Institute for Energy Research
We do not understand why IER gets the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) so spun up. Maybe it’s because of our opposition to government subsidies. Maybe it’s because we don’t believe that government mandates forcing people to buy energy from expensive, inefficient sources is good for the economy. Or perhaps it is because of our belief that consumers, not Washington, should choose the sources of energy they think is best for them.
Whatever the reason, we would like to apologize to AWEA. Apparently we compelled them to use ad hominem attacks like “anti-clean energy” to describe our organization and “bogus” to describe our research. We would have preferred that AWEA produce a substantive rebuttal to our recently released report, “Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German Experience.”
In an October 21st blog post, AWEA states “IER’s strategy clearly is to discredit wind energy in other countries.” We do not have a strategy to discredit wind energy in other countries. President Obama and top Administration officials are telling us that America must follow Germany’s example with respect to renewables or we will be left behind. Taking the President at his word, we sought to better understand Germany’s experience by commissioning a study by the think tank Rheinisch-Westfalisches Institut fur Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI). The report found the following facts:
* Financial aid to Germany’s solar industry has now reached a level that far exceeds average wages, with per worker subsidies as high as $240,000.
* In 2008, the price mark-up attributable to the government’s support for “green” electricity was about 2.2 cents US per kWh. For perspective, a 2.2 cent per kWh increase here in the US would amount to an average 19.4 percent increase in consumer’s electricity bills.
*Between 2000 and 2010, the net cost of the German government support for solar was $73.2 billion and an additional $28.1 billion for wind. Because the U.S. economy is five times larger that Germany’s, a comparable expenditure in the U.S. would amount to about half a trillion dollars.
* Green jobs created by government actions disappear as soon as government support is terminated, a lesson the German government and the green companies it supports are beginning to learn.
* Government aid for wind power is now three times the cost of conventional electricity.
AWEA lobbies Congress for government handouts and subsidies for wind energy production, so we understand why they would like to these facts to remain hidden. As the report shows, Germany’s experiment with promoting renewable energy has been expensive, and transplanting that experience to the United States will be expensive.
Apples to oranges, AWEA argues, because Germany is not a good model for the United States. In their own words:
“The problem is that the United States is not considering a feed in tariff as a means to encourage wind development because it would not work. Instead, the US is considering a free-market based national Renewable Electricity Standard, and numerous studies have shown that an RES would decrease electricity prices.”
We hope AWEA informs President Obama and other top Administration officials that Germany’s feed-in tariff is not a good model for the United States.
In AWEA’s blog post, they describe a national Renewable Electricity Standard as “a free-market” program. That is not accurate. In free markets, people are free to choose. A Renewable Electricity Standard forces people to buy wind, solar, and other government-approved energy sources. It is a mandate. Forcing someone to buy your product is not a free-market program by any definition.
Contrary to AWEA’s assertion that a Renewable Electricity Standard would lower energy prices, common sense and real-world evidence suggest otherwise. Wind and other government-approved renewables are more expensive than other forms of energy. Common sense tells us that requiring people to buy expensive and inefficient renewable energy, through a renewable energy mandate, will only increase the cost of electricity. Currently, twenty-nine states have binding renewable electricity mandates and the electricity prices in those states are thirty-eight percent higher than in states that do not have binding renewable electricity mandates.
Lastly, AWEA states that they expect IER “to take on other countries that have successfully integrated wind into their energy mix.” That assumes, of course, that increased electricity prices and billions of dollars in subsidies is a sign of successful integration of wind into a country’s electricity mix. Some would beg to differ, especially those who are footing the bill.
The Administration tells us that U.S. energy policy should emulate countries like Spain, Denmark, and Germany. The facts show that the promotion of renewables in Spain, Denmark, and Germany has been very expensive and has resulted in lower employment overall as an opportunity cost of the lavish subsidies. Of course, it is up to policymakers to ultimately decide whether the United States should follow a similar path, but no one should mislead Americans into thinking that doing so will come without a cost.
Read full release here. See how Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals here. See this comment from abroad here. See this interview.
By Phelim McAleer, Investors Business Daily
Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
You wouldn’t know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore’s movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning. I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.
The encounter was disappointing but not surprising. I served years of hard time as a liberal journalist in Europe and learned that covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism - no inconvenient questions allowed.
But it is now time for journalists, and the consumers and businesses that will pay the ultimate price, to start questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming and exposing its true cost. If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear.
The evidence of environmentalism run amok abounds in Europe. Spain believed the spin that environmental regulation can create “green jobs” and boost the economy. Now the country has 18% unemployment. Britain could suffer blackouts because of policies that require the country to replace coal with fuels like solar and wind power that aren’t readily available or reliable.
Unfortunately for Americans, many of the lawmakers who represent them in Congress seem unwilling to learn from Europe’s mistakes. The Senate is now considering a bill that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., co-authored to create a European-style “cap and trade” system for carbon dioxide emissions, and he just won the endorsement of a key swing senator. International pressure on the United States to adopt such legislation also will increase in December at climate talks in Copenhagen.
