A Little Green Ache-ER

Just because I've stopped writing a daily blog doesn't mean that I am not constantly scanning the news headlines for interesting stories that have hidden gems of political nonsense in them. That's what "Cutting Through The Fog" is all about.

One story that caught my attention, yesterday, was a story about a city-built house in Troy Michigan that was supposed to be a shining example of green technology. The writer of the story seems to be focused on the failure of this house to get up and running; now, 7 months after being built (See Full Story). But, to me, that story is a perfect example of the road that Mr. Obama seems to be walking us down with his "green technology" spiel and the billions, if not trillions, of dollars that are being planned to make America green.

The first thing that popped out at me was the "cost" of this little green house in Troy. To me, having a showboat home that is the size of a 20'x40' room and that costs nearly a million dollars to build is not a shining example of anything but sheer economic stupidity and nothing but an embarrassment.

Anywhere in America -- except in the most affluent of neighborhoods -- you can build a house for under $100 per square foot. This Troy house cost about $1125 a square foot and that is at least 11 times more expensive than any average home in this country. In actuality, you could probably build an 800 square foot home in Troy Michigan for less than $60,000 -- a fact that is supported by the house values for all the small square footage homes that are currently for sale in Troy Michigan and as verified by Zillow.com. Therefore, this little green house is easily $840,000 more expensive than it should be.

So? Are we supposed to assume that the $840,000 premium to "go green" on this house will somehow pay for itself over time by avoiding conventional gas and electric energy costs? If so, how many years?

At 30 years, that $840,000 premium is over $2300 a month. At 50 years, $1400 a month. At 100 years, it would average about $700. To put this absurd cost into perspective, I did some checking. An 20'x40' building in Michigan, using conventional electric power and gas heating, would cost about $280 a month to run. That's about 35 cents per-month per-square-foot. At 30 years, the per-square-foot-per-month cost of that green technology house in Troy is about $3.

What is more shocking is the fact that this $840,000 premium for this tiny energy-free house is totally "upfront"; just like all those wind turbines and solar panels that Al Gore and Barack Obama have in store for us. If you put that money in the bank and let it earn a measly 1 percent interest rate per year, that money would generate $700 a month. With that $700 dollars, you could pay for the $280 a month in conventional energy costs and still have $420 left over. And, that's just at checking-account interest rates. Think how much you save by getting bond rates in excess of 4 percent!

Secondly, as I have shown, there's really no return on that investment within a reasonable amount of time. In fact the technology will probably be obsolete before it pays itself off. If not, all the "green" stuff in that house will probably breakdown or wear out and have to be replaced at least one time; further pushing the costs up and making the return on investment a total impossibility.

Lastly, as that news article points out, the technology isn't reliable. Wind and Solar can have serious problems on the power grid because of the inconsistency of their power output. Just take note of this multi-European country power outage that was blamed on German Wind Turbines (See Full Story). While the German-caused wind turbine outage was due to too much outputted power, the more typical problems with wind power generation is the lack of wind. Here's a story that was conveniently ignored by all the liberal, pro-green, mainstream news media in this country: "Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency".

Make no mistake about it, Obama's plans to go green will be both very expensive and highly unreliable. All Americans will be paying a high premium to fight a global warming emergency that many think may not really exist! That little house in Troy portends our future. Once we have spent our billions or even trillions of dollars to go green, we might just be stuck with an expensive little house that's broken!