The renewable energy lobby always returns to the same well: Making energy more expensive so we'll be able to afford less of it. Since our modern lifestyle depends on cheap energy and plenty of it, this always translates into a reduced standard of living.
The latest round of this comes from right here in the Great Land, where an Anchorage-based (of course) group called the Renewable Energy Alaska Project, or REAP (that's strangely appropriate), is demanding an electric utility turn over meter-level data on electricity users, so they can develop a plan to reduce natural gas (used to generate electricity) usage.
The data request by Renewable Energy Alaska Project, an Anchorage-based nonprofit, has prompted a torrent of opposition from Chugach Electric Association, the city’s big power cooperative, and an array of other utilities in the region. They’ve asked the Regulatory Commission of Alaska to deny the request from the nonprofit, known as REAP.
The utilities say REAP is asking for sensitive data about each customer’s energy use and that disclosure would amount to an invasion of privacy.
REAP says it would keep the data confidential but that it’s needed to design a set of rates for Chugach’s member-customers aimed at reducing the consumption of natural gas. The Anchorage-area utility that distributes gas for home and commercial heating, Enstar, has warned that the region faces a shortfall as soon as next year, and electric utilities also depend on the fuel to generate the vast majority of their power.
It is unclear where the well-meaning green types at REAP intend to replace the current electricity generation, but presumably solar panels and windmills figure into it. What their short-term intent is, is to make energy more expensive for Alaskans. But, as they maintain, they are just trying to help.
“We’re just trying to help,” said Hannah Payne, an attorney at the law firm Earthjustice, who’s working with REAP. “REAP wants to come to the best possible solutions for Chugach, for the commission, for ratepayers, for everyone. And it’s a little frustrating to be shut out of the process.”
It is belaboring the obvious to note that they have no place in this process. They are an advocacy group and one that intends, by their admission, to make energy more expensive. And the Alaskan quality of living will be adversely affected by this if for no other reason than that it gets pretty damn cold up here in the winters, and in places like Anchorage, not everyone has that backup wood stove.
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And, yes, REAP states flatly that their goal is to raise rates.
REAP’S proposal, for example, could ratchet up prices as customers hit certain thresholds of consumption each month, which could incentivize them to use less power, put up rooftop solar panels or install energy efficiency upgrades.
State regulations require such non-flat rates to be supported by “appropriate justification and analysis,” which is why REAP needs the detailed data, it said.
It's always the same answer with these people: "You are using too much energy, we need to make it more expensive so you'll use less of it." And at the highest levels, of course, the "green" agenda is driven by the people who will be least affected by it.
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These proposed rate increases will hurt everyone in Alaska. They will hurt Alaskans most who can least afford it, even with their graduated rate increases; and those graduated increases will disproportionately harm small businesses, who use more energy than most households. They may be well-meaning - they surely think they are - but their agenda is not only intrusive in their insistence on seeing meter-level data from Chugach Electric Assoctionan customers, but it's also harmful, especially when you consider the nature of Alaska's climate and the fact that the Last Frontier is, or could be, one of the worlds' energy extraction hotspots. We have plenty of natural gas sources in the Great Land; we don't need schemes like this. And Alaskans don't need to see their energy costs increased to push ill-advised green energy schemes.
As I've written many times, if the green schemes were workable, economically, there would be no need for subsidies or for imposed, punitive rate increases.
Green energy policies always come down to raising the price of energy, therefore making a modern, technological lifestyle more expensive and, ultimately, out of reach for many people. Alaskans should, as the saying goes, spew this group out of their mouths before REAP can reap havoc on the Alaskan economy.
