Upon returning to the White House, President Trump immediately outlined a vision for a new “Golden Age of America,” unabashedly powered by American innovation and American energy dominance. If we hope to restore manufacturing, win the global AI race, jump-start the auto industry, and increase our housing supply, we need to increase our energy supply – and fast.
Today, many communities are quite literally paying the price for poor policy choices. For example, New Jerseyans are bracing for an upcoming 20% hike in electricity rates this summer, while residents of Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah consistently pay a fraction of the price for power.
But what led to this stark dichotomy in energy affordability in the first place? There are some clear trends in the data that help explain why Americans in New England are often charged nearly twice as much as Mountain West states for their electricity.
To help make sense of America’s energy landscape, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) just published its annual energy affordability rankings across the states, studying the practical effects of state legislation on electricity prices.
Setting aside the geographic outliers of Alaska and Hawaii, the 10 states with the most expensive average electricity prices—California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, and Maryland—have all enacted impractical clean energy mandates, all subscribe to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or a comparable cap-and-trade regime, and all have state-mandated policies subsidizing renewables.
Meanwhile, the best 10 states for energy affordability—Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Iowa, North Carolina, and West Virginia—chose a different path. These states have largely implemented more market-driven policies, resulting in a diverse and competitive mix of generation sources that boosts reliability and consistency in rates.
Of the more affordable states, only Oregon partakes in a cap-and-trade program, five states declined to impose renewable portfolio standards on their electricity production, and three states have friendlier policies on net metering that avoid burdening ratepayers.
In Idaho, just over half of the state’s electricity is derived from conventional hydroelectric energy, a quarter comes from natural gas, and the final quarter results from a combination of wind, solar, and wood. The Gem State plays to its regional strengths and avoids the strict government policies that artificially increase the cost of generation or subject residents to burdensome carbon taxes.
The new ALEC research confirms what many policymakers and industry leaders have warned for years: Too much government meddling in the energy market leads to higher energy costs for all. State legislators should implement policies that avoid preferencing one favored energy source, such as offshore wind, and instead pursue the energy mix demanded by residents and ratepayers in a competitive marketplace.
A bipartisan group of governors from states such as West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania is also exploring how laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) might be reformed to accelerate the permitting process, streamline infrastructure development, and increase resiliency and consistency across the grid. This will help speed the development of new and much-needed projects using a range of generation sources, from solar and wind to natural gas, and even nuclear.
And finally, legislators in states like New Jersey should reconsider whether participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, renewable portfolio standards, and net metering are still in the best interest of their constituents.
States need to act now with new production and expanded grid capacity to support the coming electricity demand. Unfortunately, many states have pursued misguided progressive policies that have directly contributed to higher energy prices for years. These policies have left those states with a fragile energy infrastructure that fails to meet the everyday needs of ratepayers.
By incorporating proven policy solutions in a competitive energy marketplace, state leaders can unlock America’s latent energy and natural resource potential, deliver abundant power to families cooling their homes or commuting to work, and equip our businesses to succeed in our evolving economy. This approach will foster energy affordability and reliability for all Americans.
The erosion of our energy infrastructure by progressive activism was completely avoidable. It must be corrected quickly for America to live up to the promise of a Golden Age and maintain its position as the world’s most prosperous and productive economy.
Jake Morabito is senior director of the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Meanwhile, the best 10 states for energy affordability—Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Washington, Oregon, Iowa, North Carolina, and West Virginia—chose a different path.”
A bit coy on what that path is. I asked perplexity to list US states by use of renewable energy per capita. Seven of those states were among the top renewables (2022 numbers). Note that although perplexity says they are the top states, they are not listed in order:
I have updated to try to list the states in descending order of renewableTWh/capita. It didn’t quite wotk, but is better
It seems to be in order of Renewable/total TWH, not renewable/capita.
Nick. Another meaningless metric from the champion of meaningless posts. The only State that I’m personally aware of is ND, I won’t bother checking the other states because your posting is typical liberal drivel.
North Dakota produces significantly more electricity than it consumes. The state generates about six times the energy it uses and it can hide the nuisance wind behind their huge coal (lignite) generating capacity
From the EIA:
“Coal-fired power plants accounted for 55% of North Dakota’s electricity generation in 2023, and the state’s four largest power plants by generating capacity and five largest by the amount of electricity produced annually are coal-fired.81,82 The rest of the state’s electricity generation came primarily from renewable resources, including wind energy, which supplied 36% of generation, and hydroelectric power, which provided about 4%. Natural gas fueled 5% of the state’s electricity generation.”
