Karl Rove Tilts at Windmills, Government Subsidized Windmills: This is a Problem, an Expensive, Disastrous Problem

By Gary P Jackson

I’ve written extensively about the various “green energy” scams out there today. Out of all of them, wind power is probably the biggest. Billions upon billions of local, state, and federal tax dollars are flushed down the toilet annually, wasted on an energy source that has absolutely no chance of making it on it’s own, without massive government subsidies.

Think about this: Despite a significant push by governments and private investors, wind power only generates 3% of America’s energy. A very poor investment of time and money.

The problems with wind power are many. The most significant issue is the wind itself. There are few places where the wind blows constantly. And wind turbines only generate electricity when the wind is blowing. No wind and you have no electricity. This means you still have to have conventional, and reliable, energy sources in place to make sure you actually have power. So you find yourself paying for the upkeep and maintenance on not one, but two high dollar systems.

The big selling point for wind is it’s supposedly a clean source of energy, but if it only generates energy on a part time basis, and must be backed up by a conventional system, then the only “green‘ involved is the kind the government lifts out of your wallet!

Even when the wind is blowing, the turbines are prone to breakage, so again, instead of generating power, you’re spending money on repairs as well as having to use conventional energy. Then there are the birds. These things rip birds to shreds.

How inefficient is wind power though? In doing a report about the City of Reno, Nevada’s boondoggle, I found:

One example is the city of Reno, which paid $21,000 to have a wind turbine installed. It’s saved them a whopping $4 in energy costs. In total, the city has paid $416,000 for all of it’s wind turbines, only to see a net savings of $2,800.

Bear in mind, that $2800 savings is over TWO YEARS.

To give you an idea of just how ridiculous wind power is, it would take 297 years for Reno to break even on this “investment.” A wind turbine will only last a fraction of that time before needing to be replaced with a new one.

There is also a staggering amount of corruption involved, what you’d call crony capitalism. Obama’s buddies over at General Electric have done quite well by investing almost $100 million, not in research and development, but in lobbying Congress!

GE’s corporate motto is “Imagination”, but it was lobbying muscle that drove wind power. GE’s $23 million lobbying in 2005 was rewarded with Congressional passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that provided new tax incentives and loan guarantees for renewable energy.

As GE lobbying rose to $26 million in 2009, Congress amended Section 406, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorizes loan guarantees to wind power as an “innovative technology that avoid greenhouse gases.”
In 2010, GE lobbying soared to $39 million as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 spiked Congressional funding to $27.2 billion in grants for renewable energy.

Wind power has so much in the way of a accelerated depreciation tax break, production tax credits, and renewable energy credits that GE has been able to recoup its capital investments within a few years.

Before we get to Karl “Tokyo” Rove, lets ponder this for a second. For all of the billions of dollars wasted on this boondoggle, how many nuclear power plants could be built? Nuclear is clean, reliable, and competitive.

I’m always struck by the fact that France, yes FRANCE, gets roughly 75% of it’s electricity from nuclear powered plants.

France derives over 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy. This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security. 

France is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this. 

France has been very active in developing nuclear technology. Reactors and fuel products and services are a major export. 

It is building its first Generation III reactor and planning a second.  

About 17% of France’s electricity is from recycled nuclear fuel.

The first paragraph says it all. France bases their energy policy on SECURITY. In other words, energy independence. America has the natural resources to be completely energy independent for centuries, and yet we waste blood and treasure on worthless “green” energy projects that yield little in return.

Read more about France’s program here.

In contrast:

Nuclear energy provides 19.2 percent of the United States’ electricity and is its No. 1 source of emission-free electricity.

This boggles the mind. How is it France can pull this off, but we can’t?

Part of it is government red tape and misguided environmental zealots, but it’s obvious that a fair amount of the problem can be attributed to corruption in government.

Now to Rove. From Bloomberg Businessweek: [emphasis mine]

Renewal of federal tax credits for wind energy can save U.S. jobs and reduce dependence on foreign oil, according to Karl Rove, an adviser to former President George W. Bush.

“We’ve got a growing economy that’s increasing energy consumption and wind energy should be part of the solution,” Rove said today on a panel at a wind conference in Atlanta. Extending the so-called production tax credit “should be a priority.”

A bill to extend through 2016 the 2.2-cent-a-kilowatt-hour credit for electricity produced by wind turbines, biomass, geothermal and landfill-gas plants has stalled in congress along with about 100 other expiring tax-related incentives.

The tax credit is one of the major topics of debate this week as executives gather for the Windpower 2012 annual conference.

There are about 75,000 U.S. wind-industry workers, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Letting the credit lapse will lead to the elimination of 10,000 wind- industry jobs this year and another 27,000 in 2013, the Washington-based trade group estimates.

First of all, in what fantasy world is Rove living in where the economy is “growing”? As for consumption, we’re actually using less energy, not more. A great deal of this is due to the fact tens of millions of Americans are out of work, and are not using energy to commute to one of those pesky old jobs they used to have!

No wonder President Bush’s nickname for Rove was “Turd Blossom,” something smells really bad here!

Rove spoke at the Windpower 2012 conference. So did Ted Turner and Robert Gibbs, according to their website.

Turner is a well know radical who has said that 95% of the world’s population should be “eliminated“ in order to “save the planet” and wants a world-wide one child policy for at least the next 100 years.

Rove was in some good company at this little get together, huh.

I did some research and while I couldn’t find any direct investment by Rove in wind power, I did find some interesting articles. One quotes Rove as saying: “You have to take the politics out of [energy issues] to get something done.” I don’t know about you, but when I hear a politician say something like that, a whole bunch of red flags start flying! You can bet this is ALL about politics…. and kickbacks.

