Gov. Mills asks Congress to focus more on offshore wind, renewable energy and weatherization

In a letter sent to leaders of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Mills recapped some of her administration’s recent actions, including setting ambitious new goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding renewable energy.

Mills requested continued support for – or renewed congressional commitment to – development of offshore wind power technology, federal tax incentives for renewable energy, and expanding weatherization programs as more Mainers switch to heat pumps.

A Democrat who made addressing climate change a top focus of her 2018 campaign, Mills worked with the Democratic-controlled Legislature earlier this year to set new goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and building toward obtaining all electricity from renewable sources by 2050.

Read the entire article at the following weblink:

https://www.pressherald.com/2019/12/27/in-letter-to-congressional-c...

Climate change hysteria is the smokescreen for communism’s advancement in America

There was a time when conservatives needed to read between the lines in commentaries and editorials to isolate creeping socialistic ideas being pushed onto an unsuspecting audience. It was like searching for subliminal messages in television ads; you had to slow it all down to see what the underlying message really was. Today, that need has diminished. They don’t try to sneak in Marxist, communist principles under any guise. Today. they’re just saying it.

They can do that because of two important changes in modern society. The first is the acceptance of cultural Marxism, which I’ll cover in the near future. The second is climate change hysteria which is spreading like an intellectual plague through the masses. Many have become such adherence to the tenets of climate change activism that it has become more of a religion than actual religions. It’s a cult, but not one that hides in the shadows. If anything, it’s doing its best to stay out of the shadows and shove its ideological premises in our faces. And that’s the point. They want to be able to make any claim or ask for any sacrifice by the people. Climate change is the trump card they can play to try to shield any of their demands from reproach. If you won’t give up ______ for the sake of saving the planet, then you must be a selfish climate change denier in their books.

Just as we are fully aware (at least we should be) that the Green New Deal is an economic plan clothed in the glossy robes of climate change, so too should we be realizing that the entire climate change movement is being driven by a desire for a communist near-future in America. I assume, or at least I hope, that most activists in the climate change movement do what they do because they sincerely believe the world is going to be uninhabitable in the near future if we don’t act immediately. But just as these people willfully ignore actual scientific data in favor of the pseudo-science cited by their movement, so too have they willfully ignored the fact that the only possible “solution” to the climate change “problem” is giving up everything: Our property, our rights, and ability to act as individuals. But that has changed. Many have stopped ignoring this fact and have started embracing it instead.

An article by The Nation is a perfect example of today’s practice of being forthright with their end goal. The radical progressives being targeted by articles like these are in mid-stage acceptance of communism as the only viable solution to the existential threat they’ve been sold in climate change. They believe capitalism, individualism, and freedom are the very things that hasten the impending doom they perceive in our future. Therefore, the only solution is to replace capitalism, embrace collectivism, and denounce freedoms for the sake of safety and security.

I don’t recommend reading the whole article, as it’s acute propaganda with no redeeming value for anyone who isn’t a radical progressive, but there’s an important stretch in the article that declares their communist intentions without actually invoking the term “communism”:

California’s Fires Prove the American Dream Is Flammable

https://www.thenation.com/article/california-fires-urban-planning/www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Cali-wildfires-heli-wa..." scale="0" />The valorizing of homeownership and property rights results not only in increased exposure to climate-change-fueled fires, but also in our inadequate responses to them. In a suite of 22 fire-related bills signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom this fall, only two are directed at the physical conditions of settlements. Both restrict their legislation to the “hardening” of individual structures, such as fire-resistant roofing and siding, creating “defensible space” around one’s house, and some measures around community preparedness. There is hardly any emphasis on more collective action or larger-scale spatial planning, except for reassessing traffic flow for evacuations. Any suggestion that we might discourage rebuilding on privately owned land is promptly tamped down.

