Democrats have made it quite clear they are willing to tell the biggest whoppers to advance their liberal agenda. Anyone remember when Obamacare wasn’t going to add one penny to the national deficit? Or last year’s lie of the year told by Senator Mark Udall and President Obama that if you like your health plan you could keep it? The latest one comes from state Senator Matt Jones this week as Democrats upheld their energy mandate on rural Coloradans. From Ed Sealover at Denver Business Journal:
“‘It’s a win-win-win,’ said Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, when explaining his ‘no’ vote to Harvey and citing articles in which Xcel Energy has stated that wind-power generation costs are lower than those for natural gas. ‘It’s good jobs, cleaner and cheaper.'”
When was the last time government had to force a business to do something that was cheaper? Why would you need to mandate something if it was the cheapest option?
As for this Xcel Energy fairy tale, Jones just illustrates how illiterate he is when it comes to the details of the issue. A judge in Minnesota ruled that solar power was the best option, but this was only after he hypothesized about future carbon regulations, that Xcel doesn’t know how much power they really need, and that a so-called scalable option is really what is best. Needless to say, Xcel disagrees with this ruling and is appealing it. But, hey, don’t let little details, like facts, get in the way of your narrative—because that worked so well for Obamacare.
James Taylor over at Forbes does an absolute body-slam to Jones’ notion of this law being cheaper for rural Coloradans. While the article is well worth a full read, here are some of the highlights:
- Since Colorado’s first renewable mandate in 2004, Colorado electicity prices have risen 20% above the national average. And, more than double the national rate since the mandated percentage was ratcheted up in 2007.
- Coloradans would have saved $2.7 Billion (with a “B”) if we just followed the national average starting 2007, or $2,100 per Colorado household.
- No states, besides Colorado, have enacted new renewable mandates since 2009. (They all quickly discovered it made no economic sense.)
- The 2 percent cap on raising rates is crap. Since the 1 percent cap was enacted in 2007, prices have risen by 27(!) percent. In the first 10 months of 2013 with the caps in place, prices still rose by 5 percent. Talk about a worthless cap.
We don’t know what world Senator Jones lives in, but for us paying $2,100 more (and soon to be higher than that) is never the “cheaper” option. Perhaps next he’ll just mandate us to think otherwise.