By Lisa Linowes
Editor: Reuters’ warning that ending wind and solar subsidies will raise electricity prices is the latest version of a familiar argument. Lisa Linowes (WindAction) challenged this argument when it was used to defend the Production Tax Credit in 2012 (Wind Energy Without the PTC) and in 2014 (AWEA Spins Price Distortions to Save PTC). More than a decade later, Reuters is again defending the undefendable.
“Wind and solar developers naturally want the public to equate nameplate megawatts with reliable supply, subsidized bids with total costs, and rapid deployment with technical necessity. They are selling projects. Reuters should be doing something different. The press should test industry claims, not launder them into economic common sense.”
Once again, a major media outlet is laundering the renewable-energy industry’s sales pitch through the authority of its news brand. In “Killing wind and solar subsidies will make US electricity more expensive,” Gavin Maguire, global energy transition columnist at Reuters, argues that phasing out federal wind and solar tax credits will raise prices, weaken reliability, and leave the United States unable to meet rising demand. The premise is simple: America needs more electricity; wind and solar make up much of the capacity now being added; therefore, slowing their development must make power scarcer and more expensive.
That conclusion is assumed, not demonstrated. The column treats nameplate capacity as dependable supply, heavily subsidized prices as evidence of low cost, federal renewable-energy tax credits as comparable to modest provisions for other resources, and batteries as though they generate electricity. These are not minor errors. They are the argument.
Nameplate Capacity vs. Dependable Power
A megawatt of solar is not equivalent to a megawatt that can be dispatched on demand. Solar declines late in the day and disappears at night. Wind follows weather, not system needs. A wind project may produce substantial annual energy while delivering little during a heat wave, cold snap, evening peak, or regional emergency. That does not make wind and solar useless. It means their nameplate capacity cannot be treated as dependable capacity.
Yet Reuters slides among capacity, generation, supply, and power as though they were interchangeable. It cites large numbers of proposed renewable megawatts and assumes they will strengthen reliability. But the relevant question is not how many turbines or panels developers install. It is how much dependable electricity the system can deliver during its most constrained hours. Reuters’s Maguire never asks that question.
Subsidized Prices Conceal True Cost
The Reuters column also presents wind and solar as inexpensive because they can bid into wholesale markets at very low prices. But a low bid is not the total cost of electric service.
Wind and solar receive substantial subsidies at both the federal and state levels. The federal Investment Tax Credit (extended 14 times since 1978) becomes available when a qualifying project is placed in service, while the federal Production Tax Credit (extended 12 times since 1992) is earned after the project begins generating electricity. In both cases, taxpayers shoulder a significant share of project costs, helping projects pencil out and allowing developers to sell power at prices that omit much of the cost taxpayers have already absorbed. What is advertised as cheap electricity is, in reality, heavily subsidized electricity.
The claim that “every energy industry is subsidized” is equally misleading. Wind’s PTC is an uncapped production subsidy: qualifying projects receive a federal credit for every eligible kilowatt-hour produced during their ten-year eligibility periods. Every new qualifying project creates another ten-year stream of credits.
According to the Energy Information Administration, tax subsidies to renewables between FY 2016–22 totaled $83.8 billion versus $9.3 billion for oil and gas and $15.3 billion for coal. In 2022, renewables received almost five times more tax reduction than that of oil, gas, and coal ($15.6 billion vs. $3.2 billion).
Even after Congress last year accelerated the termination of these subsidies for new wind and solar projects, Treasury estimates that the ITC and PTC in FY 2026–35 will reduce federal revenues by $156.4 billion, while the newer clean-electricity production and investment credits add another $73.1 billion—a combined total of approximately $229.5 billion. Although the newer credits are nominally technology-neutral, wind and solar dominate the development pipeline and are positioned to receive most of the benefits. Without this, the wind and solar industries as they are known today would not exist.
Federal subsidies are only one layer. State policies impose additional costs through renewable mandates, renewable-energy certificates, above-market contracts, net-metering programs, transmission expansion, and other mechanisms. In Massachusetts alone, these state-mandated climate and energy programs cost ratepayers more than $4 billion annually. Many of these costs are collected through delivery charges, public-policy riders, and other portions of electric bills rather than through the energy-supply line, making them difficult for customers to identify.
