| Sourced From TMCNet.com |
(Orlando Sentinel (FL) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 24–I’m not sure what is scarier: global warming or the 932-page cap-and-trade bill that purports to save us from life in an oven.
You’d think Leo Tolstoy wrote it.
Washington makes things incomprehensible to create hiding places for special-interest groups. It is in all the cracks and crevices of these bills that they stick their provisions, exemptions and allocations.
Cap-and-trade will be the new tax code, with carbon credits the new currency and campaign contributions the same old prerequisite for sitting at the negotiating table.
Politicians understand that when they get to pick the winners and losers, they always win.
It should not be this complicated.
Cutting carbon emissions requires only this basic formula: Increase the cost of fossil fuel and decrease the cost of renewable energy. This then encourages investment in conservation and new technology.
To understand the possibilities, I turn to Gainesville, home to the nation’s leading university and most innovative electric utility.
Gainesville Regional Utilities, which is owned by the city, began planning its power future a few years ago. It rejected the traditional approach of building a natural-gas power plant or buying into a nuclear plant.
Instead, the city commission got creative and adopted a German invention known as a feed-in tariff.
The city creates an incentive for investors to build small solar plants by agreeing to buy power from them at inflated prices for a certain period of time.
This gives the investors a guaranteed return on their investment.
It is such a good deal that there would be small solar plants going up all over Gainesville if the city didn’t limit their number to reduce the impact on electric bills.
Every year, the city agrees to buy another 4 megawatts of power — about enough for 750 homes. This only raises electric bills about 1percent a year.
It is a compromise between encouraging renewable energy while making it affordable.
The city also gives big rebates to homes and businesses that incorporate energy-saving measures or put up solar panels.
Lastly, Gainesville has contracted with a company to build a 100-megawatt power plant that will run on timber byproducts. This will be more expensive than a traditional natural-gas power plant, at least in the short term.
But like the increased cost of solar power, more expensive is a relative term.
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Gainesville should promote energy efficient homes and give incentives to people who purchase or possibly even rent these homes.