September 6, 2018
Iowa, Letters

Let’s look at the money

Emmetsburg News | Emmetsburg Reporter/Democrat | September 5, 2018 | www.emmetsburgnews.com

Judge Whittenburg’s ruling on the court case against the Palo Alto Supervisors just goes to show that legal and ethical are not always the same thing.

The few participating landowners and county leaders that want this wind installation for the money. Let’s look at the money.

MidAmerican has clearly stated that building wind turbines makes no sense without tax credits, they cannot build their projects without 100% of the Production Tax Credit (in their bid for ratemaking to the Iowa Utilities Board) and that they will receive $10 Billion in tax credits for building wind turbines. They are not the only company- by far- receiving tax credits for building wind turbines and any tax they do not pay gets covered by all of us. We are paying for these wind turbines. Turbines will cost us hundreds of billions.

Small price to pay to “save the world”? In 2016 the American Wind Energy Association boasted that wind turbines would avoid 159 million metric tons of CO2. Our global energy sector emits between 35-40 billion metric tons of CO2 each year. By their own optimistic numbers they effectively admit that even if we doubled the amount of turbines from 2016, we still would not avoid over 1% of the world’s CO2.

The cost that wind turbines take out of our economy is never considered by the utility companies. Yes, property values will be hurt if any amount of people are deterred from buying a house or land near a wind installation. Efficiency on farms is lost. Non-renewable farm ground is lost. Tiling systems will be altered and damaged. Our wildlife will be thinned and hindered.

In Oklahoma Invenergy’s biggest industrial wind project, Windcatcher, was refused recently because it could not prove need and put too much of the risk on customers. In Ontario a new Premiere was overwhelmingly voted in on the promise that he would undo the costly Green Energy Act. These projects are being fought across the state, across the country and around the world.

People are catching on. How long do you think that they will keep supporting the flow of money that we will come to depend on? Economic development built on sound economics is one thing. Economic development built on fickle political policies is quite another.