Forget pennies — real money is in taxpayer handouts
The Boston Globe, www.boston.com 24 August 2010
Joan Vennochi raises questions about Cape Winds’ “ultimate cost to consumers’’ in her Aug. 19 op-ed column “Unknown costs, unanswered questions.” But the costs to consumers – reflected in the 18.7 cents per kilowatt hour that National Grid will pay – are only the frosting on Cape Wind’s rich cake. Most of the Cape Wind dough would come from federal and Massachusetts taxpayers.
The most important question is not answered because one never hears it asked: Why would any business person invest $2 billion to build a power facility that will produce, at best, enough power for some 25,000 households?
How can such a huge investment for so little unreliable electricity be profitable?
The answer is simple: The Cape Wind developers count on massive handouts from taxpayers, in the form of write-offs, subsidies, grants, tax credits, green money, and other freebies out of public pockets.
That’s the taxpayer dough that makes the Cape Wind cake highly profitable, not the 18.7 cent frosting.
Robert Skole,
Boston
The writer reported on power in Scandinavia for about 25 years for McGraw-Hill trade magazines.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/08/24/forget-pennies-real-money-is-in-taxpayer-handouts/