Category: Green Hell

GE brings good schemes to life. Consider its recently announced “net-zero energy home” initiative.

The program calls for the installation in homes of networked appliances powered by home-based solar panels and wind turbines. So what’s not to like about homes that are energy self-sufficient?

Even accepting the GE fantasy that homes can be net-zero users of energy, that sadly does not mean that the cost of that energy is zero.

The system will add about 10 percent to the cost of a home, according to GE — a price that likely would take more than a decade to pay for itself.

GE’s net-zero-energy plan amounts to little more than a shift in check-writing.

Instead of writing monthly checks to your local utility for the energy you actually use, you’ll just write one big check to GE (or your contractor) upfront — a payment that might or might not cover a decade or more of home energy use and that probably does not include any maintenance costs for your system. Additionally, since most people borrow to purchase their homes, you’d essentially wind up financing you electric bill over the life of your mortgage, further adding to the cost of the system.

If your home turns out not to be net-zero-energy, you’ll still wind up writing those monthly checks to your local utility while GE and your contractor bask in the unearned glow of the original upfront payment.

Beware: green or clean energy — whatever you want to call it — is the new snake oil. It’s sad that the only sort of energy innovation occurring today is based more on financial shenanigans (cost-shifting, subsidies and worse) than technologies to produce more energy at less cost.

Following up on yesterday’s story about Baltimore Gas & Electric’s program to install 2 million Obama-meters in homes, BG&E says that on peak days (i.e., very hot days when there’s a lot of demand for air conditioning), its Obama-meters helped…

… lots of customers cut power use [between 2p-7pm] to 30kwh from 40kwh… [earning a rebate of] $12.50 for that day,

according to a report in SmartGridToday.

So that works out to being paid $2.50 per hour to sweat at home — much less than the minimum wage, which is scheduled to rise to $7.25 per hour on July 24.

Of course, if you went to the shopping mall or visited neighbors with air conditioning on those days then it would be money-for-nothing.

Imagine if entire neighborhoods gathered in one air-conditioned house on “peak days” (house-pooling?) everyone could save $12.50, less the cover charge for the home in which everyone “pooled” to play that new board game, Cap and Charade.

Carbon Control News reports that,

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is hoping to complete within the next few weeks an analysis of the massive House climate bill that could reshape the climate debate and ultimately determine the stance of several hesitant lawmakers…

Moderate Democrats from coal-reliant states are among those being most fiercely courted by climate bill backers, and they likely will be looking for some reassurance from EIA that implementing a cap-and-trade program will not cause their constituents’ electricity rates to sky rocket.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), a key fence-sitter, said avoiding “a spike in energy prices” was one of his top two concerns with the House legislation. “I don’t think we’re entirely there, for coal states,” he told reporters July 7.

We predict that the Obama administration will force the EIA to cast aside its objectivity and provide the “reassurance” that wobbly Democratic Senators seek.

A new study commissioned by the California Small Business Association projects the following impacts from California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006:

On average, the annual costs resulting from the implementation of AB 32 to small businesses are likely to result in loss of more than $182.6 billion in gross state output, the equivalent of more than 1.1 million jobs, nearly $76.8 billion in labor income, and nearly $5.8 billion in indirect business taxes…

The total AB 32 cost of $182.649 billion in lost output is one and a half times the total budget for the state of California. Given that the total gross state output of $1.8 trillion for California in 2008, the total lost output from AB 32 costs to small businesses is almost 10%. Accordingly, the total cost of AB 32 is $49,691 per small business in California.

These costs could be coming to a state near you courtesy of Waxman-Markey.

From World Net Daily:

The man President Obama has chosen to be his science czar [i.e. John Holdren] once advocated a shocking approach to the “population crisis” feared by scientists at the time: namely, compulsory abortions in the U.S. and a “Planetary Regime” with the power to enforce human reproduction restrictions.

Baltimore Gas & Electric is leading the way to electricity rationing, courtesy of President Obama.

The utility announced to day that it filed with local regulators an application to install 2 million so-called “smart meters” in the homes of its residential customers.

Smart meters allow local utilities to control electricity use in your home.

Using a $200 million Department of Energy grant — part of the $787 billion Obama Stimulus package enacted earlier in the year — BG&E plans to charge customers for the balance of the costs.

BG&E claims that benefits to consumers (about $5 per month) will amount to about three times the cost of the meters.

