All quotes from:
"Subsidies Keeping
Iowa Wind Turbines Turning"
By Janna Swanson
May 13, 2020
Janna Swanson is President of the Iowa Coalition for Rural Property Rights. described as “a large, statewide grass-roots organization of people living within proposed or existing industrial wind installations.”
"Iowa is a big wind state, having force-started the industry with a 1983 mandate for state utilities to buy power from 105 MW of wind capacity. With state subsidies in addition to the federal Production Tax Credit, wind literally pays for itself with in reduced corporate taxes. Wind is Iowa’s largest power source, with 10,000 MW of capacity generating 40 percent of the state’s electricity. It is also at the forefront of landfill issues of scrapped wind blades."
"First, industrial wind and solar make no sense economically. Both past and present CEOs of MidAmerican Energy (“we delivered 61.3 percent renewable wind energy to our customers,” their website boasts) admitted that the turbines in Iowa will be 100% paid for by tax credits."
"Simon Conway’s WHO Radio show ... interviewed CEO Bill Fehrman in 2017, who admitted that 100% of the cost of the turbines comes from taxes. In a May 30, 2018, article written by the Des Moines Register’s Donnelle Eller, current MidAmerican CEO Adam Wright said:
"Rick Olson, the president of Iowa Lakes Electric Co-op, told me that the entire cost of the wind turbines they built in 2007/2008 were also 100% paid for by the federal government. With the Production Tax Credit set to phase out by 2020 (or 2021) the Rural Electric Co-ops (RECs) could not afford to build new turbines because the the RECs are tax exempt."
"Wind developers admit a long list of negative impacts for neighbors up to a half-mile from any 500-foot wind turbine by offering contracts called “Neighbor Agreements” that seek to get neighbors to sign off on negative impacts (as well giving the wind developers a blanket easement to their property) for some money. By the time they offer you this “deal,” though, your County Supervisors have already allowed them to build turbines 1,200-1,500 feet from the foundation of your home."
"This is part of the reason that since 2015, 260 government entities across the US have banned or blocked industrial wind at the urging of their constituents. Many more communities have fought and lost to lawmakers that sought the money over the security of their constituents."
"Data from the US Energy Information Administration show that in the US, we use the more than 100,000 MW installed wind capacity only a third of the time. The only way we would be able to utilize wind like mineral energies to generate electricity is for the wind to blow 24/7, 365 days a year, at a steady 30 mph or so."
"Energy companies plan to instead squeeze out more reliability installing massive batteries and thousands of miles of new transmission lines, which only underscores the problem with using a diffuse intermittent source such as wind on a large scale. And they never count these costs when they talk about industrial wind being “cheap.” "
"Iowa boasts that 40% of our electricity is generated by wind turbines. But remember that that is still only about 4% of all the energy we consume, and we are only 1% of the US population. That 4% has already covered about 1,500,000 of our acres with industrial wind projects, negatively affecting homes and businesses within as well as on the perimeters of these project areas."
"While wind turbines reduce emissions at the final point of generation, once you take the emissions of manufacturing, transporting, and construction, as well as batteries, excess power lines, and grid inefficiencies, not much is left to offset the huge amount of money and angst."
"Wind turbines have shown that they last 20-25 years all told and 10–15 before they require a million dollars each in “re-powering.” A traditional power plant, in contrast, lasts 60-75 years with incremental replacement and upgrading."