Moving costs into the federal budget and less visible portions of electric bills does not eliminate them. It disperses and obscures them. A low contract or wholesale price is therefore not proof that wind or solar is inexpensive. It reflects only the portion of the cost left in the advertised price after taxpayers and ratepayers have absorbed the rest elsewhere.
“Everyone receives subsidies” is qualitatively true but quantitatively not. The argument also neglects that fossil-fired generation has been punitively regulated for several decades, making their net subsidy arguably negative. In any case, the disproportionate welfare for wind and solar is an argument for eliminating all explicit subsidies for all energies and their technologies.
A Contrived Choice
The article also groups batteries with wind and solar as resources capable of filling the electricity gap. But batteries do not generate electricity. They store power produced elsewhere, have finite duration, incur losses, and must be recharged. A 500-megawatt battery lasting four hours is not equivalent to a 500-megawatt generator capable of operating for days.
Reuters’ Maguire then asks, “If not renewables, then what?” and quickly disposes of every alternative: gas is constrained by turbine shortages, nuclear takes too long to build, hydropower has limited room to expand, and geothermal remains small. Having defined the alternatives out of contention, the column presents wind, solar, and batteries as the only practical answer–a contrived choice.
Is There Ever a Right Time?
Reuters insists that now is the wrong time to end wind and solar subsidies. But the rationale for those subsidies changes with the circumstances. During more than a decade of stagnant electricity demand, renewable advocates insisted subsidies were necessary to force a transition away from fossil fuels. Now that demand is growing, the same subsidies are portrayed as essential to prevent shortages.
Under this logic, there is never an appropriate time to end them: stagnant demand requires subsidies for decarbonization, while rising demand requires subsidies for resource adequacy. That is not a timing-sensitive economic analysis. It is an unfalsifiable defense of permanent government support.
Policymakers can retain existing nuclear, coal, and gas plants that would otherwise retire, uprate facilities, reform markets to value dependable capacity, require large new loads to secure firm supply, improve demand response, and procure resources based on performance during critical hours rather than nominal capacity.
The claim that every cancelled renewable project creates a permanent shortage is just as weak. Existing thermal plants may remain open, other generators may be built, and different technologies may become economical. The Reuters column assumes no substitution and then declares the shortage inevitable. That is advocacy, not forecasting.
Reuters identifies the article as commentary. That does not excuse the absence of serious analysis by columnist Gavin Maguire. The piece offers no regional capacity analysis, no examination of critical-hour performance, no alternative resource portfolio, and no accounting for total subsidies, transmission, or integration costs. Instead, it reproduces the renewable industry’s script and presents continued government intervention as an economic necessity.
Wind and solar developers naturally want the public to equate nameplate megawatts with reliable supply, subsidized bids with total costs, and rapid deployment with technical necessity. They are selling projects. Reuters should be doing something different. The press should test industry claims, not launder them into economic common sense.
The United States does face rising electricity demand. But the objective should not be to maximize subsidized turbines, panels, batteries, or nominal megawatts. It should be to secure a portfolio capable of delivering power during critical hours, in the locations where it is needed, at the lowest total cost to consumers and taxpayers.
Reuters mistakes the renewable industry’s political success for technical necessity. That serves developers well. It does not serve readers trying to understand the grid.
Lisa Linowes is executive director and spokesperson for WindAction, a trusted resource regarding the costs of large-scale renewables, where this post recently appeared. Her previous posts at MasterResource can be found here.
Anybody listen to NPR and PBS in the USA? They keep banging the CAGW drum.
When will they get the word? CC is a dead horse, but they have so little to offer otherwise. Funny really, how they keep pushing a lie.
What’s not funny is how many people still believe the lies. They have a significant percentage of the population brainwashed into believing climate is a serious threat. We need a prime time red team/blue team debate to expose how preposterous the propagandist’s claims are.
I believe the biased and false reporting on AGW has nothing to do with the “journalists” and everything to do with those that control the media. Try to run a story about AGW that doesn’t follow the accepted narrative once and you’re reprimanded and try it again you’re cancelled. It doesn’t take long for reporters to understand their place in the pecking order.
