Greeley Tribune reporter Nate Miller interviewed me as the voice of opposition about the wind “Production Tax Credit” (PTC). Miller does a good job of presenting both sides of the argument:
Supporters of the wind production tax credit, which began in 1992, contend failure to extend it will result in layoffs for workers from good, high-paying manufacturing jobs, many of which are located in northern Colorado. It will also make the country more dependent on foreign oil, they say. Those opposed to the credit say wind energy is inefficient and the government shouldn’t subsidize it. It’s simply wrong, they say, to believe there would be no jobs without the tax credit.
“If you look at economic modeling in the dynamic sense, the private sector would spend that money in a much more cost-effective way and those people would likely be employed,” said Amy Oliver Cooke, director of the energy policy center at the Denver-based Independence Institute, a free-market think tank “Maybe not in the wind industry, but in some other industry.”
Shocking that Big Wind and its green enablers want to extend the $3.5 billion annual tax credit. My question to them is why should the rest of the country have to pay for Colorado to indulge its green fantasies? Read the rest of the story here.