November 6, 2009
The Obama Administration sold its $787 billion stimulus plan on the basis of improving the economy through investing in green energy and by doing so, increasing employment in the United States. But what is actually happening, particularly with wind and solar projects, is that the majority of the manufactured components are being built offshore in [...]
October 28, 2009
We do not understand why IER gets the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) so spun up. Maybe it’s because of our opposition to government subsidies. Maybe it’s because we don’t believe that government mandates forcing people to buy energy from expensive, inefficient sources is good for the economy. Or perhaps it is because of our [...]
October 26, 2009
Florida Power & Light (FPL) has built a 25 megawatt photovoltaic power plant in Southern Florida that will supply power to 3000 homes and businesses–a small fraction of the company’s over 4 million customers.[i] And, when the plant comes on-line Tuesday, October 26, 2009, President Obama will travel to Florida in Air Force One to [...]
October 12, 2009
On June 26, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill. Generally, Waxman-Markey bill is thought of as a cap-and-trade bill, but it is far more than that. Of the bill’s 1,428 pages, merely half are dedicated to cap-and-trade. Dr. Robert Michaels, a Senior Fellow with IER, examined the non-cap-and-trade provisions [...]
June 11, 2009
Statistics
In 2008, solar represented 0.09 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S. [1] and 0.02 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S.[2]
In 2008, solar generating capacity in the U.S. totaled 514 megawatts and generated 843 million kilowatt hours.[3] Solar turbines generated only a percentage of their theoretical maximum output due to [...]
June 4, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 4 , 2009
CONTACT:
Laura Henderson
202.621.2951
Patrick Creighton
202.621.2947
Renewable Electricity Mandate: Pay More For Less
WASHINGTON—In advance of a Senate Energy Committee hearing on the renewable electricity mandate (REM), the Institute for Energy Research (IER) released the following fact sheet:
A National REM Would Increase the Cost of Electricity:
Wind and solar electricity are significantly more expensive than [...]
June 1, 2009
PDF (869 KB)
Coal-fired electricity generation is far cleaner today than ever before. The popular misconception that our air quality is getting worse is wrong, as shown by EPA’s air quality data. Modern coal plants, and those retrofitted with modern technologies to reduce pollution, are a success story and are currently providing about 50% of our [...]
May 18, 2009
***Update: A few minutes before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s markup of the bill, Representative Waxman released a new 946-page Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute. The text is available here. ***
***Second Update: The House Energy and Commerce Committee have released a summary of the changes in the Amendment in the Nature [...]
May 16, 2009
IER has prepared the following to assist people to understand what the hurdles are regarding the renewable electricity mandates currently under discussion in various forms. Because of the language invoked by proponents of the various renewable portfolio standards/renewable electricity standards/renewable electricity mandates, there has been scant attention paid to the scale of the hurdles being [...]
May 15, 2009
The editor of National Journal’s Energy & Environment blog recent asked the following question of some policy experts:
A cross-section of Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are backing legislation that would require U.S. electric companies to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources of energy and to demonstrate annual electricity savings [...]