Our homes and neighborhoods are suffused with memories and meaning. Scenes of scorched and charred hillsides and homes tear at us in visceral ways. And so, after each devastating blaze, communities and officials pledge to rebuild. After such trauma, it seems only reasonable, kind, and dutiful to support these efforts—even if they may be perpetuating the cycle. This is not an indictment of individual homeowners, who are only trying to find stability through the sole system that has been offered to them.

The vulnerable affluence of Porter Ranch and Granada Hills, and the exposed tranquility of Paradise, are two representations of the same westward-expansionist frontier thinking that underlies modern life in the United States. This is the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, transmuted through the urban, petrochemical century. Cheap energy—both the monetary price of subsidized gasoline and the hidden costs of fossil fuels—and the idealization of individual homeownership have created the scorching landscapes we face today. Cheap energy is untenable in the face of climate emergency. And individual homeownership should be seriously questioned.

There are other options, in theory: Rental housing serves many cities around the world well, although we should be wary about perpetuating the power of landlords in this country without delinking ownership from wealth creation. There has been resurgent interest in government-planned and -built public housing, including recent legislation proposed by Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders that would shore up and invigorate the federal system. The Green New Deal invokes prior eras of government intervention, lending itself to revitalized thinking about the social value of public goods.

If you’re a homeowner, you’re not the enemy of climate change activists. You’re simply a victim of “the sole system that has been offered to” you. It isn’t necessarily your fault that you’ve been taken into the systemic problem of the antiquated American Dream. You’re just a patsy to the evil forces of greed that have destroyed this nation, by their reckoning. You can be reformed and engage in their brave new world of climate change communism. You just have to be willing to give up everything and join their collective.

“The key thing to keep in mind with climate activism is that it is ideologically driven – and that ideology, whether they admit it or not, is totalitarian control of everything or communism,” said Steve Milloy, founder and publisher of Junk Science. “Climate is not about the controlling the environment. It’s about controlling us.”


Climate change is the perfect vehicle through which to install communism in America and around the world. It’s technical enough that average citizens cannot test and verify results on their own. They must rely on the “experts” who are comprised of technocrats and activist scientists who now have control of the narrative. This isn’t because there haven’t been objections to their pseudo-scientific claims. Over the last four decades, scientists who examined the facts and came to conclusions that ran counter to the climate change agenda have been systematically “corrected,” bullied, or purged. Saying climate change is not a man-made phenomenon or that it isn’t real at all gets scientists the same treatment from their peers as biologists and geologists who claim the world was created by God. In both cases, truthful scientists are anathema in labs, universities, and the media.

Climate change hysteria also offers a sense of urgency without an ability to see the results in a reasonable amount of time. This is why there have been U.N. studies and scientific community warnings about how the world has one decade to take action. The problem is these final-decade warnings have been in play since the 1970s.

Read the full article at the following weblink:

https://noqreport.com/2019/12/27/climate-change-communism/

House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

Report Hyped by Climate Alarmists Warned of Million of Deaths, Nuclear War, Sunken Major Cities by 2020

https://summit.news/2019/12/27/report-hyped-by-climate-alarmists-wa...

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Comment by Willem Post on December 28, 2019 at 11:52am

Passivhaus, the Gold Standard for Energy Efficiency:

The Passivhaus standard, formulated in Germany, dates from the mid 1980s.

Passivhaus, 2000 ft2, heating demand 10 W/m2 x 186 m2 = 1.86 kW, or 6,348 Btu/h, or 3.2 Btu/ft2/h at -20F outdoors and 65F indoors.

A 2 kW, thermostat-controlled electric heater in the air supply duct could be the heating system!

No expensive GSHP system is required!!

 

The house would have an HVAC system, with supply and return ductwork to each room, to supply a minimum of 0.5 ACH to the house for health reasons.

The house would have with an air-to-air heat exchanger to transfer the Btus of the stale exhaust air to fresh incoming air.

The house could have a HEPA filter to filter the incoming air.

The natural infiltration likely would be less than 0.1 ACH.

