Ed. Note: Also see Part II (on water, biomass, and geothermal); Part III (on coal); and Part IV (on energy efficiency) in this series.

“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.”

The most important book written on energy economics was the first: William Stanley Jevons’s The Coal Question (London: Macmillan and Company, 1865, rev. 1866). This classic is available in its entirety on the Internet.

Jevons’s remarkably sophisticated treatment of energy sustainability remains pertinent today.…

“Industrial wind power, a government created and enabled industry, is not only about the uneconomic. It is about controversy and division between neighbors whose country living in the wind-swept plains has never been about gargantuan machinery generating noise, flicker, and unsightliness.”

In rural communities, proposals to erect office-building-high wind turbines pit neighbor against neighbor. Some receive checks for hosting turbines on their land; the rest dread the intrusion to their senses. And all because of a slew of tax breaks and mandates to remove a free-market situation.

“Nebraska wind farm projects cause controversy and heartache,” one article in The Fence Post was titled. “With the enticement of expected high-dollar dividends and federal production tax credits,” the article explained, “some residents in Cherry County and nearby communities are struggling with daily life challenges, which they attribute to numerous turbines emerging across the landscape.”…

Editor Note: The article below, a revised version of a post at Stop These Things, is an example of a grassroots volunteer propelled by the menace of industrial wind turbines. Her analysis of wind-stronghold Iowa is pertinent for the national debate in regard to a villain in Michael Moore’s game-changing 100-minute documentary, Planet of the Humans.

Iowa is a big wind state, having force-started the industry with a 1983 mandate for state utilities to buy power from 105 MW of wind capacity. With state subsidies in addition to the federal Production Tax Credit, wind literally pays for itself with in reduced corporate taxes. Wind is Iowa’s largest power source, with 10,000 MW of capacity generating 40 percent of the state’s electricity. It is also at the forefront of landfill issues of scrapped wind blades.…

Big wind does not have a COVID problem. It has a mismanagement problem.

[Chuck] Grassley is promoting the American Wind Energy Association’s bogus claim that COVID slowed the industry causing projects to delay into 2021. He is now asking the IRS to extend the four-year window by another year to allow MWs that started construction in 2016 to spill into 2021 and still earn 100% PTC.

– Lisa Linowes (below)

The Texas Business Coalition recently published an interview with the intrepid critic of government-enabled industrial wind power, Lisa Linowes. The TBC’s article, “Wind Energy Researcher: Don’t Extend Deadline for Wind Projects” (April 26. 2020), explains what Big Wind is after now under the guise of Pandemic policy.

The article follows in its entirety.

Six U.S. senators, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, have asked for “safe harbor” deadline extensions to assist renewable energy developers to meet construction deadlines and qualify for tax credits.…