Regulation of the Day 78: Green Energy Subsidies

Today’s New York Times has a classic dog-bites-man story. The green energy sector is shedding jobs, despite being given billions of taxpayers’ dollars by Presidents Bush and Obama.

As so often happens, regulators’ efforts to change people’s behaviors aren’t working as hoped.

To paraphrase Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren’s work on ethanol subsidies: if it’s commercially viable, then it doesn’t need any subsidies. If it isn’t, no amount of subsidy will make it so.