Over at EnvironmentNC.com  Geoff Lawrence, Daren Bakst, and I have been trying to provide some commentary on the SB3, the latest energy bill to have no environmental benefits but huge costs to the consumers. My latest is re-posted below. Geoff’s post on the its constitutionality should also be read.

Duke and Progress Energy, the two giant utility monopolies that
control the electricity market in North Carolina, are strong supporter
of SB3, the bill that requires these same companies to generate 7.5
percent of their electricity from so-called renewable sources like
wind, solar, and bio-mass (mostly wood). It also requires them to
induce their customers to cut back on their use of electricity through
an additional 5 percent ?energy efficiency? requirement. Of course if
any of this was truly more efficient, i.e., allowed people to get the
exact same level of service for less money, the state would not have to
mandate it. Only an extreme paternalist would think that politicians,
environmental groups, and the corporate statists heading up our
monopoly energy companies, could possibly know better than us what is
most efficient for running our lives.

What is interesting is that while this bill represents a huge
mandate on their industry, Duke and Progress support it. It should be
noted that they also supported the last big mandate on their industry
the clean smokestacks bill (CSB). While both of these bills have in
common the idea that they would be good for the environment they also
have in common the fact that there?s no actual analysis of what their
health and well being benefits would be. They also have one other thing
in common, they both cost several billion dollars to implement over a
twelve years period and the utilities are able to pass every penny of
it on to customers. If the SB3 is anything like CSB they will then use
their support for the legislation to boast about how environmentally
conscious they are and how they exhibit such corporate responsibility.
Their phoniness on all this is evidenced by the fact their support of
any of this legislation hinges completely on whether or not they are
guaranteed that the Public Utilities Commission will allow them to
force their customer to foot the bill. It?s easy for a company to be
green when it can take all the credit while forcing others to pay the
price.

What is going on in North Carolina is that large environmental
pressure groups and monopoly utilities, while posing as adversaries,
are typically on the same side of regulatory issues. They both want
credit for being green and they are both quite happy to stiff
electricity customers in the process. And all this happens with the
tacit collusion of the state utility commission which is a regulatory
body that has been completely captured by these special interests.