{"id":1491,"date":"2011-09-19T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/gov-deal-the-ugly-on-energy.html"},"modified":"2011-09-19T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:01:00","slug":"gov-deal-the-ugly-on-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/gov-deal-the-ugly-on-energy.html","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Deal: the ugly on energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Nathan Deal said he’s a free-enterprise person and doesn’t
\n
\n<\/a>
\nwant to subsidize renewable energy, but he maybe doesn’t know
\nthat the state of Georgia subsidizes Georgia Power’s new nuclear
\nplants through an indirect tax, and that fossil fuels are far
\nmore subsidized than renewable energy.
\nThat plus the chickens.<\/p>\n

\nContinuing
\nGov. Deal: the good, the ugly, and the bad on prisons<\/a>,
\nquoting again from
\nDavid Rodock’s interview with Gov. Nathan Deal
\n
\nin today’s VDT.<\/a>
\n

The Ugly<\/H3><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\n
\nTHE TIMES: What\u2019s your position on alternative-energy sources? Should
\nthey be promoted and funded by the government?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nDEAL:<\/strong>
\n\u201cI\u2019m pretty much a free-enterprise person, and I think that
\nwhen you start having government interfere with the market place,
\nyou have some unexpected and unintended consequences. We know that one
\nof the major agricultural products of the state of Georgia is poultry
\nand virtually every poultry operator will tell you that the decision
\nby the government to subsidize corn being used for ethanol production
\nversus corn being used for either human or livestock feed stock has
\ndistorted the price structure and has placed our poultry industry,
\nand probably other parts of our agricultural industry, in jeopardy. I
\ndo think that there is a future for renewable energy. I hope that the
\nfederal government will adopt a more realistic approach to that.
\n…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Government intervention in the market place like the Georgia PSC
\nauthorizing
\n
\nGeorgia Power to pass any cost overruns for the two new nukes at Plant Vogtle
\non to its customers?<\/a><\/p>\n

\nGeorgia Power officials told state regulators they never would have
\n
\n<\/a>
\nstarted to build a new multi-billion-dollar nuclear power plant if they
\nknew the company might be on the hook for certain potential cost overruns.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Georgia Power itself admits that unless it had assumed the state
\nwould let it socialize its losses, it never would have proposed to
\nbuild those two new nukes.
\nAnd the PSC went ahead and
\n
\nOKed gapower passing on cost overruns to its customers.<\/a>
\nEven though the original nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle
\nwere proposed at $0.7 billion and ended up costing almost $9 billion.<\/p>\n

\nRemember, Georgia Power itself says that the government authorizing
\nthe public to pay for cost overruns on the two new nukes is the
\ndeciding factor on Georgia Power building them.
\nIf that’s not government intervention, I don’t know what is.
\nI’d call it a tax by another name.<\/p>\n

\nOh yes:
\n
\nfossil fuels get 12 times more subsidies than clean energy.<\/a>
\nWhere’s your free enterprise now, Gov. Deal?<\/p>\n

\nNext:
\nThe Bad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Nathan Deal said he’s a free-enterprise person and doesn’t want to subsidize renewable energy, but he maybe doesn’t know that the state of Georgia subsidizes Georgia Power’s new nuclear plants through an indirect tax, and that fossil fuels are far more subsidized than renewable energy. That plus the chickens. Continuing Gov. Deal: the good, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,216,14,17,8,18,2,23,24,133],"tags":[3788,8753,437,3787,3786,8707,8708,562,8737,8782,107,8714,396,60,8716],"class_list":["post-1491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-coal","category-economy","category-ga-psc","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-vdt","tag-clean-energy","tag-coal","tag-cost-overrun","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-free-enterprise","tag-ga-psc","tag-georgia-power","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-solar","tag-subsidies","tag-tax","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}