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FEBRUARY 16, 2010 | Policy Brief by ELIZABETH BRYAN, KATRINA CURRIE
Business Guide to Electric Choice & Competition
In the late 1990s, Pennsylvania's electricity rates were 15% above the national average, despite the abundance of low-cost coal generation in the Commonwealth. At that time, electricity was sold by a monopoly utility provider per designated region. Then federal regulations changed to allow electricity markets to develop. The state legislature re
FEBRUARY 3, 2010 | News Release by COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION
Penn State Whitewashes Climategate Investigation
University's internal review ignores key evidence of alleged scientific misconduct
Penn State's internal review of Michael Mann's alleged scientific misconduct-and the university's virtual exoneration of his behavior-ignored key evidence in the Climategate scandal. As expected, Penn State did little more than a whitewash.
JANUARY 19, 2010 | Commentary by MATTHEW BROUILLETTE
Mann-Made Global Warming?
Climategate was born in late November 2009 with the release of more than a thousand emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. One of the prominent figures in these emails is Penn State's Michael Mann, a professor in the university's Department of Meteorology. To Penn Stat
Recent Blog Posts
MARCH 16, 2010
The Green Schools Ruse
Yesterday the House passed Rep. Drucker's bill to exclude any costs associated with making a school building LEED certified from a possible taxpayer referendum.
Committee staff reported the department said there is a dollar amount threshold for referendums and green building costs can be excluded from that in order to avoid a referendum. Staff said, according to the department, if there is a referendum anyway, all projects will be included in the ballot question, including green construction. (PLS subscription)
With the cost of school construction and debt spending on the rise this bill could have wide implications. As noted in Nate Benefield's testimony on education spending:
Construction and debt spending grew 137% from 1996-97 to 2007-08, compared with 66% growth in instructional spending.
In committee, legislators debated whether green construction is more expensive and Rep. Drucker indicated responded the upfront costs are but the long-term costs are "significantly less". And Rep. Clymer hit the nail on the head when he asked why the exemption is needed if green technology is accepted by the taxpayers.
HB 689 hinders the ability of local taxpayers to gauge the true cost of school construction in their district and is just one more way government favors alternative energy companies at the expense of taxpayers.
posted by ELIZABETH BRYAN | 11:12 AM | 0 comment
MARCH 15, 2010
Sam Rohrer’s Energy Proposal
Gubernatorial candidate Sam Rohrer laid out his Energy Independence plan for Pennsylvania.
The plan includes:
- Oppose any effort to impose a natural gas severance tax in the absence of major reductions in business taxes.
- Oppose any efforts to subject the value of unrecovered gas to property taxes.
- Support expanded exploration and drilling on state lands.
- Appoint a DCNR Secretary who understands the important balance of sensible conservation, private property rights and real job creation.
- Speed up state agency approval time for permits.
- Oppose EPA and DCNR mandates that place unreasonable restrictions on well producers and property owners.
- Defend the rights of private property owners to explore, drill and extract natural gas and coal deposits.
- Fight for the phase out and elimination of Pennsylvania's anti-job Capital Stock & Franchise Tax and reductions in the State Corporate Net Income Tax.
Rohrer's plan correctly focuses on insuring the Marcellus Shale drilling remains a source of economic growth and not another slush fund for politicians.
However, while lowering Pennsylvania's overall business tax burden is critical, Rohrer leaves open the door for doing so on the back of a natural gas tax. Any severance tax should only occur after drilling companies have recouped their initial investment, and should be strictly tied to the environmental costs of drilling (though drilling companies are already being held responsible for environmental impacts through bonds and contracts.)
posted by KATRINA CURRIE | 10:05 AM | 0 comment
MARCH 12, 2010
Could Municipalities Provide Cheaper Electricity?
Last week the State House Committee on Consumer Affairs held a hearing on legislation which would allow municipalities to act as electricity aggregators for residents, unless they opt-out for another supplier. Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Sonny Popowsky explains:
The theory behind municipal aggregation is that by aggregating the buying power of a
large number of small customers, a non-profit municipal entity can get a better deal for those
customers than if those customers each go out and shop for electricity on an individual basis. In addition, many customers may have neither sufficient interest nor sufficient understanding to choose their own supplier of a product that they have never had to shop for.
While this could go a long way in encouraging competition, Duquesne Light and other Providers of Last Resort (POLR) point out that allowing entire municipalities to choose alternative suppliers creates more uncertainty, making it difficult for them to provide "least-cost" electricity through long and short-term contracts, as mandated in Act 129.
Any opt-out program should be free of restrictions or penalties that would prevent residents from leaving the municipalities program at any time. Municipal aggregators can be an effective tool to encourage more electricity shopping but, giving the power to elected leaders to negotiate contracts could easily lead to cronyism. Municipalities should stick to opt-in programs, where residents have to opt into the city's electricity aggregation maximizing consumer choice.
posted by ELIZABETH BRYAN | 10:34 AM | 0 comment
