Manhattan Institute scholar Max Schulz matches energy & area metrics and finds that Green technologies occupy vastly greater physical space and produce vastly less per-unit energy output. WSJ pundit Kim Strassel assesses Obamanomics and writes of energy renewables and 44's promise:
- "We need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy." Translation: Your utility bills are going up.
Electricity from solar power costs, about, 15 cents per kilowatt hour. Electricity from natural gas costs, about, four cents. The only way to make solar power "profitable" is to further subsidize it down to the price of natural gas, or to make natural gas as expensive as solar. Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade plan does the latter, placing a tax on fossil fuels, which companies pass along to consumers. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) reminded Congress on Wednesday that its most recent climate bill, Lieberman-Warner, would have cost Americans $6.7 trillion. Fortunately for the president, he will not have to include that sum in his new, more transparent, budget.
Greening America's energy production & consumption is a goal everyone supports. In essence, the issue is one of timing. The raw physics and economics of energy cannot be changed by wish being father to the thought. Artificially accelerating such a massive infrastructure conversion can--will--prove a very expensive proposition--in reality, a form of tax increase, in the large amount representing the price increase to substitute Green for fossil fuels--at a time when we are tossing trillions around like Frisbees.
Comments