December 4, 2011
Letters, Ohio

Windfall won’t be for electric customers

www.limaohio.com 4 December 2011

Clarification is needed for the article “Wind farm windfall.” The windfall is highly significant for the foreign developer and only temporary for the county.

Each farm receives tens of millions of dollars in subsidies and the average life of a turbine is 10 years, although the developers tell you closer to 20. Because the operating and maintenance costs per turbine are three times higher than what the developers report, once the turbine becomes too expensive to maintain, it will be abandoned. Iowa and California have examples of this. We will have to quit subsidizing this industry because our country is broke and the farms cannot survive without them.

The U.S. is being conned by this industry, but the rest of the world is awaking. Denmark announced it is done subsidizing turbines because their electricity rates have quadrupled in the past 20 years, despite being the world’s leader per capita in turbines. Spain discovered that for every green job created they lost 2.3 private sector jobs. On Nov. 6, according to an article in The Global Warming Foundation, Britain “could save each member of the population almost 550 pounds by 2020 if it scraps expensive wind energy plans in favor of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power plants.” Why? “Wind power is the most expensive form of electricity generation to build.”

But don’t turbines reduce carbon dioixde? No. A report this fall by the Manhattan Institute stated it clearly. If the U.S. achieves a 20 percent renewable energy goal by 2030, it would require $850 billion and save us only 2 percent in carbon-dioxide emissions.

We would be smarter to subsidize research and development.

Dawn Davis, Spencerville,


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/12/04/windfall-wont-be-for-electric-customers/