RALEIGH – Talk about your tilting at windmills.
The state government’s Energy Office came into existence during the 1970s, when the powers-that-be mistakenly believed gas lines were caused by oil embargoes and natural scarcity (the real culprit, as even many liberal Democrats now seem to understand, was government-imposed price controls). Since then, the Energy Office has kept its motor running with an annual trickle of public funds and clouds of righteous fumes.
With gas prices soaring during the past year, the agency has reclaimed the spotlight a bit. In a new Associated Press story, Energy Office Director Larry Shirley says that North Carolina is “rich in renewable energy,” by which he means manure and wind. I tend to agree, though we differ as to the source – he’s thinking swine farms and mountains while I’m thinking of the General Assembly.
As much as 7 percent of North Carolina’s energy needs could be supplied by windmills, he estimated. Although wind power is famously oversold and impossibly difficult to locate anywhere populated by tourists and cute birds, what I really don’t understand is why our state government continues to expend taxpayer dollars on efforts to estimate the potential energy production of windmills. This is not an issue amenable to central planning and government fiat. If the relative prices of various sources of energy change in ways that make wind or biomass attractive, fine. Government’s role should be limited to addressing true threats to public health and safety via externalities such as air and water pollution.
In the case of the air, the necessary regulations were enacted by the federal government many years ago, and along with technological innovation have helped to drive down emissions of most pollutants. North Carolina’s air is cleaner than it has been for more than a generation. Additional taxes or regulations are not required to combat pollution; they will only happen if bureaucrats acquire the power to force us to adapt ourselves to their preferred lifestyle.
State lawmakers have filed legislation that would bring precisely this unwelcome compulsion. North Carolina manufacturers, already pummeled by state-imposed blows such as tax increases and unwarranted regulations, are in no mood to see the General Assembly consider what amounts to another costly round of tax increases in the form of mandated energy-cost spikes. “It would be a tremendous cost burden,” said Sharon Miller of the Carolina Utility Customers Association. Environmental extremists brush aside this concern, which is kind of what makes them extremists.
Let’s talk a little alternative energy of our own. Let the market for energy technologies and innovations proceed without government meddling. Rather than having some central authority attempt to pick the solution, allow inventors and entrepreneurs to continue their experimentation. Don’t pick a favorite, be it hydrogen or fuel cells or biodiesel, and shove taxpayer subsidies at it. Don’t buy all the pseudo-scientific nonsense about how there are free lunches just waiting for us in energy policy – if only the big bad oil companies would stop blocking the cafeteria line.
And while we’re at it, let’s finally get rid of the state Energy Office and focus our state-government resources back on what state governments have traditionally and constitutionally been empowered to do: fight crime, fund education, and pave roads.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.