John Droz, Jr: Energy & Environmental Newsletter: May 13, 2019

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

Renewables Can’t Power Modern Civilization — Because They Were Never Meant To

The Solar Energy Racket

IEA Report: Worldwide Renewable Growth is Stalling

Europe’s Dramatic Decline Of Renewable Energy Uptake

Oklahoma passes new bill to protect military airspace from wind turbine encroachment

Is Noise Pollution the Next Big Public-Health Crisis?

When the GOP rolls out climate policies, it endorses the Left’s assumptions

Study: The US Plan is No Plan

Short good video: Bad Data

Superior Report about a Climate Change Adaptation Plan for Electricity, etc.

German emissions target will be missed substantially, despite on-target renewables

Video of a recent major AGW debate

Archive: Carbon cycle modeling and… Greenhouse Dogma

How humans create as well as destroy species

Six Reasons Why You Should Ignore the UN’s Species Extinction Report

Propaganda conveyed to kids in US schools, then brainwashes their parents

From Indoctrination to Education: Salvaging the University

Rein in the four horsemen of irreproducibility

Short video: Antonin Scalia – On American Exceptionalism

Read the articles and more here:

https://www.masterresource.org/alliance-for-wise-energy-decisions/e...

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Comment by Willem Post on May 16, 2019 at 9:32am

Here is more about "following the money"

Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street

 

This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 45% to 55% higher without direct and indirect subsidies. They would be even higher, if the costs of other items were properly allocated to the owners of wind and solar projects, instead of shifted elsewhere. See below section High Levels of Wind and Solar Require Energy Storage.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/economics-of-tesla-powe...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plant...

 

This URL shows about 2/3 of the financial value of a wind project is due to direct and indirect subsidies, and the other 1/3 is due to electricity sales.

http://johnrsweet.com/Personal/Wind/PDF/Schleede-BigMoney-20050414.pdf

 

- Indirect subsidies are due to federal and state tax rebates due to loan interest deductions from taxable income, and federal and state MARCS depreciation deductions from taxable income.

 

- Direct subsidies are up-front federal and state cash grants, the partial waiving of state sales taxes, the partial waiving of local property, municipal and school taxes. See URLs.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...

https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf

 

Any owner, foreign or domestic, of a wind and/or solar project, looking to shelter taxable income from their other US businesses, is allowed to depreciate in 6 years almost the entire cost of a wind and solar project under the IRS scheme called Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System, MARCS. The normal period for other forms of utility depreciation is about 20 years.

 

Then, with help of Wall Street financial wizardry from financial tax shelter advisers, such as BNEF*, JPMorgan, Lazard, etc., the owner sells the project to a new owner who is allowed to depreciate, according to MARCS, almost his entire cost all over again. Over the past 20 years, there now are many thousands of owners of RE projects who are cashing in on that bonanza.

 

Loss of Federal and State Tax Revenues: The loss of tax revenues to federal and state governments due to MARCS was estimated by the IRS at $266 billion for the 5y period of 2017 - 2021, or about $53.2 billion/y.

The IRS is required to annually provide a 5y-running estimate to Congress, by law.

The next report would be for the 2018 - 2022 period

 

Theindirect largesse of about $53.2 billion/y, mostly for wind and solar plants^ that produce expensive, variable/intermittent electricity, does not show up in electric rates. It likely is added to federal and state debts.

 

Most of the direct federal subsidies to all energy projects of about $25 billion/y also do not show up in electric rates. They likely were also added to the federal debt.

 

Most of the direct state subsidies to RE projects likely were added to state debts.

 

The additional costs of state-mandated RPS requirements likely were added to the utility rate base for electric rates.

 

* BNEF is Bloomberg New Energy Finance, owned by the pro-RE former Mayor Bloomberg of New York, which provides financial services to the wealthy of the world, including providing them with tax avoidance schemes.

 

^ In New England, wind is near zero for about 30% of the hours of the year, and solar is minimal or zero for about 70% of the hours of the year.

 

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68227.pdf

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tax-equity-investors-b...

 

Warren Buffett Quote: "I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate," Buffet told an audience in Omaha, Nebraska recently. "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit." 

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nancy-pfotenhauer/2014/05/12/e...

Comment by Willem Post on May 16, 2019 at 6:20am

Hi John,

Thank you for your great list of articles.

They act as an inspiration for many of us.

The main issue always is follow the money. The insider wheeler and dealers get the benefits and Joe and Jane worker get nailed for the costs.

Here is Appendix 4 of this article.

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar...

I just saw this graph of monthly data. Note the variations during a year.

 

Whereas, the graph is a nice picture showing the progress the US is making to have the US economy operate on wind and solar, it is, in fact, a highly deceptive hyping for wind and solar by the US government. In 2018, the averages of wind and solar output was about 8% of total US electricity fed to grid, after at least 20 years of generous federal and state subsidies.

 

The US grid has to be able to move around the electricity from where it is generated (wind in the Great Plains and sun in the Southwest), to population centers where it is used (mostly the east and west coast). Also, the electricity may be generated when demand is low, i.e., it needs to be stored, which is very expensive.

 

NOTE: For example, to bring wind electricity from the scarcely populated, windy Panhandle in west Texas to population centers in east Texas, about 1000 miles, $7 billion of transmission was built, because owners of wind turbine plants successfully lobbied Texas legislators. They made sure the entire cost was “socialized”, i.e., it appeared as a surcharge on residential electric bills.

 

If higher levels of wind and solar in the future, daily variations would require other generators (mostly gas turbines and hydro plants) to ramp up and down at part load, which is inefficient, to maintain balance between supply and demand, 24/7/365, as the grid does not store electricity. Any storage that does exist is completely inadequate, especially when multi-day wind/solar lulls occur.

 

Note the annual maximum and minimum sumof wind and solar for each year. It is almost two to one. The more wind and solar, the larger the quantities of electricity that would be missing during annual minimal conditions, and during conditions when winds and sunshine would be minimal in many parts of the US, including New England, which happens at random, 24/7/365.

 

And those large quantities of missing electricity would have to be supplied by a very large capacity, MW, of other generators, such as gas turbines and hydro plants, with some of it supplied from storage plants. All those peaking, filling-in and balancing plants would need to be kept in good working order, fueled, staffed and ready-to-go, at any time the grid operators order them to perform; grid operators could not order the wind to blow and the sun to shine. The owners would receive capacity payments from ISO-NE, the grid operator, to provide the services, as they do in Germany, the UK, Ireland, etc.

 

NOTE: In New England wind is minimal about 30% of the hours of the year, and solar is minimal or zero about 70% of the hours of the year. These hours very often coincide during multi-day wind/solar lulls. The often-mentioned refrain “the wind will be blowing somewhere” is nonsense, as the New England grid has minor connections with other grids, and nearby states likely would have similar weather conditions. Here are articles of multi-day, wind/solar lulls during summer and winter.

 

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/analysis-of-a-6-day-lul...

http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/a-likely-scenario-durin...

  

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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