That’s bad news for taxpayers. The Obama administration reluctantly admitted last month that cap-and-trade would cost the average American family $1,761 a year. That is a rosy prediction. A Heritage Foundation analysis pegs the cost at an average of $2,979 a year and as much as $4,600 a year by 2035. Jobs will disappear, energy prices will skyrocket, and the American Dream will become an unattainable fantasy for many. Read more here.
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What an amazing launch we had Oct. 18! Nearly 6,500 premiere parties across the United States, another 1,500 around the world, and thousands more viewers live on the Internet via our Ustream feed. The early estimate is that nearly 400,000 people watched our movie in its first week of release. Thanks
for making the debut of Not Evil Just Wrong a huge success!
The Eagle River Wisconsin Northwoods Patriots Cinematic showing of Not Evil Just Wrong. Read about it here.
Here is the pre showing video of one such Premiere showing in Phoenix.
Buy your copy of Not Evil Just Wrong today, and help us defend the American Dream. And buy extra copies for your family and friends. Remember, the holidays are just around the corner! You’ll find plenty of great reasons to buy the documentary by reading the roundup of reviews on our blog. We’re also hearing truly inspiring stories from our premiere partners, whether on major college campuses or in small towns. Not Evil fans are everywhere and ready to fight global warming hysteria!
By Marc Morano
The proposed “solutions” to scientifically fading man-made global warming fears are set to alter American lifestyles and sovereignty in ways never before contemplated.
MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen has warned: “‘He who controls carbon controls life. It is a bureaucrat’s dream to control carbon dioxide.” Washington, D.C., and the U.N. are in a field of dreams right now as they envision one of the most massive expansions of controls on human individual freedom ever contemplated by governments.
Leading the charge is none other than former Vice President Al Gore, who declared in July 2009 that the congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon also trumpeted the concept in an Oct. 25, 2009, New York Times oped. “A [climate] deal must include an equitable global governance structure,” he wrote.
Gore and the U.N.’s call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac’s call in 2000. On Nov. 20, 2000, then-President Chirac said during a speech at The Hague that the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol represented ”the first component of an authentic global governance.”
Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, “Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”
In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent U.N. global warming conferences. In December 2007, the U.N. climate conference in Bali urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”
Czech President Václav Klaus presents the truth about global warming in his book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”
The environmental group Friends of the Earth advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations during the 2007 U.N. climate conference.
“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
The Obama administration revealed even more controls in September 2009 when it was announced that the State Department wanted to form a global “Ecological Board of Directors.”
But even more chilling than a global regime set up to “solve” global warming is the personal freedoms that are under assault. In September, a top German climate adviser proposed the “creation of a CO2 budget for every person on planet.” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber told Der Spiegel that this internationally monitored “CO2 budget” would apply to “every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing.”
Czech physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, formerly of Harvard University and a global-warming skeptic, reacted to Schellnhuber’s CO2 personal “budget” proposal by citing tyrannical movements of the past. “What Schellnhuber has just said is just breathtaking, and it helps me to understand how crazy political movements such as the Nazis or communists could have so easily taken over a nation that is as sensible as Germany,” Motl wrote on Sept. 6, 2009.
The movement to control personal CO2 “budgets” and personal freedoms is growing internationally. In 2008, the U.K. proposed a “personal carbon trading scheme” where “every adult in U.K. should be forced to use ‘carbon ration cards.‘“ According to the Mail article: “Everyone would be given an annual carbon allowance to use when buying oil, gas, electricity and flights - anyone who exceeds their entitlement would have to buy top-up credits from individuals who haven’t used up their allowance.” The U.K. government would have the authority to impose fines, “monitor employees’ emissions, home energy bills, petrol purchases and holiday flights.” The London Times reported in September 2009: “Rationing being reintroduced via workplace after an absence of half a century. Employees would be required to submit quarterly reports detailing their consumption.”
In January 2008, the California state government stunned the nation when it sought to control home thermostats remotely. Even the New York Times appeared to be shaken by this proposal, comparing it to the 1960s sci-fi show “The Outer Limits.” “California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device,” the New York Times reported.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was dubbed the “eco-nanny” in May 2009 when she told audiences in China that “every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory” in order to combat global warming.
What is most surprising is that even the granddaddy of global warming treaties, the Kyoto Protocol, would have had barely a measurable impact on global CO2 levels even if fully enacted and assuming the U.N. was correct on the science. The congressional global warming cap-and-trade bill has been declared “scientifically meaningless,” and President Obama’s own EPA is now on record admitting that U.S. cap-and-trade bill “would not impact world CO2 levels.”
Even a cursory examination of the global-warming issue reveals that the proposed climate tax and regulatory “solutions” are more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science or concern for human welfare. Former Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth summed up this view succinctly: “We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
The “right thing” Wirth is referring to is the unprecedented transfer of wealth, power and control to domestic and global governance. Controlling climate change appears not to be about controlling temperatures, but about controlling human freedom. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who lived through totalitarian regimes, now warns that the biggest threat to freedom and democracy is from “ambitious environmentalism.” Read more here.