SOS Forests

The Wind Power Fraud and Ripoff

If you live here, it’s not that much fun watching Oregon (California’s mini-me) commit economic suicide. This state’s “investment” in “green” energy is one more nail in the coffin.

Germany, Spain, and Denmark have conducted studies which show a loss of 2 to 4 jobs in the private sector for every green job created. For instance:

Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, Raquel Merino Jara, Juan Ramón Rallo Julián, José Ignacio García Bielsa (2009) Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [here].

Selected excerpts:

Europe’s current policy and strategy for supporting the so-called “green jobs” or renewable energy dates back to 1997, and has become one of the principal justifications for U.S. “green jobs” proposals. Yet an examination of Europe’s experience reveals these policies to be terribly economically counterproductive.

This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style “green jobs” agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created and the net destruction per installed MW. …

Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data1, we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created. …

[W]hile it is not possible to directly translate Spain’s experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million “green jobs” as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome. …

Spain’s economic collapse has been mentioned in the Main Stream Media. What has not been fully revealed is that windmills and other “green” energy development are the cause. Oregon is well down the same slippery slope.

Leaked Doc Proves Spain’s ‘Green’ Policies — the Basis for Obama’s — an Economic Disaster

by Christopher Horner, Pajamas Media Exclusive, May 18, 2010 [here]

PJM has received a leaked internal document confirming Spain realizes its green failures, just as Obama pushes the American Power Act based on Spain’s program.

Pajamas Media has received a leaked internal assessment produced by Spain’s Zapatero administration. The assessment confirms the key charges previously made by non-governmental Spanish experts in a damning report exposing the catastrophic economic failure of Spain’s “green economy” initiatives.

On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the “green economy” policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America.

Later came the revelation that Obama administration senior Energy Department official Cathy Zoi — someone with serious publicized conflict of interest issues — demanded an urgent U.S. response to the damaging report from the non-governmental Spanish experts so as to protect the Obama administration’s plans.

Most recently, U.S. senators have introduced the vehicle for replicating Spain’s unfolding economic meltdown here, in the form of the “American Power Act.” For reasons that are obvious upon scrutiny, it should instead be called the American Power Grab Act.

But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.

Unsurprisingly for a governmental take on a flagship program, the report takes pains to minimize the extent of the economic harm. Yet despite the soft-pedaling, the document reveals exactly why electricity rates “necessarily skyrocketed” in Spain, as did the public debt needed to underwrite the disaster. This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration’s recent acknowledgment that the “green economy” stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece.

The government report does not expressly confirm the highest-profile finding of the non-governmental report: that Spain’s “green economy” program cost the country 2.2 jobs for every job “created” by the state. However, the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study. ….

Subsidized solar energy development has also been an economic disaster for Spain.

Spain’s Solar Deals on Edge of Bankruptcy as Subsidies Founder

By Ben Sills, Bloomberg Markets Magazine, Oct 18, 2010 [here]

… Across the plains around Lerida, the northeastern Spanish town where they spent weekends, farmers were turning over their fields to photovoltaic panels to capitalize on government solar- energy subsidies. …

Solar investors… were lured by a 2007 law passed by the government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that guaranteed producers a so-called solar tariff of as much as 44 cents per kilowatt-hour for their electricity for 25 years — more than 10 times the 2007 average wholesale price of about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour paid to mainstream energy suppliers. …

Zapatero introduced the subsidies three years ago as part of an effort to cut his country’s dependence on fossil fuels. At the time, he promised that the investment in renewable energy would create manufacturing jobs and that Spain could sell its panels to nations seeking to reduce carbon emissions.

Yet by failing to control the program’s cost, Zapatero saddled Spain with at least 126 billion euros of obligations to renewable-energy investors. The spending didn’t achieve the government’s aim of creating green jobs, because Spanish investors imported most of their panels from overseas when domestic manufacturers couldn’t meet short-term demand. …

The wind turbine biz in Oregon went largely to a Danish company, Vestas

Oregon, Portland help wind turbine maker Vestas build $66 million HQ

The Oregonian, August 18, 2010 [here]

Wind-power giant Vestas’ long-awaited decision to build its North American headquarters in Portland blew through City Hall Wednesday like a cool summer breeze.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said the plan to boost Vestas Americas’ work force of 400 in the city by as many as 200 could not have come at a better time, considering the state’s high unemployment.

More than 670 construction workers will get jobs transforming the Pearl District’s former Meier & Frank Depot Building into a clean-energy showpiece. The $66 million project could also revive the fortunes of Gerding Edlen Development Inc., which was clobbered by the real-estate crash.

Construction of an eco-friendly headquarters for Vestas, the world’s largest wind-turbine maker, will also paint Portland a deeper shade of green.

“This helps strengthen Portland as the nation’s capital for sustainable energy businesses,” Adams said.

But the project, backed by government subsidies, is a far smaller version of the original concept, a new $250 million building in South Waterfront. Job projections also have shrunk from an original vision of 1,200.

Vestas Americas’ announcement, hastily arranged by officials before reporters could break the news, came the same day the Danish parent company lost almost a quarter of its value in Copenhagen stock trading [here]. Vestas Wind Systems cut sales forecasts because of order delays in the United States, Spain and Germany.

Even as it adds U.S. employees, the parent company plans to lay off 300 in Denmark and drop another 300 temporary workers there. In February, Vestas Americas cut 114 jobs, including 15 in Portland, testifying to the wind industry’s continued volatility. …

Just this month Vestas laid off 500 employees in Colorado, blaming “tight credit and slowing orders” [here].

Without subsidies extracted from ratepayers, Vestas would be as bankrupt as a buggy whip manufacturer.

The electricity generated by wind turbines is intermittent as well as exorbitantly expensive. That means “ungreen” power generation, such as hydropower, must be maintained at full capacity to meet load demands when the wind isn’t blowing. Wind turbines do not and cannot replace “ungreen” power.

Wind turbines are also bird choppers. The American bald eagle population in the Mid-Columbia area has been decimated by the wind farms there.

The “investment” bled from ratepayers has a negative return in every respect. It loses money, costs jobs, kills wildlife, ruins scenery, does not replace or supplant other power generation, and is a scam and a half that benefits no one except corporate crooks and grafting government officials.

Hysterical global warming alarmism is the proffered “justification” for this nightmare, but the fact is the globe is not warming, the models that purport to “predict” global warming have been thoroughly debunked, the “scientists” involved in creating said models have been thoroughly discredited, and as an added insult, global warming, if it were happening, which it is not, would be a GOOD thing.

Our elected bozos are killing this state with egregious hoaxes, scams, and ever-expanding taxes that benefit a handful of the very rich at the expense of everyone else, including the poor.

And that’s just the electricity scam. The spotted owl scam is even more destructive. We plan to blow the doors off that pile of bogosity next month.