36% wind is not “hidden away”.
As Sandberg said it’s a stupid metric you have done a Stokes wave your hands at the issue … answer what the metric means.
Bring it home lets try Australia
WA 10.9% of population responsible for 22% of electricity used in Australia. and only 3.1% of Australia Renewables used in Australia
Victoria 25% of Australia Population 20% of electricity used in Australia and 37.8% of renewables used in Australia
So based on your Stokes metric WA must really suck we burn more electricity per head of capita and we use stuff all renewables.
Try a metric that matters, Victoria $3B per month in exports WA $22B per month in exports.
We burn our power not to keep our home lights on but to pay National debts and that is why your metric is retarded.
It’s okay as both parties keep racking up more debt on freebies for the large population in the election, rest happy we will be the ones paying it down.
Sounds like the data is not presented flexibly, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to download into a spreadsheet. Then I suggest looking for things like wind+solar proportion of total, gas capacity vs w+s (because gas is the best at handling variations in supply & demand, and input & output from & to other states.
I asked what I think is a more sensible question, whether there is any correlation between electricity prices in a state and the proportion of electricity generated and used from wind and solar. This is what it says:
There is no clear or consistent correlation between the price of electricity in a U.S. state and the proportion of electricity generated from wind in that state. Data from 2023 shows that some states with a high share of wind generation, such as Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, and New Mexico, have relatively low electricity prices, while other states with moderate or low wind shares can have either high or low prices. For example, California has a high share of solar and wind but also some of the highest electricity prices, whereas Nevada has a similar solar share but much lower prices. Similarly, states with little wind generation can have both high and low prices[1][7].
The complexity of electricity pricing involves many factors beyond generation sources, including transmission and distribution costs, market design, taxes, grid fees, and imports/exports of electricity. These factors often have a larger impact on prices than the share of wind generation alone[1].
Empirical studies in specific markets like MISO and ERCOT show that increased wind generation tends to reduce wholesale electricity prices by displacing more expensive generation, with estimated price reductions ranging from about $0.14 to $1.53 per MWh for each 100 MWh increase in wind generation. However, this effect can vary over time and by region, and wind can also increase price variability[2][4][5].
In summary:
– States with high wind generation can have low or moderate electricity prices.
– States with low wind generation can have either low or high prices.
– Wind generation tends to lower wholesale electricity prices by adding low marginal cost supply.
– Other factors like market structure, grid costs, and imports/exports strongly influence retail prices.
– No simple correlation exists between wind share and retail electricity prices across states[1][2][4][5][7].
Thus, while wind power generally helps reduce wholesale prices, the relationship between wind generation share and retail electricity prices at the state level is complex and not directly correlated.
Citations:
[1] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/us-states-electricity-sources-prices
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421511002813
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/prices-and-factors-affecting-prices.php
[4] https://www.betterenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MISO_Wind_Price_Study_2017.pdf
[5] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/49415.pdf
[6] https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/wind-energy-factsheet
[7] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/us-states-electricity-sources-prices/comments
[8] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php
—
Answer from Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-there-any-correlation-for-t-mCd78NCzSxql_quQiGdU0w?utm_source=copy_output
Looking at their summary, 4 points just seem to say it is complicated, but then:
“Wind generation tends to lower wholesale electricity prices by adding low marginal cost supply.”
Yes.
The relation between higher electricity prices and greater dependance on wind and solar is demonstrated in Europe.
That plot looks like it is from the crisis in 2022. It is not always so:
I posted in reply to this, earlier, but the dog seems to have eaten it!
I asked perplexity what seems like a more sensible question: is there a correlation between proportion of power generated in a state by wind and solar, and price of power in that state.
The answer was no, with a list of citations, where two states had the same percentages but different prices, as well as cases with high wind and solar but low prices and low wind and solar but high prices. The explanation offered for the lack of correlation was basically that lots of other factors enter the price setting process.
I posted perplexity’s quite long reply, with its source citations, but it seems Rover is hungry today…
I think your > 3 links comment is what got it hung up in moderation for a while Michel.
If you are doing the work, I would like to see a trend of price increases over two decades and the trend of renewables capital over the same period.
