Energy Poverty Around the World

The global warming/climate change industry has been aggressively pushing renewable energy, wind, solar, and biofuels for a long time even though the economies of various industrialized countries need much more energy than what renewables generate.

The green activists have been zealously lobbying Congress and the EPA to change the laws, rules, and regulations that would make it much more expensive and difficult for fossil fuel energy producers to survive while passing the higher costs onto consumers, impoverishing those customers on fixed incomes and taking away disposable income from the rest.

Green energy causes electricity poverty around the world. Today the Fraser Institute of Canada, an independent, non-partisan public policy think-tank released a study that found that energy poverty is on the rise in Canada.

"Government policies that raise electricity prices may push some families into energy poverty and further stretch the household budgets of families already in energy poverty," said Taylor Jackson, study co-author and policy analyst at the Fraser Institute.

"Because high energy costs take a large bite out of many household budgets, families across Canada pay the price when government energy policies boost the cost of electricity," said Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's senior director of natural resource studies and co-author of Energy Costs and Canadian Households: How Much Are We Spending?

According to the study, Canadian households that make $47,700 or less per year are disproportionately affected by energy poverty.

The Fraser Institute found that in 2013 the three regions most affected by energy poverty were Atlantic Canada at 20.6 percent, Saskatchewan at 12.9 percent and Ontario at 7.5 percent, with a general 7.9 percentage in Canada. “Between 2010 and 2013, energy poverty was on the rise in most provinces.” British Columbia had the lowest at 5.3 percent.

The study authors also found that the Green Energy Act of Ontario is responsible for the increase in electricity prices.

In 2013 Der Spiegel warned us that “the political world is wedged between the green-energy lobby, masquerading as saviors of the world, and the established electric utilities, with their dire warnings of chaotic supply problems and job losses.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html

In Germany, the Energiewende, or energy wave (revolution), was “Chancellor Angela Merkel’s project of the century.” It turned out to be a flop, although not as bad as her recent policy of welcoming with open arms of waves of violent Muslims into Europe.

After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Merkel “quickly decided to begin phasing out nuclear power and lead the country into the age of wind and solar.” The government-predicted renewable energy surcharge turned out to be higher than the 20 percent price hike.

Of all the companies that must pay the renewable energy surcharge, 2,300 German businesses with lobbying representation, were able to exempt themselves from this green energy surcharge by claiming tough international competition.

Der Spiegel said that German customers were forced to pay 20 billion euros for electricity from solar, wind, and biofuel plants that had a market price of only 3 billion euros. The authors explained that this cost did not include “unintended costs and collateral damage associated with the project.” The costs included the fact that, depending on weather and time of day, the entire country can face “absurd states of energy surplus or deficit.” Solar panels and wind turbines can generate lots of electricity at times and other times zero.

According to Der Spiegel, more than 300,000 German households a year had their electricity cut off for unpaid bills. Caritas, a charity group, called this “energy poverty.”

Sweden, a heavily forested country, used up its biomass from wood and paper industry waste to fuel conventional power plants; once it exhausted this source, it switched to wind farms on land because the offshore ones were very expensive and tended to rust much quicker.

There is no doubt that Americans have also been affected by energy poverty. The Institute for Energy Research is citing the case of the residents in Pueblo, Colorado. The state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act forced inexpensive coal plants to be closed. Their residential kWh rate has increased 26 percent since 2010 when “the new local utility company in Pueblo replaced nearly all its inherited cheap coal capacity with wind and natural gas.” Residential customers, with a poverty rate of 18.1 percent and one third of the population on welfare, had to pay for the large infrastructure bills when the switch was made. Wind turbines were added in order to meet the state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act requirement of 30 percent capacity coming from renewable resources. http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/energy-poverty-coming-america-coal-shuttered-green-power/

At CPAC 2015, during a panel discussion on climate change and global warming alarmism, Gary Broadbent, representing Murray Energy Corporation, the largest privately held coal mine in the U.S., highlighted Obama’s “war on coal” via regulations passed by EPA alone in the last five years totaling 25,000 pages.  Quoting Robert E. Murray, Chairman of Murray Energy Corporation, Broadband said, “Prior to the election of President Obama, coal provided 52% of the electricity generation in our country. Today it is 37%. In our judgement, it will further decline to about 30%, at a maximum.”

Enumerating the 411 power plants designated for closure through 2016, “101,000 megawatts of the lowest cost electricity in America,” CEO Murray wrote that electricity, generated by coal at the plant cost of 4 cents per kWh, will be replaced by “Mr. Obama and his appointees” with 15 cent per kWh electricity from natural gas and 22 cent per kWh electricity from wind and solar power, not to mention the huge subsidies to solar power from American taxpayers.

