In Germany the country is setting records in its reliance on alternative energy sources like solar power and record wind power installations. Japan is now building the country’s biggest solar park which make it one of the world’s largest markets for solar power (Newscientist). Here in the United States, of course, we continue to let the world take the lead in such efforts. Mitt Romney’s campaign has announced that he intends not only to reject calls for greater investment in our wind power industry but to actually kill federal support for wind power.
Romney wants to end long-standing tax credits for wind farm projects. This would result in the death of the production tax credits (PTCs). Shawn McCoy, a spokesman for Romney’s Iowa campaign, says killing PTCs is merely creating “a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.” That would be good news for our oil and coal industries.
I understand (and generally agree with) the preference to rely on the market to favor the most efficient industries. However, our reliance on oil and coal has produced continuing environmental harm and oil imports fund some countries with extreme policies on civil liberties as well as terrorism ties. Our European allies have seen the value to investing heavily in these alternative and clean energy sources. Cost/benefit analysis is only as accurate as the underlying data. When the myriad of benefits are considered, these credits are highly efficient. Indeed, the ability to maximize our use of alternative and clean energy is both a public health and national security priority.
With the world rushing forward, we appear to be rushing back (lead by an army of lobbyists).
Source: Newscientist
Koch bros are opposed to clean energy. …..yet another reason to vote for Obama.
The former governor of my state looking forward to the past! Is he a member of the Luddite party?
Re this line: “I understand (and generally agree with) the preference to rely on the market to favor the most efficient industries.”
If we truly had market forces in play, then this sentiment would be valid. As it is, the energy resources industry, like virtually every other “market” in this country, is completely distorted by tax credits, offshoring of profits, absurdly low costs for mineral rights, etc. Let alone that the old energy industries got off the ground with precisely the kind of government support that they are now trying to strip from new energy resources. People on all sides of the argument need to stop positing an old energy “free market” against a new energy “government-subsidized market”. That is a gross distortion of the reality, which in turn sets up false policy choices.
It is hard for this dog to understand why Turley supports Romney. Most articles have some snide aside about Obama appointee this, or Obama did that. The Willard is the worst threat to the world since Adolph Hitler.
Sufficient reason not to vote for him.
T. Boone Pickens is probably not real happy right now….I am just saying….
@Bob,Esq.: Amen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/obama-endorsed-by-major-environmental-groups/2012/04/18/gIQAAX7lQT_blog.html Not too surprising…..
Turley, a romney fan? Not on my watch.
In fact, if he wasn’t such a gentleman, he would have had the lying thug by the throat…..
Bob.Esq.,
What are you saying?
Romney is an empty suit looking for special interests to fill it. There is no there there.
Don’t worry, the flip will be coming very soon.
“The former governor of my state looking forward to the past! Is he a member of the Luddite party?”
Now that is just funny since wind power has been used for hundreds of years.
I wonder what Romney thinks about nuclear power? That would be a good indicator as to his being a Luddite.
Isnt there a book about some Spanish guy from the 1600′s jousting with windmills? Oh yes, Don Quixote de La Mancha; now that seems appropriate.
Don Quixote the patron saint of modern wind power.
DHMCarver
1, August 3, 2012 at 10:14 am
————————————
yup yup yup….
Why in the world would you want to damage any legitimate clean energy industry at this stage of our economy? The only answer that makes sense is that Gov. Romney is in the pocket of Big dirty energy companies. But don’t dare end the Oil subsidies. What a creep.
Just two years after President Obama touted a $400 million loan to the green energy firm Abound Solar, the company is declaring bankruptcy.
Update: 7/19/12: The Amonix Solar: FAIL – manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, subsidized by more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants given by Obama Administration, has closed its 214,000 square foot facility a year after it opened.
Solar Trust of America: FAIL – Filed Bankruptcy in Oakland, CA, April 3, 2012 – On April 2, 2012
Bright Source: FAIL – Bright Source warned Obama’s Energy Department officials in March 2011 that delays in approving a $1.6 billion U.S. loan guarantee would embarrass the White House and force the solar-energy company to close. Lost Billions of dollars but Getting More Money To Keep Trying. Can you say, “This isnt working?”
Solyndra: FAIL – Obama gave Solyndra $500,000,000 in taxpayer money and Solyndra shut its doors and laid off 1100 workers in August 2011 After Billions in Losses due to failure to make a solar product that works!
