Once a booming industry thanks to sky-high oil prices, the feel-good trend, carbon reduction and subsidies, the financial crisis has pushed investors to give up on green energies, and like the dot-com bubble of 2000, some analysts say it's about to burst. ..."I think economic reality will kill the green industry," said Mr. Buckee, who now lives in Britain and lectures on climate change. Solar energy isn't alone in its woes. Wind, biomass, biofuel and other "clean-tech" companies are getting pasted too as the financial crisis sends investors fleeing from technology names, dries up credit and freezes the IPO market.

The likes of wind farms and other similar ventures have always been seen as more of a headline grabber in the UK rather than a real alternative for the future. The authorities have given minimal tax incentives for companies to get involved and there have even been complications with getting them connected to the national grid. All in all the alternative energy market has been launched and re-launched on many occasions but it is just not working.

[W]e are being urged to support the construction of massive wind turbine farms all over this country. Why are these developers so eager to build these massive inefficient industrial complexes? Because our state and federal government are offering lucrative tax incentives to build them. Where do you suppose this money will come from? The taxpayers. These international companies hire public relations firms to market their product. They love to use buzzwords such as: green energy, renewable energy, carbon exchange, global warming, etc., to lure you into thinking wind turbines are the answer to our energy needs.

Wind power and other renewables have their place in the energy mix. But since the federal subsidies for wind farms are so large, it's unclear Texas needs to provide additional incentives. These funds could be better used to raise teacher salaries and otherwise upgrade the quality of public education across the state. Removing or reducing the state incentives for wind generators will not by itself solve the education crisis in Texas, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Gradually, the message is beginning to sink in. With wind farms already growing in unpopularity, people are now waking up to the gigantic scale of the rip-off being perpetrated. As more and more people begin to understand this, it should only be a matter of time before the whole programme crashes and burns. But, there is one minor problem ... wind energy is an EU-supported obsession. To stop the scam, we have to confront the EU. Is there a politician brave enough to do this?

Creating a welfare-dependent industry in the province may benefit the backers of these projects, but the potential cost to taxpayers is huge, and the outlook for an unsubsidized industry is grim. ...The wind power industry in Canada gets a federal government subsidy of $10 per megawatt hour. But B.C. consumers can expect to dig deeper. The cost of electricity from wind power is about $71 per megawatt hour. That compares to about $48 for natural gas and $25 for electricity produced from B.C.'s heritage hydro assets.

When Young County commissioners began discussing details of the abatement with special counsel Alan Carmichael last week, the majority seemed very interested in finding a way to maximize the amount of money Young County stands to bring in if the farm is built. While that makes perfect sense up front, it could prove perilous to the entire project. With several other counties vying for wind farms from BP, it may not take much to sway the company one way or another. In Archer County, rumor has it that commissioners are planning to agree exactly to the proposal made by BP.

Pickens' plan is basically a couple of pie charts showing how he'd like to see the U.S. energy economy work. ...He gives no specifics publicly, but he's made it clear that it's up to Congress, not consumers or investors, to make this vision become reality. Because Pickens has announced his gambit in the name of the environment, the media have dropped the skepticism they usually apply to the claims of businessmen trying to make a buck. Because his plan involves government - meaning you and I pay the costs - that skepticism ought to be even greater.

Iberdrola of Spain, owner of Elk River, realized over $9.9 million in PTC allowances in 2007. Foreign companies are not regulated by the Kansas Corporation Commission. There are no state or federal regulations of any kind on WECS. Few Kansas counties have wind regulations. WECS will force consumers to pay for their electricity three times; to build the WECS, build conventional power as backup, and additional transmission lines to carry power from the WECS to the grid. WECS will not produce large economic benefits to a community as evidenced by records from Gray County (Montezuma), or Butler County (Elk River). Elk River has produced seven jobs. Most employees live outside the community.

If wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need federal and state subsidies already in place or the additional subsidies inherently needed in the wind power expansion directly and inferentially sought after by Pickens. Similarly, if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles are really an economically viable alternative to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, they would have succeeded in the market place and no government subsidy would be necessary. We can wish T. Boone Pickens well in his wind energy business, but there is no reason for taxpayers, ratepayers or consumers to pay him for his investments.

Every wind-generating power company in New York needs to come under closer scrutiny. There is just too much public money at stake. An aggressive watchdog is needed to make sense of the complicated deals they make, to protect taxpayers and to monitor the conduct of public officials whose decisions can yield wind generators millions of dollars. That's why a state attorney general's investigation of two wind-power companies is so important -- and why a critical, independent eye should be kept on the rest of the industry. ...These agreements need to above-board without even the hint of conflict.

