US Firms Race Fiscal Cliff To Install Wind Turbines 98
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that U.S. energy companies are racing to install wind turbines before a federal tax credit expires at the end of this year which could be lost as Congress struggles with new legislation to avoid the 'fiscal cliff.' 'There's a lot of rushing right now to get projects completed by the end of the year,' says Rob Gramlich, senior vice president at the American Wind Energy Association. 'There's a good chance we could get this extension, it is very hard to predict, but the industry is not making bets on the Congress getting it done,' Even if there is an extension there is likely to be a significant curtailment of wind installations in 2013. From 1999 to 2004, Congress allowed the wind energy production tax credit to expire three times, each time retroactively extending it several months after the expiration deadline had passed, but wind energy companies say they need longer time frames to negotiate deals to sell the power they generate. 'Even if the tax credit is extended, our new construction plans likely will be ramped back substantially in 2013 compared with the last few years,' says Paul Copleman. 'So much time has passed without certainty that a normal one-year extension would not be a game-changer for our 2013 build plans.'"
hot air (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:hot air (Score:5, Funny)
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Since our founding fathers are all spinning in their graves right now, might as well hook them up to generators and harvest the free energy [smbc-comics.com].
No need to disturb them. We have lots of cats and buttered bread [wikipedia.org] to do the same job.
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LOL Just what we need, more tax payer subsidized, clean energy start-ups to fail while paying out huge year-end c-class bonuses.
Where the hell is my parachute???
Try learning economics, kid. (Score:1)
These renewables are cheaper than nuclear and require far less subsidy.
I don't hear you whining and whinging about the entrenched systems trillion dollar windfall.
Because you're an ignorant arsehole with an axe to grind because, frankly, you have nothing else to do.
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IIRC, to qualify for the credit the blades need to make 1 full rotation before the end of year. So you might invest in some overtime, focus on getting those near completion done, skip the cosmetics like paint or hooking it up to the grid until next year.
Rent seeking (Score:4, Insightful)
Rent seeking, meet regulatory capture.
Re:Rent seeking (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rent seeking (Score:5, Interesting)
What's worse is the wind turbines, perhaps because Ontario is in the centre of the continent, generate most of their power during the shoulder periods of power demand.
That doesn't matter, so long as the wind generation capacity you have is less than your fossil fuel capacity. As long as that's true, you can think of it almost like having a super-efficient storage method for the wind power your generate: you "store" it as unburned fossil fuel.
Only *after* your wind generating capability exceeds your non-renewable energy sources,does the wind power you can't sell "goes to waste". But then it was going to waste anyhow. You're still thinking of renewable energy sources like non-renewable ones. It doesn't matter if you don't capture and use every bit of a renewable energy source, because there's always more of it coming. What matters is can you make the dollars and cents work. It's quite possible for a 10% efficient solar array to be successful yet a 50% efficient one to be a financial failure. It depends on the cost of producing, siting, installing and maintaining the array vs. the value of the electricity it produces. The 90% of energy you waste with the inefficient cells doesn't matter; 100% was going to waste before you installed them.
It may well be that your government set up a bad deal, but that's just lack of financial acumen, not a problem with the technology.
Re:Rent seeking (Score:5, Informative)
It has nothing to do with nuclear.
Ontario's nuke capacity is about 11GW max but the lowest demand for any hour going back over 10 years is 13GW so the balance is made up by hydro, gas, wind and coal.
The coal usage has been cut back significantly in the last 5-7 yrs and the max wind output has only recently exceeded 1GW.
From what I understand, the issue is the wind farms were given "must-take" status for their power which is stupid during low-demand hours but that's policy and fixable.
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" We're proportionately worse off, and we're going to pay for it with higher taxes and poorer services over the two decades. Wasting billions on this foolish renewable scheme was just irresponsible."
Maybe you should think about how much longer your non-renewables will last with those turbines producing power to offset their use. Not all costs and rewards are monetary. If you're worried about energy loss from unstable generation cycles install an energy storage system to balance the output. Th
Re:Rent seeking (Score:5, Insightful)
If tax credits and rebates are what make wind profitable.
Lots of industries start with various forms of government subsidy. The mistake made in ontario was thinking that the price of wind turbines was going to remain as high as it was for a lot longer.
