Time For Big Wind To Stop Sucking Tax Dollars

Obama Believes Wind Power is Unsustainable On Its Own

From the Town Hall publication Political Calculations

We learned something really surprising about the wind energy industry from President Obama’s FY2015 budget proposal. He doesn’t believe that the industry will ever be capable of economically sustaining itself.

Here’s how we know. Tucked away within the proposal, President Obama is proposing making the wind energy production tax credit permanent.

Mr. Obama’s budget would permanently extend the production tax credit for wind electricity, which expired last year after Congress failed to pass a bill renewing it. Over the next 10 years, the tax credit would cost $19.2 billion, according to the budget plan.

According to the analysis in the article:

wind energy is only capable of delivering somewhere between one-fifth to less than one-third of its promise. And even then, it doesn’t deliver what it produces when it’s really needed.

For example stifling summer days with doldrum winds insufficient to turn the turbines to produce electricity for air-conditioning.

That the green energy lobby is now working to make the wind energy tax credit a permanent burden upon U.S. taxpayers, even as the industry supporters claim the industry’s “success”, really means that the entire industry’s business model is fatally flawed.

The production tax credit is only part of the problem

A commenter with the nom de plume thoughtfulman posted the following salient point about the costs of wind:

 The real problem is renewable portfolio standards, imposed by many states on to their utilities. This requires that some set percentage (usually 10 or 15 percent) of power sold by each utility must be generated by “renewable” facilities (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.) When an area grows and requires more power, utilities are required to provide it. Thus they are forced to buy 10 percent of this new power from such sources, no matter the cost (or the lack of availability), and resell it to their customers. This forces a guaranteed market for alternative producers with no price ceiling. It is a huge hidden subsidy funded by ratepayers.

It is an obscene windfall for Big Wind that fossil and nuclear energy industries do not enjoy.  Not that multi-line producers are not getting into the act. It is a huge profit center for MidAmerican energy.  Consider that their flacks continually trumpet that “Over 20% of Iowas electricity comes from wind” (never mentioning the subsidies and mandates) or how much is actually needed (none) or used in Iowa.

Indeed looking at a recent insert from our utility bill we see the following obfuscatory verbiage “Some environmental attributes of the energy from this wind generation have been sold. This energy is characterized as “Null Energy” in the chart and table provided.”  The chart referred to shows wind energy delivered to Iowa customers as 2.2% , that represents what they could off load to Iowans based on Iowans consumption, which is not to say plenty of capacity from other sources did not exist, only that they could mix that amount of “wind” in conveniently.

So where did the rest of the over 20% of electrical power produced by wind go?  If we are interpreting this correctly, and we would love to be disabused, it seems they sold it.  The Null energy they sold, which they refer to as wind generated, is 18.6% of all electrical energy they produced.  That means almost 90% of the wind energy they produced was not for their Iowa customers.

So consider again the obfuscatory language of the MidAmerican utility bill insert, which constitutes its official Iowa Annual Fuel Report to customers “Some environmental attributes of the energy from this wind generation have been sold.”  The “some” is 90%. How about that for one of the understatements of the year!

And what are the implications to taxpayers?  Big Wind has enjoyed an array of subsidies, cash advances, tax credits, mandates and special legislation not available to other industries. We have thus been subsidizing  Mid American to produce wind energy Iowa does not really need and other states have been requiring their utilities to buy, that they no doubt do not need either. Yet by its very periodic nature we cannot rely on wind energy for anything, not even relief, as dependable full scale capacity must be maintained from other energy sources. It is a stupid concept of back-up energy. At market determined energy price levels and needs, wind is entirely a government created and sustained artificial industry.

And the Warren Buffets who own Mid American want more of your tax dollars to continue the rip off because they are profiting not based on market considerations, but on their influence over state legislators and Congress. Tax dollars fuel those ugly scenery robbing, noisy, wind turbine monstrosities, not the wind.  Pull all the mandates and subsidies and protective legislation and see how long those rent seeking investors stay involved and how many new wind turbines are built.    R Mall

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