“Without the PTC, any mandated wind generation would be an even bigger political problem because its cost inflation would be exposed. The wind-is-competitive-with-fossil-fuels hyperbole would be refuted in real time.”
Congress enacted the Wind Production Tax Credit (PTC) in 1992 as a temporary measure for an “infant” industry. Decades and nine extensions later, it is time to eliminate the PTC.
Subsidized wind power inflates electricity costs, compromises taxpayers, and destabilizes the electric grid (wind-generated electricity is intermittent). The huge tax credit allows pricing that ruins the economics of steady, conventional generation sources. Wind power, indeed, is the perfect imperfect energy.
The PTC It is most beneficial to wealthy wind developers who are able to reduce their tax rate at the expense of the rest of us. It is past time to end corporate welfare for this mature, and in their own words, competitive, wind industry.…
“Ehrlich and other green activists also remained oblivious to the fact that the correlation between standards of living and pollution level is overwhelmingly in the direction of ‘richer is cleaner’.”
“Population catastrophists, however, constantly remind us of Hegel’s alleged observation that ‘If theory and facts disagree, so much the worse for the facts’.”
Pierre Desrochers, associate professor of geography at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, is a leading classical liberal scholar in the fields of economic development, technological innovation, business/environment interaction, energy policy, and food policy. An expert on the works and worldview of Julian Simon (1932–98), Desrochers has contributed a number of features at MasterResource that are listed at the end of this post.
Most recently, Professor Desrochers celebrated the 25th anniversary of THE BET, the most famous wager in the history of economics between optimist/realist Simon and neo-Malthusian doomsayer Paul Ehrlich, with two opinion-page editorials.…
“Cap-and-trade for CO2 emissions will be just another political plaything for crony socialism…. Cap-and-trade is high on transaction costs and wheeling-dealing and low on emission reduction. In Europe, post-Kyoto Protocol (1997 –) coal usage has increased seven percent, while gas usage has declined.”
“China to Announce Cap-and-Trade Program to Limit Emissions,” reported the New York Times last week. President Xi Jinping joined Obama’s global energy constructivism by committing (?) the world’s most populous country–and largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2)–to a to-be-determined cap-and-trade program beginning in 2017.
The Obama Administration is leveraging China’s commitment with his own Clean Power Plan to try to get other countries to sign on to a global accord in Paris this December. But these are paper promises by sovereigns who surely know that there is no guarantee that the next Administration–or Congress–will have any appetite for continuing the futile crusade to ‘save’ the climate. …