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
Coach Springer says:
February 17, 2012 at 5:40 am
3. This will be if not already while I write this an Obama talking point to counter (37,000) the Keystone pipeline criticism (20,000). It will work on a lot of people despite the facts. Government pain killers are a lot like Oxycontin highly addictive by creating pain when it starts to go away.
—
Coach – wait until people start paying over $4/gallon for gas – I’d LOVE to see President Obama (along with Jim Hansen and all of his sycophants) criticize the Keystone Pipeline
A good start. Ethanol anyone?
“Up to 37,000 jobs, many in Illinois, could be lost as projects are halted or abandoned”
Yea, about 36,000 of them are in China.
Not so fast non-warmists…
It seems politicians tried to tie the tax extension for wind power to the payroll tax credit extension but it was later removed. The wind power tax credit will need to be re-introduced as has happened in the past. 2012 is turning into a banner year for wind farms and the “grind to a halt” is just another pig at the trough demanding more feed. Wind energy will be around for a long while yet.
But what will we do with the excess bird inventory?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/02/big-wind/#comment-882687
As a professional engineer. I confess that I don’t think that wind power farms are as esthetically ugly as some other people do. Engineers tend to like large pieces of equipment – you know, “big toys for big boys”.
BUT:
1. Wind farms produce essentially no useful, economic energy;
AND
2. Wind farms are probably net-energy-value-negative over their project life;
AND
3. Wind farms require essentially 100% active standby backup from conventional power generation plants;
AND
4. Wind farms require huge life-of-project subsidies;
AND
5. Wind farms needlessly increase the cost of electricity for all, including those who can least afford it, contributing to “energy poverty”;
AND
6. Wind farms can de-stabilize the electric power grid, due to the huge peaks and lulls in their power generation profile;
AND
7. Wind farms kill millions of birds and bats worldwide, including some seriously endangered species.
AND
8. Wind farms may be one of the most useless, counterproductive devices ever invented by humankind.
So wind farms are economically ugly and environmentally ugly, and in summary are just plain old ugly.
“Wind Power – It Doesn’t Just Blow – it Sucks!”
“Coach – wait until people start paying over $4/gallon for gas – I’d LOVE to see President Obama..
$4 a gallon is coming. Right now the primary reason oil is at $100/barrel is due to the devaluation of the US dollar, demand does not justify that price. As the dollar devalues, the cost of oil increases. We could see $5 sometime soon. This could be laid at Obamas feet during this election.
So much for ‘federal protection’; ‘more air marshals are required’ will be the federal prescription for remedy … /sarc
.
My prediction. Prospective investors will be passing wind for a long time.
As an Illinois resident living within 10 miles of 2 windfarms (1 to the north, 1 to the south), there has been no household economic benefit towards electric rates. They do pay property taxes though. I have yet to see a windfarm in Chicago or Cook County. It is quite a site when 1/2 the turbines are not moving.
Brian H said :
Prediction: not one abandoned windmill will be properly taken down and recycled by owners/operators. Anywhere. Too bad they’re not biodegradable.
Which would of course be considered a hidden subsidy; the money they should have had to spend on a bond to guarantee proper decommissioning. You know the greens would be screaming like raped Apes if Nuclear plants were built without one.
Looks like the viability of the wind energy industry without subsidies is exactly zero.
Espen says:
February 17, 2012 at 2:55 am
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.
———————————-
Yeah, Solar & wind worked so well that Germany had to utilize reserve coal % oil generation.
…three Austrian coal and oil-fired power plants with a combined capacity of 935MW and 100MW of German cold reserve was secured on Tuesday, but only around 600-700MW of it was used.
http://www.icis.com/heren/articles/2012/02/09/9531044/power/edem/germany-fires-up-reserve-electricity-generation-capacity.html
That Reuters story about Germany’s renewables bailing perfotming France’s Nuclear was full of problems.
Wind power isn’t scalable. Its a great solution for an individual living on a windy Welsh hillside – why not power your house for free, likewise if you have a 1000 unit pig farm why not convert the poo to methane to heat and light the pig sheds? But to try to morph those kinds of individual self-sustainability schemes into parts of a national energy strategy or anything similarly grandiose, is inviting disaster.
By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune reporter
…enough to intermittently power up to 3.3 million homes per year…
…take advantage of powerful milk Midwestern winds for all they’re worth before the general populace realise they’ve been scammed.
There – I fixed it for you, Julie.
Exactly what happens when you run out of other people’s money.
(Attribution to Margaret Thatcher, I believe.)
Now, if we can just figure out how to make the promoters dismantle these windy boneyards without charging it to the taxpayer. (I can dream, can’t I?)
Smokey,
then indeed why subsidize? 41×10^9 US$ doesn’t amount to penny and quarters, does it? And let’s account for all the costs that each energy source, and then the monumentally stupid coal plants will be eliminated as well.
