Having taken over $100 Billion in subsidies, U.S. wind industry demands more after promising they'd need no more
Is it possible that our lawmakers could be so stupid as to believe every lie from the wind industry since the introduction of the PTC in 1992 when they first said "Just this one time"? Since that time the wind crooks have incessantly said "Just this one more time". That is junkie speak. Be outraged and let your congresspersons know you demand an end to this rigged game for the insider class. The middle class would like to see this money itself. The insider class has robbed us blind.
Apropos advice from Father Merrin, an experienced Exorcist:
"He is a liar, the demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack
us. The attack is psychological , Damien. And powerful. So don't listen, remember that, do not listen."
Washington subsidies not helping the wind industry
Credit: By Stephen Moore | The Washington Times | Friday, October 18, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com ~~
Last week the lobbying arm of the wind energy industry made an unsurprising, though somewhat embarrassing, announcement. It wants a longer lifeline with federal subsidies. So much for wind being the low-cost energy source of the future.
Less than a year ago, the American Wind Energy Association had with great fanfare issued a press statement that as Bloomberg reported: “America’s wind farms are ready to go it alone.” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has strongly supported the wind industry since the days of federal support began in 1992, boasted that the wind industry has finally “matured” and that wind farms were “ready to compete.”
Never mind.
Big Wind’s change of heart was predictable because when this tax giveaway – which basically requires taxpayers to underwrite 30 percent of the cost of wind energy production – was first enacted, the renewable energy lobby promised that it would lift itself out of the federal wheelchair and walk on its own within five years. But like clockwork, every five years they have come back to Congress pleading for an extension – much like Oliver with his porridge bowl asking: “Please, sir, could I have some more.”
What was especially interesting was why Big Wind thinks it is deserving of “more.” The industry execs mentioned the tough competition from natural gas – which isn’t going away. Natural gas is today by far the most cost-efficient source of electric power generation in most markets. Thanks to the shale revolution natural gas prices have fallen by about two-thirds. This means that only with very generous taxpayer assistance on top of local mandates requiring local utilities to buy wind and solar power can green energy compete.
Big Wind said that it will lobby for a continued subsidy so wind power will “have parity” with the solar industry subsidies. The solar industry sun gods have even higher subsidies than wind producers get. They are actually right. Per unit of electricity, solar gets five times as much as wind power. And wind gets some five times more than coal and natural gas. So now we have a subsidy arms race going on.
Over the last 30 or so years, the renewable energy industry has received well over $100 billion in federal, state and local handouts. Yet these are still fairly trivial contributors to America’s overall energy production – supplying somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent of the nation’s total. The rational solution would of course be to eliminate all federal energy subsidies and simply create a level playing field among coal, nuclear, natural gas, solar and wind. But given the current anti-fossil fuels hysteria and the movement to promote green energy at any cost, the idea of creating an economically-efficient market for energy is about as likely as hell freezing over – which isn’t going to happen anytime soon because of global warming.
Given the powerful green movement’s lobby on Capitol Hill, don’t be surprised if the federal aid keeps pouring in. But here again we see again the central contradiction of the green energy fad. On the one hand, we here rave reviews of how enormously cost effective green energy has become in the 21st century. We are told we can require 50 percent, 60 percent and even 100 percent renewable energy over the next decade at no cost to consumers or businesses.
If so. Why must the subsidies continue ad infinitum? If $100 billion of taxpayer handouts hasn’t worked, what will?
Read the rest here:
https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/10/19/washington-subsidies-not...
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Comment
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Comment by Willem Post on October 20, 2019 at 3:58pm
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Comments on Below Table
Indirect subsidies are due to loan interest deduction and depreciation deductions from taxable incomes.
Direct subsidies are due to up front grants, waiving of state sales taxes, and/or local property (municipal and school) taxes. See URL.
An owner of ridgeline wind would have to sell his output at 18.8 c/kWh, if the owner were not getting the benefits of cost shifting and upfront cash grants and subsidies.
That owner could sell his output at 16.4 c/kWh, if his costs were reduced due to cost shifting.
He could sell his output at 9 c/kWh, if on top of the cost shifting he also received various subsidies. The same rationale holds for solar. See table.
In NE construction costs of ridgeline wind and offshore wind are high/MW, and the capacity factor of wind is about 0.285 and of solar about 0.14. Thus, NE wind and solar have high prices/MWh. See table.
In US areas, such as the Great Plains, Texas Panhandle and Southwest, with much lower construction costs/MW and much better sun and wind conditions than New England, wind and solar electricity prices/MWh are less.
Those lower prices often are mentioned, without mentioning other factors, by the pro-RE media and financial consultants, such as Bloomberg, etc., which surely deceives the lay public
Future electricity cost/MWh, due to the planned build-out of NE offshore wind added to the planned build-out of NE onshore wind, likely would not significantly change, because of the high costs of grid extensions and upgrades to connect the wind plants and to provide significantly increased connections to the New York and Canadian grids.
NOTE: For the past 20 years, Germany and Denmark have been increasing their connections to nearby grids, because of their increased wind and solar.
The subsidy percentages in below table are from a cost analysis of NE wind and solar in this article. See URL.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/excessive-subsidies-for...
Values for 2018 are represented in below table.
NE Wind/Solar
NE Wind
%
NE Solar
%
Ridgeline
Large-scale
c/kWh
c/kWh
Price to utility
No direct/indirect subsidies
No cost shifting
18.8
100
23.5
100
Less cost shifting
2.4
13
2.1
9
Price to utility
No direct/indirect subsidies
With cost shifting
16.4
87
21.4
91
Less subsidy, wind
45% of 16.4
7.4
39
Less subsidy, solar
45% of 21.4
9.6
41
Price to utility*
With direct/indirect subsidies
With cost shifting
9.0
48
11.8
50
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Wind and Solar Subsidies Provide a Bonanza for Wall Street
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-more-wind-and-solar...
This URL shows wind and solar prices per kWh would be at least 50% 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...
http://www.usu.edu/ipe/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/UnseenWindFull.pdf
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
The indirect 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. Often these hours coincide for multi-day periods, which happen at random throughout the year, per ISO-NE real-time, minute-by-minute generation data posted on its website. Where would the electricity come from during these hours; $multi-billion battery storage, insufficient capacity hydro storage?
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...
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Here are the federal subsidies for various electricity sources, totaling about $15 billion in 2016.
Wind and solar are coddled to the nth degree.
This does not include state and local subsidies.
NOTE: The DOE loan guarantee program was discontinued in 2016
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
2016
Fed To Grid
Direct
Tax
R&D
DOE loan
Total
Generation
Subsidy
Subsidy
Share
Share
TWh
$million
$million
$million
$million
$million
%
%
c/kWh
Coal
1208
NG
1431
Nuclear
799
Other
21
Total
3459
8302
84.8
55.4
2.40
RE
Biomass
63
18
34
27
79
1.25
Geothermal
16
41
34
10
85
5.31
Hydro
268
2
34
2
38
0.14
Solar
51
771
1251
209
2231
43.75
Wind
220
4
1239
24
1267
5.76
Other
41
34
95
170
Subtotal
618
877
2626
367
3870
15.2
25.8
6.26
Biofuels
33
2690
90
2813
18.8
Total RE
4077
909
5316
456
6681
100.0
Total
14983
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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