The government was trying to convince the public that wind generators weren't going to destroy property values, deafen children etc. They were willing to take a loss on this up front in the hopes that by the time generation came down in price people wouldn't put up a huge protest about it. Unfortunately for the government, the price came down far faster than anyone anticipated, which is good for basically everyone else.
Had they stayed hugely expensive the government would be basically subsidizing half a dozen wind turbines here and there to show off, which, on the scale of things costs basically nothing, and if it made it easier to convince people to install a few thousand of them 20 years from now so much the better. But the price came down much faster than they anticipated.
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It may well be that your government set up a bad deal
And of course, because they are Canadians, it is impossible that there is any corruption involved such as the politicians or their donors benefiting personally from the deal, Solyndra style. Yep, I guess they were just slightly stupid, it can happen to anyone. No harm done though, so there is no need too look for any accountability whatsoever or, God forbid, fire anyone. The taxpayers children will just have to eat a little bit less and everythin
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seems like you don't really understand the purpose of subsidies. they are to encourage a fledgling industry and keep it up until it can stand on its own. there is considerable first-mover advantage in the energy business and even the hoops for connecting to the grid for a energy provider are high walls to new technology.
fit contract rates are different for wind and solar, and have been decreasing over time as a result of the evaluation of the cost changes over time. microFit was 0.80 per kw*hr for solar les
Re:Rent seeking (Score:5, Informative)
Citation needed for $0.80/kWh for wind. Even ridiculously overpriced wind farms elsewhere are at $0.20/kWh. Anholt Sea Wind Farm, widely criticized for having its proposal structured in such a way that there could only be a single bidder and therefore monopoly pricing, is at 1.05DKK/kWh or 0.19USD/kWh for the first 20TWh. 20TWh should be reached in approximately 13 years.
$0.03/kWh is only possible for nuclear reactors which have paid off their capital investment already and are only paying for maintenance. Wind power under the same conditions can produce at lower cost than that.
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I don't believe they pay that much for wind, but they do for solar
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/10/31/ontario-renewable-energy-premiums-review682.html [www.cbc.ca]
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Insurance depends on how much the government requires. AFAIK no nuclear power plant has a commercial insurance policy which would cover a Fukushima-size accident; they all rely on the government. Tepco was covered for third party liability for only $1.5 billion. Just to add to the fun, the coverage did not extend to accidents caused by natural disasters... Tepco estimates that the cost of cleaning up and paying compensation is 10 trillion yen, $125 billion. I am not sure the entire insurance industry is up
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Maybe they were factoring in the actual cost of nuclear, after all the subsidies and insurance the government provides. You could also look at it as an investment, like building a particle accelerator that may not necessarily generate big profits directly but will let you develop technology that does. Wind is already a big industry, and if you want in on the ground floor you better hurry.
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The US Congress is just pathetic.
A perfect reflection of the people that voted for them. What's to complain about?
Re:Just Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
A perfect reflection of the people that voted for them.
Actually, it demonstrably isn't. Some reasons why:
1. Gerrymandering. For example, the party that got the most votes won't hold the most seats in Congress come the next term.
2. This is a lame duck session. So it's actually a reflection of the electorate from 2 years ago, not the current electorate.
3. The "money primary", where candidates must impress potential donors to even have a chance of impressing the electorate, ensures that proposals that might hurt large donors are never even considered.
There are many opinions widely held by the American public that are nowhere near actually getting through Congress. For instance, a majority of Americans would approve the federal legalization of marijuana, but such a proposal has never even come close to getting a floor vote in Congress.
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Outright legalization failed in CA because it wouldn't have changed the federal situation while simultaneously making it illegal to make a profit growing or selling pot in CA.
The only legal form of pot growing operation under the new law would certainly have drawn the DEA. Hence it made all growing impractical if staying out of federal prison was on your todo list.
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I'm just basing that assertion on poll numbers like these: Public Policy Polling [mpp.org], Gallup [gallup.com].
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No one said "Republicans gerrymandered" so why do you feel the need to pretend they did?
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That doesn't invalidate my first point in any way whatsoever.
