The Wall Street Journal's tepid stance on renewable wind energy is receiving some push back from people who actually experience the benefits of this abundant and promising resource. On Monday, Iowa Governor Terry E. Branstad had a letter published in the Wall Street Journal contesting two recent Journal editorials lambasting the wind-energy Production Tax Credit and renewable portfolio standard.
Gov. Branstad wrote, "Our state is receiving 20% of its electricity from wind farms at stable and dependable rates, and there are over 215 wind-related businesses operating in 55 counties across Iowa, providing jobs for more than 5,000 workers."
The conservative Journal had written that states like Minnesota have seen increased electricity rates due to their renewable energy standards. Yet there are questions about the studies that see increases in electricity rates. One group of researchers skeptical of the recent alarmism found that many states saw the rise in electricity rates before the implementation of renewable energy standards slow down, if not reverse. While Gov. Branstad, a Republican, did not directly question the Journal's assertions on electricity rates, his dissent was certainly impactful. Disseminating well-supported opposing information that counters the stand-pat positions of outposts reluctant to embrace clean energy is vital to secure a future with a livable environment and progressive energy policy. Doing so within the pages of the staid Wall Street Journal is doubly impressive.
The Production Tax Credit exists to reduce costs for wind-generated electricity by reducing companies' tax bills by 2.2 cents per kWh. The PTC is good for the first 10 years of a wind company's life. As Greg Pfahl, an audit partner at the Denver office of Hein & Associates LLP, explains, "It's a credit off of the tax due at the end of the year. There is no grant or anything such as that like the Investment Tax Credit." Yet its own life is in jeopardy due to partisan gridlock. Its extension is being debated in Congress, and if it ends in January as scheduled, it could result in the loss of up to 37,000 jobs. Renewable portfolio standards, on the other hand, are government-issued orders that utilities draw a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources and have been popular from California to Germany.
This isn't the first Wall Street Journal editorial to dismiss wind energy potential. In the past, the paper has questioned whether tools like the Production Tax Credit were cost effective, yet their lack of expertise in the area jumped out. The paper claimed the tax credit was 2.2% for every kilowatt, as opposed to 2.2 cents.
Of course, we can't all be experts in wind energy, and even popular proponents of renewable energy can drop the ball when presented with seemingly compelling arguments against wind energy, as notable progressive Roger Ebert seemed to do in his review of the movie Windfall. (Here is a wind expert's take on the movie.)
This makes it important for those armed with the facts and the experience of working with wind energy, such as Gov. Branstad, to speak up. And it only improves the quality of the information Wall Street Journal readers and other skeptics receive when informed green energy proponents do so.
Phyllis Cuttino: A Bright Future for Renewable Energy
In fact, in the south of France, that region of the world that the French Impressionists have made famous for its natural beauty, windmills along ridge lines have become ubiquitous. I, for one, count them as a perfect example of modern adaptive reuse of a traditional design, as a perfect example of form following function, and as a significant reason that French electric cooperatives in the region charge residential users about one-third for their power as we do in the States.
Even on oh-so-proper Cape Cod, not only did they successfully resist Cape Wind, they are now turning off their existing turbines at nighttime because they are too loud.
Failure.
Wind and solar are awesome -- if they do not resort to killing ecosystems for them. Wind gobbles up immense acreage of ecosystems, like these planet killers constructed over our fragile, desert ecosystems. Wind also kills birds and bats, both biodiversity, and plant and animal biodiversity creates and supports all ecosystems. As far as the Earth is concerned, when they rape ecosystems for wind, they might as well have dropped a bomb on that portion of the Earth.
I witnessed a California, fragile desert ecosystem devoured by immense windmills. No life could exist in this ecosystem; it was as life giving and supporting as the dust on the moon. Why worry about windmills butchering birds and bats when these immense, twirling devils chased away all life forms, and the rape and construction of them over the ecosystem devoured all the habitat/homes, food, shelter, nurseries and cover of all of the strands in the web of all life.
Ecological ignorance is killing all the reasons man breathes.
And there are downsides to everything. The best thing we could do is use less energy, but since that seems to be out of the question you have to ask yourself which or our systems harm the environment less. Solar or Coal? Wind or Petroleum?
Windmills devour immense tracts of the Earth for low energy yield, but few folks even comprehend why they are breathing. Sad. Kill the Earth while many scientists believe land-use changes are far more dangerous for mankind's existence than even climate change. However, these two issues are interconnected. What sits on the surface of the Earth impacts climate, and a recent study reports, windmills sitting on the surface of the Earth, heat up the climate!
In areas they grow citrus crops, they use fans in the winter to protect the crops from freezing. Why are cities referred to as heat islands? Why does agriculture have hotter climates? Killing our fragile desert ecosystems for wind and solar is nuts! We need to incorporate wind and solar where people actually live and not have it transported from miles away!
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/neighbors-win-court-round-over-wind-farm-noise/
Seems "Big Wind" is quite adept at playing the same kind of dirty political games as 'Big Coal" and "Big Oil"
"Then last June, according to Friday’s ruling, Patricia Aho, a deputy environmental commissioner and former lobbyist for the power company’s law firm, took over as acting environmental commissioner. She finalized the new regulations but removed the provision that Fox Islands actively prove its compliance."
Yep, they learned from the best, Massey Coal!! Remember that little Supreme Court case when Massey 'placed' a judge on Virginia's supreme court to help them win a big case.
Smaller scale, sure...but it matches the scale of wind & coals dominance in our current energy mix. One shudders to think of the dirty tricks 'Big Wind" will be up to when it 'grows up'.
How does it compare to a new Highway going past your place?
1997 3,288
2006 26,589
2011 119,747