The coalition in support of wind power’s Production Tax Credit (PTC) has always had a bit of a Bootleggers and Baptists flavor: environmentalists making a clean and green argument in favor of wind power and the multinational wind power development corporations funding the political muscle needed to get things done.

The coalition has proven durable even as wind power took a few environmental hits, but now the business side of the coalition is beginning to fray. The PTC will expire at the end of 2012 unless Congress acts to extend it, and some interesting positions are being advertised as the tax-cliff approaches.

For example, the Chicago Tribune reports that Exelon Corp., a large electric power company that owns a significant amount of wind power and is a member of the American Wind Energy Association, is opposing efforts to renew the tax credit (sub.…

“At the rate the WT6500 [off-grid wind turbine] is delivering power at our test site, it would take several millennia for the product to pay for itself in savings—not the 56 years it would take even with the 1,155 kWh quote we received.”

– ConsumerReports.com

Is there a role for new renewables, specifically wind and solar PV in our electricity generation portfolio? And if not at the industrial-scale, grid-feeding level, what about at the micro-turbine level for local electricity use? This Consumer Reports (CR) study answers just this question.

Before examining the verdict, CR’s claim that wind power is the fastest growing source of new electric power deserves a critical comment. “Fast growing” from a small base too often is hype over substance.

Take the example of the lemonade stand of a little girl on our street, Suzie, just this summer.…

Special political favor at the local, state, and federal levels have created an artificial industry: industrial windpower. Massive turbines have resulted in negative ecological and economic effects. Rural towns and countryside across the USA have become the dumping grounds for massive infrastructure producing a paltry amount of remote, unreliable energy.

For many enjoying rural life, in particular, an invasion by industrial wind installations has turned environmentalism on its head.

New York State has more than its share of such malinvestment and damage. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli recently reported that tax exemptions by NYS’s Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) were not creating jobs and “shifting tax burdens” from mega-corporations to local residents.

As a result, we have the spectacle in Upstate New York of taxpayer-subsidized industrial wind installations driving people from their homes — while further endangering the populations of eagles, hawks, herons, cranes, bats, and all magnificent flying creatures.…

“I want to build something that is environmentally forward-thinking. I’m not building a satellite dish so I can watch the Knicks game.”

– Alec Baldwin, quoted in “Actor Tilts at Windmill,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2012.

“‘We’re behind big wind,’ [Mike] Bergey [of Bergey Windpower] said, with small-turbine technology having advanced just a couple of iterations from its early days, while the more mature big-wind technology has pushed forward eight or nine times. A little more help on the R&D front — some of that government solar money, say — would be appreciated, he said.”

– Peter Danko, “Alec Baldwin Turbine Puts Small Wind In Spotlight,” Ecotech Institute,  July 20, 2012.

Alec Baldwin, the Hollywood movie star, has worked to preserve the charm and character of the Town of East Hampton on Long Island (Suffolk County, New York).…