CleanTechnica, who prides itself on being "the most-visited clean energy or cleantech news site in the world" that "share[s], and inspire[s] others to share, correct information on cleantech and its dirty competitors (there’s a lot of misinformation out there)," got ironically fished in by one of the biggest energy industry scams in Washington. Yesterday, they published an analysis of PJM's 2011 State of the Market Report, to show gains in renewables and demand side management, and a drop in coal-fired resources. While that part of the article could certainly be fairly argued with (and is, by many flat earth cavemen), CleanTechnica loses all credibility when it finishes up by quoting The COMPETE Coalition as a "group of 622 U.S. electricity industry stakeholders advocat[ing] for competitive electricity markets," and refers to one of COMPETE's PR spin opinion pieces as a "report." So much for "correct information."
The COMPETE scam isn't even that hard to figure out. The truth is readily available for any reporter who wants to spend a few minutes doing something more than copying & pasting text from a website.
Here's what the COMPETE Coalition is really all about: It is a corporate-funded lobbying group intended to protect its Board of Director's generation revenue monopolies, including revenue derived from Reliability Must Run (old, dirty, generation) contracts and new coal-by-wire transmission projects. I'm sure it's perfectly legal to pretend the coalition is a 501(c)6 trade association with a membership that pays "dues," and not an organization whose sole purpose is lobbying for their own financial interests. The coalition accomplishes this under the guise of supporting competition in electricity markets, which is the exact opposite of their true goal. While the APPA article linked below has more general information about COMPETE's overall scam, a recent example of coalition chicanery would be COMPETE's deployment of shills to interfere in New Jersey's LCAPP hearings. COMPETE claims that RMR contracts and transmission lines produce cheaper electric rates than building new, competitive generation in high-priced markets, like New Jersey's. This isn't true at all. In the case of new transmission lines, for instance, the cost of the project is subsidized by ratepayers in 13 other states, making New Jersey's cost of new transmission to satisfy load deceptively "cheaper" only through creative accounting.
The COMPETE Coalition fairy tale was deconstructed in the publicly-filed Formal Challenge to Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline's 2010 Transmission Revenue Requirement. The Challenge (complaint), which was filed by two concerned ratepayers with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2011, had this to say about COMPETE:
Click here to read more and see full, linkable content
There's plenty of new reading waiting for you over on the citizens' Coalition blog!
The COMPETE scam isn't even that hard to figure out. The truth is readily available for any reporter who wants to spend a few minutes doing something more than copying & pasting text from a website.
Here's what the COMPETE Coalition is really all about: It is a corporate-funded lobbying group intended to protect its Board of Director's generation revenue monopolies, including revenue derived from Reliability Must Run (old, dirty, generation) contracts and new coal-by-wire transmission projects. I'm sure it's perfectly legal to pretend the coalition is a 501(c)6 trade association with a membership that pays "dues," and not an organization whose sole purpose is lobbying for their own financial interests. The coalition accomplishes this under the guise of supporting competition in electricity markets, which is the exact opposite of their true goal. While the APPA article linked below has more general information about COMPETE's overall scam, a recent example of coalition chicanery would be COMPETE's deployment of shills to interfere in New Jersey's LCAPP hearings. COMPETE claims that RMR contracts and transmission lines produce cheaper electric rates than building new, competitive generation in high-priced markets, like New Jersey's. This isn't true at all. In the case of new transmission lines, for instance, the cost of the project is subsidized by ratepayers in 13 other states, making New Jersey's cost of new transmission to satisfy load deceptively "cheaper" only through creative accounting.
The COMPETE Coalition fairy tale was deconstructed in the publicly-filed Formal Challenge to Potomac-Appalachian Transmission Highline's 2010 Transmission Revenue Requirement. The Challenge (complaint), which was filed by two concerned ratepayers with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December 2011, had this to say about COMPETE:
Click here to read more and see full, linkable content
There's plenty of new reading waiting for you over on the citizens' Coalition blog!
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