Posts Tagged ‘Hydrogen’
What’s Happening in SC on Thursday, 11/12
Hydrogen
Demand for hydrogen fuel in Aiken still small as more funds go to the effort
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/11/12/met_555469.shtml
Local Government
Honea Path to investigate spending habits of town officials
http://www.independentmail.com/news/2009/nov/11/honea-path-police-begin-investigation-rescue-squad/
Anderson County Council to discuss possible legal actions stemming from a financial report about past county administrations
http://www.independentmail.com/news/2009/nov/11/anderson-county-council-discuss-possible-legal-act/
Live in Oconee County, pay 75% more in property taxes
http://www.upstatetoday.com/news/2009/nov/11/live-here-pay-75-more/
Columbia City Council approves spending $150,000 on efficiency study
http://www.thestate.com/local/story/1024205.html
Bamberg places limits on groups soliciting for funds, donates money to local groups
http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2009/11/12/news/doc4afb64a750a1a129220811.txt
Stimulus Watch
Aiken County takes a step forward in securing $2 million in stimulus funds to refurbish sewer lines
The Best & Worst to Come: Environmental Policy
The Policy Council’s Best & Worst examines environmental legislation to anticipate in the 2010 session. Taxpayers need to be vigilant for initiatives that will have little or no impact on global climate change or local environmental protections – but will drive up costs for South Carolina homeowners and consumers.
At the same time, be on the lookout for the good ideas we hope will resurface in the coming year – measures that let local communities guide environmental decision-making, and returning control over the energy market in the state to the private sector.
For the full analysis, visit the Policy Council’s report on the Best & Worst ideas in state environmental policy.
Here’s a quick look at the good and the bad:
Best Ideas for 2010
1) Empower Localities. Whenever possible the General Assembly should defer to localities regarding environmental concerns.
2) Privatize the Energy Market. The state’s monopoly power over energy distorts the market, reducing competition and increasing costs to consumers.
3) Energy Deregulation. Legislation creating energy regulatory bodies is 40 years old, and its original mission to bring energy to rural areas is obsolete. It’s time to loosen state regulations on energy providers.
Worst Ideas for 2010
1) Mandating a Renewable Energy Portfolio. Legislation requiring electric utilities to expand the use of renewable energy resources threatens to cost jobs and raise consumer utility bills.
2) Cap and Trade. This sweeping legislation now in Congress would create a system that caps CO2 emissions at a politically acceptable level and creates a global marketplace to buy and sell allotted emissions levels. We estimate that the bill would cost South Carolina 18,965 jobs by 2020.
3) More Subsidies for Hydrogen. Federal and state lawmakers persist in pushing hydrogen technology that experts agree is “one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases.”
Nothing in the foregoing should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder passage of any legislation. Copyright 2009. South Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation, 1323 Pendleton Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29201.
Poll: Climate Change and South Carolina
Media Fails to Vet Hydrogen Claims
The new hydrogen fueling station in Columbia is one of two in South Carolina. That equals the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles operating in the state.
South Carolina’s hydrogen industry has found itself quite an ally in the Charleston media.
This past weekend, The Post and Courier offered this decidedly uncritical view of the tens of millions in tax dollars that have been spent in South Carolina on hydrogen research while Thursday the industry turned to The Charleston Regional Business Journal for promotional assistance.
On the S.C. Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance’s web page under its current news section, the group lists as its top story a piece from The Business Journal titled “Hydrogen investment may offer 10-1 return for South Carolina.”
The Alliance’s decision to post the story on its website this week is curious for two reasons: One, the article was published in the Charleston publication back in June; and two, the report simply parroted information released by legislative leaders that gave a misleading impression regarding what the Palmetto State is getting for its hydrogen investment.
“The state’s investment in the hydrogen industry is seeing a return on its investment at a 10-to-1 ratio, said House Speaker Bobby Harrell Jr,” began The Business Journal’s piece.
S.C. Media Glossing Over Hydrogen Realities
Much of the South Carolina media seems reluctant to pull back the curtain on the realities associated with government-funded hydrogen transportation research.
The Obama administration has expressed grave doubts about the viability of hydrogen transportation, but that hasn’t kept the South Carolina media from hyping the concept like it’s a no-brainer solution to our nation’s energy concerns.
Take a story that appeared in The Charleston Post and Courier this past weekend. The piece provided a decidedly uncritical look at the tens of millions in tax dollars that have been invested in hydrogen research in South Carolina, even though there’s been little return on that investment.
Highlights from the story:
State taxpayers have chipped in $12.3 million to hydrogen fuel cell efforts, while federal, municipal and private sources have invested an additional $115 million in South Carolina, said Shannon Baxter-Clemmons, executive director of the S.C. Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance.
Hardees Created More Jobs than Innovista
State lawmakers and University of South Carolina leaders promised to create thousands of private-sector jobs when they announced the Innovista research campus at USC several years ago. But so far promises of private investment and job creation are all that exist despite spending more than $100 million of taxpayer funds on the project.
