Sunday, February 28, 2021

What's so "Free Market" about the Republicans failed fossil fueled Energy theories...

Republicans continue to ignore free market forces, and with no voter blowback. 

Major Automakers Promise Total EV Conversion: While I was watching an ad supported CW Channel app rerun of "Superman and Lois," I was stunned by the two competing auto ads, one by GM and the other Ford, that promised a 15 year changeover to all electric vehicles. 

GM’s announcement … to eliminate tailpipe emissions from all its new light-duty vehicles by 2035.  GM’s U-turn seems to be in part because the market has forced its hand. Two giant auto markets — China and California — have committed to 100 percent EV by 2035.

That's how the free market works. 

Utilities Go Green Too: All state utility companies are planning a near complete conversions to free fuel like wind and solar by 2050. 

Again, because it makes sense not to have to ship, store, and control fossil fuel waste, the free market sees wind and solar as an absolute no-brainer: 

All of Wisconsin's investor-owned utilities are aiming to reduce their carbon emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050, and are on track to reducing emissions 40% by 2026, according to the PSC's latest draft energy assessment … Along with the companies' carbon reduction goals, Alliant Energy is planning to build out 1,000 MW of solar by 2023. Additional projects from WEC Energy Group and Madison Gas & Electric "will, collectively, make WI one of the largest solar producers east of the Rockies."
Supply Siders don't care about Consumer Driven Markets: Republican ideologues love big oil so much, they will say and do anything. Case in point, the Democratic bill HR 803 protecting public lands in the West. Republican heads exploded. 

Sitting down? Amazingly, Republicans slipped in a mind boggling and embarrassing amendment that actually assumed there would not be "three decades" worth of future innovation and progress:
BLOCKING BIDEN ENERGY ORDERS: The House defeated a Republican bid to prevent HR 803 from becoming law until after President Biden has rescinded executive orders aimed at transforming the U.S. energy economy from one based on fossil fuels to clean energy over the next three decades. A yes vote was to adopt the amendment. Voting yes: Steil, Fitzgerald, Grothman, Tiffany, Gallagher.
Just to be clear; Wisconsin's Republican representatives wanted to impossibly preserve the U.S.'s fossil fuel dependence for the next 30 years

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, and Tom Tiffany were all once in the Wisconsin legislature pushing this same kind of job killing thinking for decades. As blogger James Rowen of Political Environment recently wrote:
Though how ironic would it be if the (EV Foxconn) project created the very type of energy-efficient vehicles which the previous Republican administration had discouraged with a $75 annual registration upcharge - a move that dovetailed with Walker's long and wider attack on renewable energy that undercut solar power development and delayed wind farms.

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