Not only is this benefit trivial, it’s pretty phony. It comes from you using less electricity or using electricity at less convenient times — things you can already do without the meter. What’s the benefit from doing less or being inconvenienced?

We don’t know about you, but we’re not interested in selling our freedom to use electricity as we choose — especially for a lousy $5/month.

Also, consider that, since smart meters allow two-way communication, each meter represents a node from which a hacker can gain entry to the grid and wreak havoc.

The ultimate purpose of the meters is to allow local utilities to ration electricity as demand is rising faster than supply, a phenomenon that can be traced to the greens blocking construction of new power plants and transmission lines. Rolling power outages are already being planned for the Baltimore-Washington area starting as early as 2011-2012.

Smart is the new dumb.

So-called “clean energy” projects no longer need to be operational and  produce income to get taxpayer subsidies.

The Departments of Energy and Treasury announced yesterday that $3 billion worth of stimulus funds will be paid directly to  clean energy developers in exchange for foregoing future tax credits, according to a report in Restructuring Today (July 10).

Now how did that Steve Miller Band song go? Oh yeah…

Go on take the money and run…

We’ll be able to track this boondoggle at http://www.treas.gov/recovery/1603.shtml.

General Electric and smart-grid start-up Tendril have agreed to develop “smart” appliances that work with the coming “smart” grid, reports Smart Grid Today (July 9).

The deal is pitched as allowing consumers to control their GE appliances via the Internet — but it probably also means that others would be able to monitor and control them as well, including hackers, local governments, local utilities, etc.

North Korea was recently blamed for wreaking havoc in U.S. government networks. We’re going to be really PO-ed if Kim Il Jung interferes with our thermostats and dishwashers. Of course, we won’t be any happier if Barack Obama does the same thing.

If you live in the St. Louis, MO-area, you should patronize McArthur’s Bakery. Here’s why…

Complaining about the impact of Waxman-Markey on his small business, David McArthur of St. Louis-based McArthur’s Bakery said on Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck show (Eric Bolling sitting in for Glenn Beck) that,

You know, there are physics that say it takes a certain amount of energy to take a dough product to make it into a bread product. And nothing that anyone wants to do to make the world greener is going to change the amount of energy that goes into that.

This tax directly applies to us as well as every other food manufacturer. And so what it is going to do, long term, essentially says, “You haven’t cut back, so we’re going to continue to tax you and tax you more.” That’s a penalty. You know, quite frankly, the only way I can use less energy to bake a loaf of bread is to quit baking it.

Best of all, the bakery took action. McArthur said:

Well, Saturday, two weeks ago, at about 3:00 in the afternoon, I went to our reader board. We’ve got one of those nice reader board signs on our location. Out front, and I typed “Russ Carnahan voted to close us and other small business.” It was just in sheer – just aggravation, just fed up with it.

What is your business doing to fight Waxman-Markey?

Here’s Part 1 of the interview:

Here’s Part 2 of the interview:

Toledo Rep. Marcy Kaptur received $3.5 billion to vote for the Waxman-Markey bill. As reported by the Washington Times,

When House Democratic leaders were rounding up votes Friday for the massive climate-change bill, they paid special attention to their colleagues from Ohio who remained stubbornly undecided.

They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted – a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states.

To paraphrase James Carville,

Drag a $3.5 billion bribe through the halls of Congress and there’s no telling what you’ll find.

While some say that Waxman-Markey will never pass the Senate because of economic considerations, remember we said that:

• Every politician has his price; and
• President Obama is printing money like there’s no tomorrow.

Make sure Senators know that a vote for Waxman-Markey (or whatever bill the Senate develops) is a vote against their reelection — apparently the only price that they can’t afford.

President Obama’s stimulus package is slowing the development of so-called “renewable energy” projects as developers shun private capital in hopes of getting better deals from the government.

The problem is that,

None of these incentives has yet been defined with specific rules and none of the programs are yet accepting applications…

And the rentseekers aren’t happy.

Matt Cheney, chief executive of Renewable Ventures, the U.S. subsidiary of Fotowatio SL, a Spanish developer of renewable-energy projects said of Obama’s stimulus program,

“It artificially slowed the recovery.”

Keshav Prasad, vice president of business development at Signet Solar Inc. added,

“We will not close on anything until we finally hear from the DOE on the loan guarantee.”

Bureaucracy thwarts rentseeking!