Last month, GE’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Bornstein, complained that IRS rules defining ‘begin construction’ were still too vague and holding up delivery of 400 to 500 turbines. “We expect that clarification to come from the Treasury in the next week or two,” he said. “We’ve seen that clarification and we think it is helpful.”
And sure enough, GE got exactly what it wanted. Last week, the IRS delivered its third guidance document–and it’s troubling.
Despite eking out a one-year extension of the wind production tax credit (PTC) last year, only 836 MW of new wind was installed in the first six months of this year, the second lowest since 2008 (in 2013, a single two megawatt turbine was erected in Q1/Q2).
Yet surprisingly, with the PTC nominally expired not unlike in 2013, the industry is advertising 14,600+ MW of new wind under development, including 2,000 MWs added to the pipeline this year, after the PTC expired!…
Continue Reading“Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, take note. Look who is in the mainstream now! Julian Simon, step by step, is becoming the intellectual king of the sustainable development hill. First came Bjorn Lomborg. Then Paul Sabin. And now Bill Gates.”
Julian Simon, with his revolutionary theory of “the ultimate resource,” was far outside of the mainstream of sustainable development thought in his lifetime. But Simon’s marketing prowess and business acumen went to work, culminating in the most famous bet in the history of economics against Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, et al. on the future scarcity of mineral resources in a more populated world.
Such is the subject of a recent book by Yale history professor Paul Sabin, titled The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future, which was reviewed by Bill Gates (see below).…
Continue Reading“Tell me, JJ, what’s this capital request all about?”
“Boss, this is for a heat exchanger that will use our cooling-tower water for meeting our air conditioning needs when it’s cold outside. I figure it will save 5% of the power we now use for operating our chiller. The project should come in at around $10,000 and have a payback of less than a year.”
“Saves energy, does it? We can use this project to get greenie points towards obtaining Polar Bear level on our Politically Correct Building certification.”
“Maybe, but getting that certification takes a lot of paperwork and costs about $50,000.”
“Include a bicycle rack in this project, which gets points also. And does this thing use electricity?”
“A little bit, for controls and automatic valves.”
“Good. Include a solar panel to power it and put it over the entrance to the building so it can be seen. …
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