Minneapolis seems determined to rush toward 100 percent renewable energy by 2023, but perhaps its time for the City to pump the brakes on environmental virtue signalling and consider whether it has bigger problems that should be addressed first....
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The State of Minnesota has gifted more taxpayer dollars to the solar industry. This time the subsidies take the form of a $3.5 million dollar state loan package that was used to restart the production of solar panels at a Mountain Iron manufacturing facility. The plant was previously occupied by the solar company Silicon Energy, before it went bankrupt after the first round of solar subsidies, dubbed "Made in Minnesota," expired in 2017. In fact, nearly all of the companies who participated in the program have closed their facilities in the state or gone out of business. So why is the state...
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They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and this cartoon definitely fits the bill. The next time someone delivers a sermon to you on the virtues of wind and solar power, ask them this one easy question: "Do you dry your laundry on a clothesline, or do you use a dryer?"...
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Electric bills in Minnesota have increased substantially due to wind energy investments, but even in light of this information, there are organizations that go to lengths to conceal this fact. One of these organizations is Fresh Energy....
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The Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board, which protects families and small businesses from increasing electricity prices, said the focus on bills instead of prices obscure the fact that the state has the highest electricity prices in the Midwest. Unfortunately, renewable energy advocates in Minnesota use the same sleight of hand to try and persuade the general public that the state's $15 billion dollar investment in unreliable wind power has not caused electricity prices to skyrocket. This is simply is not true....
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Advocates of reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generation have released a new study attempting to show the necessary steps to make 13 states CO2-free in the Midwest. Unfortunately, the study, released by the Great Plains Institute, failed to mention the massive cost of doing so. Renewable energy advocates like to pretend wind energy is the lowest-cost source of electricity. Yet, for Minnesotans, electric bills have increased 26 percent faster than the national average as we have added more wind and solar to the grid. According to the study, renewables would have to increase their energy share dramatically. Renewables currently provide 11 percent of...
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The new conservative government in Ontario will cancel 758 renewable energy contracts in an effort to lower electricity rates in the province, with the move expected to result in CAD 790 million (USD 602.2m/EUR 513.4m) in ratepayers savings. Will conservatives in Minnesota learn from their example?...
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In recent years, the electrical grid in Texas (ERCOT) has had moments of almost utter collapse. In 2008, a storm swept through the state causing a large amount of wind capacity to rapidly go off-grid when electricity demand was highest. The grid’s frequency suddenly dropped, leaving many residents without power for up to four hours. This occurred when wind energy was responsible for merely 4 percent of Texas’s electricity generation. It happened again in 2011 when record low temperatures in Texas resulted in record high energy demand. The information we do get from these outages is crucial for understanding how...
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The just-released summer issue of Thinking Minnesota makes a compelling case for how allowing more mining in northern Minnesota would give Minnesota’s economy a potent shot in the arm. In the cover story, Center policy fellows used a sophisticated economic modeling program to conclude that increased mining will produce 8500 jobs and bring in $3.7 billion to the state’s economy. On top of that Minnesotans appear to agree. In a related article, the quarterly Thinking Minnesota poll shows that Minnesotans agree. When told that mining would add $3.4 billion to the economy and create thousands of Minnesota jobs, respondents’ support for...
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American Experiment's report "Energy Policy in Minnesota: The High Cost of Failure," must have the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) quivering in their boots. The national lobbying organization for Big Wind put out a blog post that attempted to refute our study...
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