End of tax credit a blow for wind power industry
Up to 37,000 jobs, many in Illinois, could be lost as projects are halted or abandoned
By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune reporter
The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a tax credit failed Thursday in Washington.
The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year — are seeking to be connected to the electric grid. Many of those projects will be abandoned or significantly delayed without federal subsidies.
The state is home to more than 150 companies that support the wind industry. At least 67 of those make turbines or components for wind farms. Chicago is the U.S. headquarters to more than a dozen major wind companies that wanted to take advantage of powerful Midwestern winds.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0217-wind-ptc–20120217,0,7153601.story
h/t to CRS, DrPH
The article states,
“Bowman said a year’s delay can kill some projects, partly because contracts to lease land to host turbines and interconnection agreements with utilities have expiration dates.”
Wait a minute — they’re leasing land to host turbines? With short-term expiration dates?
And considering all the energy needed to install and then remove the concrete for a turbine?
Could such leases really be necessary from a business perspective?
Also, has anyone looked into the net cost in energy, over a period of years, of wind companies having leased land versus having owned the land, from the perspective of having to remove turbines (including concrete base) from leased land due to loss of a lease prior to the expiration of a turbine’s expected lifespan? What effect does that have on the already dismal ratio of gross energy produced to gross energy consumed as a cost of production?
RTF
OT –
What happened to this post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/16/need-a-java-programmer/
Got a notification it was up earlier Thursday, but it has never appeared. “Page not found”.
Chicago is the U.S. headquarters to more than a dozen major wind companies that wanted to take advantage of…. lucrative taxpayer subsidies.
“The move is expected to have major ramifications in states such as Illinois, where 13,892 megawatts of planned wind projects — enough to power 3.3 million homes per year — are seeking to be connected to the electric grid.”
I like the way these scoundrels embellish these pie in the sky numbers. Most of the times the projected estimates will never be realized!
Good…now they can stop wasting fuel and polluting the air by driving those giant “arms” for the windmills all around Illinois. I see them all the time when I am there (grew up in central IL…go a lot to visit family) driving down the road on giant flatbeds, but rarely see them actually turning to make any power. Feel bad for the truck drivers, though…they probably make a lot of money driving those things around. Now if only they could make the trucks run on wind power we’d have an industry!
“tax breaks on wind power ” perhaps we could call them “wind breaks”?
Costs, costs and yet more costs! Wind power is not viable without subsidies and generation facilities have to be provided for when the winds don’t blow. Let users pay to have their own wind turbines installed and then the spending decision will be determined by the pay back time. Electricity consumers should not have to pay for the subsidies to others.
Anyone else smell another bailout coming?
…. and very soon, as the refugees from the wind scam will realise that like the rest of us, they have nothing to gain from these parasites of fear …. the real story of this scam will start appearing on everyone’s TV
At least one thing Illinois wind turbines don’t have that others do are hurricanes. If a windmill falls in a hurricane at sea would anyone hear it?
Though there are tornados. But alas I guess we wont be seeing graphic pictures of flying wind turbines in Illinois. Ah, well, the birds will be happy.
Keith Battye says: “tax breaks on wind power ” perhaps we could call them “wind breaks”?
Nice, Keith!
I read somewhere that this subsidy was first introduced in 1992 and that, at the time, it was not expected to be needed beyond 20 years because the technology would become competitive within that time frame. Time’s up!
Just what happened to the wind industry in California in the 1980s. Moral: don’t get involved in a business which depends on government subsidies because governments just can’t be trusted.
Rent seekers + public subsidy teat = bane of our times.
I wouldn’t like to live in any of those 3.3 million homes powered by wind anyway. I prefer reliable electricity supply.
The business case for disturbines is just the same as the environmental case for them- all hot air.
So whats one of the fastest growing business areas? – Wind Turbine Removal Services
Green Power Breaks Wind!
