The lead story in today’s New York Times is a devastating look at solar and wind power subsidies. The print head and sub-hed tell it better than the online version: “Rich Subsidies Powering Solar and Wind Projects: Big Rise in Government Aid—Companies Are Virtually Assured of Profits.” It’s worth reading the whole thing to soak in the outrageousness of the whole scene, but this graph gives a worthy summary:
“The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.”
This “banquet of government subsidies” as the Times describes the “cornucopia” of federal largesse, sounds like another fillip to the 1 percent doesn’t it? And don’t forget a key phrase here—“contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates”—which means we get it at both ends: we shell out tax money for the subsidies, and then have to pay higher utility rates, all to ensure that energy companies get a “guaranteed” profit. File under: Crony Capitalism, Green Energy Division. More here