“Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.”
– Christopher Flavin, “Electricity’s Future: The Shift to Efficiency and Small-Scale Power,” Worldwatch Paper 61, Worldwatch Institute, November 1984, p. 35.
“Wind is competitive in more and more markets. But anytime there is uncertainty about the production tax credit, it all stops.”
– Letha Tawney, Worldwatch Institute. Quoted in Eduardo Porter, “A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy,” New York Times, November 19, 2014.
Christopher Flavin, president emeritus of the Worldwatch Institute, please call your office. Letha Tawney, Acting Director of the Charge Initiative, the Worldwatch Institute’s “signature renewable energy initiative,” please call your office.
The two of you need to conference. Thirty years ago, one of you said that wind power was ready to go it alone, to break away from the taxpayer.…
Voters blasted climate alarmism at the ballot box earlier this month, just as South Carolina Republicans voters fired Rep. Robert Inglis for his climate alarmism back in 2011. Yet, Obama-like, the now head of Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University has launched a new website, republicEn.org and written an inaugural blog post about the post-election prospects for enacting a carbon tax.
In trying to sell Republicans on a carbon tax to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, Inglis insists on calling himself a Republican and free-marketer. Since 2012, his EEI has engaged in ” a nationwide public engagement campaign promoting conservative and free-enterprise solutions to energy and climate challenges.” Wiki also describes his work “to build support for energy policies that are true to conservative principles of limited government, accountability, reasonable risk-avoidance, and free enterprise.”…
“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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