Pretend there is a country with 2 political parties, one called the Snoods and the other called the Whelks, who are being elected to fill a 435-seat Congress. In the last election, 50.3% of the public voted for Snoods, and 49.7% voted for Whelks. If the representation had matched the popular vote, that would have meant that there would be 219 Snoods and 216 Whelks. But in fact, thanks to gerrymandering, there are 201 Snoods and 234 Whelks, meaning
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For what it's worth, I'm neither a Democrat or Republican - I have no dog in that fight. In my view, the correct way to handle redistricting is something along the lines of shortest-splitline [rangevoting.org] or University of Illinois' mathematical districts [uillinois.edu].
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It can also mean that the support for the Snoods is very high in the 201 places where they where voted in and very low elsewhere so their (for sake of argument > 51% there and 49% respectively). The Whelks on the other hand had exactly 49.7 in all seats.
Of course this is exactly why the Whelks want to gerrymander. Get the Snoods all bunched up in a small number of seats so that you can then (with your overall support) carry a larger number of seats.
The moral of the story is that the party with the broad
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You reasons are why the voters are so pathetic that they depend on everything being spoon fed to them by mass media instead of seeking out a better person for the job. If they want congress to represent a different opinion, they have to vote for people that will do that and vote out those who don't. They have to learn to ignore the bling. It's pretty straightforward.
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Heh, prohibition has always been big business. All sorts of industries sprang up around it, private prisons being one of the bigger ones, and the smugglers themselves make enormous profits from it. They sure as hell don't want legalized weed. Then there's the alcohol and to a smaller extent the pharmaceutical industries. They would lose a lot of business. And the stuff makes pretty good bio-fuel. Don't want
We will know an "energy source" is worth a damn (Score:2)
when politicians seek to tax them.
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Wind power is and will be taxed like any other income. They're getting a break up front on capital expenses because policymakers have reasons other than private profitability to have secure domestic sources of energy.
Re:We will know an "energy source" is worth a damn (Score:5, Funny)
The biggest enemy to our economy (Score:2)
has become the US Congress. Never have I seen so many get paid so much to do so little. They better wake up soon, otherwise a torch bearing mob may did it for them.
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Worry not for them, there's already FBI+DHS+police+banksters infiltrating that torch bearing mob.
Re:The biggest enemy to our economy (Score:4, Insightful)
With their own torches that they'll use to set fire to stuff, so they'll have an excuse to arrest the lot.
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The second amendment is currently under fire thanks to the Newtown shooting and the Christmas Eve firefi
Re:The biggest enemy to our economy (Score:5, Informative)
If the "torch-bearing mob" you're referring to was Occupy Wall Street, they didn't have any torches or pitchforks, they had signs and chants and meetings which clearly presented no physical threat to the banks. The New York police responded to them by:
- pepper-spraying them for the heinous crime of walking down a sidewalk
- beating them with batons
- In one case, running a guy over with a motorcycle, arresting him for being in the way, and then denying medical treatment of his broken leg
- Pushing them into the street and then arresting them for jaywalking
- In policing a planned march over the Brooklyn bridge, waited until as many as possible were on the bridge, then blocked both exits and arresting everyone in between
- Put an end to the protest by barging in at 3 AM to a public park, beating and kicking the sleeping people who didn't move fast enough, and destroying all the personal property that they could get their hands on
- In the aftermath, some of the people known to have been protesting were fired from their jobs
So that's why people avoid protest movements in the US: If it has a chance of changing something, it will be violently suppressed. In one of the related protests in other cities, the police repeatedly pepper-sprayed an 82-year-old woman who hadn't gotten out of the way fast enough, and ended up killing an Iraq War veteran (probably accidentally, but still).
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has become the US Congress. Never have I seen so many get paid so much to do so little. They better wake up soon, otherwise a torch bearing mob may did it for them.
We need to push them off the physical cliff!
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No, the enemy is the Republican majority in the House and their filibuster-abusing minority in the Senate.
The Dems have their problems (and they are legion) but they're nothing like the GOP.
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I can agree with you about the Republican Majority in the house being a problem, but the problem in the Senate is Harry Reid and the Senate leadership. There is no excuse for the Senate not passing budgets anymore, that blame falls at Harry's feet.
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Didn't it show that republicans can't even seriously negotiate with other republicans? The democrats at least haven't (as far as I know) rejected proposals from their own side.
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what HAS happpened however is that reid had a vote on the presidents plan for a budget, it did not get a single vote in the senate. So while you may not know of the democrats rejecting proposals, they are in fact the only ones being rejected from within their own party.
