In a pair of recent commentaries for the Cincinnati Enquirer and for the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News, American Tradition Institute executive director Paul Chesser called upon incoming Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Tom Corbett to push for repeals of their states’ respective Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards (AEPS). Both states, as with the governorships, also saw Republicans assume control of their state Houses and Senates in November’s elections.

With the dramatic political transformations in many state capitals across the country, it is clear the electorate demands smaller government and less intervention in their daily lives. And other than Obamacare’s mandate for citizens to purchase health insurance, there may be no greater offense by a government against its people than coercing them to purchase the costly, inefficient renewable electricity, as AEPS forces them to do.

“AEPS is effectively a hidden tax passed on to consumers and businesses,” Chesser wrote in the Enquirer. “The higher costs cause businesses to cut investment elsewhere, such as in jobs. With an unemployment rate near 10 percent, it’s folly to force unnecessarily expensive power on Ohio’s industries.”

During his campaign, Gov.-elect Kasich told the Dayton Daily News that he would consider a repeal of Ohio’s AEPS, “If it drives up costs to consumers.” Mandates to purchase high-priced wind- and solar-sourced energy certainly do inflict harm throughout the economy, from business and industry down to residential utility customers. Studies conducted by the Boston-based Beacon Hill Institute of similar programs in Massachusetts and North Carolina found significant increases in costs, as Chesser explained in his Patriot-News commentary:

“In a study of 11 of the Bay State’s 25 green energy programs, Beacon Hill found those subsidies and mandates will cost the state’s ratepayers $490 million this year, more than $985 million in 2020 and more than $9.8 billion cumulatively through the next 11 years,” Chesser wrote. “Add in the state’s 14 other electricity regulations and undoubtedly the researchers’ estimate is quite low (which they acknowledged).

“In North Carolina, Beacon Hill found the state’s ‘real disposable income will fall by $56.8 million by 2021′ and ‘the state economic output measured in real state Gross Domestic Product will be $140.35 million lower than without the mandate.’”

It’s only common sense that when government forces industry to use higher-cost raw materials (or in this case, wind or solar energy) as a replacement for lower-cost materials (or coal- or natural gas-energy), it only raises the costs of their finished products, which they pass on to their customers. And the original intention for passage of AEPSs (and similar policies in other states) was to address a perceived global warming problem, which has been shown to be overblown by the Climategate scandal and by natural climatic trends in recent years. Even if there was a problem, the AEPS policies prescribed by environmentalists would have no impact on global temperatures.

“What is the advantage gained in terms of reduction in the Earth’s temperature?” Chesser wrote for the Patriot-News. “That is something the climate alarmists who push these policies never tell you, because the answer is that they accomplish nothing.”

For an interview with the American Tradition Institute’s Paul Chesser, contact him at 202-670-2680 or [email protected].