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Phil Gramm

The multiple distortions of wind subsidies

Yet wind power is less economically viable today than it was when the current subsidies started in 1992. After the expected gains in moving from one-off production to assembly-line production, no major technological breakthrough has occurred that would substantially lower the cost of wind-power electricity generation. The Department of Energy’s “2009 Wind Technology Market Report” finds average wind-power costs were higher in 2009 than they were in 1994, two years after the subsidies began. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu has observed on more than one occasion, wind energy is a “mature technology.”

Meanwhile, as the production of natural gas has surged in the past few years, the price paid for this energy source has declined dramatically, to $3.29 per million BTUs at last report. This is less than one-fourth the July 2008 price, according to Energy Information Administration data.

Declining costs for electricity will give America a comparative advantage in industrial jobs that entail high levels of energy use, such as aluminum, glass, iron and steel, cement and petrochemical production. It also means, however, that wind-power subsidies will become even more costly and disruptive. As Dieter Helm notes in his important new book, “The Carbon Crunch,” wind subsidies make “new gas investment much more risky and . . . gas contracting difficult, since how much gas the power station buys as its fuel depends on factors outside its control: the wind speed.”

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Facts:

http://www.wattsupwiththat.com

AGW is 100% fraud.

All U.N. / Democrat Party redistribution/tax and spend lies and fraud..

CO2 is plant food.

Taxes feed the Democrats.

APACHEWHOKNOWS on December 26, 2012 at 4:53 PM

There are three really large windmills in Providence RI right on the water. Very impressive and kind of elegant with their slow turn rate.

AGW is not real and even the UN is having trouble toeing the line they created. The big problem is that it is part of the religion of environmentalism and there is no place in this world for those that blaspheme the great god gaia. The funny thing is that no one seems to have a problem pushing that religion onto everyone.

Dr. Frank Enstine on December 26, 2012 at 5:07 PM

APACHEWHOKNOWS on December 26, 2012 at 4:53 PM

Facts:
No matter how coherent or persuasive arguments are against AGW and “green” technology, we rubes informed or not, are still going to get it shoved down one tube and up another.

arnold ziffel on December 26, 2012 at 5:09 PM

Manchester NH Union Leader, 12/11/12

View-killing windmills: Blame the politicians

EDITORIAL

What started with a small, 12-turbine project in Lempster in 2008 has turned into a run on New Hampshire’s ridgelines by large energy companies that want to cover our hills with scores of windmills. Some of them would reach 400 feet tall, 125 feet taller than New Hampshire’s tallest building, City Hall Plaza in Manchester. As the scarring of New Hampshire hilltops accelerates, the politicians who promoted this have a lot to answer for.

In 2007, the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a bill sponsored by Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, D-Portsmouth, which created the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Legislators mandated that at least 16 percent of the state’s energy production come from new “renewable” sources such as wind power by 2025 (25 percent from all renewable sources). Suddenly, New Hampshire needed windmills.

The law has cost more than views. Public Service of New Hampshire calculates that the RPS mandate has cost it $58.3 million since 2008. It projects another $19.2 million hit in 2013 alone. Ratepayers bear that burden.

Washington shares the blame. Federal tax credits for power produced by windmills go to huge energy corporations such as Spain’s Iberdrola, the company behind several New Hampshire wind farms. A recent study by the Northbridge Group of Concord, Mass., concluded that the tax subsidy “encourages wind developers to locate wind farms with little regard to consumer demand, as long as they can be placed on line and their power brought to market to collect the subsidy,” the National Center for Policy Analysis reported this week.

Do-gooders trying to force us to switch from coal to wind power have encouraged the industrialization of scenic New Hampshire ridgelines. That industrialization will not stop until these perverse government incentives are removed.

Disclaimer: the Manchester Union Leader is still a relatively conservative newspaper, but it should be noted that the Leftist Newfound Lake Association in central New Hampshire has also formally come out in opposition to a proposed wind farm project near that lake. This after they saw the visual impact that the Ibredola wind farm at the northern edge of Newfound Lake was. Those 24 towers all all the same height as the figure I bolded in the editorial above.

Del Dolemonte on December 26, 2012 at 5:23 PM

Example:

Years and years of EPA, NFS, rules to obey, t’s to cross, i’s do dot before a ski resort can add 300 yards of ski slope on a mountain side. The ski resort is a or profit nonsubdized operation.

Need to cut the top off a mountain in New Hampshire for a taxpayer subsidized boondoggle,, two weeks and the rubber stamp in on the deal.

Hell the mafia would make better and much more even handed rulers.

APACHEWHOKNOWS on December 26, 2012 at 5:31 PM

Gramm makes the mistake of thinking the left actually cares about efficiency, affordability, and cleanliness of energy sources. The left couldn’t care less. For them, it’s a religious glorification of wind and solar, a demonization of all competing sources, and an overriding interest in using energy policy as an instrument of redistributing income and wealth. Facts and reason be damned.

petefrt on December 26, 2012 at 5:34 PM