Thousands asphyxiated. Bats fall from the skies!
another group ready to save the world:
17 Feb: Globe & Mail: Shawn McCarthy: Plotting a road map for a low-carbon future
The idea that scientists will lead humanity through our most daunting challenges is an appealing one. Faced with threats of catastrophic climate change, new global pandemics and a growing food crisis, researchers around the world are pursuing technological advances that would, if fully deployed, allow us to contain those risks. And in the process, sleep easier…
Last June, a high-powered group of scientists and thinkers gathered in Waterloo, Ont., to explore how science and technological innovation could contribute to a more sustainable energy future and avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
The scientists, business people and policy wonks set themselves an ambitious goal: to lay out a visionary but pragmatic blueprint for moving Canada – and indeed, the world – off a dependence on fossil fuels, and onto a low-carbon, electrified energy system.
The gathering was organized by the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, a partnership between the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, a research centre started by Research in Motion co-founder Michael Lazardis.
On Sunday in Vancouver, the results of their collective effort – the Equinox Blueprint – will be released at the gathering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an event that has drawn hundreds of top researchers from all over the globe…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/plotting-a-road-map-for-a-low-carbon-future/article2341616/page1/
Creating jobs based on a false premise and promoting them as the way to the future can get you political popularity. But they are not real jobs. Politicians must hope the house of cards they create will fall over on someone else’s watch so they can scream unemployment from the safety of an opposition bench.
An unsubsidised windfarm requires a local industry that can function on an intermittent supply of cheap electricity. Failing that it’s just a neodymium crop ready for harvest.
The UK is opting for the French nuclear power technology
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17069455
WHIRRR WHIRRR WHISH THUNK
BOO HOO HOO
William Martin says:
how are the european/russian wind and solar networks going, or not going, in light of the snow storms atm?
AFAIK it went much better than expected in Germany – in fact, and somewhat surprisingly, France, with all its nuclear plants, was buying electric power from Germany. Apparently, Germany had very sunny weather during the cold (and partly also windy weather), so solar power (and partly wind) was a significant contributor.
Will the corruption finally be exposed and stopped? It is no coincidence that Illinois is the site of this story; the state’s crooked politics (Blagojevich, Obama, Rezko, etc.) makes it a natural site for such a boondoggle. I’m grateful to Congress for taking this step.
Has the US Government finally cottoned on to the waste of money these things are. The report claims a near 14 Gw of planned installation. This is installed power not what they actually give which will be 20% of this.
At 3:00 AM on 17 February, John Marshall had written:
The officers of government operate on a vastly different quality of incentives than do people making decisions in the private sector. Politicians and government bureaucrats set a very low priority on considering the “waste of money these things [various wind power boondoggles] are” first and foremost because it’s not their money that’s being wasted.
There’s something else going on here.
Economist James Buchanan received the 1986 Nobel Prize in his field, chiefly for his work on public choice theory, Mr. Buchanan’s efforts having “…initiated research on how politicians’ self-interest and non-economic forces affect government economic policy.”
More recent – and lucidly, angrily polemic – publications include Peter Schweizer’s Throw Them All Out: How Politicians And Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Trading, Stock Tips, Land Deals and Cronyism That Would Send The Rest of Us to Prison (released 15 November 2011) in which he speaks authoritatively about what he calls “the permanent political class” and the phenomenon of “legal graft,” which Mr. Schweizer has assessed by examining open information sources on American politicians’ personal fiscal activities. He has commented:
An understanding of “legal graft” and its effects upon the thinking and actions of elected and appointed government officers should be nothing difficult for those of us on the skeptical side of the “man-made global climate change” kerfluffle. We need only refer to Joanne Nova’s seminal 2009 Climate Money monograph, in which she spoke of how:
…and:
This was, of course, before Climategate and the subsequent tanking of the carbon credit market.
Mr. Schweizer’s “permanent political class” has made out like bandits on the “legal graft” that’s been critical to the perpetration of the AGW fraud, not only because the “Liberal” fascisti among these thugs find it politically “sweet” (i.e., serving their “Watermelon” core constituencies’ insane interests) but also because all incumbent politicians see in the various “global climate change” subsidies and regulatory exactions incredibly lucrative opportunities to enrich themselves, their staffers, and their family members.
To these politicians, the “waste of money” on these bird-bashing Teletubbies pinwheels of which John Marshall speaks is not a “waste” at all, but just another wonderful opportunity to enrich themselves.