[Ed. note: Occasionally a comment is important enough to deserve its own post, rather than a reply in the comment section. This is in response to Comment #1 of “A Texas Sized Energy Problem” here.]
The Energy Information Administration, an independent agency within the Department of Energy, in its 2008 report, Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007, compares subsidies related to electricity production, the sector where wind is used. In table ES5, they show that the traditional fuel sources (coal, natural gas, and petroleum liquids) received $1,081 million in Federal subsidies for electricity production in 2007, while wind received $724 million, a ratio of 1.49. However, in that year, the traditional fossil sources generated 2,865 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), while wind generated 31 billion kWh.…