Constant Conservative

I’ve been strongly against subsidies for ethanol (and ag subsidies in general). I’ve also addressed the problems inherent with using wind to create electricity. On that note, let’s take a look at subsidies for something you are using right now (unless a friend has printed this off and handed it to you–even then you might be using artificial light of the electrical sort).

Here is a graph which shows the subsidies for a megawatt-hour of electricity which is derived from one of several sources.

Here is the source for the numbers (which may be a bit dated since it was last May) in the WSJ.

Solar energy is subsidized at $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind energy $23.37 and “clean coal” is $29.81. On the other hand, normal coal gets 44 cents, natural gas gets 25 cents, hydroelectric gets about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.

The whole point of these subsidies? To ensure that prices for electricity are relatively equal for the consumer no matter the source of the power. For the record, we shouldn’t be subsidizing any of this. However, in comparison with dirty King Coal, the newfangled “clean” coal is subsidized 119 times as much.

That isn’t change. That’s real money.

For a point of comparison, the average price of electricity back in 2007 was $91 per megawatt-hour. If one could assume that the 2008 price (which I was unable to locate) was essentially the same to slightly higher, one could determine what the rough price of electricity would be if the subsidies were taken away.

My recommendation? It is past time to pull the plug.