Most other houses require no fan-driven ventilation, because natural infiltration is greater than 0.5 ACH.

 

Typical space heating demands of 2000-ft2, free-standing New England houses are shown in table.

 

Table/Vermont

Area

Heating Demand

Peak Demand

Air Leakage

ACH

House type

ft2

Btu/ft2/h

Btu/h

ft3/minute

@ 50 pascal

Typical older house

2000

40.0

80,000

2133

8.0, or higher

“Vermont mix house”

2000

32.0

64,000

1600

6.0, or higher

Newer house, last 20 years

2000

24.0

48,000

1066

4.0, or higher

Newer house, last 10 years

2000

18.0

36,000

666

2.5, or higher

“HI/HS house”, last 10 years

2000

8.5

17,000

400

1.5, max

Passivhaus

2000

3.2

 6,348

160

0.6, max

Comment by Willem Post on December 28, 2019 at 11:41am

Example in Maine: Energy Cost Savings No HP and With HP

 

Using data from the Emera Maine Heat Pump Pilot Program, conducted by EMI Consulting, it appears the installation of a HP resulted energy cost savings as shown in table 1.  

 

Emera used $3.90/gal in 2014, but the 2018 price is about $2.70/gal, which is used in table 1. See table 2-1 in URL

http://www.emeramaine.com/media/41789/emera-maine-heat-pump-pilot-f...

 

However, if an owner gets a loan from the utility, a typical payment would be about $660/y.

See Appendix of this URL

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/vermont-baseless-claims...

 

NOTE: With a carbon tax on fuel oil the scale can be tipped in favor of HPs.

 

Table 1

No HP

With HP

Fuel oil price, $/gallon

2.70

2.70

Electricity price, $/kWh

0.16

Fuel oil, gal/y

660

421

Fuel oil displaced by HP, gal/y

239

Fuel oil cost, $/y

1782

1137

Electricity consumed, kWh/y

2387

Electricity cost, $/y

382

Total energy cost, $/y

1782

1519

Energy cost saving, $/y

263

.

Utility loan, $/y

660

Amortize back-up system, $/y*

792

792

Total cost, $/y

2574

2971

LOSS, $/y

397

.

Not Counted

Maintenance contract, HP, no parts, $/y

150

Outage calls, HP, no parts, $/call

150

Maintenance contract, back-up system, no parts, $/y

250

250

Outage calls, back-up system, no parts, $/call

150

150

 

* Amortize $10,000 back-up system at 5% for 20 y

Comment by Willem Post on December 28, 2019 at 11:37am

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fact-checking-regarding...

Burlington Electric Department of Vermont Severely Curtailed Its Heat Pump Program

 

According to BED, Efficiency Vermont's estimated savings were grossly exaggerated. "BED is scaling back its 2018 – 2020 projections of HPs installed in the City of Burlington, VT, due to the results of a 2017 VT DPS evaluation report. See URL.

https://publicservice.vermont.gov/sites/dps/files/documents/Energy_...

 

The VT-DPS evaluation report indicates:

 

- The owners of the surveyed HPs had average savings of about $200/heat pump per year

- The owners displaced, on average, only about 34% of their annual fuel oil, i.e., the other 66% of fuel oil was supplied by the traditional heating system.

 

The VT-DPS report did not mention other HP financial impacts on owners, such as:

 

- Annual loan payments to utilities, such as GMP. See table 1 and Appendix for details.

- Annual maintenance contract fees, at about $150 per year, no parts

- Cost for unscheduled outages, at about $150 per call, no parts

- Amortizing the $5000 heat pump at 5% for 15 years requiring annual payments of $474 per year

- Amortizing the $10000 traditional back-up system a 5% for 20 years requiring annual payments of  $792 per year

 

Instead of installing hundreds of HPs during the 2019, 2020, 2021 period, BED is now anticipating, i.e., making money available in its budget, to provide incentives for no more than 15 HPs during that period.

