Building Wind Power Turbines In America Just Got A Lot More Expensive Thanks To Tariffs
Wind power is a pipe dream. It’s unreliable, needing backup sources of energy able to meet peak demand just in case the wind isn’t blowing, and it is significantly more expensive than coal or natural gas power. Maybe some future invention or innovation will make wind power feasible, but as it stands now it’s a bad investment.
Which, of course, isn’t stopping our politicians from dumping billions into wind power in the form of subsidies, etc., etc. But I digress.
Whether or not you or I think wind power is a good idea, if the idea is to promote wind power in the United States, we should welcome the presence in the market of cheap wind tower parts. After all, the cheaper it is to build wind powers, the closer they are to viability. Which is why this decision to slap a heavy tariff on imported wind turbines from China and Vietnam is so odd.
Wind towers from China and Vietnam are about to get more expensive.
Utility-scale wind towers from China will face anti-dumping duties from 20.85 percent to 72.69 percent, the Commerce Department said Friday.
Towers from Vietnam face anti-dumping duties between 52.67 percent and 59.91 percent.
The anti-dumping tariff, designed to counteract nations selling goods in the U.S. at below-market rates to snatch up more market share, adds to countervailing duties of between 13.74 percent and 26 percent, the department announced in May.
That means some wind towers from China could face tariffs as high as nearly 100 percent.
Both tariffs are preliminary and open to modification — potentially up or down — before Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission finalize them later this year or in early 2013.
This will make the proliferation of wind power in America harder, as it will drive up the price of building wind turbines. Which is the exact opposite of what proponents of wind power should want.
But that’s supposing that proponents of wind power have the proliferation of wind power as their primary goal. They don’t, really. It’s not about wind power so much as propping up the American “green” industry. Which is why, as the solar power industry collapsed (with “stimulus” flop Solyndra leading the way), the federal government attacked China’s solar panel industry. It’s why domestic ethanol has been protected by a heavy tariff on imported ethanol.
It’s not about green energy. It’s about protectionism and crony capitalism.
Again, I don’t think that either the wind industry or the solar industry are ready for prime time. I think it’s foolish for the government to continue pushing them as if they were. But these tariffs will only serve to delay the point, if it is ever to come, when we might be able to rely on these technologies in any sort of a significant way.
Tags: Asshats, green energy, protectionism, solar power, solyndra, wind power
