Businesses that need government “investment” are usually so marginal that they can not attract private investors. Businesses that are needed, that produce something worthwhile don’t need our tax money to survive, to make a profit, to attract investors. Which brings me to “green” energy companies.
Tulsa Business World reports that the wind industry is asking Congress to extend a tax break for six years, a time frame it said is long enough to cut costs and short enough to ease fears that the credit will become a permanent part of the tax code. The tax break shaves as much as a third of the costs to generate wind power, and industry advocates contend its loss could cost thousands of jobs. Under the proposal, the credit’s value would fall gradually over the six years.
Their plan would keep 100 percent of the current credit of 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour for projects started in 2013. The credit would fall to 90 percent for projects completed in 2014, 80 percent in 2015, 70 percent in 2016 and 60 percent in 2017 and 2018, the credit’s final year.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and a longtime critic of the wind industry, said that Congress should allow the credit, to lapse.
Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, said they six year plan would cost the government $50 billion and it is a “government giveaway that has run its course.” Actually Mr. Pyle, the tax break does not cost the government – it cost the taxpayers.
The production tax credit is only one of the subsidies given to the wind industry. In addition to direct subsidies, the industry is given a de facto
subsidy at the state level in the form of mandates for renewable energy consumption. Another indirect subsidy: the exemption that the wind industry has
been given with regard to enforcement of federal wildlife laws.
- On a per-unit-of-energy-produced basis, the PTC provides a subsidy to the wind industry that is at least 12 times greater than that provided to the oil and gas sector and 6.5 times greater than that provided to the nuclear industry. That sum amounts to $6.44 per million BTUs produced. (One kilowatt-hour of electricity contains 3,412 BTUs.) Therefore on a raw, per-unit-of-energy-produced basis, subsidies to the wind sector are more than 200 times greater than those given to the oil and gas sector.
- More than two-thirds of the American population live in states that have mandated the use of renewable electricity, and those mandates are imposing significant costs on ratepayers.
- If viewed solely as a job-saving measure, a one-year extension of the PTC will cost about $329,000 per job.
- Despite numerous violations, the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—has unofficially exempted the wind industry from
prosecution under the Eagle Protection and Migratory Bird Treaty Acts. If Congress extends the PTC, federal taxpayers will, in effect, be subsidizing the killing of federally protected birds.
Separately, a group of Democrats and Rinos have urged Mr. Obama to support changes in the tax code that would allow renewable energy companies to get the benefits that some fossil fuel projects now receive. The changes include letting wind and solar companies form master limited partnerships. While owners could sell shares under these structures, the companies would be taxed at a lower rate than corporations.
Wind, solar and biofuels have been pushed by government since 1992 as the “energy of tomorrow.” The big problem with that is that tomorrow never comes. Extending tax breaks for another six years will mean that from today until tomorrow takes 27 years.
IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s) 5th Assessment Report, due for release in September of 2013, was leaked publicly over 9 months in advance on an internet publication called “Stop Green Suicide“ by Alex Rawls, who is backing it up with written evidence that cosmic rays are actually the cause of climate change and warming patterns, thus possibly blowing the lid off the whole entire global warming fraud pushed by figureheads such as Al Gore, the U.N. and Obama.
The admission of strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing changes everything. The climate alarmists can’t continue to claim that warming was almost entirely due to human activity over a period when solar warming effects, now acknowledged to be important, were at a maximum. The final draft of AR5 WG1 is not scheduled to be released for another year but the public needs to know now how the main premises and conclusions of the IPCC story line have been undercut by the IPCC itself.
You need to read the report yourself because I doubt any one in the drive-by media will mention it.
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Friedrich Nietzsche
