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Letter to the editor: Wind energy
Credit: Iowa Farmer Today | January 2, 2016 | www.iowafarmertoday.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Promoters of wind energy boast of about 25 percent of our electricity coming from wind. With 40 percent forecast in 2020, 40 percent of our electrical energy will be overpriced for Iowans in less than four years.
You don’t think it is overpriced? Take these quotes and think for yourself:
“I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffet at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2014 annual meeting. Berkshire’s MidAmerican Energy has $5.6 billion invested in windmills.
Harold Prior, [then] executive director of the Iowa Wind Energy Association, in 2013 said if Congress kills the wind-tax credit, “They’re getting into the business of picking winners and losers, which is what they say they don’t want to do.” See the irony?
I’ve called and left messages to these people asking them what petroleum subsidies they speak of that justify wind power subsidies. Repeated tries brought no response, so I looked into it myself.
One obvious oil subsidy is military protection … hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions of taxpayer dollars squandered. Why wouldn’t alternative energy advocates lobby to stop the carnage instead of piling on more handouts?
The unseen cost of petroleum subsidies is the delay of alternate source development. Shifting costs of petroleum products from the market to taxpayers keeps oil artificially low, reducing incentive to seek new energy sources.
The Oil Depletion Allowance saddles taxpayers with the cost of oil as a dwindling resource.
Windmills are deified. It is a shame Iowans are so easily conned. It is just one more chapter in a long-running story of trade associations lining their member’s pockets at the expense of working families.
Fritz Groszkruger
Dumont, Iowa
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