Oil man T. Boone Pickens recently announced his own large program to help get America off its oil addictions. His message in his own Texas twang starts off appealing, while he properly and accurately reports on the $700 billion annually we now spend on imported oil, now at 70% of our total oil consumption. ...Regrettably, near the middle of his advertisement T. Boone wandered off into an alternative energy universe, proposing that wind and solar energy replace the current 22% of our electricity produced by natural gas. Neither source is a true alternative, and are merely erratic, unreliable, supplementary energy sources.

In Tazewell we detect something more to the spat between the state's attorney and some County Board members than just a difference of professional opinion. While we're none too keen on one part of local government suing another - attorneys win, taxpayers lose - Umholtz is on the right side of this issue by taking his stand on principle. ...the everybody-does-it defense employed by some Tazewell board members is a cop-out for those who know they're on shaky ground but want to rationalize a "yes" vote. Sorry, but these elected officials can read and comprehend the law.

The reaction of environmentalists to these developments shows how apparently strong principles can be set aside in favour of certain right-on technologies. Try to sink one 15,000 tonne oil platform in the North Sea (as Shell attempted with the Brent Spar platform in 1995) and Greenpeace will vilify you, but announce a plan to plant 7,000 concrete and steel pylons - each weighing 2,000 tonnes - on the seabed and you will be an eco-hero.

Much has been written about the merits or demerits of wind energy as a viable source of electricity generation for meeting the growing needs of electricity consumption in the United States. No matter which side of the debate one comes down on, one issue is crystal clear. Trillions of taxpayer dollars are being poured into the wind energy corporations' coffers to enhance the return on investment strategies with a guaranteed commitment by federal, state and local governments for a 10-year period. According to a recent report by the National Renewable Technology Laboratory (DOE), wind energy could account for 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030. To reach this target, wind turbines would have to produce 300,000 MW of power or 1,000,000 MW installed capacity. The 500,000 plus wind turbines would cost the taxpayers between $5-7 trillion.

As the Senate opens debate on its mammoth carbon regulation program this week, the phrase of the hour is "cap and trade." This sounds innocuous enough. But anyone who looks at the legislative details will quickly see that a better description is cap and spend. This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax. ...If Congress is really going to impose this carbon tax in the name of saving mankind, the least it should do is forego all of this political largesse. In return for this new tax, Congress should cut taxes elsewhere to make the bill revenue neutral.

As they [the American Wind Energy Association] well know, "installed capacity" is meaningless, since the output of industrial wind turbines cannot be stored and cannot be predicted or regulated. Their effective or useable capacity is near zero, while the effective capacity of coal, gas and nuclear plants is near 99%. When the public figures this out, I doubt that "85% of Americans" will continue to support wind energy.

At the heart of the credit crunch now afflicting the global economy is the bursting of a great housing bubble throughout much of the developed world. Bubbles are, of course, as old as capitalism itself. Many of us in England recall learning at school of the great South Sea bubble of the early 18th century. But they seem to be coming more frequently nowadays. The housing bubble has burst only a decade or so after the Internet and tech-stock bubble. So we may not need to wait all that long to see the next one. And the most likely candidate is a green bubble, fueled by climate-change alarmism and government subsidies. ...There may well be a green business opportunity. But my advice to would-be investors is this: make sure you get out before the bubble bursts.

Watermelons - people who are "green on the outside and Red on the inside" - refuse to believe renewable-energy technologies may never be capable of replacing oil and natural gas, but it doesn't stop them from sowing their fantasy seeds. ...Even with massive subsidies, renewables can't come close to competing with oil and gas; without them, they'd be dead in the water. Though wind and solar have been on the "subsidy take" for decades, the Journal notes, they produce less than 1 percent of America's electricity; nuclear, meanwhile, generates 20 percent but is subsidized 15 times less. Believing all renewables, let alone just wind, will produce 20 percent of America's power anytime soon requires a leap of faith only fools would attempt.

Olbeter says the House Ways and Means Committee will unveil today a tax package that would extend and expand renewable tax credits and reinstate the R&D tax credit. The bill would pay for itself by closing tax loopholes, "including one that allows fund managers to defer taxes on compensation earned from offshore funds and another that would allow multinational firms flexibility in allocating global interest expense." Olberter contends that the bill "has virtually no chance, in its current form, of becoming law." He says the tax loophole closures "are a nonstarter with Senate Republicans and the White House, which opposes taxes generally and these measures specifically." ...this is likely the last meaningful attempt by the Congress to pass extension of renewable energy tax credits before November; he predicts that the solar and wind credits "will probably lapse on December 31."