Climate activist Greta Thunberg is “ancient news” with 19-year-old Xiye Bastida preaching pure Marxism and taking the unsuspecting masses by storm, according to Sky News host Rowan Dean.
Can Solar Energy Actually Compete in a Free Market? One Energy CEO’s Surprising Answer
DEPCOM Power CEO Johnnie Taul explains why the free market future of solar energy is so bright.
This week FEE sat down with Johnnie Taul, the CEO of DEPCOM Power, to discuss energy markets and renewable energy. Based in Scottsdale Arizona, DEPCOM Power is one of the fastest growing energy companies in the world. In 2018, it landed in the fifth spot on INC’s list of the fastest growing private companies.
As president, Taul oversaw a run that saw revenues soar nearly 4,000 percent in a three-year span and pull in revenues of $220 million in just its fourth year in operation.
In a wide-ranging interview with FEE*, Taul discusses misconceptions about solar power and explains why he believes the future for solar is so bright.
FEE: You’re a free market guy. And you run a green energy company. How’d that happen?
We’re certainly unique in being a free market, conservative renewable energy company. Thinking back to how we were founded, about a dozen years ago a number of us entered the innovative renewable space from a large scale construction and diverse power background. The goal was to bring that big power mindset to a new and emerging market that had a lot of potential.
When many libertarians think of solar energy, they think of tax subsidies and government propping it up in one form or another. Are they wrong?
That view is not necessarily inaccurate; it’s outdated. There’s a misperception today that solar is high cost and heavily reliant on subsidies. That’s no longer the case.
In early 2008, when we entered the solar arena, solar energy was the most expensive form of electricity available. Over 35 cents a kilowatt hour range. Fast forward twelve or thirteen years, it’s now the lowest form cost of electricity levelized in history.
Point blank question: Can solar really compete with oil and natural gas in a free market?
It absolutely can today—at utility scale. The sector of solar we are in is the utility market segment: large scale power plants.
Lazard has a study where they look at a levelized, unsubsidized comparison of the various generation sources. Utility scale solar is the lowest cost of new generation that is available today, roughly 3 cents per kilowatt hour equivalent. Ten, twelve years ago that was over 30 cents, so it’s come a long way.
Now when you look in the commercial segment of solar—especially residential rooftop, which is usually what I get asked about by folks not familiar with the industry—that is still much higher cost. It doesn’t have the scale that utility does.
Is this why solar is such a fast growing energy source? I saw its average annual growth rate over the last ten years is more than 40 percent. Is this why solar is booming?
Exactly. Costs have been reduced over 90 percent in the last decade. This has been the fuel behind the economic growth, instead of subsidies and mandates.
What Big Ag Doesn’t Want You to Know: Small Farms Can Feed the World
According to a new peer-reviewed paper, “The Myth of a Food Crisis,” corrupt philanthropic and academic sectors in agriculture and development perpetuate the lie that Big Ag is the only way to feed the world.
Sustainable, local, organic food grown on small farms has a tremendous amount to offer. Unlike chemical-intensive industrial-scale agriculture, it regenerates rural communities; it doesn’t pollute rivers and groundwater or create dead zones; it can save coral reefs; it doesn’t encroach on rainforests; it preserves soil and it can restore the climate. Why do all governments not promote it?
For policymakers, the big obstacle to global promotion and restoration of small-scale farming (leaving aside the lobbying power of agribusiness) is allegedly that, “it can’t feed the world.” If that claim were true, local food systems would be bound to leave people hungry and so promoting them becomes selfish, short-termist and unethical.
Nevertheless, this purported flaw in sustainable and local agriculture represents a curious charge because, no matter where one looks in global agriculture, food prices are low because products are in surplus.
Often, they are in huge surplus, even in the hungriest countries. Farmers will tell you they are going out of business because, as a result of these surpluses, prices are low and continuously falling. Indeed, declining agricultural prices are a broad trend continuing, with the odd blip, for over a century, and applying to every commodity. This downward trend has continued even through a recent biofuel boom designed to consume some of these surpluses. In other words, the available data contradict the likelihood of food shortages. Despite the rising global population, food gluts are everywhere.
Arizona Election Workers are Running Ultra-Violet Ballot Testing on Maricopa Ballots (VIDEO)
The Arizona forensic audit continued today at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in downtown Phoenix.
In Arizona, for months the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County have complained about calls for a forensic review of the ballots in that large and important county. The Board members claim everything was fine but they won’t allow anyone to get close to their results. They spent weeks after the election messing with ballots before they formally concluded the election results.
But despite their best efforts to prevent an audit of the Maricopa County results the forensic audit is taking place today at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
The audit is being live-streamed from 9 different angles from the arena floor at AZAudit.org.
ABC Poll: Majority Disapprove of Biden’s Border Crisis Handling
While a large majority of Democrats approve of President Joe Biden’s flooded border, a majority of American adults disapprove, according to the latest ABC News/The Washington Post poll.
There were 53% who disapproved of Biden’s handling of the influx of illegal border crossers, including 44% who strongly disapproved among the poll’s adults.
But 64% of Democrats at least somewhat approved of scores of migrants cramming into facilities in violation of COVID-19 guidelines on social distancing, compared to just 10% of Republicans.
Also, the poll found a majority of Americans (53%) are concerned Biden is going to “do too much to increase the size and role of government in the U.S.,” including 32% very concerned. But that, too, did not resonate with Democrats (just 6% very concerned and 18% somewhat concerned.)
A New American Divinity – Part I: Scientism.
On the Monday before Easter 2021, Gallup published a poll indicating that membership of a church, synagogue, or mosque had dropped below fifty percent of U.S. adults for the first time in eight decades.
For six of those decades, the number hovered around 70 percent. It has since dropped to just 47 percent, with the sheerest decline occurring in the past two decades.
Religion In America Is Hollowing Out.
The study noted:
“The decline in church membership… appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong. The change has become increasingly apparent in recent decades because millennials and Gen Z are further apart from traditionalists in their church membership rates (about 30 points lower) than baby boomers and Generation X are (eight and 16 points, respectively).”
Similarly, Pew Research has found that more Americans (41 percent) reported the global pandemic strengthening family bonds, compared to the 28 percent who reported it had strengthened their personal religious faith.
Despite that, America led other advanced economies by 12 percentage points in believing their faith had been strengthened.
Biden Regime Ignores Kids In Cages, But Gives Them Free Copies Of Kamala’s Book
Kamala Harris has yet to tackle the situation at the border, but the kids in cages are receiving English-language copies of her children’s book.
Photographs reveal that, despite Vice President Kamala Harris being tasked by the Biden administration to tackle the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border – which Joe Biden describes as a crisis, but the White House does not – she is instead giving unaccompanied minors, who are living in cages, copies of her children’s book.
The New York Post notes that, while Harris has yet to address the crisis at the border, or even visit the border, “a children’s book she wrote is waiting there for young migrants who are being welcomed into the country.” Specifically, the largely Spanish-speaking children are greeted with a copy of her 2019 book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” in which she writes “Whenever there’s trouble, superheroes show up just in time.” The discovery was made after photo journalists with mainstream media outlets captured the book on the tightly packed cots used by the illegal immigrant minors.
