The Sunshine State is quickly outpacing the rest of the country as a top solar energy installer, which looks to continue in coming years.
According to data from the Solar Energy Industries Association, Florida was ranked third in the country in 2022 behind Texas and California, installing around 12,000 megawatts of generation capacity since 2013, enough to power 1.51 million homes.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed six bills into law to boost solar power and allow promulgation of state environmental rules more stringent than the federal standard.
Whitmer signed House Bills 4317 and 4318, and Senate Bills 302 and 303, 288, and 14, which she says advance her climate goals of reaching 2 million electric vehicles driving on Michigan roads by 2030.
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The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable, and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a larger context large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection.
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Today in America, there are obvious disconnects between observable reality and the narratives we get from the corporate special interests controlling the news we consume, along with politicians who are supposedly elected to represent us.
This is nothing new. Elites have defined America’s destiny throughout its history. The only difference today is that the internet, despite ongoing crackdowns, still manages to deliver an unprecedented volume of contrarian perspectives to millions of people. We aren’t any freer or less manipulated today than we ever were, we’re just more aware of it.
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Mississippi residents are consistently told that renewable energy sources, like solar panels, are now the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity, but these claims are based on creative accounting gimmicks that only examine a small portion of the expenses incurred to integrate solar onto the grid while excluding many others.
When these hidden expenses are accounted for, it becomes obvious that solar is much more expensive than Mississippi’s existing coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants and that adding more solar will increase electricity prices for the families and businesses that rely upon it. One of the most common ways of estimating the cost of generating electricity from different types of power plants is a metric called the Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti recently announced that he joined a coalition of eight attorneys general in sending a letter to five solar lending companies demanding they suspend loan payments and interest accrual for some customers.
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A European solar power tech company has chosen Arizona as its first location in the United States.
Switzerland-based mechanical engineering company Meyer Burger Technology AG is establishing a production site for high-performance solar modules in Goodyear, Arizona. Production is expected to be operational by the end of 2022, creating an initial 250 jobs and more than 500 jobs at full capacity.
“I am very pleased to welcome Meyer Burger to our community,” Mayor of Goodyear Joe Pizzillo said in a news release.“The decision to make a large investment in our community shows Goodyear is an excellent location for advanced manufacturing businesses. Our highly skilled workforce, modern infrastructure, and low cost of doing business has created an environment where companies can thrive.”
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Recent news in the energy world has not been encouraging. Prices are rising rapidly due to a supply crunch coupled with blistering, post-pandemic demand. Renewables like wind and solar are faltering in an unprepared electrical grid. Coal burning is set to spike to make up for energy supply shortfalls at a time when the world needs to aggressively decarbonize.
Some of this hardship might have been avoided if, over the past couple of decades, policy makers had the guts to support the safest, most reliable form of energy, which also happens to be carbon-free: nuclear. Instead, Germany is taking its nuclear fleet offline and replacing it with fossil fuels, as the country’s already exorbitant electricity prices soar. California is shutting down its last nuclear plant, further imperiling its notoriously fragile grid. All the while, Americans remain divided on nuclear power.
Again, the data is clear: despite nuclear’s damaged reputation, clouded by a few high-profile accidents, nuclear power kills fewer people per electricity produced than any other energy source. It is also the most reliable. Nuclear’s capacity factor, a measure of how often a power plant is producing energy at full capacity over a certain period of time, is the highest by far – almost double that of coal and more than triple that of solar. And nuclear is clean, producing no carbon emissions. Though its radioactive waste often attracts negative press, coal plants actually create more. Moreover, all of the waste that America’s nuclear power plants have collectively produced in a half-century could fit on one football field. This is because nuclear is incredibly efficient. In the U.S., just 55 nuclear power plants produce 20% of the country’s electricity! It takes nearly 2,000 natural gas plants to produce 40 percent.
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On Wednesday, the Biden Administration made several unverified claims about the future of “green energy,” including the suggestion that half of all energy in the United States could be driven by solar power by the year 2050, as reported by Politico.
