No Jay Leno this year at the annual confab of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Instead of celebration and jokes (all at the expense of taxpayers and ratepayers), there is doom and gloom.
Bill Opalka reports at EnergyBiz:
Failure to extend the production tax credit would devastate the domestic wind energy supply chain and virtually wipe out wind power development next year, officials stressed during the June 4 opening of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) annual conference in Atlanta.
But the public is catching on to the industrial wind ruse. The lead comment (7:48 AM) on Opalka’s article says much about how fatigue has set in to this ancient, postmodernistic energy source:
… Continue ReadingWill this desire to feed at the public trough never end? The mere fact that wind needs the PTCs to survive tells us very loudly and clearly it is not a competitive power technology at this time.
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions … adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”
– F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p. 76
Whenever the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is confronted with evidence that its proposed regulations will kill jobs, risk blackouts, or otherwise harm economic growth, it typically seeks refuge in its own estimates of the amazing public health benefits the proposal will have.…
Continue ReadingDear Honorable Mark R. Warner:
I have great respect for your knowledge of information technology. But, with all due respect, sir, your May 24, 2012, response to my request that you oppose extension of the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) shows a serious lack of understanding of wind energy, energy markets, and energy research & development.
The people of [your] Virginia are fortunate that the Menendez bill (S.2204) failed. Your support for that bill was ill-advised and contrary to the interests of Virginia’s taxpayers and energy users.
You appear not to understand that the wind PTC, a tax shelter, results in shifting tax burden from “wind farm” owners and developers to ordinary tax payers and/or results in more debt that will have to be paid by our children and grandchildren. Furthermore, “wind farms” are being built primarily because of the Production Tax Credit, NOT because of their true environmental, energy or economic benefits.…
Continue Reading