TCI Regional Policy Design Stakeholder Submissions

An added gas tax will only further burden the citizens of Rhode Island as we are a rural state with no availability to statewide mass transportation and being a one city state like Providence requires people to drive there to receive various services, it's bad enough now! The Democrats have been controlling Rhode Island for years and have ruined what could be a paradise and this is just one more knife in the back from the government and one more TAX we get hit with and the idiots in the legislature will squander the money like they always do!!!!!!!!

The earth is going through a warming period. CO2 is 4/100ths % of the air we breath and is used by plants to make the oxygen we breath. Carbon emissions are not the only reason that the Earth is warming. China, Russia and India are the major polluters of carbon emissions. There are 7 billion people on the planet that need an affordable supply of energy. Raising the cost of gasoline will harm those people that need to commute for employment most and will effect our economy. In addition, raising the cost of gasoline will do NOTHING to effect the warming of the Earth. The unintended consequences of the Green New Deal is that when energy become unaffordable massive numbers of poor people will cut down trees to burn wood to cook their food and keep warm and that could destroy the Earth.

With a state that has deliberately placed itself in the current position as the most costly energy rates and related state taxes (as the state and cities and towns are high energy consumers) this proposal is both absurd but another step to further repress the economy of Rhode Island and its citizens and retirees. Our population decline demonstrates that clearly. Mismanagement of the state pension fund has precipitated an ill conceived freeze of paid for COLA's to those already retired precipitating a decline a normal sources of modest income to the state economy while union cronies of the governor got consecutive pay raises for four years from the General fund that was not financed. What is going on in this poorly managed state? Political ambition and throwing the most vulnerable under the bus. Tell the General Assembly that the Point Judith fund purchase by the state pension fund should be cancelled immediately on the grounds that such commitments can be cancelled fro a "reasonable public purposes" and mandate the state sports betting contract be rebid competitively to stop financing crony jobs while the state fails its fiduciary obligation to balance its budget and finance its pension fund to long term retirees, all from the proceeds of this sports betting venture. The TCI nonsense must be eliminated now as membership in the regional group that came up with this foolishness has never redounded to the benefit of RI. We need a new pipeline of natural gas to get cheap Marcellus Shale gas and tell Governor Cuomo that NY is restraining trade to access the shale gas, costing RI billions of annual dollars every year, preventing the state from becoming a port to export this gas also overseas. This proposal feed the anachronistic and radical environmental thinking the Governor and some members of the General Assembly are advancing. Stop this travesty now. Revive the state economy by rejecting the TCI and adopting the policies suggest herein now.

At some point the State if Rhode Island needs to stop spending monies they don’t have. More taxes will run many more residents away from this state! Get a grip &tighten your belt on needless expenditures. Tighten your belt like you’re making Rhode Islanders do. Get a grip!

RI Energy CZAR failed us! Yes, an inferior solution equates to an inferior product. Electric vehicles remain a wet dream given a flawed electricity affordability & availability. The back door carbon Tax is a niggardly end run lacking in reality.
The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to. One interesting question is why and or how anybody ever thought they could? Never the less RI like Germany still embraces an already failed in Europe wind & solar industrial complex GREEN SUICIDE. TODAY'S Snow storm & Polar Vortex weather events evening reading material, before the lights go out, for RI elected officials! Given the US Congress budget reflects a beginning for a already failed in Europe flawed wind and solar industrial complex subsidies phaseout - a much better understanding for all the components & limitations of wind & solar generated electricity is mandatory! The rational solution can be found!
Many Researchers have been underestimating the true cost and utility of wind and solar generated electricity!
This question comes up in many types of evaluations, including Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and Energy Payback Period (EPP).
Conclusions;
a) Several adjustments need to be made to make wind and solar EROIs comparable to fossil fuels or generation IV Nuclear fission. The biggest of these is adjusting to remove intermittency (strength of wind & solar is every changing even beyond the day night cycle)..
b) Back of the envelope estimates would suggest that if the adjustments are made EROIs for Wind & Solar are likely less than 1.0 hence not a feasible solutions especially when compared to lower cost & predictable alternatives! Perhaps, The very BIG IF an EROI as low as 3:1 might be useful, then there is a possibility that some wind energy would be helpful, especially if a particular wind location has a very high capacity factor (can generate electricity a large share of the time), and IF both hostile environment induced rapid equipment attrition & complex under water transmission line hubs resultant companion pricing problems can be handled adequately. The EROI of solar PV would probably still be too low in most applications, especially in the northern US locations.
c) EROI can be a starting point for analysis, just as for example in preliminary medical models et al. However it is necessary, especially where a) energy acquisition b) energy conversion to power & c) power - electricity distribution, to look at real world outcomes. Yes, in this case actual outcomes can be very different than claims by an equipment vendor or an aligned an over sold political cult having unknowingly drank the green Kool-Aid.
In any event, we need to be examining situations more closely, instead of simply assuming that hidden subsidies now buried in your electricity Bills & state + federal tax bills can be counted on indefinitely. Today the US Congress is looking at retiring W&S subsidies after 20 + years of tax & rate payer monies squandered !