LSP Energy: FAIL – LSPEnergy LP filed bankruptcy protection and a sale of its assets in Feb 2012
Energy Conversion Devices: FAIL – On February 14, 2012 Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy
Abound Solar: FAIL – Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee from Barack Obama announced in June, 2012 that it would file for bankruptcy
SunPower: FAIL – SunPower stopped producing solar cells last year at near bankruptcy restructured only with help of, get this, oil giant TOTAL who owns 60% stake. Irony! Still struggling…
Beacon Power: FAIL – Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy Oct 2011 just a year after Obama approved $43 million loan Government loan guarantee
Ecotality: FAIL – ECOtality, a San Francisco green-tech company that never earned any money on the verge of bankruptcy after receiving roughly $115 million in two loan guarantees from Obama
A123 Solar: FAIL-A123 received $279 million from taxpayers thanks to President Obama’s Department of Energy loan guarantees and after Solyndra bankruptcy is getting another $500M from Obama and it has lost $400M
UniSolar: FAIL – Uni-Solar filed for Ch 11 bankruptcy in June 20 this year laid off hundreds got more Obama money still failing but still in business
Azure Dynamics: FAIL – Azure Dynamics files for bankruptcy in June ter millions in Obama “Stimulus”
Evergreen Solar: FAIL – Evergreen Solar received $527 Million in Taxpayer money from Obama filed bankruptcy
Ener1: FAIL received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration filed for bankruptcy January 2012
Update: In May 2012 Obama visited a dusty, desert town 30 miles outside Las Vegas Wednesday to declare he’s doubling down on failed federal efforts to boost the solar industry which has NEVER proven to produce a single working product. Like Socialism, no evidence ot works, but they just keep doubling down on the failed ideals!.
http://www.dividedstates.com/list-of-failed-obama-green-energy-solar-companies/
Let us not forget, Ted Kennedy of Mass. also declared some opposition to a wind farm project.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/2/27/113830.shtml
Solar Trust of America
Solar Trust for America received $2.1 billion in conditional loan guarantees from the Department of Energy — “the largest amount ever offered to a solar project,” according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu — for a project near Blythe, Calif., but declared bankruptcy within a year. It is unclear how much of the guarantee, if any, was actually awarded.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/1209621
President Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, would not tell House members today how many companies that have received loan guarantees might go bankrupt, nor would he promise to provide the list of companies at risk to Congress.
“I don’t, again, recall the exact number,” Chu said in the course of repeated questioning from House Subcommittee on Energy and Power lawmakers who wondered how many companies might follow Solyndra into bankruptcy. “The American taxpayer has every right to expect that there is a reasonable chance of repayment for every loan that we give out,” Chu did allow.
Chu also refused to promise that he would have his staff give the committee a list of the companies that have received DOE loan guarantees. “We will do what we can,” Chu told Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas. “We don’t want to violate company confidentialities; the dynamics of what happens in these companies changes pretty rapidly.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/1167921
”
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
Brooks Atkinson (1894 – 1984), Once Around the Sun, 1951″
Bron,
“Now that is just funny since wind power has been used for hundreds of years.”
Silly me! For sure, there were huge wind farms that produced electricity way way back during Medieval times.
One of the most under reported stories is the amount of energy we will derive from fracking. Even people who are in favor of green energy realize this potentially makes us on a par w/ most OPEC nations. We will change our fuels when it is economically feasible. As long as there is cheap oil and natural gas[relatively] the “green revolution” simply will be on hold. That’s the reality, don’t attack me for simply stating what even green engineers are saying. I don’t expect “greeners” to like this new reality, but you fail to understand it @ your own peril.
nick, Fracking is a disaster. The only folks telling us how great it is are all being paid off by the gas companies. It will make us on a par with OPEC nations? You must be breathing or drinking the stuff. The reality is an industry willing to destroy the countryside and the people living there for the $$$$$$$$$$. The money is much better off going into solar.
Elaine, Wind mills have been used for centuries as a power source. Grinding grain for flour is one use.
oops, Don Quixote was tilting at windmills in the early 17th century.
The first windmills were developed to automate the tasks of grain-grinding and water-pumping and the earliest-known design is the vertical axis system developed in Persia about 500-900 A.D. The first use was apparently water pumping, but the exact method of water transport is not known because no drawings or designs — only verbal accounts — are available. The first known documented design is also of a Persian windmill, this one with vertical sails made of bundles of reeds or wood which were attached to the central vertical shaft by horizontal struts (see Figure 1a). A 19th Century American approximation of this panemone device is shown at the left (Figure 1b).
http://telosnet.com/wind/early.html
Yes, Elaine M. Bron is referring to the wind power that has been used for hundreds of years DIRECTLY to do needed work. Long before electricity was in the picture, the Dutch used wind-mills to pump the sea water out of their re-claimed land and Spain used windmills to grind their grain because they didn’t have lots of fast-flowing water for water-mills. The ROMANS used water and wind mills in mining and metal refining operations!