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"Democrats are incapable of seriously negotiating with Republicans,"
That because for the last several terms the republicans haven't been negotiating, just dictating. The only bills that have passed the house have been political bills written to kiss ass to their base electorate(or strategic attempts to embarrass the president) knowing full well that the democrats won't touch them. Fact is the democrats are fed up with their bullshit and have the last election to support their view. Unt
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http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/219093-paul-ryan-budge [thehill.com]
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Because the Ryan budget is a joke. It's a thumb in the eye that won't even solve the budget shortfalls.
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There's no point even voting on it, since it won't pass. That's called a "waste of time", much like the House voting to pass it thirty-odd times when they knew every time that it wouldn't pass the Senate or the White House. It's a joke, and it's on us.
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I think I'd rather pay them more to do even less. Seems like most of the problems come from when they do just about anything.
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There is no cliff (Score:3)
Re:There is no cliff (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I agree. Sequestration is the more accurate term that was used when the idea was first proposed.
However: the 24 hour media engine needs it's narrative, both major parties need something that "went wrong" that can conveniently be blamed on the other, and the wealthy really want to keep their excessively low effective tax rates(not that we're fixing capital gains). This stupid "emergency" is a natural consequence of a bunch of people with something to gain.
That is not to say the particulars of the "debate" are all completely OK. For example, those in congress who wish block the debt ceiling again can indeed crash the bond market, if they push it too far.
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"It's just another made-up name to mislead and / or scare the bejeezus out of people. "
All the cliff is is the resumption of normal tax rates before 2002 that the reductions of same were supposed to be very temporary to alleviate problems at the time, not go on for decades and the damage that it has caused. The spending cuts are just to make up for the overspending for two unwanted wars and contractor corruption running parallel to them without raising taxes to pay for it. Never mind t
Actually... (Score:3)
Everyone under the sun is racing to get deals done before the new year. It's not just one tax credit.
Are UK and US wind turbines the same? (Score:1)
Could be a problem........
From The Telegraph:
"Wind farm turbines wear sooner than expected, says study
The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years.
The wind energy industry and the Government base all their calculations on turbines enjoying a lifespan of 20 to 25 years.
The study estimates that routine wear and tear will more than double the cost of electricity being pro
Re:Are UK and US wind turbines the same? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/study-on-turbine-lifespan-just-more-anti-wind-propaganda/ [ewea.org]
The report (link to report proper is in the page linked above) was put together by "The Global Warming Policy Foundation" - a known organization of AGW denialists. It speaks volumes that the only sites that reference the report as an authoritative source are other AGW-denying blogs and websites. Combined with the fact that the report you cite flies contrary to dozens of other reports and technical analyses, you should be really quite suspicious about an ulterior agenda.
=Smidge=
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Oh yes it's obvious because we all know that wind turbines are really were so great they don't need all of that corporate welfare to operate profitably; oh wait they do, realy businessmen won't even build them without a government bribery.
Congress Struggles? HA! (Score:2)
They are not struggling over anything. It's just a big Dick waving contest. With the largest Penis, Mister Speaker of the house, Boner him self, causing most of the problems.
I'd rather deal with fiscal cliff (Score:1)
than see Obama administration blow the money into the air in order to pay-off their political base by diverting the United States investment on the failed bankrupted green-energy companies such as Solyndra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra) and many others. If the energy source is non-viable economically and market can not support it -- let it die.
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" failed bankrupted green-energy companies such as Solyndra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra) and many others. If the energy source is non-viable economically and market can not support it"
You do know Solyndra and many of the other failed companies were started under Bush right? Executive corruption and Chinese dumping on our markets sunk them more than any mistakes by the Obama administration. Economic viability means very little in a monopolistic market where small players get
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People like to make a big deal of of Soklyndra but the failure rate of these government supported green companies is actually quite small: http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/22/news/economy/obama-energy-bankruptcies/index.html [cnn.com]
Also, the reason Solyndra went belly-up is because China started their own initiative and dumped $4 billion into solar panel development, which they then dumped on the market for dirt cheap. And by dirt cheap, they went from $400/kg to $40/kg in three years time.
In short, we're not just comp
Wind Power Fiscal Cliff Race Over for Time Being (Score:1)