These states PRODUCE wind electricity, but export a significant quantity of it, such as Iowa to Illinois.
Notice the absence of any cost data.
“All models are wrong, but some are useful” — (usually attributed to) George Box
A known problem with the “large language” models (LLMs) used in various AI architectures is a tendency to “hallucinate” … AKA “just make shit up”.
It is always better to dig down to the original sources and “whip up a quick spreadsheet (/ R program)” from there.
The last available annual “by state” data from the EIA is for 2023 (the monthly data for 2024 is still “Preliminary”). See the third “XLS” link, “Existing Nameplate and Net Summer Capacity by Energy Source, Producer Type and State (EIA-860)”, on the following webpage :
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/
Slightly dated, but usable, population data per state can be found in the first two columns of the “Racial and Ethnic breakdown of population by state (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico), 2022” table on the following Wikipedia page :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
.
Attempting to reproduce your table gave me the attached “MWh per person” numbers per state, which differ markedly from yours …
Checking why Washington (state) is 6th in your table but 26th in mine led to to conclude that your “Renewables” is actually ( at least ???) “Wind + Solar + Hydro” (?) …
My spreadsheet sorted (highest to lowest) by the “Renewables” column instead is attached below.
Perusal of the “Coal” and “Gas” columns may also prove useful when trying to work out why certain differences between the “W + S” and “Total” numbers exist for individual states.
They love to include hydro as “renewable” to pad the numbers but won’t build more dams.
Many want to remove the dams we already have.
Perplexity wasn’t hallucinating. It’s really very similar to yours. The Renewables list features the same 7 low cost states:
And if you eliminate hydro, the NW states slide down the list – they really don’t need a whole lot of wind plus hydro. But the highest W&S states are also in the top low cost list:
The main point I was attempting (and apparently failing) to get across is that the “correct / scientific” approach is not :
1) Ask [ insert favourite AI LLM here ] a very specific question about subject X
2) Regurgitate results on WUWT
3) Treat those numbers as “gospel truth / holy writ” without checking …
.
And 6 of the top 12 states when sorted by “Coal” are also in the “low cost list”.
NB : The same two states, North Dakota and Wyoming, end up occupying the top two spots in both tables.
So what ?
“Treat those numbers as “gospel truth / holy writ” without checking …”
Of course I checked. The format of the perplexity response makes that easy. The renewbles generation I checked. The populations I mostly know roughly anyway. OK, I didn’t check every division performed, but I did check a few.
But I think your point is undermined by the fact that perplexity did get it right.
And yes, some coal states are cheap too. The point is that high reliance on wind is not incompatible with low prices, as many here claim.
I now think it is very likely you did.
Now read the words you posted in your OP and the first follow-up post, which were all that ***I*** had to go on at the time …
What is included there that is not “consistent with” the conjecture that you just accepted the numbers from Perplexity, even if you did try to reorder them ?
Where is an indication that even implies “I checked the ‘Sources / References’ section of the AI reply and found that the numbers were correct” ?
.
The largest individual number in your OP’s table is :
“Washington (state) : Renewables Generation = 88.4 TWh”
The end of the table of data I extracted from the EIA link provided in my “Reply” is shown in the attached screenshot.
Note that I have selected the cell (I51) that shows a “Renewables” calculation for Washington state of :
61.446 Hydro + 7.55 Wind + 0.364 Solar = 69.36 TWh of “Renewables”
88.4 – 69.36 = a discrepancy of 19.04 TWh. 69.36/88.4 ~= 78.46%. When I wrote that some of my numbers “differ markedly from yours” I wasn’t kidding !
Even adding the 8.435 TWh of “Nuclear” isn’t enough to bring the “Renewables” total to 88.4 TWh.
1) Please provide a link to the source of the data you used to “check the renewables generation numbers”.
2) For the benefit of any lazy “silent watchers” remaining at this point, please show exactly which components are added together from that source that gives the result :
“Washington state : Renewables total = 88.4 TWh“
“Washington state : Renewables total = 88.4 TWh“
Re Washington, I clearly stated that perplexity was using 2022 numbers. The EIA spreadsheet is shown. It shows hydro+wind+solar was 87.060 TWh. Throw in wood and it is 88.275 TWh. That, to me, is an adequate check. The reason for the discrepancy is that 2023 hydro was reduced.
My initial reaction was “Where the hell did he get that from ???”.
