If You’re Fighting the Wind Industry: Keep Fighting, Because Fighters Win

The wind industry is always and everywhere about subsidies. The punitive cost of those subsidies are starting to appear in retail power bills, infuriating householders and driving businesses to the wall. Panicked politicians, who enabled the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time, are reacting. Their inevitable response is to cut the subsidies that created the problem in the first place.

The politics of power are always and everywhere about power prices. As the proletariat tumbles to the fact that the wind and sun ain’t entirely free, wind and solar power outfits are on the back foot.

The sense of panic and confusion that pervades among renewables rent-seekers suggests the wind industry is on the brink of collapse. German wind turbine maker Siemens has set the scene by sacking 6,000 workers. Tens of thousands more of those so-called ‘green’ jobs will soon disappear, as Europe pulls the subsidy plug.

Throughout history there’s been a pretty neat correlation between fighting and winning. And, so it is, that the communities that go all out in head-to-head battles with wind power outfits – out to destroy their lives and livelihoods – keep clocking up victories.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The words of that Chinese Master of strategy hold true 2,500 years later.

The sociopaths that people wind power outfits – think ‘community liaison officers’, lawyers and project managers in shiny suits and shoes that never seem to get muddy – are a special breed, to be sure.

Across the globe, the wind industry has used the $billions in subsidies it has suckered out of taxpayers and power consumers to bribe its way into peaceful and prosperous rural communities. However, when their efforts to win hearts and minds using other people’s money fails, their fall-back approach has all the guile and tact of a drunken Sumo wrestler.

After a decade of more of battling wind industry bullies, plenty of communities know their enemies more than well enough to defeat them.

Arrogant and prone to hubris, these people are easy to irritate. And, as things are panning out in New York State, just as easy to beat.

Stop subsidizing the Big Wind bullies
New York Post
Robert Bryce
9 November 2017

Last month, Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, complained that the state is a “tough place to develop” big renewable-energy projects due to a “spirited tradition of home rule.” This came after her group and the Nature Conservancy released a report lamenting the fact that siting new renewable-energy projects is often “lengthy, uncertain and sometimes unsatisfactory for both developers and communities.”

It should be. With good reason, numerous upstate towns are actively fighting the encroachment of Big Wind. To cite just one recent example: Last month, the Watertown City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the development of eight industrial wind-turbine projects totaling 1,000 megawatts of capacity, because the projects could impair military training capabilities near Fort Drum.

Over the past decade or so, members of Reynolds’ group — some of America’s biggest subsidy miners — have collected $18.7 billion in federal and state subsidies. The burgeoning backlash against Big Wind means a growing group of rebellious New York towns stand between Reynolds’ members and even more taxpayer gravy.

The $18.7 billion sum was obtained by matching ACENY’s membership roster with data from Subsidy Tracker, a program run by Good Jobs First, a Washington-based government-accountability organization. That $18.7 billion includes all federal grants, tax credits, loans, loan guarantees and state subsidies.

The subsidies are corrosive. They encourage wind-energy companies to use legal action to bully rural landowners and small towns. They also induce the wind industry to kill more wildlife, including bats and birds.

The biggest recipient of taxpayer cash on ACENY’s roster is the world’s biggest and most-litigious wind-energy producer: NextEra Energy, which has collected nearly $5.5 billion in federal and state subsidies. NextEra is using some of that taxpayer cash to sue small towns including Hinton, Okla., and Almer and Ellington in Michigan. What did those tiny towns do to irritate the energy giant, which has a market capitalization of $73 billion? They prohibited installation of wind turbines, the latest models of which now stand about 800 feet high.

Speaking of bullying, NextEra also has a pending defamation lawsuit against Esther Wrightman, a Canadian activist who had the temerity to call the company “NextError and “NexTerror” on her Web site.

Another ACENY member: Spanish energy company Iberdrola (the parent company of its US subsidiary, Avangrid), which has collected $2.2 billion in subsidies. In 2012, shortly after Iberdrola began operating its Hardscrabble wind project, several dozen residents of Herkimer County filed a lawsuit against the company due to the nuisance, noise and sleep disturbance caused by Iberdrola’s turbines. That case, which now has 68 plaintiffs, is still pending.

Last year, after the New York town of Clayton imposed a six-month moratorium on applications for new wind-energy projects, Iberdrola sued the town, claiming the moratorium was illegal. But a state court sided with Clayton. And last November, citizens from two Vermont towns, Grafton and Windham, voted overwhelmingly to reject a proposed Iberdrola wind project.

Multibillion-dollar subsidies for Big Wind are also fueling widespread destruction of American wildlife. While the deadly effect that wind turbines have on birds, in particular eagles and other birds of prey, has been well documented, Big Wind is also killing hundreds of thousands of bats per year.

A paper published last year in Mammal Review found that wind turbines are now the largest single cause of bat mortality. A report by the conservation group Bird Studies Canada found that “across Canada, bat fatalities were reported more often than birds, accounting for 75 percent of all carcasses found.” To be sure, bats don’t get as much good press as eagles and hawks, but they are critical pollinators and insectivores.

In short, while Reynolds and other members of ACENY claim their push for renewable energy is about climate change, the numbers from Good Jobs First show that what they really want is more corporate welfare. And more corporate welfare for the group’s members means bad news for America’s small towns and even worse news for our wildlife.
New York Post