Wind and solar are supposed to be the cheap, plentiful power of the future.
But Georgetown, Texas’ much-hyped “green energy” program has sent utility bills skyrocketing and left the city nearly bankrupt, Chuck DeVore, a former California legislator turned vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, writes.
The city of 70,000, near the “progressive” hub of Austin, was the poster child for the “green movement.” Leaders applied for, and won, a $1 million grant to convert the city entirely to wind and solar power.
Liberals nationwide praised Georgetown for its “100 percent renewable” status and clucked about how the nation would soon follow.
Predictably, it failed.
Sold as “cheaper” energy, it actually left Georgetown residents with utility bills an average of $600 higher than their neighbors.
The virtue-signaling scheme nearly bankrupted the city.
“With their municipal utility facing a $7 million shortfall – money that has to be made up by the city residents through higher electricity costs – the City Council voted 5-1 in July to instruct the staff to figure out how to wriggle out of the Bloomberg PR deal,” DeVore writes. “On Aug. 13 the Council voted 5-0 to officially kill the deal. The city is also raising property taxes.”
There are many reasons why “green energy” is a scam.
For one, wind and solar power are hideously expensive. Both require massive amounts of equipment, powered by toxic heavy metals, to produce a pittance of electricity.
They are also unpredictable and intermittent, requiring massive amounts of expensive power storage, to keep the electric grid constant.
The tons of toxic heavy metals used in wind turbines and solar panels is also a ticking environmental time bomb. Since wind turbines and solar panels have short lives and must be constantly replaced, millions of tons of extremely toxic poisons likes lead and cadmium are piling up in American landfills, where they threaten to permanently poison drinking water.
There’s also the fact natural gas is cheaper and far more efficient. But since it’s a “fossil fuel,” radicals refuse to embrace it.
Hydroelectric power is even cheaper than that, and has no emissions. Since it’s cheaper and cleaner than wind and solar, it’s banned from being considered a renewable resource in most states. Environmentalists are heavily invested in wind and solar experiments, which aren’t profitable unless governments forces people to use it — making “green energy programs” nothing more than hideously expensive and wildly inefficient corporate welfare programs.
With their municipal utility facing a $7 million shortfall – money that has to be made up by the city residents through higher electricity costs – the City Council voted 5-1 in July to instruct the staff to figure out how to wriggle out of the Bloomberg PR deal.
On Aug. 13 the Council voted 5-0 to officially kill the deal. The city is also raising property taxes.
For one, wind and solar power are hideously expensive. Both require massive amounts of equipment, powered by toxic heavy metals, to produce a pittance of electricity.
They are also unpredictable and intermittent, requiring massive amounts of expensive power storage, to keep the electric grid constant.
There’s also the fact natural gas is cheaper. But since it’s a “fossil fuel,” radicals refuse to embrace it.
Hydroelectric power is even cheaper than that, and has no emissions. Since it’s cheaper and cleaner than wind and solar, it’s banned from being considered a renewable resource in most states. Environmentalists are heavily invested in wind and solar experiments, which aren’t profitable unless governments forces people to use it — making “green energy programs” nothing more than hideously expensive and wildly inefficient corporate welfare programs.