From our blog to Hick’s ears.
Just as we were posting our story on Salazar strangling the fracking business, Governor Hickenlooper was telling the Atlantic Next Generation Energy Summit in Washington that concerns over fracking are overblown.
Well, unless, you’re a solar or wind company, that is. Then, you should be concerned – very concerned – because here’s what Hick had to say about fracking in Colorado:
“I was personally involved with 50 or 60 (fracked) wells,” he said, at the Atlantic Next Generation Energy summit in Washington. “There have been tens and thousands of wells in Colorado … and we can’t find anywhere in Colorado a single example of the process of fracking that has polluted groundwater.”
The Denver Post's Democrat blogger Allison Sherry noted that Colorado is among the top two states for solar energy. Of course, Sherry doesn’t mention that solar energy (and wind, for that matter) only becomes economically viable if you subsidize it to death for consumers. Take a gander at these subsidies:
No wonder that wind power produced just 2.9% and solar power produced just one-tenth of one percent of the energy used in the United States, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA) – it's totally inefficient! In case you don’t believe your eyes (we didn’t), that would be $775.64 per megawatt hour in solar power subsidies given by the federal government in 2010 [!], compared to the $0.64 for natural gas and petroleum liquids. Here are a few more surprises from the Independence Institute’s Hard Facts: An Energy Primer, released last month:
· Renewable energy subsidies were 49 times greater than fossil fuel subsidies when comparing the amount of energy produced per dollar of subsidy.
· In 2009, renewables received a 77 percent share of total federal energy incentives while fossil fuels received a 13 percent share but produced seven times the energy.
Given these numbers, we’re wondering why Colorado families should have to pay these outsized subsidies via taxes and energy costs when we have 8.1% unemployment in Colorado. Maybe it’s time to remind liberals that “fat cat” renewable energy executives shouldn’t get rich off the backs of our struggling families.
Being one of the top two states for solar energy is kind of like being the thinnest kid at fat camp. A dubious honor for sure.