After some searching (taking more time than I’ll admit to in public …) I eventually found that if you start from the following URL
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/
in each states individual webpage clicking on the “Full data tables 1–17” link gives an Excel spreadsheet with that format.
More lines (per state) than the (single) “annual_generation_state.xls” file from the link I provided, but the overlapping numbers appear to be identical (+/- 1 MWh).
.
Mea culpa, I missed that. I think that when looking at the image file of the Perplexity table I only “registered” that the population numbers were specified for 2022, hence my initial confusion and request for clarification.
I observed that including the “Biomass” number for Washington state decreased the delta even more.
By this point I was intrigued by just how “close, but no cigar” the deltas were for all 12 of the states in Perplexity’s list … and that for Oklahoma my “running Renewables sum” had actually overshot the Perplexity “target” number …
I ended up concluding that Perplexity was using the formula :
“Renewables” = Wind + Solar + [ Hydro + Pumped Storage (PS) ] + Wood + Biomass + Geothermal
See attached screenshot for where my specific version of OCD finally led me.
Another set of averages to obscure what occurs when the wind and solar fails to meet demand.
Why do you never show balance sheets that show categories like capital investment, revenue from production, revenue from curtailment, maintenance expense, depreciation expense? Why no profit and loss statements?
Consumer rates have increased tremendously over the last decade. Why is that. Do renewables have a part of the increase?
Please describe what winning the global AI race looks like, and why the United States must win the race?
I didn’t ask Grok, and it didn’t reply that AI is the new industrial revolution. Miss it and you get wiped out.
Good questions- AI does seem to present great promise despite tremendous expense – you know, like “clean and green energy”. /s
Ai, unfortunately, supports the lemmings drive to a hive mind society where people get answers from AI and trust those answers further eroding the loss of critical thinking skills.
I find AI lies most of the time, all it does is parrot the party line, after all why would one expect a different answer since it sources are is what get published and our media and academia is anything but honest. All AI is, is the new Wikipedia. It does work if you have a technical question, like what a procedure is to add a local user to Windows 11.
AI is a pattern recognition search engine. It will give you the consensus view which can be quite useful if you know nothing about a topic, but if you are knowledgeable, you probably are aware of consensus shortcomings. And if you ask for clarification it will search again using your question topic as another search phrase.
The real problem is, one must be able to critically think and ask the right question phrased in a way that does not sink into the morass of consensus publications.
There is no need to facilitate the connection of wind and solar to the grid because unreliable and intermittent energy is the problem underlying the grid crisis, not the solution. We could have been spared the crisis if wind droughts had been discovered in time to avert the rush to connect windmills to the grid.
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/the-late-discovery-of-wind-droughts
We can now see that the result has been to spend trillions worldwide to get more expensive and less secure power with appalling environmental damage.
Wind droughts were documented by Australians over a decade ago but nobody took enough notice at home or abroad to avoid the worst public policy blunder on record.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
The President could alert voters to the risk of power failure during wind droughts by issuing an executive order for radio and TV channels to include in routine weather reports the amount of wind and solar power in the local grid at the time.
Often at breakfast and dinnertime when the demand for power peaks and there is little or no solar power available, it will be very obvious that there will never be enough windmills to provide hot meals during daylight hours. That should puncture the wind and solar bubble and raise popular demands for lawmakers to terminate the subsidies and mandates for intermittent wind and solar power.
https://www.flickerpower.com/index.php/search/categories/general/escaping-the-wind-drought-trap
Correction, hot meals will often not be available when the sun is off duty. That will tend to include breakfast and dinnertime depending on the lattitude and the season:)
“unreliable and intermittent energy is the problem underlying the grid crisis, not the solution.”
Yes, that is the basic problem. Windmills and Solar are a cancer on electric grids.
Windmills and Solar are not economically viable. For them to make money, they have to get taxpayer subsidies and they benefit from the high energy prices their inclusion on the electrical grid causes.
Windmills and solar require that an equivalent conventional generating capacity be available on standby for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Keeping conventional generating capacity on stand-by adds to the cost of electricity.
The thing we should do is stop trying to force windmills and solar onto our electrical grids, and stop giving them special pricing and taxpayer subsidies. The rest will take care of itself.
Reliable electricity generation should be our objective.
Here in the UK we have the ridiculous situation where the Seagreen offshore wind farm in the North Sea has been paid £104m for generating electricity and £262m to curtail and switch off.