Your initiative is perplexing on many fronts, which I frankly find quite disturbing and short-sighted. This initiative obviously has money and/or grants behind it. Your obvious intent is to not only curb emissions, but to curb the use of gasoline and oil. As a writer, author and someone who has extensively researched more holistic ways to live, I find it amazing that groups and initiatives like yours outright FAIL to attempt to adopt and rebuild Nikola Tesla's 'free energy' tower, "Wardenclyffe". This tower and those like it would outright END the need for oil, gasoline, and even most utility companies. Nikola Tesla's tower was funded by the great J.P. Morgan - because it worked! He used it to recreate the aurora borealis over the skies of Long Island. Nikola Tesla invented the radio, A/C power, the Tesla coil, the remote control, neon lights, wireless power, and on, and on. Do you really think his tower wouldn't have worked? His aim was to light the world that was still dark, and give free energy and power to the poor, which would have ended poverty for over 100 years had greed and suppression not taken hold of America. Examples of Tesla's radiant energy invention are plentiful on Youtube. Yet, movements like this silly and obtuse Transportation and Climate Initiative only seek to further burden 'the people'; you only seek to implement more hardship and struggle on 'the people', as this initiative would surely raise taxes and financial burden.

What do you really believe? That if you burden others and make life more difficult for others you will succeed? Karma - and energy - do not operate in this manner. Do you think you know more than the people, and you ought to tell the people how to live their lives? This is an awful line of reasoning. Those who comprise our society who are already struggling to survive and live, would have to pay more to survive because of initiatives like this one that you put forth. I suspect that you don't want to take on big corporations and big oil; it appears that would be too much for you because it is much easier just to take on 'the people', and make their lives more difficult with higher costs of living, and you do it without showing your face, so they never know who you are. That is not policy or initiative, that is cowardice, and disingenuous behavior devoid of integrity. It is a disenfranchisement of the people, and their right to choose. Have the courage to do it big and do it right. You ought to instead be implementing a natural and CHEAPER alternative (Tesla's Wardenclyffe) that SAVES the people money and lifts them out of poverty. Your initiative would increase costs and thus poverty; and yet...I bet the architects of this initiative rail against the rich and perceptibly elite. Is this not hypocritical?

Several years ago the Cassini spacecraft detected that the rings around Saturn were eroding. Is this from humans? Is this due to what government defines as 'climate change'? No, it is not. The truth is that we are not experiencing climate change, but rather 'COSMIC CHANGE'. Yes, there are changes to our weather, but some of this is attributed to geoengineering, and world governments playing God with the weather, something even Nikola Tesla said was possible, because all weather is energy. Geoengineering is making the weather and humidity even worse, because it is creating a faux lower atmosphere with the metal particulates and aerosols that are making northeastern summers more humid, and thus more unhealthy; it is also not wholly safe for humans to ingest the particulates from geoengineering. Many climate activists scream the polar caps are melting. The ice is melting! I ask you: What brought us the ice caps? Answer: The last major ice age. What happened before the ice age? Well...there wasn't any ice! Rather the earth was temperate and warm, and guess what else? GREEN! Yes, oceans rose, but the earth was more plush.

Your Transportation and Climate Initiative is downright awful. It will do nothing except raise the costs of living for a state - Rhode Island - that is already last or near last in every important economic category, and rife with corruption. I respectfully urge you to rethink it. And I dare you to rebuild Tesla's Wardenclyffe and give natural, FREE power to world. Corporations, oil companies and utility companies give off far more emissions than daily citizens anywhere. The announcement of 'zero-point energy aircrafts' is an indirect admission that 'free energy' is a real phenomena that can be harvested. Thus, this energy that would beam from Nikola Tesla's power would be FREE, natural, and would not burden anyone. It would help to eliminate greed, and perhaps free people in poverty in the inner cities, who pay hundreds every month for gas, electricity and heat. Think about it, please. This initiative is wrong, and bad. It is not good for the people. It is not utilitarian in nature. It is empty and set in misconceptions. Thank you for your time.