The major federal tax and grant subsidies for windpower and other qualifying renewables are scheduled to expire at year-end.
And claims of robust economics, competitiveness, and growth have given way to fear of a freer, less preferential market in 2013 and beyond. Wind’s artificial boom/upcoming bust is the risky business of political capitalism.
Last Friday’s edition of Environment & Energy Daily ran this story (sub. req.):
The American Wind Energy Association estimates that 10,000 jobs will be lost by September — primarily among manufacturers of wind turbines and components facing a dearth of orders for next year. By the end of the first quarter of 2013, the industry will have shed about 37,000 jobs without quick action on a PTC renewal, according to a widely cited study AWEA commissioned from Navigant Consulting. The industry estimates it employed about 78,000 people at the beginning of this year.
So in the next six-to-nine months, nearly one-half of the industry’s jobs will be gone just because a special tax break has lapsed? How lousy is this industry? What have we gotten for decades and tens of billions of dollars expended to date?
And what is the plan for the inevitable task of dismantling the industrial wind turbines that no longer spin but look like some industrial death scene from Planet of the Apes?
The twin vessels called “Solar Power” and “Wind Power” were never seaworthy in the first place, no matter how attractive their figureheads may have been.
“A boat is a hole in the water into which one pour’s money.” – Old Sailor’s adage.
The windustry is generating more resistance and problems than it does electricity.
A step in the right direction. It’s time to stop the environmental damage and economic damage done by these previously abandoned “energy” sources. Not everything is given up because some big nasty corporation caused that to happen. Sometimes it was just not a workable idea. These are two of those…..Oil did not “kill” these, it outperformed.
This is sort of a “half a loaf” bit of news. While it’s nice that the worst of the subsidies for wind and solar will go away, along with some of their damage, we still have to do something about “renewable fuels”. Somehow we have to get corn ethanol, and other fuels from bio products subsidies and requirements off the table too. These have caused enormous damage, including much of the “Arab Spring” which has destroyed western friendly governments, and led to a dramatic rise in Islamist leadership.
I’ve read somewhere that when the government subsidies dry up, we’ve ended up with several thousand abandoned windmills. Perhaps, like haz waste sites, these things should be required to post post cleanup bonds/insurance/guarantees so the eyesores don’t remain when the government trough dries up.
Not a bad idea Bob. Here in Iowa some of the older wind farms have up to 10% of the towers without a turbine installed because they can’t keep them repaired in a timely and cost effective manner. I can see utilities refusing to fix broken turbines once the Federal Government isn’t paying the costs.
That’s one of my refrains too. They require it for other forms of energy production and these things are all over everywhere.
Interesting thought. Congress should start working on a Superfund Bill now to clean up all the wind/solar messes. Pass it now. It will die in the Senate.
In farm country, even worse than the towers themselves are the foundations for some of the bigger turbine towers. We’re talking hundreds, sometimes thousands, of cubic yards of heavily reinforced concrete. Even breaking them down below a point where they will no longer interfere with routine farming operations will be a massive undertaking, likely far more expensive than getting them up in the first place. “Superfund” will almost certainly apply.
Game and Rich… hmmmm… Maybe we can get the clowns who started this hoo-raw to pay for it. Like Gore and the Kennedys.
Superfund is not a good mechanism. That’s when the operator of the site abandons the site or declares himself insolvent and the site is a source of environmental contamination. Superfund is a long wrangle of suits, countersuits, benefitting lots of lawyers and very slowly, if ever, solving the problem. If you put in a wind mill, the owner ought to be required to restore the site to original condition when you close it. After all, it is green energy, ecofriendly, save the earth proposition. I hadn’t thougth about the base as RichW pointed out.
The solution to the problem; get the government to take care of it. If it weren’t for the government trying for force an other program on us we wouldn’t have this problem.
Many of the scamsters that put up the useless wind ‘turbines’ in the first place will be the financial beneficiaries of the federally financed tear down of the inevitable derelict wind farms. They’re probably already setting up their wind turbine salvage and demolition outfits for when they declare their wind farm businesses bankrupt.
This has been discussed with wind all along. However, until the reality of abandoned turbines sinks in, there won’t be any changes. I started asking this question–what happens to the turbines when no one wants them–several years back. I tell people I would rather live next to a mine or oilfield because when those are “finished”, there’s reclamation required. I also read there’s really not much that can be done with the bases–the tons of concrete just remains. I suppose had people not bought into the “ecofriendly” label, this problem would have been addressed from the beginning.
Bob, I see the wind power companies going broke and abandoning their towers. I don’t think it is a viable business.
Use the bases to put up advertising towers. Really, really, really HUGE, evil, capitalist, advertising towers… oh, the humanity… oh the irony.