Facing trouble abroad, Siemens ads seek to tap into US taxpayers and wind welfare system
Guest essay by Mary Kay Barton
If you watch much mainstream TV, you’ve probably seen Siemens’ new multi-million-dollar advertising blitz to sell the American public on industrial wind. Why the sudden ad onslaught? Watch the video below.
The wind business abroad has taken a huge hit of late. European countries have begun slashing renewable mandates, due to the ever-broadening realization that renewables cost far more than industrial wind proponents have led people to believe: economically, environmentally, technically, and civilly.
Siemens’ energy business took a €48m hit in the second quarter due to a bearings issue with onshore turbines, and a €23m charge due to ongoing offshore grid issues in Germany – on top of subsidy and feed-in tariff cutbacks, recent articles have pointed out.
As Siemens’ tax-sheltering market dries up in Europe, its U.S. marketing efforts are clearly geared toward increasing its income and profits via wind’s tax sheltering schemes in the United States. The company stands to make millions, so Siemens ad campaign is obviously part of an overall pitch to persuade Congress to extend the hefty wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), more accurately called “Pork-To-Cronies.” As Warren Buffett recently admitted, “We get tax credits if we build lots of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Taxpayers and ratepayers, beware!
President Obama often says he intends to “close corporate loopholes,” but his PTC and other policies continue funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to his wealthy corporate insiders and campaign contributors – while we continue to rack up unconscionable debt for our children and grandchildren.
Increasing public awareness of the wind energy scam has led to increased opposition to extending any more corporate welfare to Big Wind via the PTC and energy investment tax credit (ITC). Enter another bureaucratic end-run around once clear statutory language by this Administration.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the increasingly politicized IRS recently relaxed the definition of “commence construction” to the point where the definition bears no resemblance to the actual words. During a hearing by the House Energy Policy, Health Care and Entitlements subcommittee last October, Curtis G. Wilson of the IRS admitted that developers can now game the system to the point where projects built years in the future could still meet the eligibility requirement for “commence” now.
U.S. taxpayers and ratepayers are doomed when, instead of allowing the markets to work, crony-corruptocrats are picking the winners and losers in the energy marketplace, using such nefarious tactics.
Sadly, most people don’t even know the difference between energy and power. This reality has built the framework for the biggest swindle ever perpetrated on citizens worldwide. Many have bought into the alarmist argument that “we have to do something” to stop “dangerous manmade global warming.” Enter the wind industry sales department, primed to capitalize on public fears and alarmist hype.
Siemens also needs to convince the 80% of U.S. citizens who live in suburbia that industrial wind factories are “environment-friendly,” and everyone loves them. Thus, as usual for these disingenuous ad campaigns, a sprawling wind facility is pictured among green fields, with no homes anywhere to be seen, no birds are being slaughtered, while a happy Iowa leaseholder smiles and says she loves wind.
A drive out Route 20A in Wyoming County, western New York State, however, tells a far different story. The western side of Wyoming County – which used to be some of the most beautiful countryside in New York State, has been industrialized with 308 giant, 430-foot-tall towers, and their 11-ton, bird-chopping blades spinning overhead, only hundreds of feet from peoples’ homes and roadways. There’s no doubt that Siemens won’t be showing you this reality in any of their TV ads!
Unfortunately for the residents of Orangeville in Wyoming County, greed at the top in Washington, DC determined their fate. The sole reason Invenergy went ahead with its plan to build its 58-turbine project was that, in the early morning hours of January 1, 2013, the PTC was added as pork for companies sucking at the wind welfare teat.
Ever appreciative of the handouts, Invenergy owner Ukrainian Michael Polsky rewarded President Obama by holding a $35,000 a plate fundraiser at his Chicago mansion. Mr. Obama is so committed to Big Wind that he’s even legalized 30-year eagle kill permits just for the wind industry. Anyone else harming an eagle, or even possessing a single bald eagle feather, is penalized with an iron fist.
There you have it – corporate cronyism in all its glory, with bird murder as its crowning achievement.