Creating jobs sure sounds good, but the reality is the jobs haven’t materialized.
State and USC leaders tore down a Hardees restaurant that employeed 20 people to make room for Innovista's Horizon I building. The taxpayer funded multi-million dollar building hosts zero private-sector jobs.
The university tore down a Hardees restaurant that once occupied the corner of Assembly and Blossom streets where the Horizon I building now stands. Other than the claim of a token presence by a few university researchers and the National Science Foundation, the 5-story building sits empty and largely unfinished.
The Hardees restaurant created 20 private-sector jobs. Horizon I, despite its multi-million dollar price tag, has thus far created no private-sector jobs. From the results, if state and university leaders were interested in creating jobs they would have been better off ditching Innovista and leaving the Hardees in place.
Constructing Horizon I eliminated a private-sector business responsible for 20 jobs and replaced it with an empty office building while costing state taxpayers millions of dollars. Not exactly a good return on investment.
These results are obviously a far cry from the “thousands of high-paying jobs” that Innovista was supposed to create as it ushered in the “hydrogen economy of the future.”Innovista’s failure illustrates precisely why government should never attempt to influence winners and losers in the economy.
A single fast-food restaurant did more for the South Carolina economy than Innovista has thus far…and you can’t even get fries with that.
For a detailed recap of Innovista’s failed promises, click here.
USC President Refuses to Acknowledge Innovista Failure
Many of the floors of Innovista's buildings are nothing more than empty shells, which can't be completed because of a lack of money.
Despite the clear failure of the “Innovista” research campus to live up to its promises of private investment and job creation, University of South Carolina President Harris Pastides refuses to stop pouring tax dollars into this increasingly expensive fantasy.
Pastides pledged his ongoing support of Innovista at a USC Board of Trustees meeting last week, just days after the school was forced to fire the project’s second developer.
“Innovista remains a bedrock strategy for stimulating economic development,” Pastides told the trustees. “Innovista is about creating knowledge, jobs and investment.”
First of all, government bureaucrats – specifically ivory tower educrats – should never be responsible for economic development.
And Innovista isn’t about any of the things Pastides mentioned – because it hasn’t created anything resembling what taxpayers were promised. Instead, it’s been about empty taxpayer-funded buildings and unfulfilled government promises.
At this point, taxpayers have coughed up more than $100 million for Innovista, without much to show for their investment.
Hydrogen transportation research, supposed to be one of the keystones to Innovista’s future, has proven to be a bust so far.
Despite pouring more than $40 million in tax dollars into hydrogen research over the past few years, S.C. Speaker Bobby Harrell conceded recently that just 229 jobs had been created. And, many of those are state-supported academic positions, not private sector jobs.
Those results are obviously a far cry from the “thousands of high-paying jobs” that Innovista was supposed to create as it ushered in the “hydrogen economy of the future.”
In fact, even the free-spending administration of President Barack Obama has concluded that hydrogen transportation research is currently not practical (or profitable) enough to warrant public investment, further jeopardizing Innovista’s sustained viability.
South Carolinians obviously learned the lesson of hydrogen impracticability the hard way. At a combined cost of $2.7 million, our tax dollars purchased two hydrogen fuel filling stations – which is twice the number of hydrogen-powered cars currently operating in the state.
This is precisely why government shouldn’t try to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. Instead of a thriving economic development hub, Innovista has instead turned into a dumping ground for existing university colleges and programs.
In fact, having moved the University’s Arnold School of Public Health into Innovista, Pastides boasted to the trustees that this “fully occupied” building is “teeming with Innovista activity” – although it’s not clear if the school of public health’s “activity” was any different from what it would have been doing in its old facility.
With no private sector prospects to speak of, Pastides was forced to tout the construction of two new taxpayer-funded parking garages, which are about as empty as the buildings they serve.
“There are also two parking garages in Innovista and, as you know, without the vital infrastructure of parking, growth could not occur,” he said.
Nor will it ever occur as long as we leave government in charge of creating it.
For a detailed recap of Innovista’s failed promises, click here.
Ethanol is a Waste of Energy, Land and Money
It’s difficult to tell what was more troubling about the pro-ethanol opinion piece The Myrtle Beach Sun-Times ran recently: that there are groups such as Americans for Democratic Action still pushing this propaganda or that one of South Carolina’s largest newspapers felt it was worthy of space in its pages.
While the Washington, D.C.-based organization does trot out several time-honored canards, such as the use of ethanol as a gasoline supplement reduces the cost by 40 cents per gallon (that difference is the result of subsidies because a gallon of ethanol costs far more to produce than a gallon of conventional gasoline), it also employs a new tactic, saying we need to continue this subsidy sinkhole because it’s “good for the economy.”
Don Kusler of Americans for Democratic Action, argues that we should continue throwing good money after bad because ethanol is a growing industry that’s producing secure domestic jobs.
If the ethanol industry is growing, it’s because it’s received tens of billions of dollars in subsidies over the past 30 years. With that kind of government support, what industry wouldn’t be producing “secure” domestic jobs?
