Why Wind Subsidies Are More Than Just Political Hot Air

#Energy As a taxpayer, it’s easy to get upset about energy subsidies. After all, the government invests billions in energy technology that may never be able to stand on its own, and that often results in high-profile failures such as the 2011 bankruptcy of solar company Solyndra. Earlier this week, Randy Simmons and Jordan Lofthouse brought this sense of outrage to the issue of wind subsidies on The Hill’s E2 blog:

For the past 23 years, the federal government has subsidized wind power with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through the Production Tax Credit (PTC). What do we have to show for it? Wind energy only supplied 1.6 percent of total U.S. energy in 2014. Now the Department of Energy wants to reach a ridiculous goal of 20 percent wind energy by 2030. The fledgling wind industry has no hope of reaching that goal on its own, and the government wants to stick the American taxpayer with the bill to sustain an industry that can't sustain itself.

A few years ago, we were asking similar questions about solar power. The government has provided tax credits and other subsidies (such as loan guarantees like the ones provided to Solyndra) for decades. Until recently, there wasn’t much to show for that, either. And there still isn’t in terms of total U.S. energy production.http://ift.tt/1JMvVgQ http://bit.ly/15KdByZ