If one looks, one finds that just about every major media organization is now a profit center for a large corporation.
I have no issues with corporations, but transforming media into profit centers means hyperbolic headlines to garner ad click revenues.
Gone are the ways when you could confidently read something under the assumption that it was relatively factual and unbiased.
“Gone are the ways when you could confidently read something under the assumption that it was relatively factual and unbiased.”
Those days have never existed. Media has always been used to control public opinion.
“I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.”
Thomas Jefferson
14 June 1807 Works 10:417–18
I am truly sorry you missed those days.
It is your loss.
Walter Cronkite was the closest thing to unbiased journalism I’ve seen in mainstream media but even he spun things for the establishment. He was appalled at how things went downhill after he left. Your loss in believing unbiased journalism ever existed.
It brings to mind the reported reply of John Swinton to a proposed toast to an independent Press at a congregation of newspapermen around 1880:
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
“There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
“The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks: they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
“Walter Cronkite was the closest thing to unbiased journalism I’ve seen in mainstream media but even he spun things for the establishment.”
That’s right. I recall Walter declaring the Vietnam War lost in 1968. And other idiots saying, “if we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, then we’ve lost the war.” Meaning Walter’s opinion would sway public opinion.
Walter’s opinion was wrong. There was no military defeat for the U.S. in Vietnam. American forces defeated the enemies, forced them to sign a peace agreement in 1973, and American combat troops went home.
When American troops left, it was still South Vietnam.
Then the Democrat-controlled Congress, over the next couple of years, systematically cut South Vietnam’s military aid to the bone, overriding President Ford’s vetoes, thanks to imbeciles like Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, and ended up throwing South Vietnam to the communist wolves.
Walter, it wasn’t the inability of the U’S. Military that lost the war, it was the Leftwing appeasers and cowards who threw the victory away without a second thought to all the blood, sweat and tears it took to win it.
You got it wrong, Walter. Which is not surprising since Walter looked at the world from the Left side.
The Leftwing Media has been on a propaganda effort since the Vietnam War selling their failed Leftwing ideology every day. They do great damage to the nation with their constant lies and distortions of reality.
They can even cause us to lose wars. Like South Vietnam and today, the Iran War which they are trying their best to get the U.S. to lose. These fools are so delusional that if they had their way, the suicidal, religious fanatics in Iran would have dozens of nuclear weapons right now. How divorced from reality is that!?
The Left (worldwide) will not defend the people against murderous dictators. They are afraid of murderous dictators and are afraid to confront them to the point of letting them have nuclear weapons. The Left is a total failure when it comes to national security. They don’t have it in them.
Totally agree with your comment, but just for clarification the idiot who said that was President Johnson.
True, but he wasn’t the only one.
Also true, but he was the most famous. And he said it in the context of his campaign for reelection. He was more concerned with winning the presidency than losing the war.
Cronkite was a propagandist like all corporate media shills are but was head and shoulders above those who came after him when it comes to unbiased journalism.
The left are failures intellectually in every way possible due to allowing ideology to replace reason. They don’t have a clue as to how cause and effect works in the real world. Why their policies are so destructive.
Allow me to interject a clarification.
Back then, in a town of 10,000, we had an independent newspaper and it was fair and unbiased in the news reporting.
You could also read editorials and those were segregated from the news.
I cannot find a local, hometown, newspaper anymore. All of them, as far as I can see, have been swallowed up by national organizations.
We had 3 TV channels, ABC, NBC, and CBS, but we did not watch the news on them. We had our local paper.
We had 1 AM radio station. I do not know if it broadcast news and if so with which affiliation. We listened to radio for music.
The point is, I did get relatively factual and unbiased news, but it was before all media integrated.
If you id not get to enjoy that, it is sad.
Thanks for the clarification! My comment was a generalization about mainstream media. There are always exceptions to any generalization.
I listened to Voice of America on the radio when I was young and that was as unbiased as I was ever exposed to then. I spent many years when I was young reading the competing newspapers stories in my hometown cover to cover. Often the only way you could tell they were writing about the same event was that names were the same. Glad you had a good local newspaper! I didn’t.
