“… the production tax credit will cost taxpayers $4.3 billion in 2021 and a cumulative $33.8 billion in the ten-year period from 2020 to 2029. After nearly 30 years, the wind industry’s reliance on the PTC has grown as has its cost to US taxpayers.”
The Production Tax Credit (PTC), first established under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, is a driving force for constructing otherwise uneconomic industrial wind turbines for electric generation. A per-kilowatt-hour credit, initially set at a lucrative 1.5¢, adjusted annually for inflation is 2.5¢ today.
The credit covers the first ten years of wind-turbine generation. The monetization occurs when wind developers sell the tax credits to federal tax-owing corporations, which offsets a significant percentage of the project’s capital costs.
Depending on actual power generation, and with very low marginal costs, wind energy can be sold at very low, and even negative, prices, ruining the economics of traditional power generation.
…Ed. Note: The Resolution below brings together a number of pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, free-market groups in favor of affordable, plentiful, sustainable energies. An opening membership list is provided here.
This resolution is a statement on the relationship between energy, freedom, and human wellbeing. The members of this coalition agree: a free market is the means through which affordable, reliable energy can best enhance people’s lives, here in America and across the world.
I. Affordable, reliable energy is a vital aspect of human wellbeing, providing electricity for our factories and hospitals, heat and light for our homes and schools, and locomotion for the cars, trucks, trains, and ships that move people and goods about the planet. Affordable, reliable energy enables the modern standards of wealth and health we enjoy.
II. Energy derived from carbon-based fuels fits the affordable, reliable profile necessary for human wellbeing.
…This post by William Allison, After Multiple Failed Efforts, Climate Litigation Campaign Tries a New Strategy and Branding, part of the Energy In Depth climate and environment project, updates the latest in a failing, pernicious anti-energy strategy. The shame is that the same funders and activists should support mineral energies, not economically inferior and environmentally damaging wind turbines and solar arrays. Mr. Allison’s 1,500-word post follows.
“It’s been a whirlwind few years for supporters of the climate litigation campaign, who have spent untold millions of dollars and don’t have much to show for it. Multiple strategies have been employed with each running into trouble.”
After a bruising defeat in New York state court late last year, supporters of climate litigation have finally ramped back up with new legal strategies and new branding.
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