That demonstrates just how ridiculous it is to be using windmills for power generation. Without this special pricing windmills can’t be “profitable”.
The Special Pricing is done because that is the only way to incorporate windmills into the grid. No Special Pricing = No windmillls.
Climate Alarmists think there has to be Special Pricing because that’s the only way they are going to save the world from the deadly CO2.
Those curtailment costs and other subsidies paid to Seagreen (and other wind/solar companies) need to be added to the wholesale cost of electricity to show the actual costs.
People flail around trying to find out why it is that its cheaper, a lot cheaper, to do manufacturing in China than the US. Previously the villain was Japan. They used to claim direct labor costs, but they are a very small proportion of COGS. Now they are claiming energy costs, which may be a factor in some states, but are certainly not the whole answer. They also claim direct or indirect subsidies.
No. You have to look at a particular company and look at where its costs are by activity, and compare them with what the same company would have as costs in the US. I have neither the time nor the data, but people who should have both come up with some sobering numbers. Including those who actually make the decisions to offshore. From the UK Telegraph:
It is possible, at least if you think hard enough, to come up with a few rational arguments for Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on everything imported into the United States. There is, however, a major flaw in the plan.
Apple, America’s most successful company, can’t afford to manufacture in its home country, and neither can many other companies at the top end of the market – and you can’t “make America great again” by destroying your most successful businesses.
Ever since the launch of the iPhone, by far the world’s most successful consumer product, the majority of the gadgets have been manufactured in China, and especially the newer, higher-priced models where Apple makes most of its money.
As the chief executive Tim Cook never tires of patiently explaining, that is partly about price, but it is just as much about quality, speed and reliability. China has become the manufacturing hub of choice because that is where the work can be done.
Sure, it could move production to Texas, Florida or California. But it is a lot easier in theory than it is in practice.
According to an analysis by Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities, an iPhone that costs $1,000 (£758) now would go up in price to at least $3,000 if it was made in the US. Almost as seriously, it would be at least 2028 before the required volumes could be delivered.
The problem is how US society is now. Its a mixture of social divisions, restrictive regulation, a frivolous and complacent political class, an educational establishment that has stopped preparing the best and brightest for competent business management. And continually consuming beyond its means.
The key cost to look at, nationally, is not direct labor or energy. Its the proportion of spend going on interest. When this rises to the level where interest can only be paid out of further borrowing, the end is near.
Mancur Olson asked why it was that the defeated South grew so much faster than the victorious North. Why it was that France, during a century when it lost two major wars and had four more or less revolutionary changes of government, should have grown faster than the stable UK.
The answer he gave was the bonfire of the vanities that these disasters brought. Put it another way, business as usual becomes like swimming though treacle because of growing entitlements.
The costs of the bonfires are of course huge. But without this scale of event a real restoration of competitive position doesn’t seem to happen.
“According to an analysis by Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities, an iPhone that costs $1,000 (£758) now would go up in price to at least $3,000 if it was made in the US.”
Really? Sounds like an exaggeration to me.
Oh I dunno. The industry would need to be built from the ground up. Those initial costs would be enormous.
Like a windmill or as solal farm?
Yuh, but you don’t put all new capital costs against products selling now or they’ll never sell. And, we really need to disengage with the China.
Yes, but nontheless, those capital costs would have to be paid for over time, with interest, and you have to get your labor force trained. All adds up.
Perhaps the reason for a tariff on product X is not to onshore its production but to negotiate a reduction of the other country’s tariff on product Y. And by what measure do you call a US business a success? Apple makes a lot of profit, but who does that benefit? They pay maybe $8B a year in US corporate taxes but if other US companies grow as a result of Trump economic policies then it might be a “who cares?” type of thing. If their stock goes down, adjust your portfolio. Apple has 164,000 or so worldwide employees but they refuse to disclose US employment, so income tax contribution is unknowable. But if high paying manufacturing jobs in other industries increase in US, who cares what impact Trump has on Apple employment in this country? Maybe some Apple Geniuses have to learn another marketable skill. This all sounds harsh, but the transition from a manufacturing to as service economy didn’t work out too well either. And on a personal level, I don’t much care what an iPhone costs.
A lot of what you posted is valid.
You omitted a principle cost, minimum wage.
Wind Europe regularly points out that Chinese industry is heavily subsidised by the state and also offers deferred payment terms that are not allowed in OECD states.
