%;  2) industry prices would rise by 60%; 3) national income (GDP) would be cut by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; and 4) a renewable electricity standard would kill more than one million jobs.

We have had decades of  subsides for renewable energy, yet if you eliminate hydropower, wind and solar only account for a tiny 3% of our energy, and that doesn’t include the necessity for keeping a conventional backup.  Think of a renewable mandate as something that massively raises costs but provides no economic benefit whatsoever.

If Congress does not pass a Renewable Energy Standard, we are not out of the woods.  The EPA is ready to slap a tax on all forms of energy in the interest of protecting us from the debilitating effects on our health of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that we exhale.

You would think that the Democrats would want to create jobs and grow the economy; to make us all more prosperous.  People prefer to be prosperous.  That would seem to be the road to electoral success.  But here they are, determinedly making poor people poorer, killing jobs at every opportunity, destroying business opportunity,  killing free trade and damaging our relations with our allies,  and now they want to turn the electricity off at the same time they want to get us all into electric cars.  Please explain this to me.  I don’t get it.