In a statement, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that a new study commissioned by the Department of Energy showed that solar power “could produce enough electricity to power all of the homes in the U.S. by 2035, and employ as many as 1.5 million people in the process.”
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by Michael Bastasch Former Vice President Al Gore hailed the city of Georgetown, Texas, for powering itself with only solar and wind energy, but now the city is losing millions on its green energy gamble. Georgetown’s bet against fossil fuel prices cost the city-owned utility nearly $7 million this year, and prompted officials to look for a way out of their long-term contracts for solar and wind energy. “It’s costing them big time,” vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), Bill Peacock, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “This doesn’t appear to be the first time they’ve lost money, just the first time it was big enough to have to go public with it.” Georgetown made national news after being featured in Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which was released in 2017. The film followed-up on Gore’s inaccurate 2006 film”An Inconvenient Truth.” “I think Georgetown is already a trailblazer,” Gore said during his 2016 visit to learn about Georgetown’s plan to get 100 percent of their energy from wind and solar power. “And one thing that Georgetown demonstrates to other places that are just beginning to think about it is that the power supply is…
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Senate Leadership Fund on Tuesday launched a new advertising campaign slamming Phil Bredesen for his conflicts of interest as governor, costing Tennessee taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while Bredesen made a fortune, the group says. The $1.6 million buy will run statewide on a combination of broadcast and cable television, radio and digital. The ad is available here. Bredesen is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Bob Corker (R-TN). U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) is his opponent. Senate Leadership Fund Spokesman Chris Pack said, “Call it what you want, but look at what Phil Bredesen made Tennessee do: pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into solar investments that went belly-up while he made a fortune. We knew he was trouble, but Phil Bredesen’s cashing in on the very subsidies he got passed goes beyond our wildest dreams.” Solar power companies, including Bredesen’s Silicon Ranch, wouldn’t make much of a mark without officials giving them taxpayer money, government incentives and other generous benefits, Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told The Tennessee Star in August. That’s because less than 2 percent of America’s electricity comes from solar power, Loris said.…
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Solar power companies, including Phil Bredesen’s Silicon Ranch, wouldn’t make much of a mark without do-gooder government officials giving them taxpayer money, government incentives, and other generous benefits, an expert said. That’s because less than 2 percent of America’s electricity comes from solar power, said Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “Without these government benefits, you would see a lot less because anytime you subsidize something you’re going to get more of it,” Loris told The Tennessee Star. “If you got rid of all energy subsidies, not just the ones for solar, but all the ones for fossil fuels, for wind, for nuclear, then I think, in a true free market, solar’s role in the electricity generation portfolio would be pretty minimal.” But, Loris went on to say, if market forces dictate that solar power is cost competitive and if people are willing to pay more for it, then they ought to have that right. “Those decisions are from an investment perspective and by a consumer choice perspective,” Loris said. “They shouldn’t be driven by the federal government and gambling with other people’s money.” But if those subsidies and other benefits for solar power are…
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An expert says solar power isn’t as effective an energy saver as people in government might lead Tennesseans and others across the country to believe. That expert, Nick Loris, of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, also said solar is more expensive. He also said it’s only hobbled along as far as it has because of government subsidies and tax incentives. Loris said this on Thursday, only a few days after a company with direct ties to Tennessee Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen reportedly launched a new solar initiative in northeast Tennessee. Bredesen did this through his company Silicon Ranch. As reported, Bredesen personally benefitted from solar energy policies he enacted while Tennessee’s governor. Electricity generation from solar power, Loris said, is only 1.3 percent of all electricity generation — even with government subsidies to give it a boost. “It is still more uneconomical than other energy sources,” Loris told The Tennessee Star. “Not only do you have to pay to back it up when the sun isn’t shining, but a lot of times you have to build new transmission lines and to get the solar from the places that it’s being built to where you need the…
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Thanks to politicians, environmentalists, and the solar industry, taxpayers and consumers are being fleeced. The federal government heavily subsidizes the solar industry, and a number of state governments have policies encouraging solar and green energy production.
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