Wind turbines
Spencer Daily Reporter | January 6, 2019 | www.spencerdailyreporter.com
Our supervisors are offering the money from the wind turbines to the people of Everly that didn’t want the turbines in the first place. Ten million dollars over two decades or $500,000 year on average to “give” to Everly. Actually there will be no tax money the first year. There will only be 5 percent the second year, increasing by increments of 5 percent each year until year seven when the turbine taxes will be capped at 30 percent of their full valuation. (Iowa Code 427B.26)
Where is this windfall coming from? Your taxes. MidAmerican has fully admitted that they will receive $10 billion in tax credits for building industrial wind turbines. Alliant will likely receive around $5 billion. That averages about $4.5 million per turbine when MidAmerican themselves assesses new turbines at $2,726,500 each.
MidAmerican and Alliant are not “new business” in Iowa. They would pay taxes no matter what kind of energy they produced. Wind energy is just their way of getting us to pay their taxes. That is, if the American public doesn’t eventually balk at this grand giveaway.
According to AWEA turbines are avoiding 189 million metric tons of CO2 each year when the global manmade emissions are between 35-40 billion metric tons according to Stastista.com. That is far less than 1 percent. www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/
Iowa has already covered 1 million acres (three entire counties) in industrial wind and Iowa is only 1 percent of the U.S. population.
All wind energy does is add more power plants, more transmission, more negative impacts and more cost.
Janna Swanson, Ayrshire
Coalition for Rural Property Rights president, National Wind Watch board member
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2019/01/07/wind-turbines-9/