Word of impending lawsuits lingers in Orangeville. It remains to be seen if disenchanted leaseholders will end up suing Big Wind, as others have. In the meantime, we’re hoping we don’t have any 11-ton blade breaks that throw shrapnel for thousands of feet, or any airplanes crashing into wind turbines during fog, as occurred in South Dakota earlier this year, killing all four on board. (I’ll bet you won’t be seeing any of these facts in Siemens’ ads, either.)
Our elected officials need energy literacy. Even a small dose would help.
What’s most frustrating, when attempting any kind of correspondence regarding these energy issues with many elected officials, is the kind of response I received from Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) when I wrote him a letter about ending the Wind PTC. Senator Schumer never even mentioned the PTC in his response. Instead, he rambled on about the need to “reduce foreign oil imports,” and increase “efficiency” – neither of which has a thing to do with wind-generated electricity.
Mr. Schumer recently feigned alarm following complaints by citizens about soaring electric rates – demanding answers about it, while simultaneously supporting yet another Wind PTC extension (plus other rate-increasing “renewable” projects). Senator Schumer’s hypocrisy is outrageous, and unacceptable.
Perhaps it’s time for U.S. ratepayers and taxpayers to demand that their elected officials first pass an energy literacy exam, before they pass such cost-exorbitant, “green” boondoggles on to consumers.
Congress is on vacation through Labor Day, which makes this the perfect time to approach your senators and representatives while they’re home. Attend town hall meetings and in-district fundraisers. Remind your representatives that we put them in office, and that we can also vote them out!
Since energy plays a pivotal role in our national economy – impacting the cost of absolutely everything else – candidates should have “energy” listed on their “issues” webpage.
Good candidates will support an “All of the Sensible” energy policy, as opposed to the “All of the Above” energy policy which President Obama has been pushing on behalf of the “green” movement. “Sensible” alternative energy options are those that are backed up by scientific and economic proof that they provide net societal benefits. Industrial wind fails this test miserably!
For more information, refer friends and elected officials to Robert Bryce’s excellent book, Power Hungry: The myths of “green” energy and the real fuels of the future.
Continue to call and write their offices, and encourage them to oppose any extension of the PTC and ITC! Write letters to your local newspapers, copy their district offices, and post information on their social media pages (e.g., Face Book & Twitter).
We must demand accountability from elected officials, or vote them out! Reliable, affordable energy is what has made America great. We need to keep it that way.
Mary Kay Barton is a retired health educator, New York State small business owner, Cornell-certified Master Gardener, and is a tireless advocate for scientifically sound, affordable, and reliable electricity for all Americans.
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Those window makers should be taken to task for being bird slaughtering meanies too!
I totally agree with the author about the despoiling of Wyoming County. It is a great place for cycling with lots of nice climbing (cat 3’s and 4’s) so I try to visit every year. Unfortunately as you crest each hill you typically see one of these monstrosity’s and its barely spinning — but they keep building them to provide more “fools power”. Last year I was riding along one of their quiet country roads when a semi pulling the bottom section of one of them passed me. These things are huge and the load was taking up the entire road which I noticed when it was inches from my head. Of course the driver wasn’t going to let a cyclist slow down the “mission from Gore” so I had to bail into the ditch to avoid being sacrificed for the green boondoggle.
I just drove by a wind farm in Idaho. I would guess that only one in three turbines were operational.
History has shown that a windfarm:
1. Will only produce, at most, 22% of faceplate capacity.
2. Will cost 50% more to build and maintain then projected.
3. Will have a lifespan less then half that promised.
It doesn’t even matter if the world converts to 60% wind power farm because the methane will take us all out anyway.
==
‘Widespread methane leakage’ from ocean floor off US coast
24 August 2014 Last updated at 18:04
“… There are concerns that these new seeps could be making a hitherto unnoticed contribution to global warming. … The scientists say there could be about 30,000 of these hidden methane vents worldwide. …”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28898223
There are sound reasons why these things are nonsense even if you accept the FUD from the IPCC. This is a link to Prof. Mike Kelly’s presentation recently . .