Nick? I can do without a lot of the things that fracked natural gas energy might provide. I won’t be able to LIVE, however, with NO CLEAN WATER TO DRINK! Fracking’s “collateral damage” to the potable water supply is just too great. As bad as processing tar sands sludge.
oil companies have been using hydraulic fracturing of wells since the 1940′s and quite successfully. It is nothing new.
Most oil bearing strata are 1,000′s of feet deep [below aquifers] and wells are cased with steel pipe to help prevent contamination of ground water and loss of product.
Nothing is perfect, windmills use hundreds of pounds of copper wire to produce electricity and thousands of pounds of coal to produce the steel. Both copper and coal come from mines which produce true havoc on the environment.
Plus windmills have been known to kill raptors. It is my understanding they also produce some sort of sound frequency that is quite annoying to certain people.
“But the boom — brought on by an advanced drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking — has brought problems too. While the gas companies have created numerous high-paying drilling jobs, many residents lack the skills for them. Some people’s drinking water has been contaminated. Narrow country roads are crumbling under the weight of heavy trucks. With housing scarce and expensive, more residents are becoming homeless. Local services and infrastructure are strained”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/us/hydraulic-fracturing-brings-money-and-problems-to-pennsylvania.html?pagewanted=all
Does it cause earthquakes? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/earthquake-outbreak-in-central-u-s-tied-to-drilling-wastewater.html
All I need to know who is behind it, people like Gov. Corbett, to know it is a bad idea, but the truth of it, damage to environment and drinking water for a start gives it the thumbs down.
bettykath & chimene,
I’m well aware of the use of windmills in the past for grinding grain, pumping water, etc. I’d say that is quite different from building large wind farms to generate electricity. Evidently, people missed my point.
Back in the 1980s, my husband worked for a windmill company (US Windpower) that actually installed the world’s first wind farm on Crotched Mountain in southern New Hampshire.The company also built a large wind farm in Altamont Pass in california.
http://www.umass.edu/windenergy/about.history.alumni.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Pass_Wind_Farm
*****
Darren,
“Let us not forget, Ted Kennedy of Mass. also declared some opposition to a wind farm project.”
John Kerry did too.
I wrote a post about fracking last year for the Turley blog:
Fracking USA: A Post about the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, Governor Tom Corbett, C. Alan Walker, the Marcellus Shale, Polluted Drinking Water, and the Movie Gasland
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/04/10/fracking-usa-a-post-about-the-pennsylvania-department-of-community-and-economic-development-governor-tom-corbett-c-alan-walker-the-marcellus-shale-polluted-drinking-water-and-the-movie-gasland/
bron
the problem is what migrates on the outside of the well casing, not what passes through the pipe itself.
Elaine, sorry about the misunderstanding. Previous article is excellent.
The upshot of this news is that Ohio, a battle state in the presidential elections, will lose (or stand to lose) many jobs associated with this. It may earn Pres. Obama some more votes or is anyone employed in alternative energy a liberal to begin with?
You’re all still forgetting about clean coal. Dirty water. Dirty air. There’s more fossil fuel energy in the form of coal in the continental United States than all the known oil reserves on the planet.
There has to be a gap. Wind and solar. What is the gap?
That’s hilarious. Germany as a model for electricity. Their average cost per kw/h is 27.81 cents. The US? around 11.0 for domestic users, a little lower or higher depending on locale. So, who wants electricity prices in the US to double? Maybe triple? Anyone? Buler? Buler? Oh, that’s right, Obama does. A rather famous quote of his, I believe. “Under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.” There goes the liberal arguments that they’re the party for the poor. I agree with Romney on ending federal aid for clean energy, though I would also end federal aid to the oil industry (except general tax incentives that apply to heavy industry generally, instead of a single industry specificallly).
My human Pal (none dare call a dog’s Pal and owner) lives in a small farm house and has a wind generator and solar panels on the roof. Four big marine deep cycle batteries power all of the needs of the house except the refrigerator. Stove is propane. The power company has to pay him a credit. Same thing on the sailboat except the power company does not have to pay him a credit because he has no power company hooked to the boat. LED lighting is the wave of the future. Romney’s glib little wave and his preppy attire is the wave of the past. The Willard. RepubliCons really screwed up this time around. Bring back Palin. Anybody but The Willard.
Did you know that he was conceived in the Willard Hotel and that is how he got the name Willard. Mitt means My in Swedish and he was given that appellation by the Kock Brothers. Ask for his birth certificate when you request his ten years tax return. I think he has a wind generator credit in 2009.