It’s a fact that all media exists to manipulate public opinion. Even so called “unbiased” ones. The only way to avoid being manipulated is to question everything you hear and fact check by getting as close to source data as possible. I started doing that in high school. Every time I have done that the headline has turned out to be misleading. Too often the truth is the opposite of what’s being presented.
Cronkite spun things for the establishment?
Only if you consider the left to be the establishment.
Legacy media represents the globalist establishments interests. They know the left are easily manipulated useful fools which is why traditional media was left leaning. Fox being the #1 watched news now has changed the dynamic but they contribute to the divide and conquer strategy the establishment depends on to keep the masses fighting each other rather than the massive corruption they are getting away with.
There has always been ‘Pork Barrel’ exploitation, but the exploiters seem have known, or otherwise contained, on how much they could get away with. Over two generations ago our smaller attempt using renewables produced fossils. These are going to require lots more paleontology field work. Back in those days homework was enforced.
“if you don’t read the news, you are uninformed. If you read the news, you are misinformed” Mark Twain. Not sure I got the quote or attribution correct, but still a good quote.
Yes, Twain was paraphrasing Jefferson!
In hist book “Bias” Bernie Goldberg noted that in the late 70’s, the President or CEO of CBS came to the newsroom and stated that he had good news and bad news. The good news was that the News division made a profit for the first time the prior year. The bad news was the the News division made a profit for the first time the prior year. What that led to was the News division making news instead of reporting on it. While bias has always existed, once News divisions became profit centers instead of cost centers, biased reporting escalated greatly.
That is my point. Thank you.
In Canada most of the media is funded by the federal government.
Although bought by the Canadian Thompson Company in 2008, Reuters is still fundamentally a London based ‘news’ outfit. So it is not surprising they continue to peddle this twaddle. The entire UK appears to be climate change daft. Net Zero nuts.
It might appear to be, but it actually isn’t. I’m from there. II was there a couple of months ago. I follow the big picture story, and nobody gives a damn – except the usual gullible nitwits. Most are just doing what the government tells them (and waiting for the day they can vote out this Labour government). Climate crap is mostly a joke, outside of the grifters, crackpots and thieves. There are people who will still vote Labour for the free stuff – hell, Biden got what 80 million votes?
And maybe it’s even a little more than peddling twaddle. The purpose of PR and propaganda is to fortify our allies and discourage our opponents. Thus, the AGW twaddle will go on as long as there are believers to fortify. I have to think that things have to be truly dead and maybe even buried before one sees the last of propaganda.
In fact, I’ll offer an example. Back in the 1970s when I was in graduate school, first order leveling data suggested that sections of the San Andreas fault system were bulging upward and people suspected it being a portent of a coming earthquake. Thus was the Palmdale bulge born. It garnered lots of research money, and perhaps half of the geophysical community believed it a real feature.
The bulge was a funny thing. It didn’t behave like a proper continental sized feature. It kept changing shape, etc. Finally someone from USC pointed out that the bulge appeared to be a data reduction error. There were accumulated errors from the sharp temperature gradient near ground that accounted for it.
Now allies rapidly lost faith in their bulge. The last person standing was R.O. Castle from the USGS who had started the entire episode. He continued to bang his drum well after there were no allies left.
As it currently stands it’s the US going to fossil fuels vs the rest of the world going renewable. In 5 to 10 years we will see who made the right bet.
No need to wait more years.
It is already clear.
There is valid science and real engineering that demonstrates that without funneling tax payer money into those reckless projects, they would not survive the winter.
For europe it’s a path to more energy independence and cheaper prices.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/28/wind-solar-and-heat-pumps-offer-eu-escape-from-lng-dependence-by-2030-study-says
You are funny – and very wrong.
He forgot to use the /sarc tag.
For Europe it’s a path to losing your industrial tax base and to some of the highest electric rates in the world.
A think tank is not valid science and real engineering.
It is opinions promulgated under the guise of appeal to authority.
“Ultimately, the report warns that while Europe is scrambling to end one dependency, it risks getting into another one (China).”
