Author Topic: The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare  (Read 558 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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The Coming Green Electricity Nightmare
« on: October 03, 2022, 11:53:08 pm »
The Post & Email by Paul Driessen 10/2/2022

Hundreds of billions in new subsidies will bring expensive, unreliable, eco-destructive power

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) wanted regulatory reform, in part to reverse some of the Biden Administration reversals of Trump era reforms intended to expedite permits for fossil fuel projects.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) needed Manchin’s vote in the 50-50 Senate to enact his latest spending extravaganza, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was primarily a massive climate and “green” energy subsidy arrangement. It gives Schumer allies some $370 billion in wind, solar, battery and other funding, tax credits and subsidies. In exchange, Schumer would offer a path for Manchin’s reform bill.

Manchin voted YEA, and promptly got bushwhacked. Once he’d helped enact the IRA, he had zero leverage. Schumer, he discovered, had promised an opportunity, maybe a vote, but not actual support. House and Senate members told him, we weren’t part of your secret negotiations with Schumer; we didn’t shake hands on any deal; we don’t want easier permitting for drilling, pipelines and LNG terminals that could help send US natural gas to Britain and Europe.

In the end, it’s probably a good thing Manchin’s bill went nowhere.

Yes, it provided some much needed and long overdue reforms to curb the paralysis by analysis and endless litigation that have plagued fossil fuel, highway, airport and countless other projects for decades.

But it also had Trojan horse provisions that would have unleashed hordes of newly subsidized wind, solar and transmission marauders on much of the Lower 48 USA, to send pseudo-clean electricity to mostly Democrat cities and states that don’t want even “renewable” power generation in their own backyards.

As the Wall Street Journal and energy analyst Robert Bryce observed, Manchin’s “reforms” would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other bureaucrats the power to issue permits and force multiple states to acquiesce to new transmission lines and 200-foot-tall towers across their scenic, habitat, agricultural and even residential lands – if the feds decide the lines are in the “national interest.” This could easily transform into federal powers of eminent domain, to take the needed acreage.

The feds could decree that thousands of miles of new transmission lines are in the “national interest” if, for instance, the lines “enhance the ability” of faraway wind and solar facilities to connect their intermittent, weather-dependent energy to an electric grid; or enable distant blue states to reach their renewable energy goals; or help achieve Biden Administration goals of stopping manmade climate change, “advancing environmental justice” and having “a net-zero economy” by 2050. Hopefully while avoiding blackout-a-week nightmares.

Populous states like New York could also work with FERC & Co. to have offshore wind turbines installed off less populated coasts, like Maine or North Carolina – and have the electricity delivered to the Empire State. New York’s peak summertime needs alone would require 2,500 monstrous 680-foot-tall 12-MW offshore turbines, operating 24/7 – when we’d be lucky if they generated electricity 40% of the year. (Imagine how many offshore … or 6-MW onshore … turbines we’d need to power the entire USA.)

More: https://www.thepostemail.com/2022/10/02/the-coming-green-electricity-nightmare/