President Obama has made so-called “green energy” policies a key
part of his economic agenda, but as a new book argues, they
actually disproportionately hurt the poor by boosting the cost
of energy. Last week, Examiner columnist and Manhattan Institute
fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth, author of the new book “Regulating
to Disaster: How Green Jobs Policies Are Damaging America’s
Economy,” explained that: Most people think green is good but
pay little attention to associated increases in costs. In 2015,
it will cost between $49 and $79 to generate one megawatt hour
of electricity from natural gas. A megawatt hour from onshore
wind will cost between $75 and $138, and from solar photovoltaic
will cost between $242 and $455. As her book demonstrates in
this chart, rising costs of energy hit lower income Americans
the hardest, because they spend a higher proportion of their
incomes on energy: Energy Costs as a Percentage of Income by
Quintile, 2011