“The private sector can be expected to develop improved solar and wind technologies which will begin to become competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D.”
– American Wind Energy Association, et al. (1983). Quoted in Renewable Energy Industry, Joint Hearing before the Subcommittees of the Committee on Energy and Commerce et al., House of Representatives, 98th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), p. 52.
What more can be said?
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“A vote for the PTC is a vote in support of President Obama’s destructive climate action plan.”
You can’t beat something with nothing, the anti-consumer, anti-taxpayer environmental Left knows. So even they must have a supply-side strategy to go along with their demand-side strategy of conservationism, or less usage for its own sake.
The anti-fossil-fuel strategy is not nuclear, despite efforts by James Hansen, Breakthrough Institute, and others to legitimize this mass, low-carbon energy source. It is not hydropower either. Biomass is out for the most part.
What is left? There is tiny solar with barely any central station plants (Ivanpah is one of the controversial few.)
That leaves windpower! And this is why resurrecting the expired Production Tax Credit for the umpteenth time is so critically important for the mirage of climate stabilization to continue.…
“Rejecting efforts to extend the PTC is a meaningful way for this Congress to oppose the President’s climate plan. A vote for extending the PTC is a vote for the President and the Majority Leader’s agenda.”
It seems almost counterintuitive to tell Republicans not to hand Obama and the environmental Left a big victory before taking power in both houses of Congress in the new year. But intense lobbying by the American Wind Energy Association over many years has created inertia. Government goes to those who show up, and AWEA has shown up and poisoned the Republican well.
Is it business as usual for the Republican political brand? Or a new beginning, given the election mandate of November 4th? The lame duck tax extenders issue (wind power’s Production Tax Credit expired on December 31, 2013) will tell us much.…