Robert Bryce: The Wind Lobby Is Powered by Fossil Fuels

Robert Bryce looks at the wind lobby and sees fossil fuel bodies.

Energy Tribune- The Wind Lobby Is Powered by Fossil Fuels:

Lobbyists for the wind-energy sector are actively lobbying for a multi-year extension of the production tax credit, the 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour subsidy given to producers of wind-generated electricity. To justify that lucrative subsidy, which expires at the end of this year, the wind lobby continually portrays itself as being an alternative to fossil fuels.

Furthermore, the American Wind Energy Association’s spokesmen and their many boosters in the blogosphere regularly deride anyone who criticizes industrial wind projects as somehow being in the thrall of the fossil fuel sector. But their rhetoric doesn’t match reality. The hard truth is this: AWEA represents the fossil fuel industry.

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The Green/Left, along with the Occupy Wall Street crowd has long opposed both Big Business and corporate welfare. But I defy you to find a single instance where major environmental groups – Sierra Club, Greenpeace, etc. – or leftist think tanks like the Center for American Progress, or publications like Mother Jones or The Nation, have weighed in with any substantive criticism of the subsidies being given to the wind industry. Indeed, those same entities are mute despite the fact that many of the biggest companies getting those subsidies are fossil-fuel entities.
Instead, the prevailing attitude among those various groups seems to be that any renewable-energy project must be good, because, well, it’s renewable. But as can be seen by looking at the subsidies collected by the companies on AWEA’s board of directors, the rush to build renewable energy hasn’t been as much about cutting carbon dioxide emissions as it has been about one of democracy’s oldest professions: rent seeking.