For Europe it’s a process of looking the other way on slave labor in the solar supply chain and genocide in western China and Eastern Europe. Just keep the photos of prisons and vast numbers of coal plants powering energy intensive silicon ingot foundries out of the news and out of mind. Also remember to keep the human rights “investigators” far away. At least Biden and Trump looked at the evidence.
Yes, Biden looked at it and decided to bring renewable manufacturing to the US.
Biden delayed enforcement for the benefit of high cost rooftop solar lobbyists just like the EU is doing now.
You mean, Otto-Pen decided…..
Biden was hard-pressed to decide which beach chair he should sleep on.
Or what flavor ice cream cone.
Leftwing politicians do stupid things. Joe is a Leftwing politician. He would fit right in with Labour Party thinking.
So Joe doing something stupid like promoting tax-payer subsidized windmills and industrial solar shouldn’t be a surprise.
There’s a reason why Biden decided not to run for re-election.
Looked at it? Decided?
Assuming that is correct, it did not happen, not the manufacturing part of it and we are still looking into inverters that have hidden, undocumented capabilities that put the inverters at risk of remote shutdown..
One socialist idiot supporting other socialist idiots. Who da thunk it.
“an unfalsifiable defense of permanent government support.”
An excellent way to portray the W&S subsidies and the way to your “cheaper prices.”
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1315198317261137
So it’s true. You do believe everything you read on the internet.
Funny how the allegedly cheaper renewables, never are. Every place that has installed them has seen energy costs skyrocket.
Since Trump decided to try to stop the 47 year reign of terror by the Iranian terrorist regime, there has been a massive surge of oil and gas exploration and drilling all around the world.
I have posted the list of links showing the extent of this world-wide expansion several times..
Coal, Oil and Gas continue to be the major supplier of world energy by a very large margin.
Oh and there’s a world energy crisis. I wonder who made that – your heroes MUNRetarded? Yeah leave the USA outta that crisis. Oh, it’s Reuters too paywalled, but I’m sure it’s the usual garbage:
Trump and Putin are not my heroes.
The US and their voters are one of the main reasons we are in one. But they’ll feel at the pump soon enough
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6FO75RFqJicjws7sA62tawzlSM_1u-SR81tGICSya0A&s
Your heroes are the Iranian Islamic terrorist regime and its hangers-on…
.. you know like the Yemeni Houthis threatening the Bad al-Mandab Strait.
As they have done many time before Trump.
When are you gonna thank me for diagnosing your Asperger’s, as you’re still on the NHS waiting list?
Wasn’t difficult with you.
Don’t go away though – you’re the poster boy for climate mental illness.
Using a disorder as an insult. Stay classy phil.
Using a disorder as an excuse. Stay liberal MUR.
Why should phil do something you are incapable of doing?
No matter what the problem, Trump caused it.
It must by nice being a socialists and knowing that you will never have to think for yourself.
Hydrocarbon fuels still give some 86% of total energy.
All this wasted money, and economic and environmental damage caused by wind and solar…
… and they have barely made a dent.
As if making a dent has any effect on the climate anyway – unless you’re a scientific retard, like MUR tarded. ^^^^^^
The thing to notice from the graph is that the increase in world energy use is significantly more than the tiny amount from wind and solar.
Sure, I get that and good graph BTW, but given that ECS is indistinguishable from zero, none of it even matters. At some point, humanity will use nuclear for its energy.
People in the UK may actually thank the troupe of idiots led by Miliband and his band of thieves for leaving the North Sea oil underground, so they can use it.
The world is electrifing and more and more electricity is created by renewables.
Share of electricity production from renewables
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewables?tab=line&country=OWID_WRL~FRA~CHN~IND~USA~OWID_EU27
Electricity as a share of primary energy, 1985 to 2024
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-as-a-share-of-primary-energy?tab=line
“more and more electricity is created by renewables”
One the thumb is on the scales of giving preference to renewables.
The note at the top of the graph carefully constructed by you at OWID :
The ATL article clearly uses the definition “Renewables = Wind + Solar + Batteries” … full stop.
