LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME



[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]

Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

Get weekly updates
RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Stripe

Donate via Paypal

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

News Watch Home

Shades of green 

Credit:  Cadillac News | 05/28/2014 | www.cadillacnews.com ~~

NEXTera, the developer planning a wind farm in Wexford and Osceola counties, has done well with the federal Production Tax Credit, begun in 1992 to allow alternative energies to compete with big utilities.

NEXTera/FPL (Florida Power & Light), a Fortune 200 company, is the eighth-largest power producer in the U.S., primarily from fossil fuels. While most corporations pay about a 30 percent tax rate, NEXTera paid a 1.25 percent tax rate on earnings between 2005 and 2009, thanks to the PTC.

This low tax rate, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, allowed NEXTera to avoid about $2 billion in taxes. Coincidentally, that is just about the cost of NEXTera’s newest power plant – the largest fossil fuel plant in the U.S. – smack in the middle of the environmentally sensitive Everglades.

Oops.

Michigan is helping fund NEXTera’s fossil fuel operations, since we pay about $79 per megawatt hour (MWh) for “green” energy produced here. We could import it from Iowa (a high-wind state) for about $35 MWh, but Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard forbids out-of-state competition in renewables. Our RPS has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge.

The $2.5 billion we have spent developing wind energy in Michigan, frequently in places where the majority of residents don’t want it, could have built enough new gas-fired generators to shut down half of Michigan’s dirtiest coal-fired utilities. Instead, we haven’t closed one because of wind turbines.

Wind energy’s intermittent surges and lags require back-up fossil fuel plants to work harder to even out the flow of power. As Germany has discovered, wind energy can increase, not decrease, pollution when wind drives other utilities from the market.

The only “green” here is cash for producers like NEXTera and landowners who host turbines while destroying their neighbors’ health and property values.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/26/obamas-wind-production-tax-credit-swindle/?page=all ;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/world/europe/germanys-effort-at-clean-energy-proves-complex.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0.

Victoria L. Brehm

Tustin

Source:  Cadillac News | 05/28/2014 | www.cadillacnews.com

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Contributions
   Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)
Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI M TG TS G Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook Wind Watch on Linked In

Wind Watch on Mastodon Wind Watch on Truth Social

Wind Watch on Gab Wind Watch on Bluesky