At a public hearing on the Galloo Island Wind Farm payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal, no one from the town of Hounsfield raised a voice in support of or in opposition to a plan that will bring $2.14 million annually to the county, town, Sackets Harbor Central School and Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency. You have to wonder why. ...Add it all up, and you can see just how much this "private sector" developer will rely on federal, state and local taxpayers to permit him to make profits. Especially galling is the extent to which local officials, especially the IDA, are doling out hard-won tax dollars to bring, at best, a handful of jobs to the region, and a short-lived flurry of construction money.

Jefferson County homeowners, dairy farmers and small businesses will pay the price in higher taxes to subsidize tax breaks for developers of the Galloo Island Wind Farm under the terms of a tax agreement worked out with the Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency. ...It's a lousy deal for taxpayers, and it gets worse. PILOTs and other preferential treatment for developers are meant to foster job growth, but the wind farm will generate a handful of permanent jobs beyond the short-term construction work.

At a public hearing on the Galloo Island Wind Farm payment in lieu of taxes deal, no one from the town of Hounsfield raised a voice in support of or in opposition to a plan that will bring $2.14 million annually to the county, town, Sackets Harbor Central School and Jefferson County IDA. You have to wonder why. The deal, after all, will give the wind farm an 85 percent break on taxes that would be due without the PILOT. On an assessment of $400 million (the project will cost at least $500 million to build), from a total property tax bill of $14.52 million, the school district alone would receive $8.9 million dollars a year.

Perhaps some will remember that FSU received a much ballyhooed Maryland grant to study the performance of a wind and solar apparatus built several years ago on the campus. But where is the data showing how this project fared over the last 18 months? How much fuel did the campus save? What were the annual capacity factors? How much energy did the systems provide at peak demand times? Such data and more should have been presented so that the public would know how this equipment really performed. Now, thanks to the nation's taxpayers - the source of the DOE grant - here we go again, onward and upward in the name of energy du jour.

A well-rehearsed claim repeatedly trumpeted by wind project developers, and those wanting to join with them, promises substantial new property tax revenues as a windfall for our schools and counties. This argument becomes a tool used to disarm those neighbors who are opposed to these mammoth towers and the disruption to this agricultural community. As I have investigated these claims of promised new tax revenues, I was struck by what is not shared: Subsequent appeals of the taxes, attempts to claim the turbines are not real property and affects of accelerated depreciation on these turbines thereby rapidly reducing the taxable value.

The romantic view of wind power is a stand of wind turbines atop a ridge gently spinning in a breeze generating clean electricity in place of an emission-producing power plant. Another view is a natural landscape defaced by huge structures whose operation annoys its neighbors, produces power randomly and does not reduce pollutants because fossil-fueled plants continue to operate as backup. The "pop" culture support and promotion of wind power is all based upon conceptual or theoretical constructs which do not reflect the physical, financial or regulatory realities of operating our electric grid system.

Cash-strapped Britain is now facing a looming energy gap, priced yesterday by Ofgem at up to £200bn. This is the sum that may be required to build new energy infrastructure while meeting environmental targets. Who pays, you wonder. Well, you do, with the pain intensifying around 2015 when Britain shuts down its most polluting coal-fired power plants and our old nukes. Then, household bills could jump by 60pc - enough to make anyone's hair stand on end.

Investment bankers are all aflutter with the onset of stimulus money for renewable energy projects according to the August 31 Wall Street Journal. After a long lag, numerous firms have again invested upwards of $100 million in wind farms. Investors are attracted by the quick returns made possible by the hefty federal grants and tax benefits. The growing subsidies for wind power mask wind's high cost and inherent limitations, but only for so long. ...Although appealing to many, wind power is an extremely expensive, inefficient, and unreliable source of electricity, incapable of providing base load power. Wind's intermittency, variability, line loss, necessary back-up generation, transmission needs, and dispatch complexity limit the amount of electricity wind can secure.