A “cherry-picked” graph closer to this definition — “Wind + Solar” only, no “+ Batteries” — would be something like the following :
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-electricity-production-from-solar-and-wind?tab=line&country=FRA~OWID_EU27~CHN~USA~OWID_WRL~IND
Please try again.
I’ve always been fascinated at how some people can convince themselves that government mandates prove that everyone wants what the government is forcing on them.
Scientific ignorance.
Electricity is not “created” by those toys.
Kirchhoff’s Law: energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
Those toys generate electricity by converting one form of energy into another.
True. Electricity is not energy, but Kirchhoff’s Law also applies to electrical circuits.
Yes, generated would be the word one would use. My mistake.
First law of thermodynamics isn’t Kirchoff, though.
And they are not toys.
They don’t do anything useful. That sounds like toys to me.
We don’t need to wait that long, you’re just too stupid to see it. The authoritarian European Union, who are currently in the process of destroying their own economies and demographics, are NOT “the rest of the world.”
The rest of the world? Really?
Parts of Europe and Australia, and that’s about it.
Germany: Approved state support for new gas-fired power plants and utilized coal reserves during recent energy crunches to stabilize its grid while expanding wind and solar.
Japan: Increased its reliance on coal and liquefied natural gas to maintain a stable electricity supply following safety clampdowns on nuclear energy.
Developing Economies: Nations in Asia and Europe facing sudden fuel supply constraints or high costs have temporarily leaned on reserve coal facilities to control prices.
S. Korea, China, and India are pursuing an “all-of-the-above” strategy—massively expanding both renewables and fossil fuels simultaneously to protect economic growth and energy security, just like the U.S.
And old saying:
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
It is concerning that these so called economical solutions require massive subsidies.
It is noted that subsidies hide the true costs.
It is also true that government subsidies in commercial enterprise is command economics, aka socialism.
If these solutions are so good, then stockholders (aka Capitalists) will invest with the expectation of a ROI on the money gambled.
Now, the question for which I have never seen anything addressing it is: What about the cost of land?
I see 3 possibilities.
The land is purchased. That is a cost, not previously declared. Also, what property taxes are collected?
The land is leased. That also is a cost not previously declared.
The site is on federal lands and is granted by the government. What is the economic offset given the land could be used for other purposes?
From my perspective, this is just one more cog in the dark activities to transform to a One World Order (socialist) economy and with it, the elimination of willing nations.
If one clicks on the generation pipeline tab on this link here NZ Electricity Map – Grid Generation, one can see the actual declared costs for power stations being built in NZ now. Anyone who can do simple maths can see that the energy is not cheap. The other problem is that they will be dumping onto the grid when the grid doesn’t want their power, destroying both their and other power station economics. NZ operates a Dutch Auction style market for every trading interval.
But hey, when you are saving the planet, telling the truth and understanding maths is optional.
“A megawatt of solar is …”. Shouldn’t that be “a megawatt hour of solar”?
Both are needed, for power [or a nameplate number] and energy.
As soon as you look at Weather-Dependent Productivity, they are never cheaper and they have the potential to be entirely unreliable. No use for running a 24/7/365 economy.
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/the-costs-of-weather-dependent-renewables-against-conventional-power-generation/
story tip
Even the “subsidies” for oil, coal and gas aren’t what the label “subsidy” might suggest. The utility bill aid subsidies for low income people, according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, are accounted for as subsidies supporting fossil fuels. Well, I suppose since fossil fuels make the grid possible, such an accounting makes some sense. It’s still misleading when lumped together with the subsidies for wind/solar/batteries, though.
I do not have the data, so I am speculating.
Subsidies for low income people are real, per your post. No disagreement.
How much of the total subsidies for coal and hydrocarbon fueled generators are tax breaks offered to all commercial enterprises?
Depreciation is sometimes referred to as a subsidy. It is not. Depreciation is the means by which enterprises recover their capital investment. Depreciation of one sort or another is offered to all enterprises. Now one beef of people who hate oil and gas against the industry is the capital recovery of intangible drilling costs which can be expensed in the year they are incurred or amortized over a 5 year period. It is called depletion and not offered to other enterprises, but I can’t understand the beefing over it.
I found this report very informative.
I almost put depreciating in my post.