My human Pal (none dare call a dog’s Pal an owner) lives in a small farm house and has a wind generator and solar panels on the roof. Four big marine deep cycle batteries power all of the needs of the house except the refrigerator. Stove is propane. The power company has to pay him a credit. Same thing on the sailboat except the power company does not have to pay him a credit because he has no power company hooked to the boat. LED lighting is the wave of the future. Romney’s glib little wave and his preppy attire is the wave of the past. The Willard. RepubliCons really screwed up this time around. Bring back Palin. Anybody but The Willard.
Did you know that he was conceived in the Willard Hotel and that is how he got the name Willard. Mitt means My in Swedish and he was given that appellation by the Kock Brothers. Ask for his birth certificate when you request his ten years tax return. I think he has a wind generator credit in 2009.
Windmills kill nearly half a million birds a year, according to a Fish and Wildlife estimate. The American Bird Conservancy projected that the number could more than double in 20 years if the administration realizes its goal for wind power. For years, the wind energy industry has had a license to kill golden eagles and lots of other migratory birds.
Over the past two decades, the federal government has prosecuted hundreds of cases against oil and gas producers and electricity producers for violating some of America’s oldest wildlife-protection laws: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and Eagle Protection Act.
But the Obama administration has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines.
Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.
So keep on pushing on this “green energy” while species are going extinct because people refuse to see the main reason why we are running out of fuel: OVERPOPULATION. We shouldn’t focus on how we can rape our planet of more resources we should focus on reducing the world population and then all the problems will be solved.
Check this out: http://www.vhemt.org/
candidate Obama supports clean coal – “will create 5 million new jobs.”
What happened??
US Citizens would be better off dividing all the federal funds used to support wind power between each citizen. Wind Power is a Lose Lose
CLH 1, August 4, 2012 at 3:15 am
That’s hilarious. Germany as a model for electricity. Their average cost per kw/h is 27.81 cents. The US? around 11.0 for domestic users, a little lower or higher depending on locale. So, who wants electricity prices in the US to double? Maybe triple? Anyone? Buler? Buler? Oh, that’s right, Obama does. A rather famous quote of his, I believe. “Under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket.” There goes the liberal arguments that they’re the party for the poor. I agree with Romney on ending federal aid for clean energy, though I would also end federal aid to the oil industry (except general tax incentives that apply to heavy industry generally, instead of a single industry specificallly).
=================================
You’re an idiot. How many hundreds of billions have been spent on the wars to secure oil? And all the dead and maimed people. Do you know why the U.S. wants to secure Afghanistan? To secure an oil pipeline.
Albastru Voronet 1, August 4, 2012 at 3:38 pm
But the Obama administration has never prosecuted the wind industry despite myriad examples of widespread, unpermitted bird kills by turbines.
Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that about 70 golden eagles are being killed per year by the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, about 20 miles east of Oakland, Calif. A 2008 study funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency estimated that about 2,400 raptors, including burrowing owls, American kestrels, and red-tailed hawks—as well as about 7,500 other birds, nearly all of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—are being killed every year by the turbines at Altamont.
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Millions of birds die every winter from starvation. Get out your bird feeder if you have a problem with that.
It is amazing, even disturbing, that we continue to see these articles suggesting that wind and solar make sense OR have any significant part of our energy future. This is public relations at its worst. OF COURSE those getting enormous government subsidies want them to continue, but that misses the point. Math is required here. Have wind and solar made a measurable difference in our energy mix and have they helped to reduce C02 emissions?
No. Not at all. It has been a huge disappointment and waste of public funds. We are just beginning to learn that developers make money when the deal is done, not based on performance. This sounds a lot like sub-prime mortgages.
I think we all need to start telling the truth – especially journalists.
Solar and wind schemes have not reduced CO2 emissions and they have only raised electricity rates. “Energy farming” (wind and solar) will NEVER replace coal (or oil) and they are simply an over-priced supplements, not “alternatives.” Incentives gave people false hopes about solving the problem and we are now beginning to learn the truth. Polls demonstrate that nearly 60% of Americans “believe solar will replace our dependence on oil,” yet it is impossible.
Despite significant subsidies in the last 5 years ($1 trillion worldwide) wind and solar are less than 2% of our total electricity generation (solar is .1%). Plus, because they are unreliable any attempt to accept their unpredictable electricity generation requires us to ramp down our base load electricity generation, creating additional costs and more CO2. This 2% addition of renewables hasn’t changed CO2 emissions at all – even new demand has been 3X wind and solar. These schemes have made NO difference at all.
Cheerleading for wind and solar might extend the incentives, but it won’t solve the energy problem. We need clean, affordable electricity.
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