Blue states blow hot air on wind-power boondoggles – Latest News
Your electrical energy invoice reveals a stark political divide: Red-state residents pay much less, whereas blue states gouge their residents and companies with exorbitant electric charges.
But even worse are the bald-faced lies of blue-state politicians who defend the gouging.
Instead of admitting that costly electrical energy is a alternative they’re intentionally making — your price range be damned — they continuously declare wind and solar energy are “affordable” and “reliable.”
A wind tower spins over a hay subject on the Maple Ridge Wind Farm in Lowville, New York. Getty Images
The shameless gaslighting was on full show final week, after President Trump’s Interior Department paused offshore wind farm construction alongside the East Coast close to Virginia, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The administration claims the large installations obscure radar detection of potential overseas incursions, threatening “East Coast population centers.”
Within minutes, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont accused Trump of “making things up.”
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Gov. Kathy Hochul known as the pause “B.S. “
Maybe. The announcement was short on proof backing up the administration’s security pretext.
But the doable deception on Trump’s half is gentle in comparison with the lies spewed by Democrats in response.
Hochul declared that wind energy will “keep energy costs down” and “strengthen reliability.”
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong insisted that wind energy will save ratepayers “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Lamont claimed a “diverse energy supply” that features wind “will lower utility costs for families.”
Nonsense.
In truth, worse than nonsense. Deliberate mendacity.
Each state has the authority to determine the combo of vitality sources that go into its electric grid.
Blue states have mandated ever-increasing reliance on wind, in addition to photo voltaic, as a substitute of fossil fuels, per the Institute for Energy Research.
New Yorkers pay 58% more for his or her electrical energy than the national average, as a result of of inexperienced mandates imposed by state politicians and the facility sources they exclude, like natural-gas fracking.
Connecticut ratepayers are fleeced even more, paying practically double the national average fee for electrical energy.
Climate-driven pols, virtually all of them Democrats, ought to at the very least admit they’re making choices primarily based on ideology — in addition to strain from the renewable-energy foyer.
Instead, they parrot falsehoods about “affordability” and “reliability.”
In fact, offshore wind energy is at the very least twice as costly per kilowatt as natural gas-generated electrical energy, for instance.
Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus, citing knowledge from 70 international locations, concludes “the evidence is clear: Adding more solar and wind to the energy supply pushes up the price of electricity.”
How about “reliability,” the opposite phrase that blue-state pols repeat advert nauseam to defend their inexperienced obsession?
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Germany realized how unreliable renewables are when it put in large photo voltaic and wind mills meant to satisfy 70% of its grid’s wants.
But on cloudy or windless days, these renewables ship a mere 4% of the nation’s energy calls for. Hardly “reliable.”
Germany has needed to preserve two producing systems, at large value — so Germans pay 43 cents per kilowatt-hour, more than twice what Canadians, who nonetheless rely largely on fossil fuels, pay.
In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has flip-flopped over whether or not he’ll meet his own plans to take away virtually all fossil fuels from the UK’s electrical energy provide by 2030, as a result of the price is simply too high.
He and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are jostling over whether or not including more renewables within the combine will push vitality payments to unaffordable ranges.
Renewables are budget-busters, burdening shoppers and slowing financial growth, and the UK’s studying that the onerous manner.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed an growing reliance on renewables — now up to 39% of its grid’s combine — which is why its residents and companies pay the second-highest charges within the nation, behind Hawaii.
Those crippling prices are hobbling growth and inflicting “energy poverty,” with low-income residents unable to pay their electric payments.
Electricity prices have been a hot-button problem in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election final yr, the place payments had skyrocketed as a result of outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy retired fossil fuel sources simply as statewide energy demand was hovering.
Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill promised that investing in offshore wind would “lower energy costs for families,” a blatant falsehood — however her fib gained out.
As Sherrill takes workplace this month, New Jersey voters ought to bear in mind her promise — and watch their energy payments.
Blue-state Americans struggling to pay for electrical energy need political leaders who will make affordability a precedence.
But to do this, voters need to listen to the reality.
So far, they’re getting a pack of lies from windbag politicians like Sherrill, Hochul and Lamont.
And no one is discussing wind farms’ visible blight, as their towering {hardware} mars our magnificent oceanscapes, and their harms to whales and different animals.
If Republicans have been demanding traces of equally towering oil rigs throughout Long Island Sound or Nantucket Bay, the left can be screaming bloody homicide.
Trump’s pause should drive an trustworthy dialogue of wind energy’s prices and penalties.
On the information, as a substitute of the lies, it’s a loser.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
