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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@accordsionsrule – “What have they got against vertical axis turbines?” ~ Nothing, except that wind energy is still volatile, inefficient, unreliable and dependent on taxpayers to shoulder the costs to enable them to exist in the first place. If people want to pay for these experiments themselves (without inflicting 430 – 600 foot moving machines over their neighbors’ heads), fine – go for it. Just don’t expect all the rest of us to pay for your ‘green’ electricity dujuor while the rest of us end up with “skyrocketing” electrcity rates because of it. “Shifting the burden of taxation on to residents and small businesses” is NOT doing any of us any favors. See:
Local Wind Subsidies: New York State’s Money-Road to Nowhere”:
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/08/local-wind-subsidies-more-waste-new-york-states-money-road-to-nowhere/
The Corporate Welfare Bar:
http://thedailynewsonline.com/opinion/editorials/article_886768a8-32ea-11e0-a04d-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story
Interesting @PamelaGray! Thanks for looking that up – should have known they could “double-dip.” The wind industry typically uses the line that “Wind factories will help small farms stay afloat,” which is total nonsense. Small farms that have pimped out their property to Big Wind have still gone bankrupt despite having wind leases (turns out that if you were already a bad businessman, wind leases don’t change that), and/or, they have stopped farming and moved out of the area, leaving their neighbors to suffer with the after-effects.
@Leopold Danze Smith – I assume you mean “The ‘Blue screen of death’” to be pollution from coal. The problem is that industrial wind does NOT do a thing to alleviate emissions, and actually locks us into dependence on fossil fuels. Wind would more accurately be called fossil-wind. It is a complete waste of our resources.
~ With approximately 250,000 industrial wind turbines installed worldwide today (45,100 turbines totaling over 60GW of installed wind projects in the USA, according to AWEA), CO2 emissions have NOT been significantly reduced, nor has a single conventional generation plant – including coal, been decommissioned thanks to industrial wind. (See: Wind Turbines Are Climate-Change Scarecrows, by Robert Bryce)
~ The Brookings Institute reports that “Wind and Solar are the Worst” way to reduce CO2.
~ Due to the unreliable, erratic, and volatile nature of wind, industrial wind turbines need constant “shadow capacity” from our reliable, dispatchable generators – that is, if you want to be sure the lights will come on when you flick the switch. Thus, as Big Wind CEO, Patrick Jenevein candidly admitted, “Consumers end up paying twice for the same product.”
~ All things considered, including demand levels and import/exports – the more wind installations we add, the more we must add fossil-fueled generation.
~ The TRUTH: Wind generation locks us into dependence on fossil fuels.
~ Adding wind as a supplement to our conventional generating system requires so much supplementation that in many areas of the country, adding wind actually causes increased CO2 emissions in the production of electricity than would be the case with no wind at all. Iowa exemplifies this — As Iowa’s installed wind capacity has increased over recent years, so has their coal use and CO2 emissions.
~ 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.
~ Industrial wind supplies electricity, and therefore, has nothing to do with our “foreign oil dependence” created by gasoline and diesel fuel needs.
~ 4,000 – 6,000 pounds of rare earth elements are required per turbine, producing disastrous ecological results in China, where the rare earth elements are being mined.
~ In many low-wind areas of the country (ie: New York State), Industrial Wind Turbines do NOT produce enough power to pay for themselves over their very short, 5 – 13 year lifespans.
~ The average output of many wind factories is less than 25% – many days, providing nothing at all.
~ Studies from those long-invested in wind power in Spain and elsewhere have shown that 2 – 4 jobs are LOST in the rest of the economy, in large part due to the associated “necessarily skyrocketing” electricity rates President Obama forewarned would accompany his ‘green’ energy policy.
~ Consider GE’s Shepard’s Flat Wind Factory, at which each ‘job created’ was shown to cost taxpayers $16.3 MILLION – exorbitantly expensive jobs for a product which is neither “reliable,” nor “efficient” – two professed requirements of the “sustainability” movement.
~ Wind technology has proven to be effective only as a tax shelter generator for large corporations in need of an increased bottom line – just as it was originally designed to do by ENRON, the trailblazer for industrial wind in the U.S.
