Republicans Are Warming Up to Renewable Energy , Bloomberg, Joe Ryan April 21, 2016
- Some Republicans embrace renewables as Paris accord signed
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They argue that jobs and cost cuts make renewables attractive
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“……..The leading Republican candidates for president, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, reject any role of humans in global warming, as do most party leaders. But a small and growing number of once-skeptical Republicans is embracing wind and solar. They see the clean energy sources delivering cheap electricity, bolstering America’s energy independence and fueling economic development in impoverished rural areas.
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In turn, renewables are adding jobs in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas and other conservative states, creating a formidable clean-energy constituency in a party whose energy mantra was “drill, baby drill.”…..
- Past SupportSupport for clean energy is not new for all U.S. Republicans. Some conservative state lawmakers in Iowa, Texas and elsewhere have long promoted it. When he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush pushed through legislation requiring utilities to buy renewable power, leading to widespread development of wind farms.Republican enthusiasm is based largely on economics, not climate science, and does not necessarily translate into support for the Paris agreement or other efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
- Wind and solar farms are often built on farmland, which is typically flat, cheap and treeless. That has provided rental income for farmers and created a groundswell of construction jobs. Wind and solar companies employed nearly 300,000 people in the U.S. in 2015, roughly four times more than the coal industry. All of the top 10 wind-energy producing congressional districts are represented by Republicans, according to The American Wind Energy Association.“It gives us a real leg up on economic development,” said Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a Republican whose state ranks third nationally in wind energy.A push for renewables, meanwhile, is bubbling up from within party ranks……..
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Government Subsidies
Meanwhile, clean energy has become less reliant on the government subsidies that fueled its growth, making it a less problematic issue for Republicans.
The average long-term contract price for wind power paid by utilities has dropped 60 percent since 2009, falling in some instances below $20 per megawatt hour. Those prices, which include subsidies, are on par with off-peak power prices in some regions, BNEF analyst Nathan Serota said. The solar price drop has been even steeper, falling 65 percent with contracts as low as $37 per megawatt hour, Serota said.
A Texas Believer
Drew Darby, a Texas state Republican representative whose district encompasses nine counties at the edge of oil country, said the proliferation of cheap wind power since the state spent more than $7 billion on new transmission lines has made him a believer.
“Republicans all over the country ought to be paying attention to what Texas did,” Darby said in an interview……..http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/party-of-drill-baby-drill-slowly-warming-to-wind-solar-power