And you caught me, I’m hypocrite, but I’m not proud of it, I hope we can change things, that will change not matter what. I also hope we are able chose the timing of the change, and it’s not imposed on us because we failed to act. Now promise me that, when wind and solar catch-up with oil and gas, you’ll turn off the light.
Frank,
I’m a “he”. And poor lil’ Heartland institute, only wants to interfere with the teaching of science in schools. You how kids are these days, always questioning grown-ups., we must not suffer that!
Barack Obama: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” (January 2008)
You know that in about 20 years, when proper development has gone tits up, there’ll be a bunch of enviro-nutts shrugging going: But we didn’t know.
The obvious never seem to register for the the enviro-alarmist parties. They’re probably the only ones who would want a warning sign, with small print reading “WARNING! Don’t stand here!” on the front of an Abrams tank.
Brian H said :
Same thing applies to all mining projects. In fact, a complete, acceptable, inspected reclamation plan (along with necessary bond) is required on any mining project of any size (even on private land) before commencement–not one ounce of material can be moved without it (do so and you are in violation of the law). Should these wind projects be left just sitting there as a festering eyesore, it offers an interesting dillema to the Green Energy crowd–will they even care? I seriously doubt it.
Let’s say that the subsidies are removed. Let’s say that many wind farms go bankrupt. Now what should be done with all those wind turbines. Is there an opportunity for some bright, hard working, free enterprise individual to somehow make a viable business out of all this mess?
What would a large amount of intermittent power be good for? Milling wheat, corn or soy? Water heating/treatment for local towns. Powering compressors to aerate lakes and sewage ponds? Running massive lights to annoy the neighbors?
Since they are so big and heavy would they not be difficult to just scrap and recycle?
Paulino says:
February 17, 2012 at 6:45 am
Before making rash statements like this, Paulino, would you please show some hard economic figures and/or citations supporting your position.
Just because wind farms are going under like Carbon Trading doesn’t mean you have to drag down another industry you don’t care for (but have used all your life–hence you are correct about being a hypocrite).
So please, spare us the self-righteous collateral association and provide just the facts, and NOT your unsubstantiated opinion–it does your argument a disservice.
Frank K. says:.
February 17, 2012 at 4:40 am
Meanwhile in California…
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 16 (UPI) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating the deaths of two federally protected golden eagles at a California wind farm.
This story needs to be given a larger National AND International exposure. Too many people still think (correction “believe” = in spite of the evidence to the contrary) that wind farms are a “good thing” for the planet.
This is the first step in the right direction. The next step is to remove the mandates that utilities must purchase a certain percent of green energy.
Don’t forget, when a utility is required to purchase expensive energy, it just passes the costs on to the consumer. The alternate energy providers don’t have to provide electricity at competitive prices if the utilities have no choice but to purchase their power. It’s just a transfer of wealth from consumer and tax payers to well-connected corporate interests and political cronies.
Questions:
Is this Tax Credit the biggest subsidy for wind power?
What are the other revenue entitlements enjoyed by wind power?
I know that some wind power projects receive huge subsidies through guaranteed rates (revenues) that are several times the cost of cheaper and more reliable forms of electrical generation, such as natural-gas-fired power. Some power companies effectively force consumers to take a portion of their electric power as (highly subsidized) wind power, in order to receive preferential long-term fixed-rate contracts. Such practices are unethical.
If all these hidden subsidies were rightly eliminated, grid-connected wind power projects would go bankrupt.
It is obvious that one should never build an energy project that requires huge, life-of-project subsidies. Such projects are not only uneconomic, they are so energy-inefficient they are worse-than-useless.
Wind power projects are simply unsustainable, anti-environmental nonsense
Our fearless leaders have squandered a trillion dollars of scarce global resources on global warming alarmism, and much of that has gone to building useless, worthless wind farms.
This is not new information – we confidently stated that this practice was folly in 2002*, over a decade ago.
****************
* We wrote the following in 2002. See our point #8:
8. The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.
_________________________________________
In 2002 I co-authored a paper at the request of APEGGA with Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Harvard Astrophysicist, and Dr. Tim Patterson, Carleton Paleoclimatologist, at
http://www.apegga.com/members/Publications/peggs/Web11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
We wrote that article as skeptics of alleged catastrophic humanmade global warming, and I think it is clear that we won that debate (Note: NO global warming for more than a decade!).
Reviewing the eight summary points in our 2002 APEGGA paper, it is clear that our predictive track record is infinitely better than that of the IPCC and the global warming alarmist movement.
Some of our predictions did not fully materialize in Canada, because our country did not adopt all the excesses of the Kyoto Protocol, but those countries that did so, particularly the UK and Western Europe, have experienced all these downsides of global warming mania.
Here are the eight summary points from our 2002 APEGGA paper (excerpt):
Kyoto has many fatal flaws, any one of which should cause this treaty to be scrapped.
1. Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.
2. Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SO2, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil.
3. Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity.
4. Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt.
5. Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution.
6. Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.
7. Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming.
8. The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.
_______________________