Common sense isn't.
Excerpt From
Cato Policy Analysis No. 280 (archive, 2000), August 27, 1997
by Robert L. Bradley Jr.
Executive Summary
A multi-billion-dollar government crusade to promote renewable energy for electricity generation, now in its third decade, has resulted in major economic costs and unintended environmental consequences. Even improved new generation renewable capacity is, on average, twice as expensive as new capacity from the most economical fossil-fuel alternative and triple the cost of surplus electricity. Solar power for bulk generation is substantially more uneconomic than the average; biomass, hydroelectric power, and geothermal projects are less uneconomic. Wind power is the closest to the double-triple rule.
The uncompetitiveness of renewable generation explains the emphasis pro-renewable energy lobbyists on both the state and federal levels put on quota requirements, as well as continued or expanded subsidies. Yet every major renewable energy source has drawn criticism from leading environmental groups: hydro for river habitat destruction, wind for avian mortality, solar for desert overdevelopment, biomass for air emissions, and geothermal for depletion and toxic discharges.
Current state and federal efforts to restructure the electricity industry are being politicized to foist a new round of involuntary commitments on ratepayers and taxpayers for politically favored renewables, particularly wind and solar. Yet new government subsidies for favored renewable technologies are likely to create few environmental benefits; increase electricity-generation overcapacity in most regions of the United States; raise electricity rates; and create new "environmental pressures," given the extra land and materials (compared with those needed for traditional technologies) it would take to significantly increase the capacity of wind and solar generation.
| Quote of the moment |
| We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.... [The organized moneyed people] are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.... I should like to have it said of my second administration that these forces met their master. |
| ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), U.S. president. FDR Speaks authorized edition of speeches, 1933-1945 (recordings of Franklin Roosevelt’s public addresses), side 3, address at Madison Square Garden, New York (Oct. 31, 1936), ed. Henry Steele Commager, Introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt, Washington Records, Inc. (1960). In this campaign speech FDR responded to the attacks (by Republicans) on him as a radical who aroused class antagonism and acted as a dictatorial leader. ~ |
Common sense isn't.
Images stored locally for protection of your privacy (unless/until you search with Google).
Disclaimer Fine Print: This site is personal, and is independent of TVA or any other organization. Use of the abbreviation "TVA" is purely for descriptive purposes (for example, to distinguish from wind power plants on Buffalo Ridge in Minnesota). No endorsement, no approval, and no involvement by TVA is implied.
Copyright © 2000- hal9000[zat]mensetmanus.net
I last touched this page on
Saturday, 2022-11-12 at 04:16:45 UTC.