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ENERGY ORDERS: The House defeated a Republican bid to prevent HR 803 from becoming law until after President Biden has rescinded executive orders aimed at transforming the U.S. energy economy from one based on fossil fuels to clean energy over the next three decades.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.

Walker's Legacy Fossil Fuel Energy problem leaves Wisconsin far behind our Neighbors!!!

Scott Walker's whole agenda has been to push tired old policies from the 80's and 90's. Not surprisingly, the manufacturing renaissance didn't happen. On the coal burning energy front, Wisconsinites are paying a higher price for their utility bills because those plants needed to clean up their emissions.

Bullheadedly sticking with legacy fuels and claiming falsely that they are still so much cheaper than alternative fuels has effectively left Wisconsin behind most other states.

Wisconsin has some of the highest electricity prices in the nation, although the average customer spends far less on electricity than in most states (residents aren’t running air conditioners as much as their counterparts in the hot and sticky southern states).

So why are Wisconsin’s rates so high?

“Built-in costs. It’s a combination of legacy infrastructure and legacy business models.”said Gary Radloff, director of Midwest Energy Policy Analysis for the Wisconsin Energy Institute. Utilities have invested heavily in power plants and transmission lines that are paid off over decades through customer rates set by the Public Service Commission.

Those investments also include billions of dollars spent on pollution controls for aging coal plants, some of which are now being replaced with new natural-gas plants, said Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, which represents the interests of residential and small businesses.

Content said Wisconsin ratepayers would be better off if utilities had followed those in Minnesota and Iowa by investing sooner in lower-cost natural gas and wind generation. “If you went with natural gas and renewables, you’re not trying to have a cleaner burning cigarette, you’re not smoking,” he said.

Yet the PSC has also approved significant increases in recent years to the flat monthly fee customers pay just to have an account, something consumer advocates argue punishes those who use the least electricity. “We’ve been investing heavily in the supply side,” Content said. “And not in helping customers manage their energy costs.”

Wisconsin Tax Reform Targets "Liberal" Hybrid Owners Again!!! State bets on Gasoline!

I want to let you think about the following proposed HIKE in TAXES on hybrid and electric vehicles, that Republicans are considering in their tax reform plan for the state. Let it sink in...

Increased Fees For Hybrids And Electric Cars: Most drivers would see no vehicle registration fee increase under this plan. People who drive hybrids and electric cars would be the exceptions. Hybrid registration fees would go up by $30 per year, while electric car registration fees would go up by $125 annually. The change would generate $4.8 million in revenue in the next two-year budget.

I know, I spent hours rereading this penalty on thrifty environmentally concerned drivers, thinking there was a typo....a word left out that could change the meaning somehow...

Only state hybrid and electric car owners will be punished and made to fix the roads so many interstate drivers end up destroying.

Walker, the Back to the Future Governor: In the not too distant future, a majority of vehicles will be hybrid and EV only cars. This means the U.S. will soon fall dramatically behind market-driven auto technology. Hey, aren't we now the technology state with Foxconn?

The Netherlands and Norway have already set targets to ban fossil-fuel cars by 2025, with sales after that deadline limited to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. France also said on July 6 that it would ban sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 to reduce air pollution and become a carbon-neutral country by 2050. Britain made a similar announcement two weeks later.

Yet in Wisconsin, Scott Walker is betting on gas power trucks and cars. And he wants to be reelected?

Walker's backward Fossil Fuel Energy Policy Killing the Return of Manufacturing in Wisconsin!!!

There's a reason why Scott Walker's Wisconsin isn't seeing a manufacturing Renaissance; his big oil pals are getting rich overcharging big business. I know, crazy right? Esquire Magazine's Charles Pierce explains Walker this way:

Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.

Walker's embarrassing AG lapdog Brad Schimel wrote an opinion piece recently in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He claimed...

As one of the top manufacturing states in the country, Wisconsin has much to lose if the Obama administration succeeds in its plan to destroy the viability of clean-coal electric generation. Manufacturing jobs in our state depends on affordable and reliable electric power. Because of the degree to which our state economies rely on manufacturing jobs, we will be disproportionately affected by the president's so-called "Clean Power Plan."

