POWER AT A PRICE: Costly and inefficient alternative energy is behind PNM ... - Albuquerque Journal

The PNM rate increase, if approved, will be another blow to a wobbly New Mexico economy. The restaurant owner who cannot offset higher electric rates by raising menu prices is just one example of the potential adverse economic impacts.

The genesis of the PNM rate hike request was the false claim that carbon dioxide was causing global warming. When it was revealed that researchers had cooked the books with phony temperature data, the scam was overhauled and labeled climate change. This name change had the virtue of ambiguity.

The claim that humans cause climate change is on thin ice. Ten-thousand years ago, a mere blink in geologic time, an ice sheet several thousand feet thick covered much of North America. It melted. Dozens of ice ages have occurred, each followed by a warm period.

The climate fluctuates.

Pseudo environmentalists, ducking genuine climate science debate, disparage carbon dioxide with the fatuous label “dirty.” The truth is carbon dioxide is clean. It is colorless and odorless, and life on this planet would not exist without it.

Reality notwithstanding, Congress passed stringent laws and the EPA issued draconian regulations to curb carbon dioxide. The use of so-called alternative energy was mandated.

The primary alternative energy schemes â€" solar panels and windmills â€" are expensive and unreliable.

Ironically alternative energy sources have serious adverse environmental impacts. Among other problems, windmills chop up birds in flight like a giant food processor, and solar beams incinerate birds.

Windmills and solar panels are inherently costly, inefficient and unreliable. Hence the PNM request for a rate increase.

Much of the blame for the current energy debacle lies with disreputable investors in windmill and solar panel companies and politicians to whom these alternative energy investors donate millions of dollars. The politicians then support these companies at the expense of honest hard-working citizens.

Adding insult to injury, politicians use tax dollars to hire contractors and consultants to rationalize costly government laws and regulations that force the shutdown of low-cost, efficient and reliable power plants. All high mileage government contractors and consultants understand that they must give politicians and government bureaucrats the answers they want.

PNM is not blameless in this energy fiasco.

For years PNM management has pandered to politicians, remaining silent on the high costs and low reliability of alternative energy schemes. Worse still, PNM has spent considerable resources bragging about their windmills and solar panels.

It appears that the PNM strategy is complicity with duplicity followed by cost recovery from electric service customers.

Higher cost to cook a chicken is but one example of the consequences of our absurd alternative energy policy.

That policy is stifling economic growth. And people who can least afford higher energy bills will suffer the most.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

The solution to this mess is for politicians to rescind the irrational alternative energy mandates. Meanwhile, PNM should not benefit from its complicity with those who hatched the alternative energy schemes.