“The spate of layoffs that wind industry advocates have warned about has accelerated in recent weeks, with workers losing their jobs in key wind states such as Iowa and Colorado in a trend expected to continue at least into next year.”
– Nick Juliano, “Wind Layoffs Mostly Hitting Constituents of PTC Supporters,” Greenwire, August 29, 2012.
Energy reality continues to set in for the government-dependent energy sector, industrial windpower. Part of the reckoning is economic–the increased competitive gap between electricity generated from natural gas versus wind. But the bigger part is the looming expiration of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind. Twenty years of such political favor has not been enough for a product that is intermittent (read: sub-industrial grade).
As reported in Greenwire last week:
…More than 2,200 jobs have been cut, are at risk or were never created, although an untold number more likely have been affected through cuts at smaller companies that may not have generated formal announcements.
Editor note: This post follows those of Walter Donway, who authored Crony Capitalism: Principles (Part 1) and Crony Capitalism: Practice (Part 2).
America’s energy industries (oil, gas, electricity) have been a bastion of crony capitalism for much of their history. Leading gas and electricity firms sponsored state and then federal public-utility regulation during the Progressive Era and New Deal. Like other so-called public utilities, they welcomed the prospect of making commission-approved “reasonable” profits in an entry-restricted environment rather than taking their chances in open-entry markets.
The U.S. coal industry also longed for federal aid. “The bituminous coal industry has been one of the most chaotic industries in the United States in recent years,” an Ohio University professor wrote in 1940. “Because of this lack of order it has recommended itself to the Nation as an industry urgently in need of social control and, as a result, it has come to serve as a significant laboratory for experiments in certain types of government regulation.”…
“Unfortunately the [wind] industry has begun letting workers go up and down our American manufacturing supply chain…. Congress must [extend subsidies] now to give wind energy a stable business environment… to … save 37,000 American jobs by the first quarter of next year.”
– Denise Bode (AWEA), Press Release, August 9, 2012
“He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.”
– Ayn Rand, “The Moratorium on Brains II,” Ayn Rand Letter, 1971
The wind industry is imploding, and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) is providing the details. Suffice it to say that there will be no Jay Leno at the next AWEA confab.
With accumulating layoffs, extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) is increasingly becoming too late. AWEA has been warming about 10,000 job losses by September 1, and now the number is 37,000 in the next seven or so months.…