Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Posted on 01/18/2008 5:25:03 AM PST by alnitak
Shattering all its previous records, the U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) in 2007, expanding the nation’s total wind power generating capacity by 45% in a single calendar year and injecting an investment of over $9 billion into the economy, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced today. The new wind projects account for about 30% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally in 2007 and will power the equivalent of 1.5 million American households annually while strengthening U.S. energy supply with clean, homegrown electric power.
“This is the third consecutive year of record-setting growth, establishing wind power as one of the largest sources of new electricity supply for the country,” said AWEA Executive Director Randall Swisher. “This remarkable and accelerating growth is driven by strong demand, favorable economics, and a period of welcome relief from the on-again, off-again, boom-and-bust, cycle of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power.”
“But the PTC and tax incentives for other renewable energy sources are now in danger of lapsing at the end of this year—and at the worst moment for the U.S economy,” added Swisher. “The U.S. wind industry calls on Congress and the President to quickly extend the PTC—the only existing U.S. incentive for wind power—in order to sustain this remarkable growth along with the manufacturing jobs, fresh economic opportunities, and reduction of global warming pollution that it provides.”
The U.S. wind power fleet now numbers 16,818 MW and spans 34 states. American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind energy in 2008, just over 1% of U.S. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at awea.org ...
Let's be fair in stating that the PTC is a tax credit. These aren't checks being handed out. This is tax credit of 1.9 cents per kwh -- simply money the govt is not collecting, which is fine with me. I'd rather the money stay in the hands of private developers and manufacturers than go to DC. And although coal and nukes are critically important and I support both, let's not fool ourselves into thinking those industries don't get MUCH more government benefits than wind energy. (How about multi-billion dollar govt insurance guarantees for nuke plants for starters)
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
What new coal plant is getting government benefit besides increased expenses and regulation?
Do you have a source link for this?
Soon the whole country can look like the Amish farmlands. Each neighborhood will have its own phalanx of windmills. Anything that screws the OPECkers is a winner to me. Realistically, we need a massive rebirth of nuclear power. Japan & France can do it; so can we. Japan is the only country to have actually been nuked and their willing to employ nuclear power. What excuse can we have for being afraid of it?
If you want to be fair, admit a tax credit is a market distortion just as a subsidy is. It’s an indirect subsidy, but it can make an otherwise unprofitable enterprise profitable, if all its customers don’t have to pay some taxes.
Government help on insurance costs for nukes is merely a fix for a government problem, that of over-regulation. The government has never taken the bully pulpit and explained to a hysterical public how safe nuclear power really is, and why Chernobyl could never happen here. (Three Mile Island was a huge disaster, but there were zero fatalities - something that can’t be said for coal, oil, gas, solar, wind plant “huge disasters.”) But they don’t, they just subsidize the outrageous insurance rates that they are partly responsible for the high price of.
Well, for one thing, there's plenty of coal operators who wash a pile of coal and get a big subsidy for creating "clean coal". Just google "clean coal subsidy"
And this isn't all as tax credits the PTC. There's huge pork checks being handed out in this program.
Say what? If students at one school can be brilliant and invent something, surely students in another school can do the same, your conspiracy theories notwithstanding.
Another claim : “injected 9 billion into the economy”.
No, it didn’t. You were subsidized by the taxpayer. You “injected” NOTHING into the economy.
“Do you have a source link for this?”
This is 27 years ago. I was stationed at Ellsworth.
The laws of thermodynamics dictate that whatever energy you extract, well, you do extract.
Now, whether (weather) that has a measurable impact on the energy in weather systems...
Excellent point (along with your other observations).
Just follow the money, and the "green power" is a joke; simply costing taxpayers subsidy money to bring power to certain areas where the landscape becomes a propeller nightmare, and the cost to produce semi-reliable power is five or six times the cost of similar "old" technology like Nuclear power.
Between carbon trade/cap futures, alternative energy "solutions", etc., we are being duped into taxpayer oblivion....
Sounds like one of those “cars that run on water” stories.
My nuke E prof (who worked on the Manhattan Project) in college took one look at a picture of Chernobyl and said - "that's not a power plant, that's a bomb factory".
Something about being able to access the reactor while it was running.
“Say what? If students at one school can be brilliant and invent something, surely students in another school can do the same, your conspiracy theories notwithstanding.”
I was not inferring that there was a conspiracy theory. Products are bought by companies all the time and buried. What I was saying was that there was great fanfare about this and then it just died.
Think about it. We hear all the time about all these great inventions. Are we to believe that in almost 30 years there hasn’t been an engine that can run at 100+ miles per gallon?
How come they are not in our vehicles?
I understand there is government funding for pilot plants of new technologies of clean coal. I was mistaken in not counting that. But I don’t find funding for ongoing operations of washing coal. Can you help direct me to some info besides unsupported claims by bloggers?
BZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTTT....wrong.
The collecting to pay for OTHER entitlement programs is picked up by the taxpayer. It's simple wealth re-distribution at taxpayer expense, where a lobbyist interest gains a "credit" (which means THEY don't get taxed), but to fund this shortfall, taxpayers get gouged somewhere else.
Follow the money, and EVERY sudsidy is a payoff, no different than the Global Warming scare to provide interests with a Carbon Cap+Trade market, stadiums to be built/subsidized by tax incentives, businesses to be located with tax breaks, etc. In EVERY case, their burden on infrastructure, their lack of contribuiton to taxes that would be used for tax-based entitlement programs, etc. is offset by taxpayer raping.
South Dakota is supposed to be the Saudi Arabia of wind energy and these monsters fill the landscape in man areas. Two problems: First the cost of electricity generated by windmills is about 4 times more per kilowatt that electricity produced in nuclear plants and almost twice as expensive as electricity produced by coal plants. Second even if every inch of space in this state were covered in windmills they wouldn’t produce but a fraction of our current electric needs.
A couple of weeks later the engine was gone and the students were not talking. The press didn’t say a thing."
Yep, years ago a guy I know was getting about 60 mpg from his new diesel truck.
He stopped talking about it after his buddies stopped adding fuel to his tank.
Such a vehicle would be a toy, not move people safely and timely. Physics of energy contained in gasoline and the energy required to move mass in while overcoming friction, drag and the Carnot limits of a heat engine do not go away.
Do you think China or Russia would care about who bought up the patents to gain such ability?
Repeating lies over and over do not make them true. But the do sell magazines to gullible with stories of Bigfoot & UFO's.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.