For comparison, Field researched the property tax for the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township along Lake Michigan. He found that the annual real and personal property taxes for Palisades are just over $12 million or .2 cents per kilowatt hour.
…
Field said he considers Michigan’s system to be “schizophrenic” in the sense that it places a tax burden on renewable energy while at the same time the state has a renewable portfolio standard law to encourage renewable energy. He contends that all sources of producing energy should have the same per kilowatt hour tax rate.
Full story here
h/t to Mike Lorrey
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“… He contends that all sources of producing energy should have the same per kilowatt hour tax rate…”
Make it fully equal… no subsidies.
How can that be? The IPCC has certified that land like sun and wind is free, and that the opportunity cost of thousands of hectares of land covered in panels is nill.
Welcome to Michigan.
Coal still works very well for making electricity. There is plenty of it in the ground in the US. It’s needs to be taken out of the ground at an increased pace so its price will come down lower and electricity bills will go lower.
🙂
Very funny! This is all in Michigan’s 6th Congressional district represented by Rep. Fred “lightbulb” Upton. There are two nuke plants in this district; Palisades and D.C. Cook. D.C. Cook has been crankin’ out the megawatts year after year for over 35 years now. I grew up in this area. Ol’ Fred and I attended the same high school. The Uptons co-founded Whirlpool Corporation. They’re veritable royalty in that part of Michigan. Trust me, I can think of few places more poorly suited for large scale PV power generation. Hell, I remember stretches of 6 weeks in the late Fall, early Winter when we wouldn’t see the sun. I say tax the facilities the same but remove all the subsidies for both nuke and solar. Let’s see which industry survives.
Wow, that’s interesting economics. Taxes exceed revenue so that even huge subsidies are not enough.
I wonder why the hi-tech folks don’t invent some sophisticated panels that e.g. collect light from a bigger areas via mirrors and lenses, so that the area of the expensive solar panels is reduced, and/or why the detectors are not rotating themselves to optimize the inflow of radiation.
The power to tax is the power to destroy.
It may be that the assessed value reflects the greater investment necessary for solar power generation. More assessed value means more taxation. This tax structure may reflect reality, whereas the price of solar power (after subsidies) does not.
All forms of generation should have the same tax per KwH … for income or sales-tax. The owner seems to be betting that a judge either doesn’t get what property tax is, or will pretend he doesn’t and write laws from the bench for his benefit.
Awesome. Gonna put a 150W bicycle generator in a 4000sq-ft house, call it a “generating facility” and watch my tax bill go to nothing/yr. Smart man, there.
Isn’t land just taxed by the acre based on its zoning regardless of what you decide to do on it within the law?
It’s up to the indivvidual investor if you want to invest in an industry that is only viable with government subsidy. Like all government subsidy that can end with a change in government or a change in government cashflow 🙂
These people just didn’t do their homework before laying out their cash. It sucks to be them.
Spain already proved beyond a shadow of a doubt solar farms are a money pit. Running a diesel generator to fake output….. sheesh.
Property tax proportional to area of land occupied? Solar is low energy density; nuclear is high energy density. It makes sense that solar pays a much higher property tax than solar per MWh (or kWh in the case of useless solar) of electricity produced.
In Michigan you should all be very grateful that they are just taxing one facility. In Australia we are all going to be taxed into the 18th century. At least that is the way we will all have to live without power and running water if our PM gets her way with the “Carbon” tax.
What jumped out at me is that they are being paid 45 cents per kilowatt hour! That is preposterous, and a clear indication that this form of solar is not viable.
These liberal solutions to energy production are like a deer pissing on a forest fire.
225 thousand kWh the first year – using 1,5 acres?? That’s a lot of land use for a little electricity!
When you need lots of square feet to generate your power, you have to pay the tax on lots of square feet. Energy density is the key… Too many forget that little factor (like the folks recently cheering the solar-powered plane as a revolution in commercial air transportation – never mind you can’t get enough energy out of the surface area of a 747 to even keep up with a gas-powered Cessna 180!).
Low energy density = LOTS of room needed. Add in NIMBYs and concern over just about every ecosystem on the planet, and I can’t see the logic behind a push for solar and wind. You’d think we’d push for floating nuclear power plants, 2o miles off-shore. Imagine something the size of an aircraft carrier or supertanker, dedicated to being a platform for a nuclear power plant. High energy density and ZERO footprint on land (not to mention a rather large cooling reserve all around).
You’d think we’d push for floating nuclear power plants, 2o miles off-shore.
Won’t someone think of the fish?…
/sarc
time to march
Here’s a great article by Ross McKitrick detailing more green insanity in Ontario.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/05/16/ontarios-power-trip-the-failure-of-the-green-energy-act/
Includes summary of latest net job loss stats from UK and Spain.
“despite receiving net transfers of about £330-million ($521-million) from the rest of the U.K. for its renewables sector, Scotland still experienced a net job loss from wind power, and for the U.K. as a whole, 3.7 jobs were lost for every job created in renewable energy.
In Spain… on average, each job in the wind sector cost the country more than £1-million, implying a loss of 2.2 private sector jobs for every new job created in the renewables sector.”
Do some sums –
1.5 acres of solar panels.
20 houses supplied.
How many houses per acre?
To me it seems we may need more land for solar panels than for houses? Sounds a bit like the biofuel problem . . .
That sound like a good idea Shanghai Dan.
Providing security bothers me in this current world condition.
Question: how is the energy captured by the PV panels converted for use on the local grid?
Strikes me there must be a lot of fancy hardware between the panels and the grid that nobody ever talks about. Cost of that hardware must also be factored in.
If they would be taxed by produced energy, the extremely low of output of solar could be utilized to grab land while paying close to no taxes.
Luboš Motl says: May 16, 2011 at 10:13 pm
“I wonder why the hi-tech folks don’t invent some sophisticated panels that e.g. collect light from a bigger areas via mirrors and lenses, so that the area of the expensive solar panels is reduced, and/or why the detectors are not rotating themselves to optimize the inflow of radiation.”
You totally fail to understand the economics of solar subsidies. These are industry invented subsidies sold to gullible politicians. So solar energy is not a way to make electricity but a way to sell solar panels. And of course mirrors and rotating panels would produce more electricity per panel … which means that less panels will be required … therefore this is not encouraged!