 

Those few HPs likely would be in pre-selected, highly insulated/highly sealed houses to ensure 85 to 100 percent of displacement of fuel oil. Google Burlington Electric 2018 Tier 3 Plan, which BED is required to submit the VT-Public Utilities Commission every three years. The Plan describes the BED HP intentions for that period.

NOTE: The BED intentions barely were mentioned by the VT mass media, because it does not bode well for the VT Comprehensive Energy Plan goal of 35000 HPs by 2025. That goal was based not on any analysis, but likely on a number picked out of a hat by bureaucrats. See Appendix.

Comment by Willem Post on December 28, 2019 at 11:32am

Socialism is about Democrat/Progressive government, centralized, MONOPOLISTIC, command and control of the wheezing, near-zero, real-growth, Vermont economy.

Dem/Progs have demonstrated their ineptitude by EXPENSIVELY taking control of Healthcare and Education and Energy, by wrestling them away from LOCAL control.

Since 2000, Dem/Progs promoted the spending of $3 billion on energy projects, including the money-pit called Efficiency Vermont, but have only INCREASING CO2 to show for it.
Talking about ineptitude!!

But it is not enough. They want more and more money, this time to “save the world, fight climate change”

Let us face it, Vermont is just a fly on an elephant’s butt.
Dem/Progs want to EXPENSIVELY turn the fly into a flea!!

They want to inflict their ineptitude on the ENTIRE Vermont Economy.
This disaster-in-the-making has to be stopped at the ballot box before it is too late.
They are brainwashing children in public schools and colleges with various dogmas that say black is white,

That was done in the USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, N. Korea, etc., with MARVELOUS results; they all became and STILL ARE basket cases.

Comment by Willem Post on December 28, 2019 at 11:21am

Comments on Below Table

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/cost-shifting-is-the-na...

 

Indirect subsidies are due to loan interest deduction and depreciation deductions from taxable incomes.

Direct subsidies are due to up front grants, waiving of state sales taxes, and/or local property (municipal and school) taxes. See URL.

 

An owner of ridgeline wind would have to sell his output at 18.8 c/kWh, if the owner were not getting the benefits of cost shifting and upfront cash grants and subsidies.

That owner could sell his output at 16.4 c/kWh, if his costs were reduced due to cost shifting.

He could sell his output at 9 c/kWh, if on top of the cost shifting he also received various subsidies. The same rationale holds for solar. See table.

 

In NE construction costs of ridgeline wind and offshore wind are high/MW, and the capacity factor of wind is about 0.285 and of solar about 0.14. Thus, NE wind and solar have high prices/MWh. See table.

 

In US areas, such as the Great Plains, Texas Panhandle and Southwest, with much lower construction costs/MW and much better sun and wind conditions than New England, wind and solar electricity prices/MWh are less.

 

Those lower prices often are mentioned, without mentioning other factors, by the pro-RE media and financial consultants, such as Bloomberg, etc., which surely deceives the lay public

 

Future electricity cost/MWh, due to the planned build-out of NE offshore wind added to the planned build-out of NE onshore wind, likely would not significantly change, because of the high costs of grid extensions and upgrades to connect the wind plants and to provide significantly increased connections to the New York and Canadian grids.

 

NOTE: For the past 20 years, Germany and Denmark have been increasing their connections to nearby grids, because of their increased wind and solar.

 

The subsidy percentages in below table are from a cost analysis of NE wind and solar in this article. See URL.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...

 

Values for 2018 are represented in below table.

 

NE Wind/Solar

NE Wind

%

NE Solar

%

Ridgeline

Large-scale

c/kWh

c/kWh

Price to utility

No direct/indirect subsidies

No cost shifting

18.8

100

23.5

100

Less cost shifting

2.4

13

2.1

9

Price to utility

No direct/indirect subsidies

With cost shifting

16.4

87

21.4

91

Less subsidy, wind

45% of 16.4

7.4

39

Less subsidy, solar

45% of 21.4

9.6

41

Price to utility*

With direct/indirect subsidies

With cost shifting

9.0

48

11.8

50

 

* Owner prices to utilities are based on recent 20-year electricity supply contracts awarded by competitive bidding in New England.

