GE: Oregon Subsidizes Wind Power, Nuclear is Forgotten

Locations (proposed and actual) for wind farms

In the State of Oregon, General Electric made headlines after it was awarded a wind turbine contract worth $1.4 billion.  According to Oregon law, 25% of that state’s customers must get their power from “renewable” resources by 2025 (California is 33% by 2020 and Washington State is 15% by 2020).  We’re talking about a tremendous amount of electrictiy which will need to be generated:

To satisfy those requirements, West Coast utilities will need to come up with about 16,000 megawatts of generation from renewable sources by 2025. That’s a staggering amount of electricity — more than double the output of the entire federal hydroelectric system in the Northwest, which includes 31 dams and one nuclear plant.

Not only is it a staggering amount of power but the money needed to build these projects is equally large.  Who is going to foot the bill for all of this juice?  You got it… the taxpayer:

But during the past eight years, while the state has taken applications for $300 million in tax breaks to subsidize the development of the windiest, most transmission-accessible sites, it has yet to do any substantive analysis of how big a subsidy is necessary — if any — to continue attracting investments.

Not only is the Oregonian taxpayer subsidizing these power plants but a large percentage of this electricity is actually going to other states like California, effectively making the citizens of one state pay for the power needs of another:

That will assure that windmills locate here, Wiser said. Her group estimates that at least $44 million of the recent Oregon energy tax breaks are going to wind complexes that are selling their power to California, Washington and Idaho.

“Basically, we’re using our state’s tax money to help those states reach their renewable energy standards,” she said. “Nobody else throws $11 million at every wind farm.”

And the jobs that these projects are creating?  They are very expensive:

However, a Renewable Northwest Project study of seven new wind farms revealed that they created about 11 permanent jobs at each complex, for operations and maintenance. At that rate, the Business Energy Tax Credit is providing about a $1 million subsidy for each permanent job, once initial construction is done. Wind projects also qualify for federal and other tax breaks.

And under Oregon law, there is an $11 million tax credit that can be used for each project but companies are cooking the books so that instead of claiming this credit for each job they are instead dividing each job into different phases, thus collecting the tax credit multiple times:

Wiser complains that windmill developers are milking the state by increasingly splitting their projects into multiple phases to collect $11 million in energy tax credits for each phase.

Costs for different types of power generation.

So companies are taking advantage of the taxpayer, taxpayers are paying more than they should, politicians in the government are mandating more green power which will only increase fiscal support for these industries, and much of the power being generated (and paid for by the citizens of Oregon) is being sold to other states!

Wind power currently supplies 1.4% of the world’s energy needs and is considered to be 30% reliable (it can’t be windy all of the time).  The lesson about reliability was learned when, on the Texas plains, the wind died and the wind farms there stopped producing electricity, sending brownouts across the region.

Consider the fact that Oregonian law mandates that 25% of electricity be generated by renewable energy by 2020 – that’s 11 years away – and only 1.4% of the world’s power comes from wind!  Solar provides 0.8% of the world’s power, dams almost 20% and geothermal 0.23%!

Wind power is not the most expensive form of electricity to generate however it is one of the least reliable types.  The more power that is being forced to come from wind (or solar) the more unreliable the energy grid will become as demand tends to keep up with supply.  Imagine coming home from work and your lights don’t turn on because there is no wind… how well would our modern life work under this scenario.

And yet to fight “global warming” it is legally mandated that at anywhere from 15-25% of all power must be generated from renewable resources by 2020 on the West Coast!

So what is really the payoff?  The jobs generated in Barack Obama’s “green economy” are coming at $1 million per and the power itself is only there 30% of the time?  This is ludicrous!

And nuclear power, which is safe and reliable and has a cost very close to that of wind power is ignored while in Europe there are many new nuclear power plants being designed and built including five for England!

And it’s all being based on fighting “global warming” which is based on bad science anyway.

Another Liberal pipe dream for which we will all be paying.

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Exploring Liberal Myths: Energy
Obama Goes Nuclear?