FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Paul Chesser
[email protected]
(303) 578-6205

With Coloradans increasingly concerned over job losses and high energy prices, environmentalists are going to greater and greater lengths to cover up the true toll of so-called “renewable energy standards.”

“Forcing Coloradans to pay big subsidies to wind and solar speculators drains family budgets, jacks up utility bills and kills thousands of jobs,” said Paul Chesser, executive director of the newly-formed Western Tradition Institute.

“We need to have a rational discussion about the high toll of renewable energy, but environmentalists would rather have irrational discussions about how many taxpayer dollars they can get to subsidize their wasteful energy schemes,” said Chesser.

An economic analysis conducted on North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard, which requires a minimum of 3 percent power generated from alternative sources by 2012 and 12.5 percent by 2021, found those mandates will likely cost the state 3,600 jobs and $1.8 billion in higher electricity rates, while slashing the state’s economy by more than $140 million a year by 2021.

The truth is emerging on the “green” jobs front as well. In Spain, a study by Dr. Gabriel Calzada found that massive government subsidies for the renewable industry ended up killing 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the economy for every job the alternative energy sector created. A similar study in Italy found that one green job cost 4.8 jobs elsewhere in the nation’s economy.

“This should not surprise,” said Chesser. “Without exception, every wind and solar project that goes forward in the U.S. requires a huge infusion of taxpayer money to subsidize it, or else it doesn’t happen.

“It’s simple logic. If you divert, via the government, money from taxpayers’ pockets to prop up the alternative energy sector, you are going to force a reduction in economic activity in every other economic sector. That’s how you kill jobs overall and create bubbles. Haven’t we had enough of those blow up in our faces lately?”

Western Tradition Institute is a non-partisan, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public policy research organization founded in 2010. WTI is dedicated to the study and examination of environmental and energy policy, and promotes rational policies that defend people, property and prosperity. It does not endorse or oppose candidates for election.

Paul Chesser has been a director of global warming watchdog Climate Strategies Watch, special correspondent for the Heartland Institute, and Associate Editor of the Carolina Journal (a John Locke Foundation publication). He currently publishes a weekly blog in the American Spectator.

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact Executive Director Paul Chesser at [email protected] or (303) 578-6205.