A perfect example of what is wrong with the energy picture on Oregon

The Energy Trust Of Oregon has a great thing going for it. Whenever rates are raised for electricity, the trust is guranteed an ever increasing percentage of the new rate increase. Oregonians who are unfortunate to have their power supplied by Pacific Power(we are a victim of PP) has had the misfortune to have had our rates raised 4 times in the last two years. It is a despicable thing that the legislators did to the citizens of Oregon when they created the Energy Trust. Here is what the Energy Trust does with the funds it collects: The Energy Trust, which uses the electricity tax revenue to fund energy conservation programs and subsidize renewable energy projects around Oregon and the Northwest. Pacific Power just hit us with another rate increase of almost 15%! PP is rationalizing this increase due to increased costs and for providing new infrastructure and providing future supplies of green energy. So the stinking environmentalists and econazis are partly to blame for this fiasco as they set the table for Oregonians for years to come. They ruined the timber industry, the fishing industry, ranching and farming has taken a hit and Oregon's economy is still in a tailspin. Now we get a double digit rate increase on top of spiking gasoline prices.


Before I forget, in this next post check out what the Bulletin exposes about the fees(taxes) we pay to remove some days that we never had a say in whether we wanted them removed. Makes me furious and almost rabid with rage.

---

Your pain is the Energy Trust’s gain
Bend Bulletin
Published: January 26. 2011 4:00AM PST

Pacific Power customers scrambling to work this year’s double-digit rate increase into their electricity budgets should be sure to set aside a little extra for the tax man, better known as the Energy Trust of Oregon. Their pain is the Energy Trust’s gain.


Most people know the Energy Trust as the government-created nonprofit that conducts free home-energy audits. Of course, nothing the Energy Trust does is really free. But many of the people footing the bill know little about the trust or, we suspect, its claim on their hard-earned money. So here’s a little history.


Back in 1999, the Legislature told the state’s two big utilities (Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp, which operates in Oregon as Pacific Power) to apply a 3 percent charge to all retail electricity sales. This charge is merely a tax by another name, and the money it generates is used for a variety of purposes. Some goes to education service districts to make schools more energy-efficient. Some pays to weatherize low-income housing. But most, almost 75 percent, of the so-called “public purpose charge” goes to the Energy Trust, which uses the electricity tax revenue to fund energy conservation programs and subsidize renewable energy projects.


The tax revenue that flows through the Energy Trust’s hands is significant. During the 18-month period from January 2009 through June 2010, the trust’s portion of the electricity tax amounted to nearly $86 million, or roughly $57 million per year. Among the projects subsidized with that money, according to a December 2010 Energy Trust report, are numerous wind generation facilities, solar installations and, last but not least, a project that collects methane percolating through the Douglas County landfill.


The trust’s funding mechanism ensures that Oregonians will continue to pay for more of the same — lots more. When you receive a fixed percentage of an ever-rising number, as the trust and its electricity-tax partners do, you collect more and more money whether you need it or not. Thus, while Pacific Power had to make a case to the Public Utility Commission for the rate increases that kicked in last month, the Energy Trust automatically capitalizes on Pacific Power’s work. You know, kind of like a parasite.


PUC spokesman Bob Valdez acknowledges that “as retail bills go up, the share that goes to the Energy Trust for energy conservation ... goes up as well.” But he says the “Legislature did that so it would keep track with inflation and also accommodate a growing number of customers and ... be there for any emerging technology that might come up.”


Maybe so. But it’s hard to believe lawmakers back in 1999 supported the weirdness at work today. One of the justifications for Pacific Power’s recent hikes is the cost of “green” power, which Oregon’s renewable portfolio standards require utilities to provide. Thus is the high cost of Oregon’s renewable energy mandate forcing Oregonians to pay more money to a nonprofit that subsidizes ... renewable energy.


But it gets crazier still. Last September, the PUC allowed Pacific Power to apply a 1.7 percent surcharge to electricity bills in order to pay for the removal of several dams. The electricity tax applies to that portion of Oregonians’ electricity bills, too, says the PUC’s Valdez. Thus, must Oregonians pay the Trust more simply because they have to cough up money to help fish. One environmental tax begets another.


Fortunately, the burden imposed by Oregon’s electricity tax can also be a great opportunity. It all depends on the willingness of lawmakers to help taxpayers despite the certain objections of environmentalists and organizations that feed on electricity tax revenue. Lawmakers who do respect taxpayers should ask, first, whether the Energy Trust has become obsolete. It seems to us that the proliferation of subsidies and mandates supporting efficiency and renewable energy are quickly making it so.


Moreover, the trust’s funding mechanism forces Oregonians to pay an environmental tax on other environmental taxes. They must pay twice, for instance, for the state’s renewable portfolio standard. They pay once in the form of higher electricity costs and once again in the form of increased electricity-tax contributions.


Well, here’s an opportunity for lawmakers to prove that they can cut expensive programs that have outlived their usefulness. Better yet, by doing so they can pat themselves on the back — with justification — for doing something to moderate electricity costs that their own policies are driving skyward.

Original article is here.

