Let the wind subsidy blow away
Credit: Chicago Tribune | January 5, 2014 | www.chicagotribune.com ~~
In
the early 1990s, with dreams of cheap and clean wind energy ascendant,
Congress lavished a generous subsidy on power from the tall, twirling
turbines. The wind industry responded, and since then has increased its
installed generating capacity 30-fold.
For
20-plus years the subsidy has been intermittent, although not as
unreliable as the winds that drive the turbines. The most recent
authorization, a
2013 extension tucked into the federal budget deal that avoided the
so-called fiscal cliff, expired Dec. 31. Applause, please, for our
do-little Congress: What's known as the wind production tax credit has
long outlived any public policy usefulness. Lawmakers now being urged by
industry lobbyists to renew the subsidy retroactively instead should
let it blow away.
We
say this with no animus toward the bucolic concept of wind energy,
whose clean-and-green image is to electrical generation what puppies and
kittens are to the animal kingdom. Our concern is the reality of
subsidized wind energy at a time when natural gas is more plentiful, and
cheaper, than Washington could envision in the 1990s. Today wind
generation is a comparatively expensive proposition that, whenever its
tax subsidy temporarily has vanished, has seen the new construction of
wind farms all but vanish too. These
welfare payments to the industry have incentivized private investors to
sink money into wind projects that, without the federal freebie,
they're eager (and probably smart) to avoid.
Like its cousins, the ethanol and solar industries, the
wind lobby basks in political correctness and political favoritism: Big
Wind, too, has grown comfortable in its dependence on federal and state
governments that decide which energy industries will be winners or
losers - discrimination enforced by squeezing taxpayers or rigging
regulations.
News
about eagles killed by turbines is an issue separate from government
coddling, but one now emerging as a public relations debacle. In late
November, Duke Energy agreed to pay $1 million in fines in the first
criminal case brought against a wind company over the killings of
federally protected birds, 14 golden eagles and 149 other protected
birds slain at two wind projects in Wyoming. Robert G. Dreher, an acting
assistant U.S. attorney general, explained the violation of the
Migratory Bird Treaty Act: "In this plea agreement, Duke Energy
Renewables acknowledges that it constructed these wind projects in a
manner it knew beforehand would likely result in avian deaths."
Duke
said it is working with federal officials and field biologists to
determine when it should shut down its turbines to limit bird deaths.
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is investigating similar
cases elsewhere - and has referred seven of them to the U.S. Department
of Justice for prosecution.
Motor
vehicle drivers, illegal hunters and deaths by poisoning kill more
eagles than turbines do. But growing publicity about wind farms chewing
up eagles undercuts the industry's promotion of itself as
environmentally friendly. The National Audubon Society and other
conservation groups are especially exercised about a new federal rule,
announced in December, that lets wind farms obtain 30-year permits to
lawfully kill bald
and golden eagles. Many Americans who only have heard about neighbors
of wind farms criticizing the turbines' thrumming noises will have a far
easier time relating to criminal cases based on huge blades pulverizing
wildlife.
All
of which pins the Obama administration between its dueling political
loyalists: environmentalists learning about the 30-year eagle kill
permits, and fans of renewable energy sources that don't spew carbon
dioxide.
Wind
energy's peculiar problem is that, because wind blows erratically,
companies that rely on it also need backup generating capacity -
typically fossil-fueled - for days when customers want electricity but
the air is still.
The
obvious solution here is for Congress and the White House to stop
manipulating the tax code as America's de facto energy policy: Thorough
federal tax reform should sunset this arbitrary favoritism for wind
energy and other politically favored industries.
Late
in 2013, Big Wind fought fiercely to renew its expiring subsidy but
failed. We hope that means many members of Congress see this as a mature
industry that long ago outgrew its infancy and understand that the
nation's new wealth of lower-cost natural gas has profoundly rewritten
U.S. energy economics.
The
wind lobbyists will be back in 2014, pleading for more handouts from
American taxpayers. Tell your members of Congress that a government $17
trillion in debt - and still borrowing heavily - can't afford to keep
protecting this industry from cheaper competition.
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