“There are more lobbyists per square foot on this issue than I’ve seen in a long time.”
The Washington Times reports:
A top Republican lawmaker said Wednesday that long-standing federal subsidies on the wind farm industry should be allowed to expire at the end of the year, calling wind energy unreliable, too expensive and damaging to the environment.
While wind energy interests have launched a concerted campaign to preserve the tax break, “These are not your grandma’s windmills,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican.
The new power-generating wind turbines “destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment,” Mr. Alexander said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, contending that the monolithic turbines destroy the aesthetics of the landscape and even knock eagles out of the sky…
“Wind gets more breaks than oil,” he said.
And the giant turbines don’t always turn. When the winds stand still, the energy grid needs the backup power of gas-fueled or coal-fueled power plants.
“Wind turbines produce a relatively puny amount of expensive, unreliable energy,” Mr. Alexander said, adding that wind produces 2.3 percent of the nation’s overall energy and only 8 percent of America’s “green” energy.
He acknowledged that killing the tax credit was “not going to be easy to do.”
“There are more lobbyists per square foot on this issue than I’ve seen in a long time, which is an indication of the billions of taxpayer dollars that are going into the pockets of wealthy people who benefit, and companies who benefit, from these tax breaks,” Mr. Alexander said.