Big Wind Payoffs ARE ‘Taxpayer Money’

Big Wind Payoffs ARE ‘Taxpayer Money’

 

New York State taxpayers and ratepayers in the GLOW (Genesee, Livingston, Orleans, & Wyoming Counties) region need to be made aware of incorrect assertions made by Orangeville Supervisor, Susan May, in her recent letter - especially since Orleans County is now being targeted by Big Wind developers. 

 

Ms. May was absolutely WRONG when she stated that recent projects completed by Invenergy in Orangeville were “done without taxpayer money."  Any payments the Town of Orangeville receives from Invenergy are a pittance of the recycled taxpayer and ratepayer dollars that Big Wind has first picked from the pockets of all U.S. taxpayers and New York State ratepayers.

 

The ONLY reason that Invenergy's 58-turbine project in Orangeville was built at all was because the federal Wind Production TAX Credit (PTC) - a TAX that ALL U.S. taxpayers are forced to pay ($.023 per kilowatt-hour) - was added as pork to the Fiscal Cliff Deal in the wee hours of the morning, December 31, 2012.  Without the PTC, Invenergy would NOT have built the Orangeville project. (See: http://www.masterresource.org/2013/09/new-york-wind-wars/)

 

In fact, generous subsidies and incentives are what enable the industrial wind industry to exist, as they make up as much as 80% of the cost of these projects. Thus, it’s certainly not hard to figure out why Big Energy corporations pay many $Millions of dollars to run national TV advertising campaigns geared at convincing crony-politicians to vote to continue these TAXES on American citizens. (See: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/08/siemens-ad-us-taxpayers/)

 

Industrial Wind is part and parcel of the UN’s Agenda 21 scheme, and is nothing but a transfer of our wealth, to rich, multi-national corporations – many of whom have NOT paid any taxes in the U.S. in years (ie: GE, FPL, etc).  As Warren Buffett candidly admitted, “We get tax credits if we build lots of windfarms.  That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

 

The driving force behind the existence of the wind industry are their claims that wind will significantly reduce CO2 and thereby stop Global Warming.  Again, reality tells a different story. 

 

30+ years into enabling the wind industry to exist, and there’s been Over $1.7 Trillion Spent, and ZERO CO2 abated (and that cost does NOT include all the civil and environmental devastation caused by sprawling wind factories).  Aptly stated by Manhattan Institute scholar, Robert Bryce, “Wind turbines are Climate-Change Scarecrows.”

 

FACT: Industrial wind cannot replace our reliable, dispatchable baseload generators because wind has virtually NO firm capacity (specified amounts of power on demand).  Thus, wind needs constant "shadow capacity" from our reliable, conventional generators – a redundancy which Big Wind CEO, Patrick Jenevein admitted “turns ratepayers and taxpayers into double-payers for the same product.”

 

ONE single 450 MW gas-fired combined cycle generating unit located at New York City -- where the power is needed in New York State -- operating at only 60% capacity factor, would provide MORE electricity than all of New York State’s wind factories combined, at about 1/4 of the capital costs – WITHOUT all the negative civil, economic, environmental, human health, and property value impacts that sprawling wind factories and all the transmission lines that must be added to New York City create.

 

Wasting money on the volatile, unreliability of wind has contributed to New York State earning the dubious distinction of having some of the highest electricity rates in the United States – a whopping 53% above the national average, which ultimately hurts the poor the most.  A NYS resident using 6,500 kWh of electricity annually will pay about $400 more per year for their electricity than if our electricity prices were at the national average. That’s over $3.2 BILLION dollars New York State residents will not be able to spend in the rest of the economy.

 

It is our children and grandchildren who will be saddled with the $Trillions of dollars the ‘green’ scam has piled onto our national debt – all while Big Wind destroys the very environment, and the townships, which they claim they wish to save. 

 

Consider this stunning contrast on display in Wyoming County and ask yourself -- Who will our children and grandchildren remember most fondly:

 

~ William Pryor Letchworth - a man with the foresight, wisdom and love for his fellow man to leave us the legacy of the natural beauty of Letchworth State Park - “The Grand Canyon of the East,” on the east side of the Warsaw Valley; 

 

OR… 

 

~ Elected officials – short-sighted men and women who threw their neighbors and the natural beauty of Wyoming County under the bus and industrialized five towns on the west side of the Warsaw Valley with useless wind turbines – a major contributor to the $multi-Trillion-dollar national debt?

As the song goes: “Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone…”

 

Mary Kay Barton

 

Tiny url:   http://tinyurl.com/qa2mk5h