It’s hard to believe how fast they grow up. One minute you’re dropping your subsidies off for their first day of kindergarten, and before you know it they’re taking victory laps in college. Politico  (3/7/13) reports: “Just months after the wind power production tax credit won a last-minute renewal by Congress, opponents of the subsidy are circling the wagons to make sure it doesn’t happen again… The loose coalition of anti-PTC groups has just begun meeting to map out an...
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Claims by the wind industry that another year-long extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) would create American jobs are based on “self-serving industry interviews and unsupported wind capacity forecasts that have no credibility,” according to a study by the American Energy Alliance (AEA) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR). Additionally, the report finds that the analysis conducted for the wind industry by Chicago-based Navigant Consulting significantly...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Claims by the wind industry that another year-long extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) would create American jobs are based on “self-serving industry interviews and unsupported wind capacity forecasts that have no credibility,” according to a study released today  by the American Energy Alliance (AEA) and the National Center for...
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Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

  The wind crew is bitterly clinging to its tax credits. They probably don’t have religion or guns. Politico  (3/5/13) reports: “Two months after Congress rescued it, the wind industry’s crucial tax credit is back on the countdown to extinction. The fiscal cliff deal revived the wind-production tax credit on New Year’s Day just hours after it legally expired. Industry leaders say the extension saved thousands of jobs and will support the installation of...
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Often in the policy debates on government regulations, you will have free-market people decrying inefficient impediments to business, while the other side will tout the (alleged) benefits to the environment or whatever the social goal happens to be. Yet a new MIT study —from a group that is very sympathetic to carbon regulatory policies—documents how inefficient vehicle fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards are. Even if one buys into the premise that the government should be forcing businesses...

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I wonder if they are going to mention the years that she has spent not responding to document and other requests from Senators and Congressmen. Or the data that she promised to provide (but did not) on the utility MACT or CSAPR. Or her role in the creation of RGGI. Or her involvement in NESCAUM and the low carbon fuel standard. I bet not. But the quote from Jeff Holmstead is awesome all by itself. Standwithgina.com  (3/13) reports: “‘[McCarthy] is willing to sit down and listen and...
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Cronyism. Campaign finance. Prostitution. This story has it all. Politico  (3/4/13) reports: “An Associated Press investigation has found that New Jersey's Sen. Robert Menendez sponsored legislation with incentives for natural gas vehicle conversions that could benefit the biggest donor to his re-election… The CEO and a former consultant to GFS Corp. say that Dr. Salomon Melgen invested in the Florida company, which helps industries convert diesel fuel-fleets to natural gas, and joined...
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This is going to be fun. We’ll see you in Houston on the 9^th. 

    At every turn, the story behind wind energy gets more depressing. It’s like a kid who starts out in Mom and Dad’s basement after Harvard; it’s cute for a few months, and then you realize they may never leave. Green Tech Media  (2/27/13) reports: “‘Capacity factor measures the power output from a generator as a percentage of its maximum capability. With most forms of generation, you would operate at whatever...
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A recent story in EnergyGuardian (sub. req'd) centered on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) support for the carbon “fee” bill introduced by his colleagues Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Fortunately, the newly-released NERA study gives us a quantitative estimate of how much their scheme would hurt the U.S. economy. The whole episode fulfills the warnings that many of us have been making during the carbon tax debate. Specifically, advocates of a carbon tax rely on a...

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A new study by NERA Economic Consulting, prepared for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), documents the economic dangers of a federal carbon tax. The study is very conservative in its assumptions (as I’ll explain below), giving the benefit of the doubt to the proponents of a carbon tax. Even so, there study reaches two conclusions: Either the US government sets a carbon tax low enough so that its economic impacts are simply bad, but not awful, in which case there are few...
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