Energy Solutions Come from the Market – Not from Mandates

Last week, AEA Economist Travis Fisher wrote a Letter to the Editor in The Charlotte Observer regarding North Carolina’s renewable energy mandate. Fisher’s letter outlines the importance of freezing an energy mandate that has proven to be costly for North Carolinians. Below is an excerpt from the piece:

Renewable energy advocates claim a bill to freeze North Carolina’s 2007 energy mandate “dramatically disrupts” the state’s energy goals.

In reality, freezing the mandate is a practical solution to the real problem: political meddling.

From 2007 to 2013, U.S. production of natural gas from shale formations grew an amazing 783 percent, thanks to innovations such as the combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

In contrast, a mandate on electricity from solar power and poultry waste is not a solution – it’s meddlesome and costly.