In CEO Murray’s opinion, the Obama Administration has bypassed illegally Congress, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the States and their Public Utility Commissions, which are “empowered to regulate the availability and cost of electricity.”

According to Chairman Murray, while we came within 700 megawatts of reducing loads to 61 million Americans in 13 states during the Polar Vortex of 2014, “China has been building a new 500 megawatt coal-fired plant every week for years, [and] burned about 4.0 billion tons of coal last year.”

Democrat Electioneering Day

On Election Day I agreed to pass sample ballots for a couple of hours for the Republican Party. They were having a hard time finding someone to do it - Republicans are generally busy working. How hard could it be sitting down and giving a ballot sample to those who pass by?  It was a gorgeous fall day and I was glad to be outdoors. I would find out soon enough that it was harder than it seemed.

Armed with a small box of papers, I was told to stay behind a certain line, 40 feet from the front door, marked clearly in blue and by several huge signs warning not to cross the electioneering line.

A small unattended box with the name Democrat in big, bold letters was on the grass nearby. About thirty minutes later, a gentleman with a National Education Association (NEA) blue cap and a Mark Warner t-shirt took possession of the box and started giving out Democrat sample ballots.

He seemed oblivious to the Virginia State Board of Elections vote of October 14, 2008, “to ban clothing and hats as well as buttons and other paraphernalia that directly advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate or issue.”

He was not just giving out ballots; he was walking across the line back and forth, solicitously “helping” the elderly walk to the door even though he kept violating the blue electioneering line. I brought this obvious fact to his attention and to the officials and he told me, quite annoyed, that nothing was illegal as long as he was helping people vote.

This man told me he was a retired reading teacher. Now I fully understand why many students cannot read when they graduate, and defy authority and the law without compunction. For Democrats, the rule of law and civil society are just suggestions.

Car after old and rusty car emblazoned with assorted Democrat/union/ Obama/Biden stickers drove up with voters who did not seem so well-off or particularly healthy – some were in wheelchairs and others moved slowly and painfully with walkers or canes.

These two hours would become an economic voting lesson I would not soon forget. Here were these people, obviously soon to become victims of the rationed and dysfunctional Obamacare and obviously poor, relegated to the same low income status, yet they could not wait to march in and vote joyously for the same status quo that had made them financially poor, unemployed, and on welfare. They rudely dismissed my Republican sample ballots with words such as, “I don’t vote for those crooks that have destroyed our economy and our country.” I was speechless in the face of such economic ignorance.

A couple from Central America, who could still vividly remember the poverty and socialist paradise exploitation they’ve left to come to the freedom of opportunity in America, told me, after they took the Republican ballot, they could not understand why people would vote for socialism.

Did they not learn from history and from the experience of millions of exploited who fled from around the world to come here for a better life, freedom of religion, and a chance to succeed? Apparently not, they are now coming here for the social programs, welfare, and other generous handouts from the hard-working Americans. As long as they vote the “right” way, they remain on the dependent and needy Democrat plantation.

A few well-to-do bureaucrats driving shiny new cars waved me off without a word, turning their noses in disgust, as if I was a malaria-laden mosquito.

I asked the Democrat volunteer why these people who drive up in such rickety cars are voting for Democrats again, for the status quo. He explained that it was a poor district; most people are unemployed, on welfare or disability, thanks to all the Republicans who stalled the Democrats and our wonderful President who tried to help the poor.

I asked him to give me one example of what the President and his party did in a stellar manner that improved the lives of the poor. His answer shocked me, “they sheltered Social Security from the grubby hands of Republicans and increased welfare and food stamp rolls.”

I tried to give him examples of the high unemployment, high inflation, the destruction of the dollar, and the destruction of the best health care system in the world under this administration. He told me that I had no idea what I was talking about, living under communism has warped my mind and thus my ability to properly understand what is going on.

I gave up in disgust and was relieved when my two hours were up – I even forgot my chair. I cannot say it was entirely a waste of my time. It was a reinforcement of what I already knew; the brainwashing of our population and its maintenance on poverty row perennially is a direct result of the warped education they’ve received from the highly inadequate teachers who support Common Core and are dues-paying NEA members.

It was no surprise to me at the end of the evening when all the socialist Congressmen remained in power in Virginia. The densely populated northern Virginia made sure that the Commonwealth maintained its socialist platform.