I was just reading today where newly seated Gov. Murphy will be rejoining the global warming group and that is predicted to raise electric rates throughout the state, we'll get zero benefit but an increase in our electric bill.
Here we go. Retirement and us moving to a more tax friendly state is looking more and more like an option.
Phil Murphy reverses Christie and brings Jersey back into climate change pact | NJ.com
The whole thing is a way to put a positive spin on raising rates. New Jersey needs tons and tons more revenue to keep a mere half of its pension promises, much less feed its hungry unions. The article mentions the laughable claim that New Jersey (the state as a whole) sacrificed revenue by leaving the pact. Where would that revenue come from? Thin air? No, it comes from ratepayers. People who pay for electricity there. And if liberals would bother to think of public utility rates as if they were a roundabout tax, it would be seen as a regressive consumption tax, which liberals definitively do not like.
But how "bad" or "good" this regressive consumption tax (if you will) is for the people depends on how its proceeds are spent. In this case, more than half is spent on energy efficiency improvement programs, which are essentially a form of "energy welfare" except that they pay dividends for a long time, by helping people make permanent energy efficiency improvements to their homes. Considerably less of the money (but a significant amount, over 10%) is flushed into direct bill assistance.
ThinkProgress
makes the laughably incorrect claim that "
For example, investing in efficiency programs — such as weatherizing houses — reduces the amount of electricity used. But that’s not actually why bills are going down. The decrease in electricity demand actually reduces the overall price of electricity." Um, no. The cost per kWh does not decrease as demand does. The cost per kWh increases when demand decreases, because of the high costs of running public utilities and providing energy, paying a high price for labor, pensions, infrastructure, and so forth, that cost is basically fixed, which when divided by a smaller number of kWh sold, means the price of electricity goes up. What
the report actually said was this:
"RGGI has also led to changes in consumers’ overall expenditures on electricity: On the one hand, the inclusion of the cost of CO2 allowances in wholesale prices increased retail electricity prices in the RGGI region throughout 2012-2014. But the near-term price impacts are more than offset during these years and beyond, because these states invested a substantial amount of the RGGI auction proceeds in energy-efficiency programs that reduce overall electricity consumption.
Direct bill assistance for people in energy-inefficient crappy homes is flushing money down the drain, and should be minimized. On the other hand, I think the re-investment of electric revenues into weatherization programs that basically permanently (or at least for a long time) improve the energy efficiency of people's homes and businesses is one of the best forms of "welfare" imaginable, because it improves people's economic situations indefinitely. If you take a 2-star house and with $5-$10k turn it into a 5-star house, you're making life better for anyone who lives in that house now or in the future. Whether people are flushing their own money down the toilet by heating crappy homes or it's someone else's money (e.g. other rate-payers) that are doing it, it's still stupid because it's a waste of energy resources. Building in incentives and financial assistance for consumers of energy to consume it more efficiently is quite possibly a better long-term economic policy than not doing so, if it can be done effectively and without anyone being able to skim the resources for corrupt political and financial gain. New Jersey has a lot of problems that dwarf this energy issue, but overall I think being in the RGGI would have been just fine for New Jersey.
It's not about "global warming." That's just the B.S. pretense under which it's sold to unwitting New Jersey voters. It's too bad that these types of ideas are sold to the public under the guise of "regulating carbon emissions and combating global warming," because that is a divisive hot-button of an issue.
