Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Solar Flare

Just in time for Earth Day:

Homeowners and businesses that wish to generate their own cheap, renewable energy now have a force of conservative political might to contend with, and the Koch brothers are leading the charge. The L.A. Times, to its credit, found the positive spin to put on this: Little old solar “has now grown big enough to have enemies.”

The escalating battle centers over two ways traditional utilities have found to counter the rapidly growing solar market: demanding a share of the power generated by renewables and opposing net metering, which allows solar panel users to sell the extra electricity they generate back to the grid — and without which solar might no longer be affordable. The Times reports on the conservative heavyweights making a fossil fuel-powered effort to make those things happen:

The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation’s largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.

…The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy mandates.

“State governments are starting to wake up,” Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said in an email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires that 20% of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources.

Rachel Maddow reported last night that the state of Oklahoma, the leader in backwards thinking, has passed a law that charges homeowners for using solar panels.

The reason is obvious: solar and other renewable energy sources are a threat to the oil industry, and in America, oil rules.  If the Koch brothers’ fortune had come from the glass panel business, they’d make it their mission to put solar panels on everything.  That’s the way capitalism works, and that’s why they’re buying up every state legislature with more than 100 sunny days in the calendar year.

One bark on “Solar Flare

  1. I have lived in Oklahoma, with a very few years elsewhere, since 1981. People regularly ask me what is wrong with Oklahoma’s politicians at the state and national level. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Oklahoma has very accurate representation. The politicians are accurately reflecting the views, warped as they are, of the majority of the state’s population.

    The question should be – what the hell am I doing here?

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