These prices would have been about 48% to 50% higher without the direct and indirect subsidies and the cost shifting.

Similar percentages apply in areas with better wind and solar conditions, and lower construction costs/MW, than New England.

The prices, c/MWh, in those areas are lower than New England.

 

Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar...

 

This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 50% higher without direct and indirect subsidies. They would be even higher, if the costs of other items were properly allocated to the owners of wind and solar projects, instead of shifted elsewhere. See below section High Levels of Wind and Solar Require Energy Storage.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/economics-of-tesla-powe...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plant...

http://www.usu.edu/ipe/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/UnseenWindFull.pdf

 

This URL shows about 2/3 of the financial value of a wind project is due to direct and indirect subsidies, and the other 1/3 is due to electricity sales.

http://johnrsweet.com/Personal/Wind/PDF/Schleede-BigMoney-20050414.pdf

 

- Indirect subsidies are due to federal and state tax rebates due to loan interest deductions from taxable income, and federal and state MARCS depreciation deductions from taxable income.

 

- Direct subsidies are up-front federal and state cash grants, the partial waiving of state sales taxes, the partial waiving of local property, municipal and school taxes. See URLs.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf

 

Any owner, foreign or domestic, of a wind and/or solar project, looking to shelter taxable income from their other US businesses, is allowed to depreciate in 6 years almost the entire cost of a wind and solar project under the IRS scheme called Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System, MARCS. The normal period for other forms of utility depreciation is about 20 years.

 

Then, with help of Wall Street financial wizardry from financial tax shelter advisers, such as BNEF*, JPMorgan, Lazard, etc., the owner sells the project to a new owner who is allowed to depreciate, according to MARCS, almost his entire cost all over again. Over the past 20 years, there now are many thousands of owners of RE projects who are cashing in on that bonanza.

 

Loss of Federal and State Tax Revenues: The loss of tax revenues to federal and state governments due to MARCS was estimated by the IRS at $266 billion for the 5y period of 2017 - 2021, or about $53.2 billion/y.

The IRS is required to annually provide a 5y-running estimate to Congress, by law.

The next report would be for the 2018 - 2022 period

 

The indirect largesse of about $53.2 billion/y, mostly for wind and solar plants^ that produce expensive, variable/intermittent electricity, does not show up in electric rates. It likely is added to federal and state debts.

 

Most of the direct federal subsidies to all energy projects of about $25 billion/y also do not show up in electric rates. They likely were also added to the federal debt.

 

Most of the direct state subsidies to RE projects likely were added to state debts.

 

The additional costs of state-mandated RPS requirements likely were added to the utility rate base for electric rates.

 

* BNEF is Bloomberg New Energy Finance, owned by the pro-RE former Mayor Bloomberg of New York, which provides financial services to the wealthy of the world, including providing them with tax avoidance schemes.

 

^ In New England, wind is near zero for about 30% of the hours of the year, and solar is minimal or zero for about 70% of the hours of the year. Often these hours coincide for multi-day periods, which happen at random throughout the year, per ISO-NE real-time, minute-by-minute generation data posted on its website. Where would the electricity come from during these hours; $multi-billion battery storage, insufficient capacity hydro storage?

 

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68227.pdf

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tax-equity-investors-b...

 

Warren Buffett Quote: "I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate," Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit." 

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/e...

Comment by Donna Amrita Davidge on December 28, 2019 at 10:49am
What an absolute drag.. ruining our state how sad is that

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Sign up today and lend your voice and presence to the steadily rising tide that will soon sweep the scourge of useless and wretched turbines from our beloved Maine countryside. For many of us, our little pieces of paradise have been hard won. Did the carpetbaggers think they could simply steal them from us?

We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 -- Mahatma Gandhi

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Vince Lombardi 

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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