Texans pay to be No. 1 in wind energy

[Geee]

Watchdog.org:

Texas is home to the nation’s largest wind energy industry. Thanks, taxpayers.

 

At every stage in the process of getting to number one — from the nearly $900 million in tax breaks for companies to choose their sites in West Texas to the hundreds of millions in tax credits for producing the power — taxpayers continue to subsidize the industry.

 

The astounding numbers are buried in reports and not broken out in monthly utility bills. “They are invisible to the rate payer and the policy maker,” Robert Bryce told Watchdog on Thursday. “It’s all presented as if there are no costs. So there is no big push in Congress to change anything.”

 

This blissful state of ignorance isn’t for Bryce’s lack of effort. The senior fellow for the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment at the Manhattan Institute who lives in Austin has been writing about energy issues for 25 years.

 

INVISIBLE: Wind subsidies, like the wind, are invisible to the public and politicians, says the Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce.

 

Earlier this month, National Review published Bryce’s tally of $176 billion in federal, state and local subsidies — just to the biggest players in the wind energy industry.

 

Bryce used something called Subsidy Tracker, a tool of the government accountability website Good Jobs First to identify $163.9 billion in federal loans and guarantees, $9.4 billion in federal grants and tax credits and $2.9 billion from state and local governments for the wind industry.