I happened upon this article on Azcentral.com, Debate erupts over how APS spends alternative energy surcharge . It is about how Arizona Public Service, the electrical service utility is to spend the extra money that it collects from it's customers on mandated alternative energy sources.
This is now typical throughout the country where utility companies are made to collect extra from their customers in order to purchase a mandated amount of their energy from so called alternative energy sources. Of course this extra charge to consumers is only necessary because the alternative energy sources are not viable in the market on their own and would not be used by the utilities if not mandated by the government. As the article itself makes very clear:
This is now typical throughout the country where utility companies are made to collect extra from their customers in order to purchase a mandated amount of their energy from so called alternative energy sources. Of course this extra charge to consumers is only necessary because the alternative energy sources are not viable in the market on their own and would not be used by the utilities if not mandated by the government. As the article itself makes very clear:
Like most solar installations, the school projects aren't cost effective without rebates from the utility and the federal government
So not only is the consumer paying an extra charge on their bill for a energy source which is not economically viable, they are subsidizing it through their taxes. The idea being that this will somehow create both an industry and a market for that industry out of thin air. The problem is that the consumers of this commodity are also the investors in the industry, the taxpayer. So what they are trying to do is sell something back to us which we already paid for. So what we have created is a situation where we are robbing Peter to pay......Peter. Ain't capitalism great!
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