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/storage/ECMA.Aberdeen.actual.pdf
It is really worth a look.
***
response I received from Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) when I wrote him a letter about ending the Wind PTC. Senator Schumer never even mentioned the PTC in his response. Instead, he rambled on about the need to “reduce foreign oil imports,” and increase “efficiency” – neither of which has a thing to do with wind-generated electricity.
***
Idiocy from the bureaucrap. There’s negligible electricity generated by “foreign oil imports”. Equally stupid is “efficiency”, if you properly define that by unsubsidized cost/kwhr.
Dear Kit Carruthers,
‘Windows’ do NOT typically KILL eagles, condors, whopping cranes and bats – industrial wind turbines do! Furthermore, windows within homes & buildings have improved the quality of life for literally 100’s of BILLIONS of people over time, while sprawling industrial wind factories have had the exact opposite effect. With over 250,000 industrial wind turbines installed worldwide today, CO2 emissions have NOT been significantly reduced, nor have any coal plants been shuttered thanks to industrial wind energy – anywhere.
Another thing you may wish to consider is that ONE (1) 450 MW Combined Cycle Generating Unit located at New York City (where the power is needed in New York State), would provide more power than all of New York State’s 16 installed wind factories combined, at 1/4 of the capital costs — and would have significantly reduced CO2 emissions and created far more jobs than all those wind farms – without all the added costs (economic, environmental, and civil) of all the transmission lines that must be added across the state to New York City. See:
Beyond Wind Spin: Miami Herald Should Get It Right — MasterResource:
http://www.masterresource.org/2013/08/beyond-wind-spin-miami-herald-rebuttal/
Exposing the wind industry genocide:
http://www.theecoreport.com/green-blogs/technology/energy/windproblems/exposing-the-wind-industry-genocide/
Industrial Wind: The Great American “S-WIND-LE” – Not Clean, Not Green, Not Free!:
http://citizenpowerallianceblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-great-american-s-wind-le-not-clean.html
Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future:
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Hungry-Myths-Energy-Future/dp/1586489534
The Green Corruption Files : Clean Energy; Dirty Money:
http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2014/06/clean-energy-dirty-money-green.html#.U91wm0joWUc
Thank you very much for posting my article on Watts Up With That!
“Our elected officials need energy literacy. Even a small dose would help…”
Elected officials are fully literate regarding energy. They send money to those that are “green” and they receive campaign funds in return. What needs to be done with the elected officials is to put them in fear of not being elected if they continue the corruption.
Bishop Hill has a great article on the folly of “renewables”.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2014/8/25/kelly-on-the-engineering-challenge.html
Siemens the Corruptor, the Bribing… Please deal with it as an invader. As a virus. As the revenge of the Third Reich. No, I am not exaggerating.
“Why the sudden ad onslaught?”
…because most people are incredibly stupid
The biggest problem with the wind subsides is that a lot of the elected Republicans support it because they are getting the “kickbacks” from the corporate cronyism too. We have to fight the Liberals that support it as their green delusions and fantasies, the Liberal that also support the corporate cronyism and the Republicans that get their payouts.
It’s an uphill walk against the wind every day
Mary Kay Barton
August 25, 2014 at 10:26 am
Dear Kit Carruthers,
‘Windows’ do NOT typically KILL eagles…”
====
Me thinks Kit meant “widow maker” not “window maker”.
Criticizing wind farms for sucking on the taxpayer teat is legitimate, but what type of power plant doesn’t use taxpayer money to get built?
I wrote this a few years back for some one elses benifit.
Whenever you here the Democrats talk about reducing the deficit the first priority is tax the rich and eliminate oil company tax credits and subsidies. So let’s look at the reality of Oil Co’s. tax breaks.
A few details on cutting oil industry subsidies: I know it’s an emotional subject, especially every time we fill up at the pump, but bear with me. First, I have to make some assumptions since “cutting subsidies and credits” is meaningless and misleading unless details are presented.
