“Manhattan Institute scholar, Robert Bryce, recently reported that the wind industry has garnered $176 billion of crony cash here in the U.S. It’s no wonder the American Wind Energy Association spends over $20 million per year lobbying for more of the same!”

Who can be in favor of industrial wind blight, enriching the top one percent at the expense of taxpayers, ratepayers, and the rural environment? Yes, as Donald Trump has noted, “America is being auctioned off to the highest bidder.”

The reason for this travesty of concentrated benefits, diffused costs at the hand of government is half-truths and misinformation. A recent article, NY looks to the wind to replace its fossil fuel diet, by Joe Mahoney, is a case in point.

There is nothing “free,” “clean,” or “green” about industrial wind.…

“Clearly the work of the U.S. Government laboratories played a crucial role in wind resource assessment and critically needed impetus to technology development―a role the private sector viewed as either too risky or representing an inadequate business opportunity. NREL has led and nurtured wind technology toward commercial viability since the 1970s and, in my view, this work represents one of the best return-on-investments in energy technology ever made by Uncle Sam.”

–  Jim Dehlsen, the founder of Zond Energy Systems (2003)

Enron might have saved the US wind industry in the mid-to-late 1990s. It began with its purchase of Zond Energy Systems in late 1996. At the time, Zond was in financial trouble, and its main domestic competitor, Kenetech, was in worse shape and would soon declare bankruptcy.

With Enron’s capital (and reputation at the time), the renamed Enron Wind Corp.…

“If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States. The potential to add incremental gas sales, and additional demand for renewable technology is enormous. In addition, a carbon emissions trading system will be developed.”

– John Palmisano, from Kyoto, Japan (1997)

A Hall of Shame crony memo just turned 18 years old. Dated December 12, 1997, it was written from Kyoto, Japan, in the afterglow of the Kyoto Protocol agreement by Enron lobbyist John Palmisano.

Global green planners such as Palmisano were euphoric that, somehow, someway, the world had embarked on an irreversible course of climate control (and thus industrial and land-use control). His memo reflects the train-just-left-the-station mentality, as well as the specific benefits for first-mover ‘green’ Enron.…

This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press, for a half century now, has created an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.

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“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”