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Government Support of Wind Energy is Really Wind Welfare

July 23, 2013 by Paul Crowe

Turbine on fire, your tax dollars going up in smoke

Wind turbine on fire, your tax dollars going up in smoke

Wind welfare

Wind welfare and you’re paying for it

Let’s cut to the chase, most of us are tired of the government taking more and more money from taxpayers like you and me and giving it to whatever individuals or companies make the most noise, and that’s exactly what wind energy is, just one more big government welfare program.

Wind Welfare

Landowners signing leases for wind turbines are simply doing the equivalent of filling out the paperwork to sign up for a government check, sort of like “wind welfare.” Why? It’s pretty simple, the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard requires utility companies to buy “renewable energy” like wind energy. You don’t have to force companies to buy something unless it is an inferior product. If it was as good as or better than electricity produced by conventional methods, utilities would be building wind turbines on their own. The government is simply forcing them to buy what it is paying other companies to provide.

Who pays for wind welfare? You do!

You want electricity to be there when you need it so the utility companies have the generators and power plants necessary to supply it on demand, running all day, every day and able to be adjusted as needed. Wind only supplies electricity when the wind blows, no utility can depend on it, so power companies can’t replace any generators with wind power or they might not have any electricity for your lights when you flip the switch. Forcing utilities to buy this inferior power from wind companies means the generators they already have are now more equipment than necessary and powering them up and down to adjust for changes in the wind means they run less efficiently and economically. The combination of more equipment than necessary and inefficient operation means costs rise and your electric bill goes up.

Some of the the money the government forces the utility to pay to the wind company goes to the landowners who are selling an unwanted product, expensive and unreliable electricity. Those “green” landowners are not helping anyone but themselves while you pay the cost AND you have to put up with these monster turbines in your community, ugly to look at, unsafe to be around and destructive to property values. Wow, what a deal!

Wind developers collect wind welfare, too

The wind developers, who magically appeared to chase all of this green stimulus money, collect even more with production tax credits, an incentive from the government to keep building more turbines which means the utilities will be forced to buy even more expensive electricity.

All of this money from the government also provides ample incentive for some individuals in a community to make decisions that may not be in the best interests of the entire community.

Enough already!

Let’s stop the wind welfare payments. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies and individuals were selling something everyone wanted instead of this subsidized inferior electricity? Then real customers would gladly give them money in return for a useful product, everyone would be happy and we wouldn’t have to see these oversize industrial lawn ornaments littering the landscape, but that would be too simple wouldn’t it?

Filed Under: Wind Energy Tagged With: PTC, tax credit, taxpayers, wind welfare

What can you do?

  • Be informed! Read as many articles on this website as you have time for, so you can understand the issue. Do your own research. Check us out.
  • Tell your neighbors about the wind turbines, point them to this website so they can learn more.

Comments

  1. terri says

    July 27, 2013 at 4:13 pm

    So true! Windmills would be developed IF they were viable, this is just an example of government officials giving away our hard earned tax dollars to their rich friends. If your truly are a greenie you would quickly assess there is nothing green about windmills check this link to see one of the larger wind-farms near my home it clearly shows what unfettered greed will quickly do to the environment: http://clui.org/ludb/site/tehachapi-wind-farm The windmills, leak oil and fling it everywhere, they make noise at all hours the noise is deep and resonant, inescapable goes on for days and days, windmills were granted special permits to kill endangered wildlife, they are so tall 40-45 stories that they have aircraft avoidance lights which blink in a Vegas on drugs nighttime display. During the daytime they are a gray disharmonious, kinetic industrial mishmash, obliterating the landscape, truly the ugliest thing ever since strip mining, and clear cutting. And then miles of cross country transmission lines must be strung to feed customers hundreds of miles away. Seriously there has to be a better way to make electricity, there are acres upon acres of empty rooftops already hooked to the grid, why all this new construction? why are we allowing the destruction of environment to save environment?

    • ReidH says

      September 3, 2013 at 12:37 pm

      What really blows, why isn’t the government actively granting subsidies for real cost and energy conservation technologies like LED lightning? My goodness, if every American changed our their incandescent and florescent lights with LED, they would have better light and electric energy consumption would take a serious drop. Conservation and the money would go directly to the consumer rather than to the investor class.

Unfortunately

The less you know about wind energy,
the more you'll like it.

Why wind developers never understand …

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

~ Upton Sinclair

Don’t know – Don’t care

Is willful ignorance necessary
to promote wind energy?

No, but it helps.

Climate Change

Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong. … Also, if the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental results can be made to look like the expected consequences.

~ Richard Feynman, 1964

It’s not on-demand, it’s no-demand

Wind energy is "no-demand" electricity. If the wind isn't blowing and you demand electricity, the answer is no.

Wind – expensive, inefficient, unreliable



December 1923 Popular Science cover dreaming about generating electricity from windmills, and though the dream never dies, the dream doesn't work, didn't then, doesn't now and without huge government giveaways of your money, no wind farms would get built anywhere. The government forces utilities to buy wind power so payments to landowners are simply wind welfare.


Wind energy runs on tax credits

"I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate, 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."
~ Warren Buffett - from interview with Fortune magazine

Wind investments and high cost green energy

“I’m in the wind business … I’ve lost my ass in the business. ... Hey, we can get on everything green. We can get on everything renewable. Then the cost of power will go up ten times."
~ T. Boone Pickens - on Morning Joe on MSNBC

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