Cap and Trades Little Brother

I missed this. Not a surprise, Me not paying much attention to all the details and the massive amounts of ridiculous ideas coming out of Washington. The American Renewable Energy Act not to be confused with the forth coming cap and trade bill is in congress now. Some states have past this and this bill will mandate it for the country as a whole. Where cap and trade is about taxing to much CO2, RES (renewable energy standard) is about penalizing for to little renewable energy.

If both are passed energy producers are going to get hit "coming and going" as they say. Renewable energy is almost exclusively not CO2 admitting. If you burn coal your hit with the carbon tax and it will not count toward the 25% renewable energy requirement. However if you use solar you have no carbon tax and it can be used toward the renewable requirement. This is not as economy crushing as a cap and trade bill will be. It is not going to help.

To be clear I find man made global warming a joke. You can make a security argument. Drilling and a gradual change over don't further destabilize the economy. At the moment I find it to be much more a security issue than energy.

Why bring this up. I read Obsidian Wings only occasionally. Thought there was some value in it I am not so sure anymore. New thoughts, at least new to me, keep you from falling into ideological pits.

From Renewable Energy Standards.

"A renewable energy standard is a requirement that utilities get a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy. It's a market-based system: utilities that exceeded the requirement would get credits that they could sell to other utilities who weren't doing as well, enabling us to meet the standard in the most cost-effective way.

This would be good in a number of different ways: good for the environment, good for our national security, and also, according to both the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), good for consumers"(cont.)

Mar-ket Basssed Sy-stem ? You mean a system that uses a market not a free market system. Washington sets up a market by creating artificial demand. Pass a law that penalizes not having enough renewable energy raising the demand for it. Then just to be sure it keeps going, it is artificial after all, set a minimum price. I got it a market based system. Don't forget to use free market sounding ideas like "most cost-effective way".

Good for the environment if evil CO2 spewing man is causing the world to burn to a cinder. Good for national security if it do not press on the economy till it grinds to a stop. Good for consumers .?

"It would probably save less money now that oil and natural gas prices are down, but they will rise again. When they do, we'll be very glad if we took advantage of this drop in demand to cut our reliance on them."

Oh that pesky free market idea. Making energy the cheapest way we can. If coal and gas get to high we find a cheaper way. That can't work.?

Referenced is the idea that is more energy comes for renewable it will lessen the demand for fossil fuels thus driving it's price down. I do not know the numbers but it only works if increased cost of the renewables is less than the savings on fossil fuels. It looks like it is going to be hard with the increased cost of cap and trade on those fuels.

Is it wrong to hope it fails!?