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How the left destroys civilization:
How to Turn a Whole State’s Power Production to Wind and Solar Dreams
Excerpt:
.....The technology to store energy simply hasn’t kept pace with our ability to generate it, leaving renewable sources like wind and solar handicapped by their inherent intermittency. Consequently, renewables provide only a fraction of Nebraska’s energy needs and find economic viability only through a regime of heavy government subsidy.
Despite this technological deficiency, clean energy advocates still insist we decommission “dirty” sources sooner rather than later. Cities and regions who have done so have encountered grave disruptions in production and delivery, resulting in rolling blackouts, brownouts, and at times grid failure under heavy demand.
This is not entirely by accident.
Artificial scarcity raises prices, which in turn reduces consumption, a prime goal of the modern environmental movement. When combined with mandated lifestyle changes and forced energy retrofits to homes and businesses, renewables advocates claim that the lower production capabilities of clean energy won’t be a problem, being offset by lower demand from consumers.
However, this strategy ignores the problem of meeting baseline energy needs for manufacturing, communications, internet, medical facilities, and even the charging of electric vehicles, none of which is an elective use of power.
Nebraska has 166 publicly owned utilities, including cooperatives and public power districts, serving approximately 1.9 million residents. We are the only state served entirely by publicly owned utilities. This publicly owned structure keeps costs low by removing the profit motive from the equation.
Omaha Public Power District, Nebraska Public Power District, and Lincoln Electrical System are the major players in power generation in our state and are governed by elected boards, which, according to activist group Nebraska Conservation Voters, now boast majorities of “clean energy advocates.”
Races for public power boards aren’t known as high-spending affairs, so the influx of substantial amounts to one candidate over another can easily swing a race. A good example can be found in the campaign of Aaron Troester, a farmer from O’Neill, Nebraska, who is now the representative for Subdivision 2 on the NPPD board.
A group calling themselves Nebraskans Against Corruption (NAC) sent out a direct mail piece in support of Troester, touting him as the candidate who “will stand up to NG&T [sic] and stop the corruption.”
“NG&T” refers to the Nebraska Electric Generation and Transmission cooperative, who supported Troester’s opponent. NEG&T supports an “all of the above” philosophy toward electricity generation that includes renewable sources when available but stops short of using them exclusively.
.....”Decarbonizing” the production of electricity leaves no room for an “all of the above” viewpoint. Adopting a “carbon neutral” system necessitates mothballing coal- and natural gas–fueled plants, and along with them any dissenting opinion.
Troester denied any knowledge of Nebraskans Against Corruption. However, his denial is weakened, as his largest contributor (very nearly his only contributor), a group known as Nebraskans for Common Ground (NCG), is the sole funder of Nebraskans Against Corruption and a part of its leadership.
Along with a third group, Nebraskans for Fiscal Responsibility (NFR) this trio of “grassroots” independent committees have funneled hundreds of thousands of out-of-state dollars directly into Nebraska’s public power board campaigns.
Dividing money from a central source among numerous “cutouts” is intended to give the impression of a larger network enjoying broad popular support, despite many such organizations existing almost entirely on paper alone. The three “Nebraskans” groups are an example of this tactic, known as AstroTurfing.
Nebraskans for Common Ground has little online presence, with only a Facebook page launched in September of 2020 and dormant ever since. A vibrant citizen action group would be expected to have far more points of engagement with its supporters than a social media page with eight followers.
.....All three “Nebraskans” groups are under the care of Lincoln Electric System board member Chelsea Johnson, also deputy director for Nebraska Conservation Voters (NCV) (State Senator Eliot Bostar is the executive director), which is the state-level arm of the League of Conservation Voters, a Washington, D.C.–based environmentalist organization that receives a great deal of its funding from the San Francisco–based Sea Change Foundation.
Each of Johnson’s groups was established entirely with LCV cash.
The Sea Change Foundation is presently the subject of congressional inquiry, suspected of channeling hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian interests (including the Russian government) to environmental activists in the United States to convince Americans to abandon reliable energy sources in the name of climate change. The goal is to hamstring America’s economy with high energy prices, an unreliable power supply, and unpredictable economic outcomes.
.....The amounts involved are indeed startling, especially when considering the relatively low profile of the races the money funded.
According to filings with the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, in the 2020 election cycle alone, nearly $600,000 was spent by the League of Conservation Voters (or their PACs) on Nebraska races for seats on the Public Power boards, a smattering of Democrat party groups, and a state Senate race (Eliot Bostar for Legislature).
Nearly all dollars passed through Nebraskans for Common Ground on its way to hand-picked candidates.
According to the Nebraska Conservation Voters website, they have “won 88% of their targeted races.”
.....Despite creating an impression of broad-based support, the Conservation Voter Movement in Nebraska is much less a “movement” than a well planned and strategically orchestrated campaign funding scheme that has seized functional control of our Public Power systems.
Bostar, though born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, occasionally visited relatives near York, NE as a child. He returned to Nebraska as an adult to hitch his wagon to the protest against the Keystone XL pipeline project led by BOLD Nebraska and Jane Kleeb, helping in the construction of their “Clean Energy Barn,” a small structure built in the path of the pipeline Kleeb billed as “powered 100% by renewable energy.”
Featuring both wind and solar power generation on site, the structure was heralded as a model of Nebraska’s “clean energy future,” teaching Nebraskans how to achieve decarbonization.
However, according to information provided by the local public power utility that services the area, the “Clean Energy Barn” routinely relied on electricity generated by coal-fired power plants for more than a third of its total energy consumption. This, despite the barn being roughly the size of a detached two-car garage.
.....Absent the campaign-altering dollars administered by Chelsea Johnson and Eliot Bostar, and had they relied solely on “grassroots” support, the “Nebraskans” groups would likely have had little to no effect on the election.
The infusion of campaign funds against which few candidates can hope to compete has succeeded so far in avoiding public scrutiny while achieving a sea change in philosophy on how to run our consumer-owned public utilities.
No longer does providing reliable and affordable energy form the mainstay of our public power mission. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of special interest dollars so far, and more to come, our names may still be on the deed to our public power systems, but the control now belongs to an environmentalist elite who are using our utilities to pursue their own agenda. They make the decisions now; we just get to pay for them.
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More proof that we need to be involved at every facet of the local level. The fascist and their climate change nonsense are working in the shadows hoping we never wake up until it is too late.
Trump being in Nebraska this weekend it would be nice if he could bring the above to Nebraskans’ attention. Nebraska is an important agricultural state and the wind/solar fraud being perpetuated by the left would decimate the farmers.