The newly released Annual Market Report, 2010 from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) can be summed up in one word — Spin!

I’ve tracked the wind industry’s progress closely in the last six years, and mapping our observations to their declarations is always a challenge; AWEA’s reports are packed with assertions but rarely include the data and assumptions on which claims are based.

This year’s report was no different. To illustrate the point, it is useful to critically examine some of their claims. After all, we as taxpayers directly or indirectly enable the projects that make this trade association possible.

High Cost, Low Value

With natural gas selling at record lows, and supplies expected to be abundant through this decade, if not far longer, wind developers are under pressure from investors to secure power purchase agreements (PPAs) with utilities.…

“The [conflicts between wind turbines and residents] are more than just NIMBYISM; they are a justified reaction to intrusive technologies that would not even be polluting the landscape except for involuntary taxpayer/ratepayer subsidies enacted and enforced by government edict. Capitalists and environmentalists unite!”

Mark Twain said “a lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on”. The falsehoods about industrial wind turbines have been marching the globe for 20+ years, but the truth is now in its shoes and making its way into the court of public opinion and into the court of law. Has the tide turned against government created industrial wind?

It’s been a fervent time since the offshore announcement in Ontario recently (see my previous post, Ontario’s Wind Moratorium: Public Discontent Sends a Global Message to Government-Dependent Energy (and energy sprawl).…

The American Tradition Institute (ATI) and the American Tradition Partnership (ATP) have filed suit in Federal District Court in Colorado to have Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) declared unconstitutional. The plaintiffs find that the Colorado RES discriminates on its face against legal, safer, less costly, less polluting and more reliable in-state and out-of-state generators of electricity sold in interstate commerce, and thus violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Given 29 states with either a RES or a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) of varying strength, the outcome of this case will likely have far reaching implications. The suit was filed yesterday, April 4, 2011.

Part of the suit is a “declaration” of technical aspects and the costs and benefits of how the RES is implemented; I am the author of that declaration.…

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.

President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create (really centrally plan) jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece – most of them in China.

His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits.

Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rules, now that Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade.…