Heinrich’s Bad ‘Investment’
New Mexico’s junior member of the U.S. Senate doesn’t know much about anything, but when it comes to energy and economic development, his ignorance runs especially deep.
In a grueling interview with Albuquerque’s Weekly Alibi (sample question: “Do the [healthcare] reforms, as expressed by the Republicans in their legislation, constitute a danger to America’s middle class?”), Martin Heinrich boasted that he “worked really hard to work on renewable energy development and infrastructure management, so that we can become net exporters of clean energy to the rest of the country.” The Land of Enchantment’s awful governor hasn’t been much help, apparently, but “in Washington, we passed a set of incentives for wind and solar that are driving growing industries in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Las Cruces, too.” The solon touted “investment” in wind power in rural New Mexico, which “creates permanent jobs for technicians who will be living in those rural communities.”
We’ve long known that as a job-creation mechanism, “clean energy” disappoints. And a new survey from the left-leaning Brookings Institution finds that one important type of funding for politically correct power is drying up: “Between 2011 and 2016, [venture capital] cleantech investment declined by nearly 30 percent, from $7.5 billion to $5.24 billion.” Even worse, VC in the sector is “heavily clustered in just four metro areas — San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, and Los Angeles.”
Meanwhile:
* Oklahoma is abandoning its “zero emissions tax credit,” through approval of a bill that one legislator promises “will save the state a significant amount of money moving forward, freeing up revenue that can be used on high priorities like education, public safety and health care”
* a new analysis published by the Institute for Energy Research concludes that despite spending €1.1 trillion on “green power,” European Union countries’ “investment has provided little in terms of generating capacity and output”
* rampant NIMBYism, from coast to coast, plagues proposals for wind and solar facilities
New Mexico’s northwest corner, where the bulk of the state’s coal and natural-gas production takes place, continues to suffer from one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation. Does Martin Heinrich care?