Wind and solar energy companies push for tax breaks for their inefficient production

Washington Times:
It’s become a national leader in wind-power generation, but in deep-red, oil-rich Texas, many conservatives still turn a skeptical eye toward renewable energy — despite growth numbers that dwarf virtually every other sector of the economy.

For Jeff Clark, who heads The Wind Coalition in Texas, the fact that political posturing often seems to overrule hard data can be mind-boggling.

“As soon as I say, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s clean and it doesn’t contribute to climate change,’ I’ve just lost half my audience. The joke is, Would you love me more if I was dirtier?” said Mr. Clark, offering a tongue-in-cheek take on the immediate instinct of many Republicans to promote only fossil fuels.

As Republican leaders in Washington craft a once-in-a-generation tax reform bill that they say will spur unprecedented economic growth, critics contend that Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House are missing a key chance to promote wind and solar power.

In recent years, the expansion in those sectors is unrivaled anywhere else in the economy.

As of the end of last year, more than 100,000 Americans were employed in the wind industry — twice the number of coal miners nationwide. The industry added 15,000 jobs last year, and 88 percent of all wind capacity added in 2016 came in states that voted for President Trump, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Wind turbine technician is now the second fastest growing trade in the nation, dropping from No. 1 last year.

Taking its spot atop the list of fastest-growing jobs was solar panel installer.

More broadly, 2 percent of all jobs added to the economy last year came in the solar power sector. Over the past four years, solar jobs are up 20 percent, and the industry added $84 billion to the country’s gross domestic product last year, according to numbers from The Solar Foundation.
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When you look at the production of energy per employee you bet a better picture of just how inefficient wind and solar energy is.  When you consider that they produce a fraction of the electricity produced by coal and natural gas with more than twice as many workers you see just how inefficient they are.   It is the equivalent of digging a canal with spoons if you just focus on the number of workers.

This is on top of the fact that the energy they produce is not scalable to demand and is intermittent.  They are at best a supplemental energy provider at this point and they will need technological innovation to become truly competitive.

The skepticism about these energy sources is not rooted in "liking dirtier energy," but in the reliability of the supply of energy and the downside of the blackouts that result from over-reliance on wind and solar.

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