Wind Energy Lobby Kicks Out Company Calling For End To Wind Subsidies
According Exelon, which had been outspoken in its opposition to extending wind’s production tax credit, the subsidies are distorting the market and undermining the development of other clean energies such as nuclear power.
The American Wind Energy Association’s board voted last week to oust Exelon from the board and from the organization, specifically because of the company’s vocal opposition to extending the PTC.
“We regret that the actions of the Exelon Corp. made it necessary for the American Wind Energy Association to terminate Exelon as a member,” AWEA spokesman Peter Kelley told POLITICO. …
Exelon spokeswoman Judy Rader called the move “unfortunate,” and Senior Vice President David Brown said the company received no warning before being kicked out.
“We had not had any communications with them previous that would indicate that that was coming,” Brown said Monday.
He added that “the wind PTC has run its course. And it’s reached the tipping point where it’s distorting competitive markets that we operate in, … and it’s displacing other clean generation in the market.”
Specifically, wind is undermining the company’s nuclear fleet, Brown said.
The simple truth about wind energy is that it doesn’t work. It’s expensive and unreliable and, absent government subsidies and mandates, nobody would buy it. With wind energy – much like other “green” debacles like solar and ethanol – the government has tried to create a self-licking ice cream cone. The subsidized these industries into existence and, when it became clear nobody was buying, they began subsidizing/mandating the use of these energies as well.
It’s all been a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars that hasn’t achieved even a fraction of the “green” outcome that hydraulic fracturing – the “fracking” loathed by environmentalists across the nation – has done by lowering natural gas prices to the point where gas has begun to supplant coal as the nation’s baseline, reliable and cheap energy solution.
Thanks to fracking – and not wind or solar or ethanol or any other “green” government enterprise – US carbon emissions are at twenty-year lows.
So yes, let’s stop subsidizing wind energy. It’s not “greening” anything but the wallets of the crony capitalists in the wind energy.
Tags: ethanol, solar energy, subsidies, wind energy
