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UNITED STATES: POLITICS: POLITICAL PARTIES: REPUBLICAN PARTY, TEA PARTY :
INDUSTRIES: PETROLEUM :
ENVIRONMENT: GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE:
CLIMATE CHANGE DECEIT :
ENERGY: SOLAR :
ENERGY: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY:
The Koch Brothers' Dirty War on Solar Power
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The Koch Brothers' Dirty War on Solar Power
All over the country, the Kochs and utilities have been blocking solar
initiatives but nowhere more so than in Florida
By Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/
the-koch-brothers-dirty-war-on-solar-power-20160211
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A shorter URL for the above link:
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http://tinyurl.com/zzbtwsd
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After decades of false starts, solar power in America is finally poised
for its breakthrough moment. The price of solar panels has dropped by more
than 80 percent since President Obama took office, and the industry is
beginning to compete with coal and natural gas on economics alone.
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But the birth of Big Solar poses a grave threat to those who profit from
burning fossil fuels. And investor-owned utilities, together with
Koch-brothers-funded front groups like American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), are mounting a fierce, rear-guard resistance at the state
level pushing rate hikes and punishing fees for homeowners who turn to
solar power. Their efforts have darkened green-energy prospects in
could-be solar superpowers like Arizona and Nevada. But nowhere has the
solar industry been more eclipsed than in Florida, where the utilities'
powers of obstruction are unrivaled.
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The Sunshine State has the best solarity east of the Mississippi, and the
third-best rooftop solar potential in America. Yet measured by solar
production, it ranks just 16th in the nation. It's dwarfed by solar giants
like California. Florida even lags behind Northern states like New Jersey,
Massachusetts and New York. "It defies logic," says former Florida Gov.
Charlie Crist. "It's absolutely absurd."
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The solar industry in Florida has been boxed out by investor-owned
utilities (IOUs) that reap massive profits from natural gas and coal.
These IOUs wield outsize political power in the state capital of
Tallahassee, and flex it to protect their absolute monopoly on electricity
sales. "We live in the Stone Age in regard to renewable power," says state
Rep. Dwight Dudley, the ranking Democrat on the energy subcommittee in the
Florida House. "The power companies hold sway here, and the consumers are
at their mercy."
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The full political might of Florida's IOUs was on display in December,
when a deceptive campaign, funded by the state's electric utilities,
crushed a citizen-led effort to open Florida to solar competition through
the 2016 ballot. "When your opponents have no ethical foundation, have
unlimited resources and are willing to say and do anything to defeat you,"
says Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy,
which led the pro-solar effort, "it's a tough hurdle to overcome."
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It should come as no surprise that the utilities have fought so hard. The
rise of cheap, distributed solar power poses a disruptive and perhaps
existential threat to the traditional electric utility business.
Monopoly electric utilities used to make sense. Dirty power, generated at
a distance from population centers, was carried over a set of transmission
lines to homes and businesses. Consumers got reliable power from a single
provider. IOUs were guaranteed a profit both for building power plants
and transmission lines as well as for the electricity itself.
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But in recent years, the nation's IOUs have been abusing their monopoly
powers to profit from massive infrastructure projects. Utilities more than
doubled their capital expenditures last decade; costs were paid for by
electric customers, whose power bills have soared nearly 40 percent. For
investors, the formula is simple: More infrastructure equals more profit.
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The rise of distributed solar power poses a triple threat to these
monopoly gains. First: When homeowners install their own solar panels, it
means the utilities build fewer power plants, and investors miss out on a
chance to profit. Second: Solar homes buy less electricity from the grid;
utilities lose out on recurring profits from power sales. Third: Under
"net metering" laws, most utilities have to pay rooftop solar producers
for the excess power they feed onto the grid. In short, rooftop solar
transforms a utility's traditional consumers into business rivals.
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The complete article may be read at the URL above.
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Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@xxxxxxxxxx
http://workface.com/e/daviddillard
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