With the current administrations agenda this is how it may play out. It appears the two main tax items are the DA (depletion allowance) and the IDC (intangible drilling cost) tax deduction.
The DA is complicated but the basics are that a company’s assets, its reserves (oil in the ground) decreases as the reserves are extracted. Unlike a manufacturing plant which has the potential to generate revenue indefinitely. An oil company is much like a general contractor and has very few capital assets to amortize. A manufacturing plant’s equipment can depreciate so that’s the closest analogy. DA: Each year, the taxpayer deducts a portion of the original capital investment, less previous deductions, that is equal to the fraction of the estimated remaining recoverable reserves that have been produced and sold that year. The cumulative amount recovered under this method can never exceed the taxpayer’s original capital investment. I don’t have a handle on exactly how much this saves a company but my sense is that it’s not huge. But more importantly, if the DA is eliminated it will only affect future fields…not existing ones. It is difficult to estimate if eliminating the DA will change future drilling activity.
The elimination of the IDC tax credit would have a huge immediate effect. The IDC is a significant incentive to drill. About 40% of the cost to drill a well is IC (intangible costs). The IDC allows a company to deduct that amount from the taxes owed…not from the income earned. So if a company owes the feds $100 million in taxes and spends $100 million in IC it can subtract $35 million (IC X 0.35) from its taxes. Defiantly a huge break. So they only pay $65 million in taxes. But take note: the ICD doesn’t increase the company’s revenue or profits; it allows them to spend more money drilling. If they don’t spend it drilling new wells they lose it. That’s the logic behind the IDC tax credit: instead of letting the government spend the money the oil industry gets to drill more wells. That was once considered a good thing.
The effect on drilling activity: the economics of each project or well is evaluated on its own merits. This evaluation includes utilizing the IDC. Eliminate it and a number of projects become sub-economic and won’t be drilled. This will disappoint many contractors and their employees, but eliminating the IDC won’t diminish Oil Co. profit. Each well must stand on its own profitability. No single well is completed to extraction with subsidies from others. What no IDC will do is eliminate a big chunk of their capex reserve (Capitol expense) used for drilling. The money an oil company saves with the IDC doesn’t go to any owner or stockholder. It has to be spent. And it can’t be spent overseas…the law requires it to be spent domestically. So all of this subsidy goes to the service companies who drill the wells. And the more revenue flowing to these companies the more employees they hire (who then pay more taxes along with their companies). Additional drilling also means more lease bonuses and royalty to landowners (who also pay more taxes). The additional production is also taxed by the local and state authorities. Ideally if the extra capex provided by the IDC results in more production then there is an even greater revenue to tax.
This extra capex and the additional drilling will increase domestic extraction and reduce future imports, however it will have little effect on world extraction or prices, as domestic extraction is only 7% of world extraction. So as I’ve pointed out before any increase in responsible domestic drilling and production has significant benefits to the economy. Lots of jobs, reduced trade deficit, lots of royalty income to individuals and the government, lots of revenue to one of our few remaining profitable industries that employs millions (including many of the folks damaged by the BP spill) and can’t be outsourced.
So if the public wants to eliminate these subsidies so be it. But it won’t lessen the current profits of the oil industry. It will reduce its future revenue but not necessarily its profitability, however it may well actually reduce total Tax revenue Oil Co’s pay in later years . Oil Co profits will continue flowing out to its millions of shareholders (who are dominated by the country’s retirees). It will reduce the amount of money the industry rolls back into the economy. But that’s OK with the Oil Co’s …anything that reduces the competition for the little drilling potential we have left is just fine by them. So all the politicians can do is placate the public’s anger over energy costs, but in the end they’ll have to deal with the results.
So what we have here is either political ignorance or political greed that in the end trades votes for jobs. So what will the end effect be when they raise taxes on the rich…do they Know? Do they care… or could it again be… just trade votes for Jobs.
