They also printed an editorial by Nancy Rader, of the California Wind Energy Association: Supporting wind power is good for the country | The Desert Sun | mydesert.com:
However, I suppose in the interest of presenting both sides of the argument, they also published an editorial by Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance -- a group funded by Koch brothers, who, have been accused of being some of the worst polluters in America and have made their fortune by polluting and not paying for cleanups. See these links: http://www.polluterwatch.com/koch-industries; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/exposing-the-koch-brother_b_1009898.html; Wikipedia says that Koch Brothers paid as much as $400M in fines between 1999 and 2003 for pollution. Tom Pyle's editorial is notably slanted: Here is his editorial: Tom Pyle -- Koch Brother's Team's opinion --Below is the text along with my comments.
What’s the real cost of wind power? For Californians, it’s more than $330 million in handouts to big business. (Why doesn't he compare this number to the amount of private investment it attracted? Or the amount of subsidies that currently go to hydrocarbon extraction and energy production)According to the Institute for Energy Research, Californians paid that much money in 2012 so that multinational corporations could experiment with wind power on the taxpayer dime — and yet nearly $200 million of that money wound up going to companies in other states.(What's wrong with buying wind turbines and equipment from other states -- if California doesn't make it, where would we get it? Better to buy from other states, than other countries)
It’s a textbook case of corporate welfare that doesn’t benefit California. The culprit is a federal program called the Wind Production Tax Credit. This program gives wind producers 2.3 cents for kilowatt hour of energy they produce — which amounts to billions in subsidies every year. (This amount helps level the playing field between renewable energy and hydrocarbon. It also makes the investment relatively attractive. .
Coachella Valley’s wind producers are some of the country’s largest recipients of this subsidy, due in large part to wind farms in the San Gorgonio Pass. But after 20 years of taking Californians’ money once in their taxes and twice in their utility bills, the Wind PTC expired at the end of 2013. Now Congress is debating whether to renew this corporate cash cow.
But the evidence is mounting that these types of “green” and “clean energy” handouts are surprisingly dirty. (Note he says it is dirty energy --but provides no rationale)According to a new report by CBS News, the federal government has lavished the green energy and technology industry with at least $150 billion in taxpayer money in recent years.
This deluge of federal funding has only resulted in a string of technological flops and business bankruptcies.
There’s no shortage of examples.(All of the examples are not related to wind energy --but are solar and battery technology) Solyndra — which went bankrupt after receiving $500 million taxpayer dollars — is already well-known. Abound Solar received $400 million in 2010, then filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Fisker Automotive took $528 million from the feds in 2009 and another $392 million in 2012, then laid off 75 percent of its work force last April. And LG Chem took $151 million in stimulus money to build an electric car battery plant where employees were paid to do nothing. In all of these cases, poor and middle-class taxpayers came out the real losers. (They paid for it once with their taxes and they will pay again with higher energy bills. The winners, though, are the millionaires and billionaires who used the taxpayers’ money to experiment with new technologies and business models. Our loss has been their experiential and monetary gain — even if the companies they founded go under. (The solar cell companies, and possibly the battery companies "went under" because of "dumping" by China. China exported solar panels at below the cost to manufacture them, in order to get a head start on the technology. That was what the US was trying to do also.
Even where it hasn’t fizzled, green energy’s economic impact hasn’t been that bright. According to a comprehensive study recently released by a team of Spanish academics, each new “green job” costs the rest of the economy 2.2 other jobs because of the necessary subsidies. ( I believe this link is a description of the "Spanish Academics" study The analysis at this link clearly debunks that study and indicates that the Spanish study may have been based upon falsified data.). More damning is their finding that each “green” megawatt of energy destroys an average of over five jobs, with each solar-powered megawatt eliminating nearly nine jobs and each wind-powered megawatt costing over four jobs. (Note: he doesn't mention that nuclear power probably also eliminated jobs since it produces so very much energy with so few employees. I would imagine that almost any energy source would require fewer jobs than the digging, shipping and burning of coal --yes it might eliminate coal miner jobs --but wouldn't that be good for the country? )
These perverse trade-offs can be laid at the feet of government energy subsidies. Whether it’s $150 or $150 billion, the government’s financial intervention distorts the economy by shifting investment from proven job creators to expensive experiments that don’t always pan out.
The Spanish study bears directly on America’s experience because many of our country’s green job initiatives are based on the Spanish model. In fact, President Obama has specifically praised Spain’s green jobs experiments on numerous occasions, labeling theirs a system worth emulating.
The Wind PTC is a microcosm of the problems inherent in the green energy industry. Like other taxpayer-funded “green” initiatives, renewing it would only worsen the negative effects that such subsidies have already had on job creation and economic growth, while enabling green job billionaires to continue their experiments with Californians’ money.
There’s nothing clean about perpetuating this system.
Tom Pyle is president of the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, a not-for-profit think tank based in Washington, D.C. It is funded partly by the Koch Brothers. Email him at aeapyle@gmail.com