I gained a tax advantage by depreciating a rental property.
My wife is a CPA and taught me. Everything in your post is true.
Environmentalists are always whining about the “subsidies” Oil and Gas companies receive because rhey think that tax breaks and depreciation are the same as subsidies.
With many things a company buys, they get to deduct them fully in the first year.
With depreciation, a company has to deduct the cost over a number of years.
Since money now is worth more than money later, depreciation actually costs a business money. It is no subsidy.
A lot of people on the left, declare that any tax rate that is less then the one they want others to pay, is a subsidy.
Does any green energy writer understand or admit to the order of magnitude difference in cost per watt even comparing rooftop solar with large utility scale solar? No its easier for them to armwave when targeting low information readers with generalizations.
But, but, but the fuel is free! /s
“Reuters is again defending the undefendable. “
Well, here was WUWT itself just two days ago (echoing CFACT):
“Right now, solar and battery energy storage are among the only major energy resources that can be deployed quickly enough and affordably enough to keep pace with rising demand. In fact, they have accounted for more than 80% of all new power added to the grid during the Trump administration.”
…
“AI won’t run on talking points. It will run on affordable, abundant electricity. The market is already pointing us toward the fastest, most affordable path to more power. Let’s take it.”
And many commenters pointed out just how erroneous the reliance on solar + batteries was.
A cloudy day.. you got nuffing !!
FAR better to build a gas or coal plant.
pointed out … in response to me. But none in response to WUWT, which made the claim. I just quoted it.
Again, it’s the misdirection of the author of the article, and just because the article was re-posted here does NOT mean the host endorses it.
You forget, we deplorable skeptics like to debate both sides of an issue.
The vast majority of posts argued the points made in the article.
You did not.
You keep pretending WUWT is a propaganda site. It is not.
Different articles addressing different point by different authors associated with different organizations.
You do not see the difference, apparently.
Most authors here have ties so close to the Heartland Institute, CFACT, and the Heritage Foundation that you couldn’t fit a piece of paper between them.”
At least be honest about the eco system you are in.
As usual, when looserName has nothing to say he just makes stuff up.
Do you have any evidence that most authors here, have any form of relationship with Heartland, or anybody else? And even if they did, so what?
You seem to feel that anyone who disagrees with what the party tells you to believe, is by definition evil.
I’m all for debate. But here WUWT blasts Reuters for “defending the undefendable”, which WUWT was defending just a few days prior. My objection is really to the extremism of this characterisation, frequently found here. The greater economy of renewables is a mainstream view, supported by major business outfits like Lazard’s. It’s fine to dispute that. But to insist that the proposition is undefendable is really just silly, and weakens the attempts to defeat it.
Give it up man. Enjoy your retirement.
“accounted for more than 80% of all new power added”, but only delivered 20% of all the new power to the end user.
Nick,
Just because WUWT publishes something doesn’t make it so. You know that. Here is the local reality. META, Google, etc. have arrived in southeastern Wyoming and have built data centers all along a short stretch of highway south of Cheyenne. More, probably are coming.
When first proposing these centers they engaged in the usual foamy blather about using renewable energy. This sounded believable in their PR because Wyoming is pretty sunny despite being above 40deg north and its generally believed to be windy, although I should show people data from the last month or so. But Big Data are actually in Cheyenne because of the confluence of a huge amount of optical fiber, already installed, along the east-west Union Pacific mainline and the north-south Burlington system. There are satellite link and flight systems there too.
Oh, there will be some feed into the grid supplying them from wind plants and batteries also involving mostly foamy PR — could go into that some other time.
Tall Grass Industries will be building a potentially 10GW gas turbine facility along that road too. What a coincidence. The initial build-out will be 1.8GW. Just for comparison the entire Wyoming load served by Rocky Mountain Power is about 1.0GW. To have any chance of supplying that same 1.8GW with wind would more than double the currently installed wind in Wyoming in total. Even then it would require back-up or impossible amounts of batteries/pumped hydro …
The smart folks know
that gas will run the show.
“Tall Grass Industries will be building a potentially 10GW gas turbine facility”
How can you tell what is foamy blather and what isn’t? Sounds like a tall story to me.
