Green Energy: Don’t Stick Granny with the Bill
2 days ago Guest Blogger 79 Comments
From Climate Etc.
by Planning Engineer (Russell Schussler)
Renewable energy has an equity problem. Energy policies that force consumers to incur huge costs to meet larger public aims become a hidden form of taxation. Energy bills eat up much larger proportions of income for those at the lower end of the economic scale.
When electric utilities or electric rates are used to accomplish any public good, any cost increase falls disproportionately upon those with lesser incomes and resources. Power costs tend to function as a highly regressive tax, putting the burden on those who struggle the most and having the least impact on the wealthy. As a practicing engineer I often worried what impact our projects would have on the less fortunate. Now I fear that poor struggling grandmothers will end up paying for the “green” dreams of the financially well off.
When I look at the envisioned green transition, I worry about exorbitant costs less than I used to. I’m not sure anymore what I have a sufficient understanding around the abilities of nations to incur huge amounts of costs and debt for the “public good”. It’s beyond my comprehension at times. I see so many billions spent on things that seem less consequential than the grid. So sometimes I think, why not spend that kind of big money on various assorted energy projects. Maybe we can dump huge sums of public money into longshot projects and hope for the best. But I can’t help wondering who will eventually pay for it, and hoping that poor and least able among us do not end up financing ill-considered pursuits.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/30/green-energy-dont-stick-granny-with-the-bill/
