Environment
Exploring market-based solutions to the most pressing environmental issues facing North Carolina.
How a Budget Provision Keeps the Cooper Administration from Creating a Tax out of Thin Air
The Biden administration seeks to fund extreme environmentalist initiatives at the state level, including cap and trade programs. Such programs amount to “an energy-rationing scheme that acts as an energy…
Duke’s Worrisome Text
Late afternoon on Thursday, January 4, customers of Duke Energy received a text message alerting them to expected high energy demand the next day and requesting they “take steps to…
How Cooper and Clean Energy Cronies Use Blackouts to Argue for More Blackouts
Amy O. Cooke, retired Locke CEO, wrote a piece yesterday in Carolina Journal discussing the strange take in response to the Christmas Eve 2022 blackouts offered by Gov. Roy Cooper…
More on the Costs of North Carolina’s Different Electricity Generating Sources
Since 2016, the federal government has massively subsidized renewable sources of electricity — with wind receiving nearly 20 times more subsidies per unit of power generated than nuclear, and solar…
Discussing the Costs of North Carolina’s Different Electricity Generating Sources
Electricity from existing power plants is cheapest, and state law lets the cost of building new power plants fall on electricity consumers through increases in their power bills. New solar…
Report Argues Offshore Wind Development Activities Are Killing Whales and Dolphins
On November 2, Save Long Beach Island released a report arguing that offshore wind energy vessel surveys were responsible for the recent spike in whale and dolphin deaths off the…
Measuring the Reliability of North Carolina’s Different Electricity Generating Sources
In determining the reliability of different electricity generation sources, a source's "capacity factor" is a useful measure of how much it produces vs. how much it says it can produce.…
Offshore Wind Costs Are Getting Worse
UPDATE: A press release sent out by Orsted on October 31, 2023, stated that “Following a decision by its Board of Directors, Ørsted will cease development of the Ocean Wind…
New Law Stops North Carolina from Repeating Pennsylvania’s ‘Crazy’ Trucking Mistake
I recently wrote about “How the Budget Stops California from Setting North Carolina’s Transportation Policy.” I described how Gov. Roy Cooper had signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” in 2020 with…
Governor’s Vetoes Would Harm Ratepayers and Reliable Electricity
Gov. Cooper vetoed bills that would define nuclear energy as clean energy and help a new natural gas pipeline get permitting. Cooper and certain environmentalists seem to think the vetoes…
How the Budget Stops California from Setting North Carolina’s Transportation Policy
North Carolina’s no-more-stringent law forbids state environmental agencies from imposing stricter environmental regulations than required by the federal government. In 2022, as per his agreement with California Gov. Newsom, Gov.…
Virginia’s Power Provider Also Seeks More Natural Gas Plants
In August, Duke Energy filed an updated resource plan with the North Carolina Utilities Commission. The plan featured three possible portfolios, but Duke made it plain that the third portfolio (P3) was…