Author Topic: Austin’s $2B Biomass Boondoggle  (Read 525 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Austin’s $2B Biomass Boondoggle
« on: June 03, 2019, 01:43:48 am »
Texas Scorecard By Jacob Asmussen May 30, 2019

Imagine this: You finally saved enough money to lease a new luxury car. You pay all of the monthly payments and all of the maintenance for years on end, and you even finally pay the entire purchase price of the car—then you have it towed to a junk yard.

Oh, and you only ever drove the car twice.

Such a scenario is actually very much akin to reality for Austin taxpayers—except their story is far worse.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler recently announced the city’s taxpayers will be paying a whopping $460 million to buy a biomass power plant in East Texas, a plant Austinites had already coughed up $128 million to build and were paying $54 million every year to operate.

Even after all that cash over the span of six years, the plant produced energy for only two months.

The story began in 2008, when Roger Duncan, then-Austin Energy’s general manager, sketched out a plan to help achieve Austin City Council’s renewable energy goals. He wanted local citizens to pony up the cash to build the Nacogdoches Generating Facility, then pay for all of the energy produced at the biomass plant.

His plan required a 20-year, $2.3 billion contract.

More: https://texasscorecard.com/local/austins-2b-biomass-boondoggle/

Offline IsailedawayfromFR

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Re: Austin’s $2B Biomass Boondoggle
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2019, 02:54:38 am »
Rather than being disgraced and blacklisted from all like jobs forever, the worthless POS GM of this boondoggle is now an esteemed worker at the University of Texas.  Seems he does Environmental Research without a science degree and nothing but a BA in Philosophy.


Roger Duncan Research Fellow
Roger Duncan is a Research Fellow with the Energy Institute and a Research Associate at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at The University of Texas at Austin.

A former General Manager of Austin Energy, the municipal utility for Austin, Texas, Roger was twice elected to the Austin City Council, serving from 1981 to 1985. In 2005, Business Week magazine recognized Roger as one of the top 20 carbon reducers in the world. He has a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin with a major in philosophy.
No punishment, in my opinion, is too great, for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin~  George Washington

Offline Sanguine

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Re: Austin’s $2B Biomass Boondoggle
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2019, 03:56:29 am »
My dad has been on this earth for a long time, and I can remember him when I was a little kid, saying (true but) unkind things about the Austin City Council.  They have been "special" for a long, long time.

Offline IsailedawayfromFR

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Re: Austin’s $2B Biomass Boondoggle
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2019, 02:01:23 pm »
My dad has been on this earth for a long time, and I can remember him when I was a little kid, saying (true but) unkind things about the Austin City Council.  They have been "special" for a long, long time.
Oh, I can go back to the days of Emma Long ruling the City Council as likely the first of many Democrat liberals to take up residence there.

She was so liberal LBJ made her the US representative of the World Population Commission.

Among other duties, this organization promotes abortion worldwide.
No punishment, in my opinion, is too great, for the man who can build his greatness upon his country's ruin~  George Washington