The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced its latest National Top 50 ranking of green energy purchasers in the U.S. Three Texas cities-Austin, Houston, and Dallas-are in the top 50, and in fact lead all local governments. Many businesses with a Texas presence are also on the list. While it’s usually great to have Texas ranked near the top in lists such as jobs and economic growth, this ranking brings with it some concerns for Texas taxpayers and consumers. Such as:
– The City of Houston says its “comprehensive renewable energy plan calls for the purchase of fixed-price renewable power to hedge against the rising cost of conventional energy.” That’s a great concept, but in fact conventional electricity prices have been dropping for years and can generally be purchased much more cheaply that renewable energy products-except perhaps in those cases renewable energy prices are lowered because of federal and state government subsidies.- Entities don’t actually have to use electricity generated from renewable sources to qualify for a Top 50 ranking. Instead, they can buy Renewable Energy Credits (or certificates). In Texas, RECs are credits granted to renewable energy generators that can be purchased to satisfy the Texas Legislature’s mandated Renewable Portfolio Standard. So renewable generators get to sell both renewable electricity and RECs. And electricity users can purchase RECs and claim credit for using electricity generated from renewable sources even though they might actually be using electricity generated from a coal plant. All the while residential consumers are paying higher prices for electricity and products to support the REC scheme. – To support the use of renewable energy, Texans are paying over $7 billion for the construction high-power transmission lines out to West Texas to transmit electricity from wind farms-even though these wind farms do little to help us meet our overall power needs. That $7 billion would have been put to much better use if it had been invested in some coal plants or natural gas peaker plants near the existing electricity grid.
All isn’t what it seems when it comes to the “benefits” of renewable energy. A further example is that purchases of renewable energy from large hydro resources (dams) or from sources constructed before 1998 don’t count. All of these highlight the fact that the current renewable industry schemes operating in this country are not designed to help consumers, taxpayers, or the environment. Instead, they are meant to subsidize an otherwise largely unsustainable green energy industry and its supporters in government.
-Bill Peacock