The South Dakota PUC has released a report claiming that carbon cap and trade would cost South Dakota citizens an arm and a leg. As the typically lefty Aberdeen News reports:The PUC report was authored with input from commission staff, utility companies and national experts, including environmental groups, Johnson said. It includes a series of so-called "carbon regulation principles," including that:
- Regulations should apply to a variety of industries — transportation and industry, for example--not just the utility sector.
I'm just shocked at their conclusion... since, as far as I can tell, 90 percent of the input came from utility companies. I didn't see any input from any alternative energy companies, or any of the claimed "environmental groups."
You can download the report yourself from the PUC's website.
We need a new PUC that is willing to look forward. Sources of energy that don't require a monstrous 19th-century grid of power lines. Rules that allow us to sell wind power TO the utilities. Incineration and waste-water generated power, hydro energy storage, you name it, South Dakota could lead in all these areas. But no, they want to keep burning Wyoming coal.
Since the report was written pretty much by those who have the most to lose from moving away from coal, we should not be surprised. But I sure am not impressed.
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We need a state energy department. The executive branch has exactly one energy worker listed. One. She's buried in the Bureau of Administration and works only electrical transmission issues. The PUC does not set state executive energy policy. They are merely a rating increase approving rubber-stamp for the utilities.
ReplyDeleteSome would have us believe the Department of Tourism (and Economic Development) acts as the energy policy setting office. Yep, right up there with the tourist traps - that's the extent of our energy policy folks. Try to find an engineer in the Department of Tourism. Hint, it's right next to the plan to reduce the governor's air force.