“Ecomagination” is the name General Electric gives to it’s environmental rent-seeking scam, which drives up energy costs. Governor Martin O’Malley’s latest energy proposal might as well be called O’Magination, because like GE it brings higher prices to life—as in a $1 billion energy tax.
Last week the Senate passed a bill, backed by the O’Malley administration, which increases the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requirement on state utilities to acquire energy from solar sources.
Maryland increased RPS mandates in 2007 requiring utilities to purchase 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The current bill accelerates the mandate for solar power incrementally over the next 12 years. The mandate also penalizes utilities that cannot meet the new requirement. The new penalty raises the per-kilowatt hour charge from 35 cents to 40 cents, the cost of which is passed on to ratepayers.
Republicans claim the RPS mandates will cost ratepayers in the BGE and PEPCO service areas alone $800 million. All GOP amendments to reduce the economic impact on consumers were voted down along party lines.
Despite the lionization by it’s champions, renewable energy like solar and wind are more expensive to generate and transmit than energy from fossil fuels. Therefore RPS is a government mandate to purchase more expensive energy, or more accurately an indirect energy tax.
To remain competitive with fossil fuels, renewable energy needs the heavy hand of government. As of 2008 renewable energy received nearly $5 billion in federal subsidies. Even with the lavish subsidies renewable energy is still four times as expensive as fossil fuel generated energy. Solar energy receives over $24 in subsidies per-megawatt hour versus fifty cents per megawatt hour for coal.
According to the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration data, renewable energy provided a mere 7 percent of U.S. energy supply. Solar energy accounted for only one percent of tiny slice. USEIA also projects that over the next 20 years, solar energy will continue to provide only a small fraction of the total electricity produced from renewable sources.
The stark reality is that renewables—even with their subsidies and mandates—cannot possibly meet current or future energy demand. The chief executive of British Petroleum, Tony Hayward, admitted as much in February.
Studies also show that in Germany and Spain (the two countries American policies are modeled on) the green jobs angle for promoting renewable energy turns out to be an illusion. In Spain two conventional jobs are destroyed for every green job created. In Germany, the higher electricity prices–from promoting renewable energy—had led to additional job losses.
Furthermore, any chance state utilities had to meet the new mandate evaporated when BP Solar announced the closing of it’s Frederick solar panel manufacturing plant and transfer of operations overseas. Maryland simply does not have the capacity to meet the new mandate, and the experience Kittitas County in Washington State reveals the high capital costs of doing so. Last year the county saw cost estimates for a 75 megawatt solar power plant rise 200 percent from $100 million to $300 million. Independent estimates put the price tag even higher at $750 million.
In 2006, then candidate O’Malley promised to roll back electricity rate hikes. However, his policies have in fact, exacerbated them. Since O’Malley took office:
-O'Malley's handpicked “independent” and “competent” Public Service Commission rubber stamped the very rate hikes he promised to prevent—while he raised their salaries.
-BGE rates increased 85 percent
-Statewide electricity rates increased 60 percent according to USEIA data
-Implemented unnecessary RGGI energy tax
-Signed cap and trade into law based on flawed climate report paid for and written by global warming alarmists
O’Malley’s broken promises may come back to haunt him in the November election, but Marylanders are already paying the price.
Comments
While I can't fact check every statement you make, and I am sure many of them are true, you lost quite a bit of credibility with the comment about BP Solar's plant closing having an impact on the renewable portfolio mandate. The mandate does not require that the panels be made in MD. The fact is, most of BP Solar's production went overseas, and BP is still going to be making solar panels to meet their sales demand, just not in Maryland. They are shifting their production to lower cost locations overseas.
Renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuel energy, but fossil fuel energy has more hidden costs that are not included in the cost of the product, such as cleaning up the pollution left behind. This "externalizing" of costs is the same as receiving a subsidy, it's just not called that.
Fossil fuels will also get scarcer, so we need to be looking at how to transition away from them now so that we can do it in a planned manner, instead of reacting later.
I get my electric from WES and I get 100% wind energy. Have been for over a year. I pay about .04 cents/kWh more for it.
Why should I have to pay anything more to get solar?
Just more of the addiction to OPM that these scum bags have.
And WHAT did the failed Gov O'Malley do to save those EXISTING "green jobs"? ZIP! Not even a letter to the company.
He is all talk and no action unless it involves taking our money.
Mark are you suggesting that our environmental protection agencies are not applying our laws.."but fossil fuel energy has more hidden costs that are not included in the cost of the product, such as cleaning up the pollution left behind." Mark where is the pollution your talking about? Straw men arguments are worthless so please produce a list of polluted sites that are extended from fossil fuel consumption.
We have at least 100 years of fossil fuels in the US and that is a conservative figure..so is it really a crisis of our present time to convert to renewables at a detrimental cost to our economy. List for me the green jobs that are shovel ready this year..next year...10 years from now...can you do that for us?
The entire purpose of "renewable energy" is to not work. By 2001, California had put up 1.8 GWe wind energy, according to a recent document from the Californa Energy Commission. The abandoned Rancho Seco and San Onofre Unit 1 totaled 1.3 GWe. Lights went out twice in 2001. First time was during last 3 days of Clinton Administration. Second time when the California government put price controls on Qualified Facilities. 40 billion was sucked out of the CA economey. Power shortage never exceded 0.65 GWe. San Onofre Unit 1 might have saved the day. Absolutly none of the zillion reports on the CA energy shortage mention tearing down the nukes. They all say "Enron did it." The real cause was the El Paso pipeline blowing up and no rain. Also Tearing down the nukes (0.85 GWe Trojan was also torn down).
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