~ Two of the largest wind holding corporations – GE and Florida Power & Light – have paid NO federal income taxes in the U.S. in years, in large measure because of their “investment” in wind.
~ The sprawling footprints of industrial wind factories cover vast swaths of land, causing massive Habitat Fragmentation.
~ Mathematically, it would take more than 3000 wind turbines rated at 2 MW each, spread over 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles), to equal the energy from one 1600 MW coal or nuclear plant. Because these wind turbines can produce no effective (or firm) capacity, they can never replace the need for those conventional generating units.
~ Wind, paired with natural gas (the most flexible generating system), can offset a mere fraction more CO2 emissions than could be achieved with the gas unit alone – without any wind at all. Wind represents redundant generation, although it would generate capital costs more than triple the cost of the gas unit. With wind, the country gets one electricity production system for the cost of two.
~ Wind can neither be a functional alternative, nor additive energy source. Wind energy is so diffuse that no machine can convert it to modern power. (See: Understanding E = mc2 at: Energy Tribune)
See the entire summary at:
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
@Kit Carruthers, The fact of the matter is – the onset of “industry” and reliable, affordable power in this nation is directly correlated to improved health and greatly increased longevity for all Americans. See:
STANDARD OF LIVING – THE REAL HOCKEY STICK:
http://www.cornwallalliance.org/newsletter/issue/standard-of-living-the-real-hockey-stick/
Mary Kay Barton
August 25, 2014 at 8:18 pm
> @Leopold Danze Smith – I assume you mean “The ‘Blue screen of death’” to be pollution from coal.
No, no – Until Microsoft finally made Windows mostly work with Windows XP and 7, system crashes displayed a page of gobbledy-gook on a blue background, hence the Blue Screen of Death, or BSoD for short. People take delight in posting images of BSoDs on ATMs, telephones, and other appliances, but many people’s favorite is the BSoD Bill Gates got during a demo at a major conference with a stage-sized display.
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/22287-blue-screen-of-death-bsod
BTW, in New Hampshire, two of three wind projects around Newfound Lake have been abandoned (for now). Newfound Lake is one of the most important lakes in the state and people around it and elsewhere have done a very good job mobilizing against the projects. It helped a lot that Groton Wind, a little to the north, did get built so people had a good idea what they were fighting against.
I have in-laws in Alden NY, north of the wind projects out there. Thank you for your tireless work.
You do realize how impossible it would be to park these churning eyesores in the Hamptons, or any other democrat held turf? The blue counties are population centers that by nature are poor hosts to wind power whereas red flyover country is ideal. It might be a tactical scheme to require there be as many wind turbines in blue counties as there are in red. That would be an interesting game changer of the greens actually had to live with the environmental and health problems these bird killers create.
Next point – in many wind power candidate sites space is leased or sold by local ranchers and farmers who tend not to be leftist urbanites. There is a lot of income to be made by converting a corner of a soy bean patch to a wind farm and which has no cost to the land owner until the machinery fails and is removed – restoring the land is left to the land owner. Big wind isn’t old enough for the end of life horror stories the land owners are going to be faced with.
Heed the lesson of the rotting corpses of wind turbine farms that Hawaii is stuck with.
That article linked about confusing energy with power.. It had so many things wrong with it that I don’t know where to start.
Mary Kay Barton:
Thankyou for your article.
If you have not seen it there is an item of mine that may interest you if only for your files.
It is from a few years ago, pertains to the UK situation but includes information from other countries including the US, and can be found here. Among several other things, it says and explains
Richard
Sorry, my link did not work. It is this
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
I would say build these absurd things. The more there are the larger the group of people who will come to see how useless and disturbing that they are. Every ‘green’ politician should have on in his garden and when they go on vacation it should always be a spot where they can enjoy them. Once they run out of other people’s money it will be over. In Europe we have reached that point and the ‘greens’ have now BIG problems to stay in power and will eventually be wiped out. When the little man can’t afford the energy he needs and has no job and no food there will be revolution. He has nothing to lose.
More expensive energy won’t make the economy grow. Generations of humans understood this concept.
