Like the child who just isn’t quite ready to move out of his parents’ house so too does the wind industry plead with Congress to let its lucrative subsidy stay just a little bit longer. The weak argument that the child and the industry use is nearly identical. Something to the effect of: Because this time things will work out, with just a little more money this time will be different, this time is the time they’ll make it on their own. Taxpayers shouldn’t believe it whether it is a relative at the door or Congress extending production tax credits to the wind industry. The argument the wind industry makes is that it is a sector of the economy with tremendous potential and is so close to being commercially viable. In order to make that a reality it needs just this teeny handout to help it stand on its own two feet. The additional funding which will provide the push it needs to make it competitive in the market. The promise is that a subsidy, such as the wind production tax credit, will be just the ticket that’s needed to take the industry over the valley of death to an economically viable company that produces a competitive and clean source of energy. The argument the wind lobbyists make today is nearly verbatim to what they said back in 1992. Just take a look at this 1992 New York Times article, “A New Era for Windmill Power.” The piece explains that “striking improvements in technology, the commercial use of these windmills, or wind turbines as the builders call them, has shown that in addition to being pollution free, they can now compete with fossil fuels in the cost of producing electricity.” The obvious question then is if that was true in 1992, then why did wind ever need a tax credit? A full 20 years have gone by and only 2 percent of our nation’s energy comes from wind.

Earlier this week, TPA posted a blog that discussed a new, nearly unprecedented effort on part of the Treasury Department to recoup taxpayer money that had been “awarded” to now-bankrupt green energy. While so far Treasury has only sought out one company to return its government funding, we should not downplay what a significant, noteworthy step the feds are making. One of the chief selling points of the astronomically expensive so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was that it would immediately create hundreds upon thousands of “shovel ready” jobs. Over three years from its date of enactment and with an unemployment rate that has remained well above 8 percent, there’s no question that, by and large, these supposedly shovel ready jobs never came. There are several reasons for this, but the one this blog will address is the fact that many of the companies who received government money have not used it. A recent article in the Boston Herald provides more information about two such companies.