Part of the reason Connecticut’s overtaxed residents are suffering from an affordability crisis is that they are also suffering from an energy shortage. If the supply of energy were sufficient to meet the demand for energy, the price of energy would be lower. All Connecticut legislators who have even a nodding understanding of the law of supply and demand – called a “law” because economic laws are and should be both predictable and inescapable – should have known before they went gaga over a promising new and untested energy source, turbine windmills, that energy affordability is directly related to all Connecticut businesses.
If you don’t have sufficient energy production, all goods
and services become more expensive, and if the assets of those who purchase the
byproducts of energy -- all goods and services produced in the United States –
do not increase commensurately, their affordability quotient will be reduced.
To put it in the simplest terms possible: If, because of high energy prices,
the purchaser of goods and services cannot increase his own assets to meet an
assault on his budget by rising energy costs, he will suffer the “affordability
crisis” now upon us, according to all the campaign readouts issued by
politicians who are directly responsible for the affordability crisis.
The news from the Hartford Courant on the energy front – “Study:
Green shift clashes with gas reliance” -- is not reassuring.
Here is the lede to the story:
A white paper by a Boston-based research group -- “New
England’s Energy Transition: Colliding With Reality” – warns that New England
consumers face higher electric costs and shrinking supply because of policy
shifts toward renewables and away from natural gas, which remains the mainstay
of the regional energy portfolio. The study “shows that, in spite of the
billions of dollars spent in New England over the past 25 years on zero carbon
energy programs, the region’s reliance on fossil fuels — notably natural gas —
for electric generation within the six states has increased, to the current
55.4 percent from 54.6 percent in 2000.”
Translation: Several years ago, spurred on by environmental
purists, the whole of New England, including Connecticut, made a conscious choice
to wean itself from fossil fuel based energy products – including natural gas,
considered at the time a cleaner form of energy than oil and coal. The weaning
has not occurred, possibly because such a withdrawal would instantly bankrupt
everyone dependent on relatively clean natural gas – that is to say, all
residents of New England. Half the
energy needs in Connecticut are met by severely neglected nuclear plants.
Technological improvements in the nuclear production of energy are very
promising indeed.
The research report tells us, “After 25 years, New England
has nearly eliminated coal, sidelined oil, lost two nuclear plants and built
thousands of megawatts of wind and solar. Yet the region remains about as
dependent on fossil generation as it was in 2000… The region is now driving up
operating costs for its existing gas fleet while simultaneously discouraging
investment in new natural gas capacity. Yet it is pursuing this policy shift
without first proving that a dependable alternative system can be built at
sufficient scale and at a price consumers can afford.”
And the Courant supplied the following gloss on the report:
“What changed is the fossil mix. While coal and oil nearly vanished, by last
year a decades-long shift to natural gas had accelerated to the point where gas
output surpassed what had been the output of all fossil fuels combined in 2000.
Pushing the gas expansion was the Great Recession in 2008, which slowed
electric demand growth, and the boom in shale-gas. [Natural] Gas was also considered
environmentally acceptable compared to coal and oil, the report says.”
Some formerly dunderheaded politicians are beginning to
realize that New England’s war on fossil fuel related energy suppliers has
created a gap in energy supply that cannot be filled by the wishful thinking of
environmental purists. Left leaning politicians in Connecticut especially have
yielded to the Siren’s Song that will plunge Connecticut below water -- because
wishful thinking of any kind never trumps reality. If Connecticut’s energy
supply does not increase to meet future demand, the unforgiving law of supply
and demand tells us, the demand, no longer affordable, will disappear.
Profitable tax producing people and companies with wheels on their feet will
move to more promising states.
To close Connecticut’s energy gap, the report sensibly
recommends, “permitting new high-efficiency natural gas generation and
expansion of the pipelines to deliver relatively low cost gas from
Pennsylvania, something that has so far been blocked by environmental
challenges in New York. It also recommends maintaining dependable energy
resources until replacements are proven reliable, determining whether [its
current amelioration programs] are phasing out energy sources before they can
be replaced, studying whether programs like behind-the-meter residential solar
unfairly allocate grid maintenance costs; and evaluating competing energy
portfolios on the cost, emissions and reliability of the complete system
required to support them, including transmission, storage, firming, fuel
infrastructure and other supporting resources.”
In the matter of energy production, critics of Connecticut’s
single party state government have sometimes suggested that nuclear energy
ought to have a prominent place at the legislative table. The Democrat
top-heavy government’s “investment” in wind power appears to be working as many
prominent left of center Democrat legislators thought it would – to drive
competing sources of energy from the field, a resolution that only worsens
Connecticut’s expanding energy gap and does not align with campaign promises often
made by Democrats to attack the state’s “affordability crisis,” caused in part
by progressive politicians who are insensible to the economic distortions their
programs have created.
Stop misallocating tax money, reduce unnecessary and
destructive regulations, move surplus money, whenever possible, from government
coffers back to people’s wallets and purses through appropriate tax cuts – and
get out of the way of capitalist creativity: That’s the road to prosperity for both
government budgets and a vibrant enriching economy. President John Kennedy’s
“incoming tide that lifts all the boats” will restore a broken economy if is permitted
by progressives and socialists Luddites to rise. There will be no rising tide
in Connecticut without a fierce focus by the legislature on energy diversification,
because abundant energy lies at the root of rising cost of every product and
service in the state.
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