What is a subsidy?
There’s an ongoing debate concerning windmills placed on East River Mountain. For math lovers let’s take a look at numbers associated with this project. But first let’s get a dictionary and define the word “subsidy.”
According to Webster it states, “Monetary assistance granted by a government to a person or private commercial enterprise.” The government has no money except what they take from the people therefore the “monetary assistance” is given to the person or commercial enterprise by the taxpayers, however unwillingly. Right?
Now let’s look at energy produced by several methods considered “green” and compare that to coal. The standard for comparison is a megawatt, or one million watts of electricity generated by whatever means. The total assistance given to the coal industry equals 44 cents per megawatt, that’s the price of a single postage stamp. The total assistance given to wind generators is $23.37, that 53 postage stamps, for solar power it’s $24.34 which gets us to over 55 postage stamps. This means wind and solar power is 53 to 55 times more expensive than coal. Guess who pays for this?
Wind and solar power last year generated 45,493,000 megahours of the 4,118,000,000 total megahours consumed, which converts to 1.1 percent. Now let’s convert this data to equivalent energy in barrels of oil. Out total output of “green” electricity equals roughly 76,000 barrels of oil per day. We use an equivalent of 47,400,000 barrels per day, which means wind and solar power is 0.2 of our energy consumption. That’s two-tenths of 1 percent.
Wind and solar power generating devices reward only those who build them through subsidies paid for by the American taxpayer. President Obama said in his February address to Congress, “We will double our nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years.” That will get us all the way up to 2.2 percent of the electricity needed. I’m impressed, aren’t you?
Ed Killen
Tazewell, Va.
17 July 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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