Windpower is hype
Bennington Banner, www.benningtonbanner.com 10 January 2012
Government officials and environmentalists have been pontificating the wonders of alternative energy and have indicated wind power will make a significant contribution to our electric grid and save our planet. They’ve been able to get tax shelters, subsidies and policy changes favorable to wind advocates but unfavorable to taxpayers and consumers.
A new study conducted by Bentek Energy takes the wind out of wind energy.
It shows wind boosters have greatly overstated wind’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the cost to reduce those emissions can’t support a business case. To be cost effective, the carbon tax would have to be greater than $33 a ton. With our depressed economy, unemployment around 8.5 percent and the prevailing view of Congress to reduce taxes, the imposition of a carbon tax will not happen, regardless of how small.
Wind power is also three to four times more costly than nuclear, coal, oil and natural gas. It’s also intermittent and unreliable. Is there any wonder why government mandates and subsidies are necessary to get people to produce and install wind mills? If wind power was profitable private investors would be investing and creating jobs. As subsidies go away, the wind sector will cease to exist.
Robert Bryce, in a Forbes magazine article, indicated wind energy business is the electric sector’s equivalent of the corn ethanol scam.
The wind energy advocates have been overcome by the hype of a green energy party line which is unreliable and grossly overstated.
Wake up, Vermont.
FRANK MAZUR
South Burlington
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/01/10/windpower-is-hype/