I love these stories which show what happens with Leftist fantasies encounter real world economics.
Austin’s clean energy program costing more, selling less
For the past decade, Austin’s ambition to become the world’s clean-energy capital has been best exemplified by one effort: GreenChoice, a program that sells electricity generated entirely from renewable sources such as wind.Now the nationally renowned program is struggling to find buyers — the latest allotment is 99 percent unsold after seven months on the market — and Austin Energy is looking for ways to bring down the rising costs.
Of course this is the PRIMARY reason Obama is trying to destroy real-world economics. So fantasies like these can become government mandated programs and every home in America is paying twice as much for energy while enduring blackouts and brownouts since “renewable” energy sources simply can’t meet the demand that exists.
3 users commented in " Platitude meets reality "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThis is only a short term anomaly. In the long run (maybe 2-5 years from now at most), green energy programs will all succeed. For one simple reason. There will be no choice. It’s as easy as one-two-three. First, the federal or state government mandate an “energy portfolio” that requires an ever increasing and otherwise unattainable renewable content minimums. Two, the utilities fail to meet those minimums through voluntary programs and complain to public utility commissions to allow them to “spread the expense”. Three, everyone pays dramatically more for their power.
Kevin:
Not in 2-5 years. It will take that long just to upgrade the main trunks of the nationwide electricity grid to accept “green” energy sources.
And barring some world-shaking development (like Polywell fusion) there simply isn’t enough green energy to run this nation.People have no freakin’ idea how much energy it takes to run a city. They think you can plop a few windmills down or lay out some solar cells on an empty lot somewhere, and BANG! problem solved.
The reality is far different. And that’s not even taking into account the environmental protection lawsuits as Obama’s army of “new green jobs” starts trying to actually BUILD “green” powerplants just to see them tied up in expensive litigation for years just like all other forms of power generation.
The end result of this ideological pursuit is going to be more expensive energy due to cap and trade, and a growing series of brownouts and blackouts until the nation decides it’s had enough and we’ll go back to burning coal and natural gas with a vengeance.
Cosmic, I didn’t mean that we would have much green energy production, just that we would all be paying for it through increased rates forced on us (for the sake of green power). It would take decades to actually implement a wholesale change in the way we make power, regardless of what we are changing to.
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