Category: Alternative Subsidy

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

More people have been killed by Oregon’s windmills than died at Three Mile Island;

Today, 20 percent of America’s electricity, and 69 percent of its carbon-free generation of electricity, is from nuclear plants. But it has been 30 years since America began construction on a new nuclear reactor.
France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; China is starting construction of a new reactor every three months. Meanwhile, America, which pioneered nuclear power, is squandering money on wind power, which provides 1.3 percent of the nation’s electricity: it is slurping up $30 billion of tax breaks and other subsidies amounting to $18.82 per megawatt-hour, 25 times as much per megawatt-hour as the combined subsidies for all other forms of electricity production.
Wind power involves gargantuan “energy sprawl.” To produce 20 percent of America’s power by wind, which the Obama administration dreamily proposes, would require 186,000 tall turbines—40 stories tall, their flashing lights can be seen for 20 miles—covering an area the size of West Virginia. The amount of electricity that would be produced by wind turbines extending the entire 2,178 miles of the Appalachian Trail can be produced by four reactors occupying four square miles of land.

Amen.
h/t Eric Anderson

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Harvesting the taxpayer;

What hasn’t received national attention is the stunning taxpayer subsidized profits the developer is expecting to reap from the [Cape Cod] project. A study by the Massachusetts based Beacon Hill Institute found that the proposed $1 billion dollars in subsidies from the project would contribute to a nearly 25% return on equity by investors – more than twice the average historical for return for all corporations. Add taxpayers to that list of groups opposed to the project.

h/t Manotick

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

The high price of magical thinking;

The Danish study finds that the energy technology sector in Denmark from 1999 to 2006 underperformed the broader manufacturing sector in Denmark by an average of 13% in terms of value added, reducing Danish GDP by approximately $270-million compared to what it would have been if the wind sector workforce was employed elsewhere. The Danish Economic Council concluded in a report in 2006: “The wind power expansion in the 1990s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration.” The Centre for Policy Studies study concludes: “Denmark needs a proper debate and a thorough reappraisal of the technologies that need to be invented, developed, and costed before forcing the country into a venture that shows a high risk of turning into an economic black hole.”

h/t Manotick

Y2Kyoto: “Carbon Credit” And “Worthless Asset”

Not just synonyms anymore!

Europe’s emissions trading system was in uproar yesterday amid a mounting scandal over “recycled” carbon permits.
Two carbon exchanges were forced to suspend trading as panic hit investors fearful that they had bought invalid permits.
BlueNext and Nord Pool, the French and Nordic exchanges, suspended trading in certificates of emission reduction (CERs) when it emerged that some had been illegally reused.
[…]
The double counting is threatening confidence in the ETS, according to staff at one energy consultancy. Icis Heren said: “For companies obliged by law to buy carbon credits … government-led carbon credit recycling means they risk buying a worthless asset.”

More…

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

Chicago Boyz;

Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:
There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.
Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.
Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.

It’s the math, stupid.

He Was Going To Drive, But Ran Out Of Cord

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
CNN, November 2008“There is a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hand, saying that they’re going to be trimming down and streamlining their businesses,” Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-New York, told the chief executive officers of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee.
Washington Examiner, February 2010Electric vehicle maker used private jet to lobby in D.C. a dozen times

We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

The only real problem with wind turbines isn’t their performance record.

Northern New Brunswick’s cold, icy weather is causing wind turbines to freeze and stop producing power at the Caribou Wind Park near Bathurst.

The problem is that people still can’t tell the difference between stuff built to generate power….

Official data recording the performance of half the UK’s onshore turbines revealed the problems caused by a lack of wind during the cold snap. On the coldest day – January 7 – they produced just 5 per cent of their maximum output. On January 9 they produced just 9 per cent, and on two other days the figure was only 10 per cent.

… and stuff built to generate tax subsidies.

“If people see a water tower, they expect it to stand still,” said Wally Wysopal, the city manager of North St. Paul. “If there’s a turbine, they want it to turn.”

h/t Manotick and J.A.

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