CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Ordinary taxpayers are justifiably repulsed by having to bear the tax burden escaped by corporations that can take advantage of the extremely generous tax breaks and subsidies provided to them by the Congress and state legislatures. However, it is certainly not illegal for corporations to take advantage of those breaks. The blame for bad government policies – including the huge tax breaks and subsidies described in this paper -- rests primarily with our elected representatives who seem unable to understand the full implications of the measures they adopt and/or unable to resist demands from lobbyists.

The huge tax breaks and subsidies for wind energy are especially repulsive to many citizens, electric customers and taxpayers because it has become increasingly clear during the past 3 years that the wind industry and other wind advocates have, for more than a decade, greatly overstated environmental, energy and economic benefits of wind energy and greatly understated or ignored its adverse environmental, ecological, economic, scenic, and property value impacts.

In fact, the huge machines (many 400 ft or 40 stories) produce very little electricity. That electricity is intermittent, volatile, and unreliable. Further, because their output is dependent on wind speed, wind turbines cannot be counted on to be available at the time of peak electricity demand. This means that areas experiencing increases in peak demand or needing to replace older generators will have to add reliable (“dispatchable”) generating capacity whether or not “wind farms” are built. Electric customers could be paying twice: once for wind turbines and again for reliable generating units.

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