I recently read about Lewis County's loss of income from the Maple Ridge Wind Farm because of the loss of their Empire Zone certification. This is something of great importance to any community that is considering wind farms. When monies come into a community, budgets are set up and the spending begins. Projects are started, and the community depends on the yearly income from the wind farms to meet the demand of new expenses and projects. Now Lewis County has to make up a loss of income.

The tax-dodging Treasury secretary and the chief of the unconstitutional department of energy announced more than half of a billion dollars in unconstitutional government handouts to energy companies this week, most of which will go toward expensive, inefficient wind power through a foreign-owned company. And this is just the "first round." Under the guise of "creating jobs" and "clean energy," this portion of the $54 billion allocated for energy in the "stimulus package" is expected to eventually siphon more than $3 billion from the productive economy - killing a great number of jobs in the process.

HB2472 would lower the maximum state payments to large wind projects from $10 million to $3.5 million -- shaving only about $20 million from the rapid growth of the subsidies. That made sense when the Legislature approved the bill, and it makes even more now that the program is expected to grow by nearly $100 million ...one of the first orders of business should be to override the governor's veto of HB2472, and reduce the unnecessarily large tax subsidies of some energy projects in Oregon.

Tax credits are essentially subsidies, and subsidies should generally be temporary. In the field of renewable energy, subsidies should be offered just long enough to encourage the emergence of technologies and economies of scale that allow new energy sources to compete without public assistance. They should never be so large or long-lived that they amount to a giveaway, promoting the development of projects that would have been completed without tax credits.

Cap-and-trade schemes could hurt families and send jobs overseas The recently passed U.S. House bill to create a cap-and-trade system to tackle greenhouse-gas emissions threatens to hurt families and send jobs out of the country, argues Washington state Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy. In Washington state, the definition of 'green jobs' is ill defined.

A payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement being developed by the Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency will give away tens of millions of dollars in taxes with minimal return for the price being paid by county taxpayers. A uniform policy plan being prepared by the agency will collect $2.5 million from developers of the proposed Galloo Island Wind Farm in its first year of operation. That represents about 15 percent to 20 percent of what would be collected if the project paid full taxes.

Jefferson County development officials continue to wrestle with the terms of a tax-exempt policy for several wind power projects planned for the county. ...The projects will have far-reaching impacts throughout the county and not just on the host communities, while they do not provide long-term jobs. Project developers should pay taxes like other businesses and industries.

Friday, in a text book example of bad governance, the House of Representatives passed by the slimmest of margins what is believed to be the largest tax bill in United States history. Not a single one of the 219 representatives who voted for it knew exactly what was in the bill. The major part of the bill is its Cap and Trade provisions.

Despite expensive and extensive green-job policies, a surprisingly low number of jobs were created. And about two-thirds of those "green" jobs were just to set up the energy source, in construction, fabrication, installation, marketing and administration. Only 10 percent of the green jobs created were permanent jobs actually operating and maintaining the renewable sources of energy. Each wind industry job created in Spain required a subsidy of about $1.4 million.

Excuse me if I'm not quite as excited about a cap and trade tax on my electricity as wind enthusiast Joe Richardson is. I believe I'll side with the North Dakota Legislature and the Industrial Commission, who want to see hard-and-fast numbers about what the true cost of a cap and trade tax is to the North Dakota economy.

But what are our tax dollars buying? In Utah, $79 million is being spent on improving drinking water. School districts in Georgia are receiving $660 million. Nebraska received $1 million to maintain national wildlife refuges. But what about Washington? In particular, will our tax dollars help build the Desert Claim Wind Power Project in Kittitas County?

The renewable energy source is all the rage in Texas, growing by 60 percent last year alone. It's a fave of the federal government ...According to one federal estimate, wind generators get more than $23 in federal incentives for every megawatt they produce. That compares with 25 cents for natural gas, 44 cents for coal and $1.59 for nuclear power. ...Texas is also working on another state sweetener for wind - almost $5 billion of new transmission lines.