This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.

1. Duke Power: What Occupy Wall Street (or Raleigh) should be protesting

If the protesters on Wall Street or on the steps of the state Capitol in Raleigh want to find possibly the nation’s most prominent example of a rent-seeking, crony-capitalist company, they need to look no further than North Carolina’s own Duke Power.

As demonstrated in this very insightful article by former Carolina Journal reporter Paul Chesser, current executive director of the American Tradition Institute, Duke Energy is a company whose entire existence and potential for expansion is tied directly to government protection from competition and largesse from taxpayers. It is a true monopoly that spends large amounts of money on rent-seeking activities meant to take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of subsidies both from taxpayers and from the direct victims of their monopoly power, their electricity customers.

As Chesser argues, almost their entire business strategy is not to discover new ways to satisfy customers, but to find new ways to increase their bottom line by taking advantage of government subsidies and privileges. Here is a list of Duke’s rent-seeking prowess as noted by Chesser:

  • NLPC, Duke has been on a wind and solar farm-buying and building spree in order to: capture grants from the Recovery Act; capitalize on states’ incentives and tax credits; collect Department of Energy research and development grants and contracts; and accelerate depreciation on the facilities so as to shield more of its income from taxation. …

  • The subsidies available for wind projects allow Duke to earn returns on equity of 17 to 22 percent … compared to what utilities are usually allowed to earn on state-regulated retail electricity, which is approximately half what they earn on wholesale electricity sales. …

  • Duke Energy now seeks a 20 percent rate increase for most of its North Carolina customers.

As Chesser concludes:

Unfortunately when you have regulated monopolies (utilities) operating in conjunction with government overseers (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state utilities commissions) to implement policies dictated by bureaucrats and politicians, the ratepayers are the ones who get screwed.

Oddly enough, the capitalism haters who spent last weekend chanting and listening to speakers at Raleigh’s state Capitol building have not said a word about Duke. Here is a huge monopoly ripping them off with every month’s electric bill staring them in the face, and it is completely ignored by the anti-greed crowd. Could that be because Duke has been part of the same eco-wealth-transfer establishment that most of them actually support, or are they just blind fools? Well, I’ll give credit where credit is due. I think it’s the former.

2. Quite the improvement in electric car technology

This article from The Daily Caller points out that the Roberts electric car — built in 1896 — got the same mileage as the Chevy Volt. One big difference? The Roberts did it without massive government subsidies.

3. Weekly Ozone Report

Each week during the summer (now fall) ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high-ozone days had been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. While many environmental groups express concern about air quality, the John Locke Foundation is the only organization that keeps up-to-date track of the actual ozone data and reports it in an unfiltered manner on a regular basis.

The ozone season began on April 1 and ends October 31. All reported data are from the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

During the period from October 10 through October 16, there were no reported high-ozone readings on monitors across the state of North Carolina. So far this season there have been 99 readings on various North Carolina monitors that have exceeded federal standards of 0.75 parts per billion. These have occurred over a period of 26 days.

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