The total number of wind-powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around 200,000 at its peak, which is modest compared to some 500,000 waterwheels.[22] Windmills were applied in regions where there was too little water, where rivers freeze in winter and in flat lands where the flow of the river was too slow to provide the required power.[22] With the coming of the industrial revolution, the importance of wind and water as primary industrial energy sources declined and were eventually replaced by steam (in steam mills) and internal combustion engines, although windmills continued to be built in large numbers until late in the nineteenth century. More recently, windmills have been preserved for their historic value, in some cases as static exhibits when the antique machinery is too fragile to put in motion, and in other cases as fully working mills.[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill
John piccirilli August 25, 2014 at 5:22 pm
“Kit……how much money do you make from wind?”
None, My research is funded by a fossil fuel energy company.
Mary Kay Barton August 25, 2014 at 8:32 pm
“@Kit Carruthers, The fact of the matter is – the onset of “industry” and reliable, affordable power in this nation is directly correlated to improved health and greatly increased longevity for all Americans.”
I’m not denying that our current (Western) standard of living is nothing to do with the rise in industrialisation, but you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think that it hasn’t brought about major public health and ecological problems (see: various industrial health disorders, deaths from mining, polluted food and water supplies, ozone hole, acid rain, and more. Wind farms – if at all – barely scratch the surface of that, which was the point I was trying to make.
Jim Wiegand August 25, 2014 at 8:32 pm
“In the meantime the industry’s turbines are killing millions of raptors and bats.
With the wind industry lies and the Interior Department covering for them, one would think these profiteers are saving the world. With true scientific facts, it can be seen that they are really helping to bankrupt society and are driving species to extinction.”
Jim, perhaps you were writing this while I wrote my comment, above, but unless you have some sources for this quote (and the rest of your post) then it has no merit. I have already linked to a study showing stable eagle populations in the Western US, and another showing eagle mortalities to be in the order of <100 over 15 years, yet you claim (without source) that raptor deaths are 10,000 times greater than that and these birds are being driven to extinction! While eagles are not the sum total of raptors, I doubt you can extrapolate so wildly that other species are being massacred in numbers several orders of magnitude higher! But as always, happy to be enlightened with some literature.
DirkH
August 25, 2014 at 12:18 pm
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.”
—
That was me being especially sarcastic Dirk. 😉
Ki Carruthers — Air & water quality in the United States has greatly improved as we have wised up and imposed better controls over the years. You admit that wind isn’t scratching the surface, so why go from one form of mountain top removal to another – especially one that couldn’t dent a grape in the scheme of things? Reliable, affordable power has greatly improved the quality of life for all Americans. Can we do better? Sure! But not by pushing a switch to unreliable, volatile, antiquated industrial wind energy.
@Jarryd Beck – From the Energy Tribune article, “Understanding E = mc2,” which discusses energy density, and which you say has “so many things wrong with it that you don’t know where to start”:
“The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential.”
See more at: Understanding E = mc2 – Energy Tribune
http://www.energytribune.com/2771/understanding-e-mc2#sthash.5sNBbdf4.kcWnE7Gc.dpuf
Unmentionable
August 26, 2014 at 4:40 am
“That was me being especially sarcastic Dirk. ;-)”
Oh no. And I had hope that there’s a remaining population of the Western Methanophobe.
Dear Ms. Barton:
I hope you are submitting your well-written commentary to newspapers throughout the country. If the majors won’t print it, try the smaller ones. You can submit to most via email to either “editor@ur momisugly[domain name]” or “editorial@ur momisugly[domain name].
DirkH
August 26, 2014 at 7:01 am
Unmentionable
August 26, 2014 at 4:40 am
“That was me being especially sarcastic Dirk. ;-)”
Oh no. And I had hope that there’s a remaining population of the Western Methanophobe
—
There’s a small population of them over at the BBC I hear, they’re so cute.
Here’s the cost of decarbonizing with wind power: $100 trillion:
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Decarbonizing.html
@Kit Carruthers ……….What expertise do you have in any of these matters? I ask because your statements all reek with ignorance. In fact what do you even bring to this discussion besides ignorance?
