Georgetown, Texas was featured in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” sequel for their policy of only using wind and solar power.
Today, they are trying to get out of their green energy contracts. Last year alone, the city lost seven million dollars. That is seven million dollars this city of 47,500 can ill afford and if they don’t manage to cancel those contracts, it will only get worse. The city leaders, anxious to prove what good little greenies they are entered into long-term contracts for the energy that powers their city, even as oil and gas prices are dropping.
The cost of green energy just keeps on increasing, pointing to huge losses in the years to come.
Georgetown’s bet against fossil fuel prices cost the city-owned utility nearly $7 million this year, and prompted officials to look for a way out of their long-term contracts for solar and wind energy.
“It’s costing them big time,” vice president of research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), Bill Peacock, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “This doesn’t appear to be the first time they’ve lost money, just the first time it was big enough to have to go public with it.”
Georgetown made national news after being featured in Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Sequel,” which was released in 2017. The film followed-up on Gore’s inaccurate 2006 film“An Inconvenient Truth.”
“I think Georgetown is already a trailblazer,” Gore said during his 2016 visit to learn about Georgetown’s plan to get 100 percent of their energy from wind and solar power.
“We took competitive bids in 2012 for all types of energy production and chose wind and solar because of the competitive nature of the pricing at the time,” Morgan said. “If we had chosen a natural gas project in 2012 for a long-term contract, we would still have the same situation, because it’s all about long-term contracting and where the energy market was in 2012.”
The city also had to pay more than anticipated in fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2017 for renewable energy because of depressed energy prices, he said. In 2016, the city projected the bill would be $33.6 million for renewable energy, though the actual costs were $40.3 million, Morgan said. In 2017, the city projected the power would cost $39.5 million, though it ultimately cost $46 million, according to city figures.
“These differences in projected and actual costs were previously offset by increased revenue, implementing a power cost adjustment and adjusting the timing of some large capital projects,” Morgan said.