I found several articles over at Think Progress, the highly partisan lefty site, that also caught my attention. For starters, two of President Obama’s biggest cronies, General Electric and Warren Buffet, along with Google, an Obama friendly outfit, have significant interest in seeing continued tax payer dollars wasted subsidizing this boondoggle.

Of course, there is the standard caterwauling that Congress isn’t wasting enough money on this deal. But what really caught my eye was an article talking about bi-partisan support among Governors.

The National Governors Association has something called the Governor’s Wind Energy Coalition. And no, they aren’t talking about the hot air they generate!

There’s a letter to Congress, co-signed by Governors Lincoln Chafee, the well known liberal Republican, turned Independent, Governor of Rhode Island and the coalition chairman, and Iowa’s Republican Governor Terry Branstad, the vice-chair. Although most of the Governors on the masthead are lefties, I was very disappointed to see Governors Susanna Martinez, Mary Fallon, and Sam Brownback involved in this.

Read the letter begging Congress for more money here.

Paul Driessen has a great summary that details why we must stop subsidizing failure: [emphasis mine]

Energy 101. It is impossible to have wind turbines without fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Turbines average only 30% of their “rated capacity” – and less than 5% on the hottest and coldest days, when electricity is needed most. They produce excessive electricity when it is least needed, and electricity cannot be stored for later use. Hydrocarbon-fired backup generators must run constantly, to fill the gap and avoid brownouts, blackouts, and grid destabilization due to constant surges and falloffs in electricity to the grid. Wind turbines frequently draw electricity from the grid, to keep blades turning when the wind is not blowing, reduce strain on turbine gears, and prevent icing during periods of winter calm.

Energy 201. Despite tens of billions in subsidies, wind turbines still generate less than 3% of US electricity. Thankfully, conventional sources keep our country running – and America still has centuries of hydrocarbon resources. It’s time our government allowed us to develop and use those resources.

Economics 101. It is likewise impossible to have wind turbines without perpetual subsidies – mostly money borrowed from Chinese banks and future generations.

Wind has never been able to compete economically with traditional energy, and there is no credible evidence that it will be able to in the foreseeable future, especially with abundant natural gas costing one-fourth what it did just a few years ago.

It thus makes far more sense to rely on the plentiful, reliable, affordable electricity sources that have powered our economy for decades, build more gas-fired generators – and recycle wind turbines into useful products (while preserving a few as museum exhibits).

Economics 201. As Spain, Germany, Britain and other countries have learned, wind energy mandates and subsidies drive up the price of electricity – for families, factories, hospitals, schools, offices and shops.

They squeeze budgets and cost jobs. Indeed, studies have found that two to four traditional jobs are lost for every wind or other “green” job created. That means the supposed 37,000 jobs (perpetuated by $5 billion to $10 billion in combined annual subsidies, or $135,000 to $270,000 per wind job) are likely costing the United States 74,000 to 158,000 traditional jobs, while diverting billions from far more productive uses.

Environment 101. Industrial wind turbine projects require enormous quantities of rare earth metals, concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and other raw materials, for highly inefficient turbines, multiple backup generators and thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines.

Extracting and processing these materials, turning them into finished components, and shipping and installing the turbines and power lines involve enormous amounts of fossil fuel and extensive environmental damage. Offshore wind turbine projects are even more expensive, resource intensive and indefensible. Calling wind energy “clean” or “eco-friendly” is an extraordinary distortion of the facts.

Environment 201. Wind turbines, transmission lines and backup generators also require vast amounts of crop, scenic and wildlife habitat land.

Where a typical 600-megawatt coal or gas-fired power plant requires 250-750 acres, to generate power 90-95% of the year, a 600-MW wind installation needs 40,000 to 50,000 acres (or more), to deliver 30% performance. And while gas, coal and nuclear plants can be built close to cities, wind installations must go where the wind blows, typically hundreds of miles away – adding thousands of additional acres to every project for transmission lines.

Environment 301. Sometimes referred to as “Cuisinarts of the air,” US wind turbines also slaughter nearly half a million eagles, hawks, falcons, vultures, ducks, geese, bats and other rare, threatened, endangered and otherwise protected flying creatures every year.

(This may be a very conservative number, as coyotes and turbine operator cleanup crews remove much of the evidence.)

And yet, while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of even a dozen common birds, turbine operators have been granted a blanket exemption from endangered and migratory species laws and penalties. Now the US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a formal rule to allow repeated “takings” (killings) of bald and golden eagles by wind turbines – in effect granting operators a 007 license to kill.

Read more here.

I don’t know exactly what Karl Rove’s angle is, but I doubt it’s ideological. Wind power is a disaster on every level. It’s inefficient, it causes great harm to the environment, and is wasting tens of billions of dollars that our government doesn’t have, and would be better used elsewhere.

Any politician that supports this disaster needs to be called out. There are too many PROVEN sources of relaible energy for this nonsense to continue.

Again, for the blood and treasure wasted, we could be building clean, green nuclear plants. That would create a hell of a lot more jobs than wind, and we’d actually see a return on the investment. There is natural gas. Another clean and green fuel. We have centuries worth of recoverable natural gas. And it’s cheap.

Few things upset me more than the so-called “green movement.” In every case, when you peal back the layers you find government waste, corrupt politicians, and shady characters.

I have a better idea. How about governments stay out of this and allow the free market to pick the winners and losers. That system has always worked well. What we are doing now, not so much.