Enivironazis in the EPA trying to ruin the coal industry

Here in Oregon, the most progressive, regressive state in the country, we have only ONE coal fired power plant. Rather than let the plant be upgraded and able to burn coal much cleaner, the state is forcing the plant to be shuttered by 2015. This will result in the loss of 120 plus jobs. Very well paying jobs at that that will be hard to replace in Eastern Oregon, one of the most depressed regions in the entire country. This one plant provides about 50% of the power for the greater Portland area if I am recalling correctly. The great green state of Oregon has forced a green agenda upon the citizens who live here. Cap and trade is already under way here in 'Pooregon' as many now call the state. Several of the utilities in our state are now charging a fee or tax, as I see it to pay for removal of power producing dams, shuttering of the Boardman coal plant, and forcing of a ridiculous green agenda upon us. The demosocialistacrats who have been in power for years have ruined Oregon. Thanks to the liberal Governor 'Sleepy' Ted and his ilk on down, Oregonians have been taxed and burdened with so many new fees now they are calling for budget cuts and spending restraint. Sound familiar?

Part of our problem here is the that the population centers of Portland, Salem, Eugene, Medford and possibly Bend are quite liberal and vote that way. The rest of the state is rather conservative but lacks the same numbers in voters. Every attempt to bring in any new power sources, gasoline piplines, LPG plants are stymied and sued by the environazi groups. Now the attack has begun on King Coal.

Alan Caruba who has the site Warning Signs has one of the sharpest minds out there. He is a fine writer, has authored several books and does book reviews. His articles have appeared here before and I hope you will agree on what he has to say. If not, please let me know as all comments are welcome. Just remember one of the very few rules here is 'Anonymous' commenters will not have their comments posted. Some of you will recall the one 'Anonymous' I had problems with due to the foul language that was used, over and over. After three warnings, that individual got the boot.

---

EPA Goes Ape Over Power Plant Emissions
By Alan Caruba

Not a day goes by without our being told that something is going to kill us. Much of what kills people is genetic; little time bombs in our DNA that determine the state of our health.

Anyone who reads the daily obituaries knows that Americans are living longer than any previous generation. Most of the population is dying of nothing more sinister than old age.

The diseases that kill Americans have been quantified and known for decades. At the top of the list is heart disease, followed by a variety of different kinds of cancers. Third in line are strokes. Chronic lower respiratory diseases such as asthma are next, but nothing more than accidents kill as many people.

The remaining factors include diabetes, Alzheimer’s, pneumonia, nephritis (kidney diseases), and septicemia, a disease of the blood.

What do Americans really die from? Genetic dispositions to illness. Accidents. Poor diets. And bad lifestyle choices that include smoking, drinking, and taking illegal drugs.

With the exception of asthma that affects about seven percent of the population none of this has anything to do with air quality. Indeed, the causes of asthma remain somewhat shrouded in mystery even if the symptoms do not.

None of this empirical knowledge and data has the slightest effect, however, on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American Lung Association that profits greatly from any claims about air quality. Both are inclined to making wild claims.

In early July, the EPA announced proposed cuts in “pollution from power plants in 31 states and D.C.” This is not about air quality. It is part of the long-term attack on all sources of power in America, but most particularly the coal-fired plants that provide just over fifty percent of all the electricity on which Americans depend for everything!

Depriving Americans of electricity would trigger a tsunami of deaths in the form of heat stroke in the summer months or freezing in the cold of winter. That, however, is the actual objective of the EPA and the many environmental organizations that wage ceaseless propaganda campaigns and endless law suits whose sole purpose is to deprive Americans of this vital source of power.

The EPA claims that infinitesimal particulates from power plant emissions, specifically sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) “harms the health of people “living downwind” of power plants. They propose reducing such emissions by 71 percent over 2005 levels of SO2 and fifty-two percent of NOx.

This is in line with the crazed and fraudulent claim that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing global warming and thus requires the huge tax on energy sources, the Cap-and-Trade Act making its way through Congress.

The claims are the typical exaggerations of all proposed government regulations. The EPA claims that their latest action would yield “more than $120 billion in annual health benefits in 2014, including avoiding an estimated 14,000 to 36,000 premature deaths, 23,000 nonfatal heart attacks, 21,000 cases of acute bronchitis, 240,000 aggravated asthma, and 1.9 million days when people miss school or work due to ozone-and-particle pollution-related symptoms.”

There’s a very impolite word to describe these kinds of statistics.

They are the same kind of statistics the Obama administration has been conjuring while it blew through a trillion dollar “stimulus” program with no real effect on the economy. These are the same kind of vacuous statistics behind the promise of new jobs, the takeover of healthcare, one-sixth of the nation’s economy, the takeover of the auto industry, et cetera!

Everyone wants clean air. The effort to achieve it began over three decades ago and it has been a success at the same time the U.S. gross domestic product increased 156 percent, vehicle miles traveled increased 143 percent, energy consumption increased 45 percent, and the population increased 36 percent.

Cracking down on coal-fired plants is a political act. It has no relation whatever to any need to reduce particulates for the general population.

When the American Lung Association talks of preventing “tens of thousands of premature deaths each year” it is engaged in the worst kind of exaggeration and fear-mongering.

Because Americans are rightly concerned with issues involving jobs, mortgages, auto payments, and all the real threats to their well-being, the EPA knows it can sneak through draconian regulations that, in normal times, would be and should be stopped in their tracks.

The EPA and environmental organizations are the enemy of economic recovery. They are the true cancer on the body politic.

Original article from Warning Signs can be found here.