Are renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets exchanged in totally different markets, with little crossover potential for project developers and investors?

But most of the those who are pumping money into the alternative energy sector -- and investing heavily in ethanol, wind and solar power -- are just shrewd people, who understand that it's hard to go wrong when Uncle Sam is helping hedge your bets and guarantee a return on investment.

We applied a couple of years ago, using a consultant, for a grant to help with the installation of solar panels on one of our buildings. ...After all of this preparation we were notified that the grant would not be given due to lack of funds. However, it was suggested that since there were few requests for wind turbines, we likely would get a grant.

On April 25, The Hays Daily News ran a fairly extensive news story on the proposed development of the industrial wind power generation plant west and southwest of Hays. That article stated that about 80 local families have expressed their opposition so far, but it did not say much about why there is this opposition. Let me try to explain very briefly some of the multiple sources of opposition. But please understand that this is an extremely brief explanation of each. More information is available at a public meeting being held tonight in the Fox Pavilion, starting at 7 p.m. and sponsored by the Ellis County Environmental Awareness Coalition. (Full disclosure: I am a member of this group.) I would say that the opposition can be divided into three groups, and these groups often overlap.

Absent special political privileges - federal research and development subsidies, tax breaks, and state RPS programs - today's renewable-energy industry, or most of it, would not even exist. Three decades, $14 billion in direct federal support, and untold billions in state taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies have failed to make "green" energy economically self-sustaining. Enough is enough. Congress should terminate, not expand, its patronage of this boondoggle.

937 is an unnecessary government mandate that is going to increase your utility bill. So vote no on I-937. I say this upfront because not everybody reads articles completely. No matter what else you read about I-937, remember this: If I-937 passes, we all will pay for it.

This initiative is really about wind power. The initiative counts other renewables, such as biomass, solar and tidal power, but other approaches are less advanced. Bizarrely, I-937 leaves out a biggie. Hydropower — that hallmark renewable of the Northwest — doesn't count, except for efficiencies made at qualifying utility dams since 1999. That's right: Hydropower doesn't count as renewable energy in the initiative.

So why, apart from the well-intentioned New York state legislators, who want renewable energy but don't understand the costs and inefficiencies, should the beautiful Catskills await the new industrial rapists? The claim of new jobs doesn't stand any scrutiny, since teams of contractors will be brought into the area and taken out again after the turbines have gone up. No, the real reason that Goldman Sachs and other big mecantile financiers are backing the giant windmills are good old-fashioned tax breaks. The US government permits a triple depreciation for tax purposes on wind turbines, and those with enough capital can invest in tax shelters that use these depreciations to remove the tax on profits for other ventures. In the words of one Catskills campaigner: "If I had the ability to invest $1 million in a wind farm, I could avoid paying taxes on another $2 million in profits from some other venture. Yup, that would save me half a million in taxes. Hmmmmm". Maybe, when it comes to some of the solutions offered by well-intentioned environmentalists, it would be wise to examine the motivation of some of the lobbyists who profess to support them. It's still not too late for the Catskill Mountains.

Yet, the only solid measure of the warming, the NASA satellite data, shows that over the 27 years that data has been available, warming has been at a negligible rate of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade. This level is engulfed by the statistical variation for reliability. Although there is an increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant nor does it pose health risks. Its effects, other things being equal, are to raise temperatures, but by how much is highly contentious.

It all sounds nice and crunchy on the surface, but Whole Foods might soon find itself picketed the same way Wal-Mart is, but instead of unions it'll be environmentalists.

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.

This demanding work is carried out by the MoD at no charge to the developer. Since the beginning of this rush for wind the MoD have received about 4500 applications and this year it is running at between 70 and 100 per month. They all have to be assessed, and many of these will be re-assessed so the work is enormous.

We applaud any effort to offer incentives to increase the use of renewable and alternative energy sources to power Michigan. But we hope the 25-percent goal can be reached by offering incentives, not by issuing mandates. The cheapest source of energy in the United States is coal. For the time being, at least, renewable sources of energy are a more expensive alternative. It would not bode well for economic development in Michigan if the state had astronomical energy costs.

As we said, it is not unreasonable to assume that the United States can overcome these technological hurdles. But that doesn’t make them any less considerable. Nor should we forget that the federal government has been subsidizing the renewable energy industry for decades with very little to show for it. “25-by-’25″ is a noble idea, but one which also still needs some careful consideration.

Renewables may not help much with global warming, but the nation might still benefit from all the new jobs that would come from building and operating them. Recent work by professor Lloyd Dumas of the University of Texas at Dallas predicts that happy result. Dumas cites research showing that if 20 percent of future power plants are renewable, they will create two to three times more jobs than if they all burn fossil fuels. It's the same argument we hear from consultants hired by local governments to estimate the employment that a tax-financed subway or stadium would create. Both they and Dumas conveniently forget that the money to pay these newly employed workers is unavailable for spending by consumers or investment by businesses. Workers who used to produce those goods move to other jobs, possibly after a spell of unemployment.

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.

The domestic auto industry isn't the only uncompetitive industry that seems to require life-sustaining transfusions of government cash to stay in business. Alternative energy sources have relied on such subsidies, called "investments," for years. Yet in President-elect Obama's announcement of his energy team, we were told "the foundations of our energy independence" lie in "the power of wind and solar." ...After decades of tax credits and subsidies, wind provides only about 1% of our electricity. By comparison, coal provides 49%, natural gas 22%, nuclear power 19% and hydroelectric 7%.

Suppose you wanted to make a bundle in the electric energy business in the little state of Vermont. How would you go about it? The old-fashioned way would be to generate electricity at a lower cost than your competitors. But forget that – too demanding. Here’s another way: get the federal and state governments to rig the deal in your favor.

Green energy has been on the subsidy take for years, including in 2005 when Mr. Delahunt was calling for "an Apollo project for alternative energy sources, for hybrid engines, for biodiesel, for wind and solar and everything else." The reality is that all such projects are only commercially viable because of political patronage. Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf ran the numbers and found that the effective tax rate for wind is minus-163.8%. In other words, every dollar a wind firm spends is subsidized to the tune of 64 cents from the government.