Robert Bradley Jr. has a useful and interesting MasterResource piece on years of broken "clean energy" promises in the US.
False Optimism, Broken Promises of Wind and Solar Advocates
“… I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t…. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But…”
– Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), an original author of the 1992 Production Tax Credit (PTC)
Special government favor has propped up solar power since the 1970s and wind power since the early 1990s. One decade turning into the next, the (not-so) “clean energy” lobby has repeatedly made promises that their technologies are, or soon will be, competitive with electricity generated from natural gas, petroleum, or coal.
Documentation of this failure is well reported here at MasterResource and by the Institute for Energy Research. This particular post reproduces in large part a 2015 piece by the American Energy Alliance (IER), “Wind Fail: 20 Quotes for 30 Years of False Hopes.”
A Litany of False Claims
It turns out that wind promoters like Sen. Grassley and AWEA have long made claims that wind would soon be cost competitive and that the PTC would not be needed forever. Here are of some of their claims over the years:
The whole piece is well worth reading as the optimism is just as false, the promises just as broken here in the UK.
Conclusion
The American Wind Energy Association surely knew in 2015 that their claims about wind being cost competitive were untrue. Without the PTC, no one would build wind turbines. As Warren Buffet said, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Conclusion
The American Wind Energy Association surely knew in 2015 that their claims about wind being cost competitive were untrue. Without the PTC, no one would build wind turbines. As Warren Buffet said, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
6 comments:
I've just seen an apt description of one of the ways that the Federal government likes to waste taxpayers' money: "recreational wars".
dearieme - unfortunately it's probably fun too.
There's also the question of all these miscreants being brought to book.
James - yes there is, although it's not a small number even if only the main miscreants are brought to book.
Subsidies from the Government are subsidies from the taxpayer with the added cost of the government involvement. If wind and solar are that good and cheap people would be flocking to buy them. That the government has to add cash tells all you need to know.
John - yes it's a blatant giveaway. Why so many people don't see that must be an indication of how powerful propaganda can be as we are well past the time when wind and solar should be commercially viable if they are ever to be viable.
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