An outrageous lie the press failed to followup on.

Electricity rates paid by businesses and residents of Wisconsin now rank highest among eight Midwest states ... The analysis was released at a time when one of We Energies' largest customers, Charter Steel of Saukville, is raising concerns about the utility's rates and a power plant construction program that has left We Energies with more power than its own customers need.

The fact is, the states biggest manufacturers are getting pummeled with high utility rates, ending any chance they'll expand in Wisconsin. There's not peep coming out of the Walker administration, because they're in the pocket of big oil and energy. Look what he's done to the PSC. The rhetorical stall tactics have run their course:

Charter says We Energies has been telling customers for years to be patient because rates in surrounding states will catch up...

But that hasn't happened. In fact, the price difference is getting worse due to We Energies over expansion, which comes in at twice the planned required reserve:

Wisconsin exceeds the 7.1 percent planning reserve requirement set by MISO for 2016. Wisconsin’s planning reserve margin for the 2016-2022 period is between 14.2 and 17.5 percent.

Just as bad, the big cuts to "Focus on Energy" will kill whatever advantage we had:

An analysis of the state's energy situation found that residential electric bills in Wisconsin actually rank below the Midwest average, because customers here are using far less power on average than those in other nearby states ... nearly $8 a month below the average of all eight Midwest states ... Energy efficiency and the conservation program  Focus on Energy have helped keep average Wisconsin residential usage flat over the last two decades," said the report, 

But Walker couldn't help but mess that up too....

Wisconsin's electric utilities back the bill, which would cut funding for the Focus on Energy program by $7 million at a time when electricity costs in Wisconsin have risen above the national average. But the program's supporters cite its savings, pointing out that the program has delivered $3 of savings to customers for every $1 spent. 

Theresa Lehman, director of sustainable services at Miron Construction said at a time when capital spending budgets are tight, the program offers incentives that help customers cut their costs by allowing them to afford the upfront expenses of switching to more efficient LED lighting. St. Elizabeth Hospital in Appleton is saving $30,000 a year. Another client, Lake Mills Elementary School, received $100,000 in incentives from the program and is now saving $85,000 every year on its energy costs.

Walker's disconnect is unsettling. Hie rhetoric gives the appearance prices are steady right now, even while they increase, even without Obama's Clean Power Plan:

The federal Clean Power Plan was put on hold last month in a 5-4 vote by the U.S. Supreme Court. Wisconsin has joined with coal mining and coal-reliant states to challenge the rule, citing the impact it would have on the state's manufacturing sector.

MacIver Institute makes Dire 15 year energy prediction if we're crazy enough to go with Solar and Wind Power.

The fellows at the rightwing tabloid and think tank, MacIver Institute, have another phony drummed up "report."

The Nostradamus wing of the institute wants us to think they can look 15 years into the future and predict job losses totaling nearly 21,000, with electricity prices rising 19%. Of course that assumes solar and wind energy prices never come down, the cost of equipment never gets lower, or that new manufacturing plants filled with workers are never built to create the turbines and fuel cells. So...:

This isn't the first time MacIver Institute stuck their neck out with wild predictions. Who can forget their headline from the turn of the 20th century:

Republicans forge ahead with Fossil Fuels and Nuke Energy, while Defunding Clean Energy and Research. "We am Bizarro World."

I had to read the story twice!!!

This is straight out of DC Comic’s Bizarro World, where everything Bizarro's did or said, was just the opposite of earth.

So welcome to Bizarro GOP:

New Republican Agenda?

Climate Wire: The House this week is scheduled to take up a bill to fund the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers and related agencies that proposes steep spending cuts to clean energy and research programs. 

In a report accompanying the bill, House Republicans blast President Obama's budget request for its preference toward funding renewable energy, efficiency and research while proposing cuts for fossil and nuclear programs. The House spending bill takes the opposite approach.

"Unfortunately, this budget request once again fails to reflect a coherent energy policy or plan for this country," the report says, adding that the president's request "seems more ideological than practical."

Projection much? It'll be easy to compare the above upside down GOP approach to energy to Bizarro World life: