“Market conditions back in 1992 no longer exist. Big wind no longer needs the Production Tax Credit, and certainly cannot justify the extraordinary benefits received [3.5¢/kWh pre-tax]. Retaining the subsidy in light of lower installation costs and increased production serves only to further distort the market and bestow a bounty on big wind that far exceeds what 1992 lawmakers could ever have envisioned.”

The American Wind Energy Association’s latest market report touts an industrial- wind-energy construction pipeline of 29,634 megawatts, that, if all built, will bring the US installed capacity to nearly 115,000 MW.  Installed capacity stands at 85,000 MW today.

You can bet that all (or most) of the new megawatts will meet the Obama/IRS requirements for full-tax credit eligibility. As we’ve written before, the Production Tax Credit ‘phase-out’ was little more than a 5-year extension of the PTC after Congress looked the other way while the IRS implemented its own definition of the phase-out.…

“RGGI proponents want us to believe that the program is delivering on a global environmental promise, but the reality is the nine-state cap and trade system is a colossal failure of resource allocation that should be repealed to leave more efficient market forces.”

“During the Ohio debate, safety repeatedly took a backseat to economic opportunity. However, the problem for the wind industry is that safety is increasingly an issue as the incidence of turbine failure appears to be accelerating.”

[Editor Note: A new feature at MasterResource will periodically review important wind-related news in the US and around the world. For proponents of fuel-neutral, let-the-market-decide energy policy, as well as those opposing industrial wind turbines for environmental reasons, the news is increasingly positive. It should be highlighted and shared to motivate grassroots energy activists.…

The much touted benefits of wind come with a fatal caveat: industrial wind turbines–suffering from intermittency, low average-usage factors, remote siting, relatively high (and all-up-front) costs–are uneconomic. So the fact that the Wind industry creates jobs and can piggyback on consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral, baseload power is no consolation.

The starting point of economics is that wants exceed resources. Market prices are therefore needed to allocate resources. Out of a wide range of technical possibilities (including wind-produced electricity), only a small subset is economic desirable as well. Think of a bullet train from Los Angeles to New York City–technically possible but uneconomic when compared to air travel. Only freely acting consumers in a government-neutral marketplace can decide the difference.

The new study cosponsored by the American Wind Energy Association, Electricity Markets, Reliability, and the Evolving U.S.…

“Catastrophic failure with wind turbines is not new, and it’s not rare…. Recent experience shows that not much has changed in the ensuing years.”

“Those of us who follow the wind debate closely have repeatedly witnessed cases where projects were permitted despite an obvious lack of meaningful evidence on a host of topics….  The recent Maryland [Dan’s Mountain } decision provides an important precedent that other states can and should now follow.

[Editor Note: A new feature at MasterResource will periodically review important wind-related news in the US and around the world. For proponents of fuel-neutral, let-the-market-decide energy policy, as well as those opposing industrial wind turbines for environmental reasons, the news is increasingly positive. It should be highlighted and shared to motivate grassroots energy activists. MasterResource is indebted to Lisa Linowes for authoring this new series.]…