More Failure of Windpower

Hawaii Reporter: Hawaii ReporterMore Failures of Wind EnergyBy Michael R. Fox Ph.D., 4/6/2008 4:49:27 PM

While wind energy is being wildly supported by many in the U.S., there have always been drawbacks to the performance and costs of these machines. The U.S. has had a heavily subsidized romance with them for nearly 40 years and too few of the state and federal policy makers have taken a close look at what the tens of billions in subsidies have actually done for the taxpayers.

These wind energy programs have made many companies such as Florida Power and Light very wealthy because of the heavy subsidies, tax credits, and accelerated depreciation allowance. Additional benefits come from local taxing authorities. This source of energy remains very unreliable and limited, having produced only about 1% of the nation’s energy for decades.

Such companies are far less interested in windmills than in the legalized tax evasion programs at their disposal. There is little promise that this will improve in the future, for the simple reason that the wind remain unpredictable, unreliable, and intermittent. For example, during the years of 2002 and 2003, Florida Power and light owner of the majority of windmills in the US did not pay any taxes on revenues of more than $2 billion dollars (http://tinyurl.com/5tb7pj). It was estimated that FPL took more than $1.2 billion in deductions during those two years, avoiding payments of hundreds of millions in taxes (http://tinyurl.com/5tb7pj). You and I paid those for them.

Remarkably, even after all this time such tax evasion programs are wildly supported by state legislatures, Congress, the media, the greens, and too many state and federal agencies. Many states now have the onerous Renewable Portfolio Standards which require utilities to have a sizable fraction (often 20%) of their energy sales to be from “renewable” energy sources such as wind energy. That is, state legislators require that its citizens to pay the taxes for large corporations. We are not being protected from our own government’s costly edicts.