“The Senate bill should serve as the PTC/ITC blueprint for the final bill…. [Such reform] is an important step, but only first step, toward a level-playing-field between electrical energies that will, longer term, improve grid reliability coast-to-coast, border-to-border.”

After 25-years of subsidy-driven financing, the wind industry is entirely reliant on tax-equity investors, willing to accept tax credits in return for funding a significant percentage of their project costs. Tax equity now accounts for up to 60% of the capital needed to construct a typical wind facility. The pool of investors with enough passive income to qualify for wind PTCs is limited and includes the largest financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Bank of American, Citi and even Google.

Said bluntly, Main Street Americans are coughing up billions annually to help the richest Wall Street bankers avoid paying their taxes.…

“The IRS expanded the two-year development window to four years [from two years to give] … developers countless ways in which to secure the full PTC and never experience the phased-down PTC in the years 2017, 2018, and 2019.”

“One of the first actions by the new administration should be to withdraw and revise IRS notice 2016-31 and change the ‘Continuity Safe Harbor’ to a 2-year period. In addition, we recommend that the controversial elements of the IRS’s ‘start construction’ rules be subject to public review under the Administrative Procedures Act. Lastly, the Congress should … repeal tax credits for wind energy facilities and eliminate Section 45 of the internal revenue code of 1986.”

This essay is the second in a series aimed at exposing abuses by the Obama administration in its effort to force wind power on the public.…

“President Bill Clinton in 1997 announced the Department of Energy’s Million Solar Roofs Initiative as part of the buildup to the international negotiation on climate change held in Kyoto, Japan. The goal’s date was 2010.… Yet after 40 years of government plans and incentives, the U.S. is not halfway to Bill’s one-million goal.”

“If solar was really cheap, dependable, and competitive, Hillary would not need to be touting solar as the energy future — or espouse special government favor either. Let-the-market-decide would be enough.”

The centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s energy plan for Election 2016 is to boost the nation’s installed solar capacity seven-fold between the time she takes office and the end of 2020 (four years). Going from 20 gigawatts to 140 gigawatts would involve a half-billion solar panels on twenty-five million roofs.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

Some of the more insightful articles in this issue are:

Study: $40± Million in Property Value Loss due to Wind Project

Study: 80%± Reduction in Tourism due to Turbines

Study: Energy Policy and Electricity Prices

Study: Is Renewable Energy Sustainable?…