Earlier you stated that the wind turbine threat to birds from turbines was relative. Relative to what? The industry’s rigged data? I will remind you the ability to understand what is in front of you are also happens to be related to IQ and one’s character. You were also given sources of important information in the articles I have written. In them are many quoted sources. Look at them, then look at them again. The data was taken from the industry’s own rigged research.
For most people these facts are not hard for most to grasp……………….
Since 1997 approximately 28,600 eagle carcasses have been shipped to Denver, about 18,000 of them were bald eagles. The other 10,600 were golden eagles. The public only knows what happened to 85 of these eagles (Pagel FWS 2013). Last year the parts and bodies from 1795 bald eagles were reported as being shipped to the Repository. How does an eagle end up in pieces? They get chopped up by turbine blades.
The industry has been hiding the bodies of endangered species. In Hawaii 50 have been killed by turbines since 2007 (leaked in 5/14) and far more have gone unreported because of the use of rigged studies. I have read over the studies used and can confirm that they like other industry studies and are not even close to being scientific.
The golden eagle is disappearing from California. Years ago it was confirmed that wind turbines were confirmed to be the number one cause of eagle mortality. You can read about their disappearance in my articles along with sources.
The industry has hidden the slaughter of many millions of birds and bats. Currently the AWEA is claiming they are only killing about an average of 2.9 birds per MW and I expect this fake number will decline along with the increased rigging of wind industry studies taking place. From my research into this industry’s bogus mortality studies, the real number is at least 10-50 times higher depending on locations. Below are some of the ways wind industry studies are being rigged to hide mortality.
(1) By searching turbines that are not operational, ( 2) by searching for bodies in grossly undersized areas around wind turbines, (3) by not searching turbines daily which allows more time for bodies to be consumed by predators, hidden by employees, and picked up by leaseholders wanting to protect their income, (4) By not using trained dogs in searches which could quickly find virtually every carcasses in a large area around each turbine, (5) By not allowing turbines that are known to be killing the most birds at bats at a wind farms to be included in mortality studies (6) By avoiding searches during periods of high usage by migrating birds, (7) By not counting mortality wounded birds that have wandered away from turbines, (8) By not counting birds taken to rehab centers which are later euthanized or permanently placed in captivity, (9) By hiring industry shills to make sure that wind industry protocol is followed, (10) by not conducting mortality searches the first year of wind farm operation 11) By letting farming practices plow carcasses into the ground during surveys, (12) By rigging data calculations and by discarding very important “incidental carcasses” from the data, (12) by outright lying about problematic data such as fatalities to endangered species, and most importantly (13) By restricting search areas to the roads and cleared areas around near turbines which also happen to also be the easiest areas for wind personnel to pre-scan for carcasses ahead of formal searches, and (14 ) Pay very close attention to this one………………by not allowing 24 hour camera surveillance on turbines that would expose the truth regarding mortality.
Camera surveillance on turbines was suggested by well meaning biologists over 25 years ago and to this day it has never happened. Besides exposing the horrific wind industry slaughter taking place these cameras would cost a small fraction of the many millions being given to shill biologist for rigging their studies. They have not been used because the industry is rigging every bit of their mortality research.
Anyway one wants to view any of this, none of the wind industry data is scientific. Wind industry studies clearly demonstrate premeditated FRAUD that is being supported by the Interior Department’s absurd “voluntary regulations” and their deliberate lack of oversight.
Thank you, Jim. The death of so many thousands of birds and bats at wind farms and solar farms is a sore point with me as well. The oil industry spends millions to keep birds away from tailing ponds. The Big Green Machine does nothing. If they succeed in getting the hundreds of thousands of win turbines erected, we will lose millions upon millions of birds and bats and drive some species like the Golden Eagle to extinction.
Jim, I’ve yet to see a single link from you. You talk about your articles, but I haven’t a clue what they are (and you haven’t linked to any of them). It is interesting, however, that you have at least revised your estimate of bird deaths from 10,000 times higher than peer-reviewed studies to “…at least 10-50 times higher depending on locations“. As always, look forward to you providing some sources.