[ClearCase_guy]

Always interesting to see "$1 Billion in profits" in one paragraph and "$1 Billion in tax credits" in another. It's pure profit? No expenses at all? Energy is an economic topic, yes? This is an economics piece? Hello?

[The Great RJ]

Not the first energy boondoogle being paid for at tax payer's expense-- the whole ethanol (grain alcohol) industry that supplies alcohol for blending in gasoline exists solely because of massive government subsidies. Grain alcohol plants are sprouting up all over the midwest funded by similar lavish tax credits.

Trouble is that alcohol blended gasoline isn't energy efficient--it takes more energy to make a gallon of alcohol than you can get from burning it. That energy, in the form of electricity or natural gas, comes from traditional sources. The more energy consumed making alcohol the less less electricity and natural gas is available for other things like heating homes all this with no net gain of energy from burning the alcohol produced as a gasoline blend.

I'm convinced that all the windmill electric generators being built around the country are a similar waste of money.