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Several of America's finest national wildlife refuges - Pocosin Lakes, Alligator River and Lake Mattamuskeet - in concert with local landowners, provide the winter base from which these incredible animals can fly ...Remarkably, if the project moves ahead, the migratory swans, geese, ducks, and raptors may return to their winter Carolina home in a year or two to find 49 spinning turbines, each the height of the Washington Monument.
How is creating green jobs is like banning tractors to create farm jobs?
June 25, 2012 in National Center for Policy Analysis
June 25, 2012 in National Center for Policy Analysis
Best option of all - generating electricity using bicycle generators. Pedaling ten hours a day on a stationary bike, each person can generate 1 kWh. Investing $1 million in bicycle generators and paying people the going rate for the energy they create, we could create 1,610 jobs.
There is another benefit: these are not part time jobs. These are full-time jobs for an entire year.
Also filed under [
Impact on Economy|
USA]
Local organization supports Golden Eagle research amid questions about effective regulation of the wind industry
June 23, 2012 in The Recorder
June 23, 2012 in The Recorder
Highlanders For Responsible Development (HRD) has donated $1,000 to support a West Virginia University research effort to better determine the status and behaviour of golden eagles in the central Appalachians, including Highland County and the surrounding area. A major concern for HRD and the WVU research group is the potential for golden eagle mortality and population impacts associated with construction of utility-scale wind turbines on mountain ridges in the region.
Obama also cites the need to compete with other countries in developing the energy industries "of the future." The Brookings scholars argue that higher living standards depend on growing productivity, not the global market share of U.S. industries. ...Having China or someone else develop clean-energy technology might be to U.S. advantage; let them pay the inevitable start-up costs; then we can adapt the discoveries to our own needs.
Also filed under [
Tax Breaks & Subsidies|
USA]
Although it has the potential to be a green source of energy, wind power as it currently is being developed kills hundreds of thousands birds each year, including bald and golden eagles. ...The birds that are publicly acknowledged as being killed therefore represent just a fraction of the true toll.
Sens. Bennet and Udall are not doing enough to combat America's debt
June 16, 2012 in The Denver Post
June 16, 2012 in The Denver Post
Senators Bennet and Udall have consistently backed extension of three little-known items: the Production Tax Credit, the Investment Tax Credit, and Section 1603 grants. These notorious mechanisms provide billions in subsidies to the least efficient, most hated, and most environmentally destructive type of power generation: industrial wind projects.
AWEA's biggest member companies may be promoting wind energy -- and in the process they are reaping lucrative subsidies -- but they are also among the world's biggest users and/or producers of fossil fuels. Many of those very same fossil-fuel companies have garnered billions of dollars in tax-free cash grants and/or loan guarantees from the US government to deploy "clean" energy.
Cape Cod Wind Farms - When agencies put business interest over public safety
June 15, 2012 in The Legal Examiner
June 15, 2012 in The Legal Examiner
We live in a world where agency approval is deemed the gold standard. ...If the agency is rushing to the business interests of its lobbying friends, and avoiding its mission of providing the safest product to the public, then what value, if any, does the approval of the agency mean to consumer safety?
In order to merely keep up with the growth of global electricity use, the wind industry would have to cover 96 square miles every day with wind turbines. That's an area about the size of four Manhattans.
Glib economists might suggest that such a feat could be achieved, but that ignores another key question: Where will we put all those turbines?
The wildlife service says that monitoring and reporting by the wind energy operators "will be critically important for assessing impacts to eagles" under the proposed rules, and that the agency will conduct "periodic evaluations" of permitted sites. But the acreage devoted to wind turbines has exploded in the past decade; wildlife service staff has not. Effectively enforcement of these permits is a dubious prospect.
According to Mr. Obama, that future apparently requires a clumsy array of expensive federal subsidies. The wind production tax credit (PTC) devotes more than $1 billion a year to support wind-power projects, rewarding them for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they generate, not for providing electricity inexpensively or devising cheaper ways to operate.
Also filed under [
Tax Breaks & Subsidies|
USA]
It was a government subsidy industry where in exchange for creating conscience-soothing but otherwise inefficient windmills and solar panels, the government gave the makers piles of cash consumers never would. ...The reason the Spanish example is so important is that it demonstrates how the whole green energy "revolution" was really an ideologically driven green boondoggle from the start.
When bald eagles confront danger, most normal Americans would leap to protect America's national symbol. But Team Obama wants to give wind-power companies long-term permits to butcher bald eagles on the altar of green energy.
When bald eagles confront danger, most normal Americans would leap to preserve, protect and defend America's national symbol. But Team Obama's response is completely different: It wants to give wind-power companies long-term permits to butcher bald eagles on the altar of green energy.
Windy Republicans: GOP Congressmen sign up for energy crony capitalism
May 7, 2012 in Wall Street Journal
May 7, 2012 in Wall Street Journal
The vote on the PTC will be a big moment for the GOP. One reason the party lost its way in the Bush years is that it became a vehicle for special business pleading instead of free markets. If the party is serious about tax reform, deficit reduction and ending corporate welfare, then it will vote to take wind power off the taxpayer dole.
Also filed under [
Tax Breaks & Subsidies|
USA]
A government folly is playing out in our state's Capitol over a wind electricity project a group wants to build in Clark County.
At the root of this folly is a federal requirement. Believe it or not, a wind farm developer can force a utility company to buy its electricity, even if the company doesn't want it.
This gets worse. The wind power might cost more than the company wants its customers to have to pay for electricity.
Those customers aren't the only ones who are being fleeced. Even at high premiums the entire wind industry would be blown away by conventional power sources if not for huge taxpayer subsidies. According to a 2008 Energy Information Agency (EIA) report, the average 2007 subsidy per megawatt hour for wind and solar was about $24, compared with an average $1.65 for all others.
More jobs promoting green energy than actually making green energy
March 31, 2012 in Kennebec Journal
March 31, 2012 in Kennebec Journal
The largest green-job producers within manufacturing are steel mills. Over 50 percent of all jobs in steel mills are counted as green -- not because the steel goes to make green products, but because most of our steel is made from scrap steel.
That's right; most of our steel is recycled steel. And according Part 3 of the BLS definition, if you recycle, your job is green.
Also filed under [
Impact on Economy|
USA]
Herein is the biggest paradox: Many green groups want to first encourage conservation before considering more transmission -- lines that some fear would run roughshod through sensitive habitat.
Beyond the issue of conservation is the variable nature of wind and solar and how grid managers would incorporate them into the system.
Also filed under [
Transmission|
USA]
Wind power is horizon blight.
It's also what economists call rent-seeking. "Rents" are what you get when you're a political crony and you convince the government to take money from others and give it to you. The country would be better off with fewer rent-seekers feeding on the federal budget.