Industrial Wind vs. Rural America, Electricity Markets

“If you have no conscience, no morals, no aesthetic sensibility, no understanding of free markets; if you hate wildlife, people and the natural landscape, if you loathe private property… then the … wind industry is undoubtedly the place for you…. Only the Taliban at Bamiyan or ISIS at Palmyra can really come close to matching the wind industry’s scorched-earth zeal…”

~ James Delingpole, “The SNP Has Done For Scotland’s Landscape What ISIS Have Done To Palmyra,” July 23, 2015.

The destruction of rural America is ongoing, thanks to all who continue to push industrial wind energy as a fantasy-cure for ‘Climate Change.’  Trillions of dollars have been spent on ‘renewables’ worldwide, yet CO2 has NOT been significantly reduced, while rural America is paying the ultimate price. Our countrysides, wildlife, and Constitutional private property rights are being sacrificed on the altar of ‘green’ energy for NO net benefit.

U.S. taxpayers and ratepayers need to awaken to the environmentally-destructive, wealth-transfer and corporate land-grab that IS industrial wind energy, before more of our priceless American countrysides and wildlife are destroyed.

Ironically, many states are outlawing certain pesticides to “protect bees, birds, butterflies and other pollinators,” while continuing to mandate (via Renewable Portfolio Standards – RPS) pollinator-slaughtering industrial wind sprawl.

Elected officials – both Democrat and Republican – who are on board with President’s Obama’s ‘green’ assault in the name of halting ‘Climate Change’ are complicit in destroying the rural fabric, environment and wildlife that is the grandeur of America – including the slaughter of our nation’s eagles. This assault, and those who promote it, must be removed.

WHY should American taxpayers continue to fund dysfunctional wind energy, when even the U.S. EPA air chief, Janet McCabe admits that the EPA’s analysis shows that “wind power can expand throughout the Clean Power Plan compliance period, from 2022 to 2030, even if the tax credit is not renewed”? As long as taxpayer-funded wind welfare (the Wind Production Tax Credit – PTC) exists, State’s without RPS policies are subsidizing the market-distorting, environmentally-destructive energy choices of others, while those with RPS policies are being shielded from the true costs of wind energy.

Below is a letter I authored for a local newspaper fighting against an industrial wind developer. Only a grassroot rebellion, led by rural environmentalists against urban special-interest ‘environmentalists’ can turn the tide.

Typical Windy-Disinformation Sales Propaganda

The brochure APEX ‘Clean’ Energy recently distributed in western New York State along the shores of Lake Ontario is typical of deceitful windy-disinformation campaigns seen across the United States.

Much like APEX’s website (which pictures APEX’s staff in an idyllic countryside setting, with NO industrial wind turbines in sight!), the front cover of APEX’s brochure pictures a farm – without a single industrial wind turbine in sight – absurdly titled: “Wind Energy: Good for Property Values.”

How stupid does APEX think people are? Any honest real estate person will tell you that the most important consideration when buying a property is: “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!“

Even worse is the shameless Wyoming County Supervisors who are quoted in APEX’s brochure – Eagle’s Joe Kushner and Sheldon’s John Knab (both of whom will NOT seek re-election this year, and at least one is reportedly leaving the area).

Both Kushner and Knab pimped their towns out to Big Wind for a few recycled taxpayer dollars, making themselves some of the wind industry’s favorite go-to-guys. Sheldon Supervisor, John Knab, has traveled as far as the state of Alabama (that we know of), speaking on behalf of the wind industry.  Knab and Kushner seem despicably intent on turning more countrysides into bird-slaughtering, industrial wind factories by aiding and abetting Big Wind hucksters, like APEX, with their windy-disinformation campaigns.

The civil discord and environmental destruction Knab and Kushner orchestrated here in Wyoming County is reminiscent of when Native Americans sold Manhattan for a bunch of beads – their ignorance taken advantage of by those who could not care less about them.

APEX’s brochure also disingenuously lists two Orangeville, NY properties as selling above assessed value, while failing to mention that both those properties had significant acreage – most important since farmland in Wyoming County has been going for $6,000 – $12,000 an acre (since the installation of the Batavia yogurt factory).

For obvious reasons, APEX did NOT mention the fact that at least ten Orangeville properties have sold BELOW their assessed value since Invenergy’s wind factory went up, and many others haven’t sold at all.

APEX’s brochure also neglected to mention the ongoing lawsuit in Orangeville, and the skyrocketing Wyoming County tax rate, which has risen yearly over the past 12 years (another 9.68% this year), in direct correlation with the installation of wind factories here.

It’s no surprise that APEX didn’t include this report – which shows a 56% DECREASE in property values near APEX’s Illinois project:

http://edgarcountywatchdogs.com/2014/12/wind-farms-cause-property-value-to-tank-by-fifty-six-percent-in-vermilion-county-illinois/

The story is the same everywhere. Sprawling industrial wind factories negatively impact property values!

More Wind = “Skyrocketing” electricity rates

There’s also pesky little facts like NYS’s “skyrocketing” electricity rates that need to be considered.

According to NYSERDA, the average NYS residential electricity rate in 1999 was 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).  The first NYS wind factories went up in 2000 (Wethersfield & Madison).  20 wind factories later, and the average residential electricity rate in NYS as of February, 2015, is now 19.8 cents per kWh (according to the EIA, as cited by NYSERDA) – one of the highest rates in the nation, and nearly a 50% increase since New York State began mindlessly plastering countrysides with redundant generation of industrial wind factories. (Of further interest – only 2% of NYS’s electricity comes from coal.)

Wind Energy Performance – a “LEMON” by any measure

Regarding industrial wind’s performance – New York State’s wind factories have been averaging a pathetic 24%.  Any other piece of equipment – be it a machine, person or animal, that operated only 24% of the time would have been dubbed a “LEMON” and put out to pasture a long time ago!  Which one of you would buy a vehicle that only operated 24% of the time?  You wouldn’t.  You couldn’t afford to.  It’s just that simple.  But when the state and federal government are in charge of spending our money, economic reality doesn’t seem to matter.

Physicist and Malone, NY Town Board member, Jack Sullivan, reported on the reality of wind’s failure to produce in his article:  “Some Lessons from New York.”

Sullivan explained, “Both Vesta and GE turbines have a manufacturer’s life expectancy rating of 20 years, yet no New York wind project is on track to sell enough electricity in 20 years to pay for itself.”

Mr. Sullivan used the wind industry’s 20-year life expectancy claim for his calculations. The inconvenient truth exposed in another report, however, says that “wind turbines last only half as long” as the wind industry has claimed – making the fact that they can never pay for themselves even more evident.

These things aren’t ‘wind farms,’ they’re tax farms – in the business of harvesting our taxpayer and ratepayer dollars, and transferring them into the pockets of rich, multi-national corporations.  All of this enabled because of cronyism in high places and short-sightedness, willful ignorance, and greed of those willing to suck on the teat of wind welfare at the rest of our expense.

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Mary Kay Barton is a reired Health Educator and tireless advocate for reliable, affordable electricity for all Americans.