You are in essence attempting to justify using “slave” labor to make things cheaply. Not only are there ethical questions about doing that, but economic ones also. Doing this hollows out the middle class because their wages don’t keep up. Additionally you end up transferring massive wealth from the middle class to investors and upper management.
Globalization was supposed to “level” the playing field by ultimately raising low wages in the new manufacturing countries so that a balance could be obtained. That never occurred and there is no possibility that it ever will. The trade imbalances will be maintained and money continually sucked out of the U.S. economy. The wealth gap will grow until people revolt, hopefully by voting the policies they want.
I certainly do not justify or excuse slave labor. If you use it, you may reduce costs, though generally I doubt its cost effective, you will lose on quality and commitment what you gain in direct labor cost.
But I don’t think that direct labor costs are the reason why China (and before that Japan and the other Asian countries) is a cheaper place to manufacture. You have to look at both societies in the round. Look at how that drives the cost picture in a given case. Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities is one person who seems to have done the work and had the data, and he has quantified his findings. The size of the differential makes it impossible the advantage is due solely or mainly to direct labor costs, which are a very small and falling percentage of COGS.
There is no doubt there is slave labor in China – though there was not and is not in Japan or indeed the other countries to which US corporations have outsourced manufacturing. But I don’t think it is the decisive cost factor.
I think you have to look at education, regulation, attitudes to work, attitudes to debt, social cohesion, focus of government both local and national. And at what this does for the environment in which a given company operates. Just in time manufacture is a social phenomenon, its not a technique. So is zero defects quality control.
Tariffs may be a start, but you won’t fix the competitiveness problem with tariffs. Something approaching a social and cultural revolution will be required. Trump could start by balancing the budget. But he is very unlikely to be able or willing to do this, and so its likely the next four years will continue the decline, via monetizing the debt load, into eventual devaluation and default. That’s the only thing powerful enough to drive the social and cultural revolution that is needed.
Slave labor doesn’t have to be actual slavery. It is using poorly educated people with no avenue of escape by paying barely subsistence wages thereby minimizing a cost. The benefit is that people in the western world can not compete based on labor costs with everything else equal.
“This [accelerate the permitting process, etc.-dd] will help speed the development of new and much-needed projects using a range of generation sources, from solar and wind to natural gas, and even nuclear.”
No. Stop ignoring the glaring difference between intermittent solar and wind sources and the far more reliable and dispatchable sources like coal, gas, and nuclear.
Allowing wind and solar developers to inject power into the grid with no responsibility for anything at all when it is calm or dark has been parasitic to the system as a whole, driving up the overall cost. Make the developer meet strict minimum dispatch assurance, or “NO CONNECTION FOR YOU!”
“No. Stop ignoring the glaring difference between intermittent solar and wind sources and the far more reliable and dispatchable sources like coal, gas, and nuclear.”
Yes, windmills and solar are the problem. Thinking windmills and solar are a viable option is wrong-headed.
Windmills and Industrial Solar are failed experiments. It’s time to move on.
Yes, for all our ingenuity in many fields, we’re pitifully slow learners when it comes to the deficiencies of wind & solar utility scale power supply.
Ideology and rationality cannot occupy the same mind space at the same time, is why.
Clarification: Failed at grid scale.
There are niche applications where they do work, but not as environmentally devasting “farms.”
I agree.
Remember…
“Under my plan… electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” – Barrack Obama, January 2008
An astute prognostication.
That was around the time that Obama stopped the sea levels from rising, wasn’t it?
Ed will show Murricans how it’s done in the UK while nationalising British Steel from Chinese-
Ed Miliband axes ‘zombie projects’ in queue for power grid connections
Tariffs are bad cos Trump.
Yet more proof that government interference is not the answer it is the problem. Get the government out of the energy and transportation business, they have screwed things up enough already.
In Britain a deeply unpopular government ploughs ahead with capital projects in support of green energy. In Britain the two parties most likely to depose this legislature either refute the ‘Wind Rush’ entirely or have a more evolutionary view of the matter. We are at a point whereby vast sums are being being squandered in light of the fact that other politics will be more inclined to abandon the project entirely when come to power in favour of this country’s significant mineral resources. Each project announced now is increasingly wasteful of money but fixation has its head and burdening the future with a philosophy that has no general support is a measure of the lunacy of dogma driven leadership we have, an energy policy based on mania.