For one thing Louisiana has THE BEST wind energy potential in the North American continent. I know because I worked on the project that did all the studies. Places in Louisiana have 3-10 times the wind potential of even the most successful wind farm locations being built or operating elsewhere. The only reason we don’t have wind energy in Louisiana now is because the Legislature refused to authorize construction of Turbines. All these guys (Jindal included) are so in the pocket of oil companies and Cleco, Entergy, and LABI that they would rather take some bribes from those companies than to provide the people of the state with reliable clean and cheap energy.

As for Solar, the cost of the panels has come down considerably so that the market entry versus electricity produced is becoming quite manageable. The main benefit of Solar in Louisiana is that it can be used as a distributed array in which each business or building has its own electricity-generating capability. Imagine how much electricity can be generated by all the surface area of a Wal-Mart’s roof. Plus, for residents there are federal tax credits (Louisiana has mostly refused to provide state incentives) that cover half the cost of purchasing solar systems for homes, and FHA and USDA loans that will finance the rest. Because most people use electricity mainly in the evening for TV, cooking, and A/C, it means their houses become mainly generating stations during the day, sending their meter running backwards. So it could come out that the average utility bill gets cut in half, demand on the electric grid goes down, and people actually have power during a grid-outage.

As for home design, the costs is only about 30% more than standard spec-house construction. It can be even less here in Louisiana because most green house design aspects are actually taken from the architecture, layout, and scales of our own Louisiana plantation homes. They knew 400 years ago how to build a home that stayed warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We’ve just been reinventing the wheel lately.

But this is all off topic — the utilities should be lower here. We should be using renewable options, and mainly we should be trying to attract green energy companies to the area.

Alexander takes care of Monroe and only gives Alexandria just enough support to get reelected occasionally.

If we are to ever be politically viable we either need an Alexandria Congressman again, or we need to get our population up so we can have our own district again.

Alexander is worse than Jefferson and Fields? Really?

Your comment (“because of our reliance on coal and natural gas”) made me chuckle a little – how are we supposed to generate electricity? The sunshine and unicorn flatulence fueled machines take decades to recoup their initial investment back to the break even point. I’m not even sure we have a viable wind zone in Louisiana for that “clean” option. We have above average potential for solar, but, again, all of that is very slowly improving. Sure, everyone could live in a house that requires no input from the electrical grid, if everyone had $750k to $1.5m to build those houses. And, the next big move is to power our cars with electricity (a concept with which I agree, by the way). There are still no viable, commercial alternatives to burning fossil fuels for electricity, both short and mid term. Even nuclear power (on the scale of France and Japan), of which I am a big proponent for large scale, industrial production of electricity, is a long way off for most areas of the U.S.

So, what am I missing here? Why is our electricity, produced by coal and natural gas, more expensive than electricity produced in other parts of the United States, also by coal and natural gas? Is it because we rely on 50 to 60 year old facilities (or even older)?