Enviros Make Amazing Admission — Solar Power Is Totally Welfare Dependent | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Dr. Roy Cordato, who is Vice President for Research and resident scholar for the John Locke Foundation.



    It is now being acknowledged by even its staunchest supporters that the solar industry in North Carolina is completely a creature of government mandates and subsidies and could never stand on its own without wealth transfers from taxpayers and rate payers. In other words, it is completely welfare dependent. Of course, this is what the John Locke Foundation has been saying all along. Welcome aboard ENC, although we never thought of it as something an industry or its supporters should be proud of or would want to brag about.

    What this means is that the "success" of solar has nothing to do with its relative efficiency or cost advantages as an energy generator. In fact, as ENC notes, it doesn't even have anything to do with North Carolina's geography or sunny skies. Its "success" is due strictly to the fact that the state government is willing to throw a lot of money at it. Of course, this would be true of the pyramid industry if there was a massive government program that was making hundred of millions of dollars of taxpayer money available for the purpose of building pyramids. And if we did that, North Carolina could be a leading state in the construction of pyramids and lauded by pyramid lovers (and worshippers) everywhere. But alas, as acknowledged with the solar industry, without any subsidies pyramid building is not a particularly strong industry. The point, of course, is not to argue that the state should start subsidizing pyramids, but that any industry, no matter how pointless or inefficient, can thrive and survive given enough free money.

    So two cheers for Environment North Carolina. It has at least partially seen the light and joined the John Locke Foundation in telling the world that solar power, without gifts and welfare payments from politicians, would be a completely unsustainable industry.


    The 2015 ozone season began on April 1 and, as I have been doing since this newsletter was started, each week during the ozone season this newsletter will report how many, if any, high ozone days have been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. (Note: ground level ozone, which is what we are reporting on, is often called "smog.") According to current EPA standards, a region or county experiences a high ozone day if a monitor in that area registers the amount of ozone in the air as 76 parts per billion (ppb) or greater. The official ozone season will end on October 31. All reported data is preliminary and issued by the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state's Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Thus far this season there have been 5 high ozone days recorded on any of the state's 42 monitors. Three occurred on June 25 and two on August 5.

    The table below shows all of the North Carolina's ozone monitors and the high reading on those monitors for each day of the 7-day period, August 31-September 5.