A large part of the political issues we are currently living through on “green power” mandates stem from voter-approved requirements that date back (and prior) to Climategate days – such as “by the year 2025, will generate of our local power needs from renewable resources”. Back before we all really knew what we were voting for. These mandates were pushed through at a time when CAGW was thought to be a real threat – and the gullible voters dutifully agreed to be subjected to years and years of future folly such as wind turbine installations – and the subsidies to builders/land owners that follow. Right here in the State of Washington – which boasts a high percentage of existing renewable energy sources – hydro-electric power generating dams – we see the fruits of that voter labor. Driving eastbound on Interstate 90 over the Cascade mountain crest one sees multitudes of wind towers plopped down where, just a few years ago nature and farming were king. Looking at my electric bill, it has steadily increased to where with the cost of power and distribution I am now paying over 9 cents per kilowatt hour (before the taxes), and prior to the renewable mandates being instituted we were paying around 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour. There is your “law of (intended?) consequences” for ya!!!
Well played Ms Barton, a very interesting article. Nice to see another example debunking the idea that climate skeptics are old white males.
Why the sudden ad onslaught? Why do robbers rob banks? Same answer. Coincidentally, same ethics, too.
@cedarhill: what needs to be done with politicians is term limits, which would help to reduce the back-scratching effect of campaign money. But that may be off-topic for this board.
OTOH, if methane these leaks aren’t new, but were only recently discovered, or if they a new only because they are cyclic, then that means that released methane doesn’t make it up to the upper atmosphere, where its incidence hasn’t been rising much.
Ahh, mkelly – I should have thought of that — widow makers, not “window makers” — but it is so common for Big Wind Enthusiasts to use the “cars, cats & buildings kill more birds” argument, that I didn’t assume what she wrote to be a mistake.
Unmentionable
August 25, 2014 at 9:57 am
“It doesn’t even matter if the world converts to 60% wind power farm because the methane will take us all out anyway.”
Hey, I think I saw the last Methanophobe during the Macondo accident! I thought you guys went extinct with the Peak Oilers!
The interesting thing about Methane is of course that it is not oxidized .- contrary to CO2. Now, what happens to an unoxidized molecule in the atmosphere…
Also, please enumerate the historic Methane Global Warming events. The vents you mention are natural… so we should have some Catastrophic Methane meltdowns under our belt…
Ms. Barton, another observation to help your crusade. Last year the wind capacity factor for the US was 32% (that is, the wind turbines produced only 32% of nameplate capacity. But when the wind is blowing, they produce 100%. Obviously the wind does not always blow. The grid must be sized for when it does not, which means redundant standby capacity must be in place to a first order approximation equalling installed wind nameplate capacity. (the actual situation is more complicated and covered more precisely in my forthcoming book, but the point is correct.) Older smaller coal spinning reserves forced into retirement by EPA rules, almost all of that is peaking natural gas turbines, which have the highest levelized cost of all generation except solar. So the actual capital and electricity costs of wind are more than twice what the EIA says, or the wind industry says, because of the necessary standby capacity.
It is economically twice as bad as you have made out. Direct wind investment is not viable without the direct PTC subsidy, the grid is forced to take the produced electricity, and somewhere else on the grid the utilities have to install the necessary backup at their expense. A more perverse system could not be imagined.
Fight on. Perhaps you will find the forthcoming essay Tilting at Windmills (honoring Don Quixote for obvious reasons) to be of some help. Should be available before the elections.
Right on Bruce Cobb! They are all crooks! When you have both ends of the economic spectrum in this country bent on living off welfare, sooner or later the whole thing is going to collapse.
The following documentary is an hour and 36 minutes long but well worth the time.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/06/20140601-075938.html
Here is how the writeup starts. (For our international readers, Ontario is a large Canadian province.)
“TORONTO – Anyone who has studied the Ontario Liberal government’s failed experiment with wind power knows what a financial and social catastrophe it has been.
How billions of taxpayers’ and hydro customers’ dollars are being wasted, and will continue to be wasted for decades to come, because of former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty’s naive blunder into wind energy, now fully supported by Premier Kathleen Wynne.”
David Suzuki comes on very briefly, however Ross McKitrick is interviewed for about 15 minutes.