American Elephants

It is hard to know just what Barack Obama believes.  Some say that his real opinions are set in concrete — that he simply does not change his mind, and is not open to opposing opinion.  On the other hand, his speeches and his actions often do not match, and what he says today may be very different than what he said a few months ago.  He does not reveal much of his thinking.

Does he really believe in the clean green economy that he advocates?  Does he believe that wind energy and solar energy are the wave of the future? Does he believe that electric cars are the coming mode of transportation?  Does he believe that coal companies must be bankrupted as he has so often stated?  Coal-fired power plants supply about half of our nation’s electricity.  Does he believe that they can simply be replaced with wind turbines from China?

There are vast bodies of information from serious and reliable sources that say these things are pipe dreams. They say that subsidies invested in these intermittent power sources are a waste, for wind and solar can never supply significant amounts of power.  The formulation of public policy seems to rely on overt political calculation and science shaped and tailored  in the service of a political objective.

Now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has placed a $300 million to $500 million annual surtax on Michigan’s electric utility bills.On December 16 FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff announced new rules that would essentially “socialize” the cost of transmission lines across 13 states in the Midwest.

According to utility companies, this region-wide pricing scheme will force Michigan to pay about 20% of as much as $20 billion costs of new high-voltage utility lines.  Because of this new tariff, everything in Michigan will be more expensive to make.  FERC’s vision is hundreds of miles of transmission lines that will link to windmills in Iowa and the Dakotas.  Michigan businesses and homeowners will get little benefit.  Indiana will have higher costs, and will industries and utility rate-payers in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

In June, FERC drafted a rule creating a new national transmission policy to link wind and solar energy projects to the national electricity grid.  Previously, and by law, FERC  has set prices on the standard that users pay for the cost of the electricity that they consume.  Now all is to be socialized, and everyone is to be charged for what the Obama administration conceives to be the common good.  What they call “public policy goals” are supposed to spread the cost of multibillion dollar transmission lines because neither wind nor solar can compete with coal, natural gas nor nuclear power.  Intermittent wind will be two to three times as costly as conventional power, and of course wind and solar both require 24/7 full-time backup from a conventional power source.

This means that states that adopted renewable standards get to make the folks in other states pay for their folly.   It’s probably unconstitutional, and certainly unethical, but nothing is to stand in the way of the latest Leftist Utopian vision.  Not even the probability that it just plain won’t work.