Colin McNickle At Large

Crowd green’s ignobility

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Pennsylvania solar power aficionados, take note. Then take heed:

There has been lots of media attention over the last few weeks focused on the utter, total and complete failure of the once highly touted but now mothballed Crescent Dunes solar energy plant in Nevada.

The facility used mirrors to capture the sun to turn salt into a molten energy storage system that produced steam to turn turbines that generated electricity, even at night.

Of course, as most “green energy” is, it’s oversold and under-performs. Oh, and it’s also heavily subsidized by taxpayers because there is not operational or economic efficiency to it.

Which, surprise, surprise, proved to be the case with Crescent Dunes. It never produced (and never came close to producing) the amounts of energy that were promised, even with a $737 million federal loan guarantee. Then there were the $100 million-plus in state tax abatements. The private investment paled by comparison.

Indeed, this was a unique solar experiment. But its failure was foretold in a much smaller test model years before. As The Wall Street Journal noted, even at that level, the U.S. Department of Energy concluded it “was never expected to be a viable commercial-scale plant and, in fact, did not validate economic feasibility.”

Now, but-but-ers and tut-tut-ers will be quick to tort-tort that the Nevada example doesn’t apply to standard solar panel generation. Indeed, it is not a parallel. But even solar panel generation has proven to be problematic – from cost efficiency (natural gas generation remains, by far, more cost efficient) to safety (i.e., the fire hazards of large battery storage facilities).

As Ross Marchand, director of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, noted in an October commentary in Townhall.com:

“Until the U.S. commits itself to free, open and unsubsidized energy markets, solar boondoggles will continue to bury taxpayers in a mountain of debt.”

Yet, all across Pennsylvania, schemes are being hatched by Crowd Green to “save the planet” by encumbering taxpayers taken for rubes.

It was the 19th-century proverb that reminded us how “the ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.” How tragic then that where sound public policy is involved, too many of our elected and appointed “leaders” are proud members of that ignobility.

Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).

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Colin McNickle
Colin McNickle

Colin received his B.G.S. from Ohio University. The 40-year journalism veteran joined the Institute in October 2016. That followed a 22-year career with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 18 as director of editorial pages for Trib Total Media. Prior that, Colin had a long and varied career in media — from radio, newspapers and magazines, to United Press International and The Associated Press.

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