Nice snippet. Changes the context. Well done sophistry.
This site allows guest editorials. Something your favorite sites don’t do.
Removing wind and solar subsidies won’t make power more expensive rather it will provide cost clarity. Cost clarity will show that wind and solar can’t compete with fossil fuel and nuclear on a level playing field.
And in fact, wind/solar/battery “renewable” systems are net energy consumers. This is why unsubsidized power supplied by them costs 3 to 10 times as much as gas, coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric plants. The extra cost is to pay for the conventional energy needed to produce the “renewables”.
“wind and solar make up much of the capacity now being added”
Er, just because these are being installed more than anything else does not mean they are good or practical.
These are the least “green” energy sources on the planet, having huge land footprints, ridiculous infrastructure requirements, and constant, expensive maintenance. Both produce direct current electricity (DC) and require conversion to alternating current (AC) before use. Every conversion is a loos of energy.
Solar power manufacturing is very polluting, manual labor and machinery intensive, and expensive in terms of heavy and rare metals. It not only takes up large acreage, but as the panels age, they lose production (a few percent every year) and leak heavy metals into the soil, spoiling it forever as farmable land.
Oh, and solar energy is pretty much useless on the Northern Hemisphere above 40 deg latitude. Simply not enough insolation (solar input) to even break even.
Wind turbines have physical constraints that cannot be overcome. For example, no lubricant known can stand the conditions of turbines at full power. Offshore turbines are also subject to weather, waves, wind erosion of the blades, degradation of the base structures, more infrastructure (also at risk more than on land), and more challenging maintenance. We have tens of 1000s of dead turbines in the US at the moment as removal once they die is not in long term plans (conveniently for the owners)
Not only is the carbon footprint for these two energy sources huge and more than carbon-based and nuclear energies, but their parts are not recyclable. BTW, their half-life is only about 12 years (maintenance becomes too intensive) while carbon-based and nuclear are many decades.
Oh, let us not forget that there is no power here when the Sun sets and the wind dies (as it can for days in winter and high pressure systems). Batteries (huge) are expensive, use expensive metals, non recyclable, have energy production measured in minutes, (NOT hours or days), more infrastructure, and prone to burning and release seriously toxic smoke when they fail.
So, when the day is cloudy or the wind light, do you charge the batteries or let people have electricity to carry on their lives? Imagine the California idea that EV cars plugged in at night could be drained of charge to be redistributed to the grid—so you find a dead EV car in the morning. Or, if all of the EV cars in New York City plugged in at the same time, the grid will crash. How could anything go wrong?
“Reuters mistakes the renewable industry’s political success for technical necessity. That serves developers well. It does not serve readers trying to understand the grid.”
I think better said would be this; Reuters mistakes the renewable industry’s political success for technical success
Even that must be refined.
So I went to AI and had them fix my grammar and tweak my thoughts, this is what I like.
“Reuters mistakes the renewable industry’s political success for technical success. By reporting on policy wins while purposely ignoring the fact that renewables lack the technical capability to meet basic grid necessities, they serve developers well, but leave readers completely in the dark.”
I dont like the word, mistake, it was not a mistake.
“Reuters does not mistake the renewable industry’s political success for technical success; they actively substitute it. By framing political wins as engineering readiness, they consciously weaponize a renewable ideology—purposely ignoring the fact that renewables lack the technical capability to meet basic grid necessities.”
“Reuters’ coverage is not a mistake, but a calculated alignment with renewable ideology. They knowingly conflate political momentum with technical viability, purposely ignoring the reality that renewables cannot inherently satisfy the physical necessities of a stable grid.”
“Reuters is not making a mistake; they are actively taking a side. They deliberately mask a lack of technical necessity with political success, serving as an ideological megaphone for the renewable industry while purposely ignoring grid reality.”
I feel like I am fighting students of chomsky where every word is a false premise and every word I say is turned backwards. Clean, Green, Sustainable, Renewable, all false premises.
Why isn’t the need to “force a transition away from fossil fuels” immediately regarded with deep suspicion? Throughout history more efficient or available forms of energy have naturally supplanted what was previously used, with no coercion required.