[Graeme]

Nationwide Wind & Solar Misinformation Scheme Making The Rounds, AWEA Responds

A few days ago, I got an email from someone at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) alerting me to the fact that the American Energy Alliance’s (and IER’s) President — or his PR firm — was bashing wind and solar power “with what is the essentially the same op-ed in multiple states nationwide.” Nice, eh? Good to know the fossil fuel dark side doesn’t rest in its efforts to delay a healthy, economically beneficial transition to clean energy.

“He (or his staff) is tailoring the canned op-eds to each state and tying in the 60 minutes hit piece to help make his point,” the AWEA rep added. He noted that AWEA, ACORE, and SEIA were “busy submitting/placing response letters.”

It’s really sad. This is my least favorite thing to write about — the absurdly harmful attacks the fossil fuel industry and its puppets continue to wield on crucially needed clean energy. Is there any wonder the public thinks solar is not as cheap as it is, wind is not as cheap as it is, and a large number of clean energy myths.

I won’t link to them, because I don’t want to give them any love, but the AWEA rep send along links to articles in Pennsylvania (2), Iowa, Florida, Texas, Wyoming, Virginia, and Alabama. Surely, that’s not even all of them.

AWEA now has a response up on its blog, which I’m going to repost right here:

Recently, newspapers in several states across the country have published similar opinion pieces by former lobbyist for Koch Industries Thomas Pyle, now president of the anti-wind American Energy Alliance. These canned attacks portray wind as costly and uncompetitive, and attack the jobs it supports. They all share a strong bias and outdated, discredited information.

With only a minor tweak here and there, Pyle broadcasts nearly identical op-eds to anybody who will take them.

Whether in Virginia, Texas, or Alabama, they all read the same:

“ …[T]he evidence is mounting that these types of “green” and “clean energy” handouts are surprisingly dirty…”

The same goes for Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming, where only the slightest changes can be found:

“These perverse trade-offs can be laid at the feet of government subsidies… the government’s financial intervention distorts the economy… as Solyndra and others demonstrate…”

One state at a time, Pyle copy-and-pastes his way to misinforming readers of American newspapers.

Recycling already debunked information

The Pyle op-eds mostly regurgitate previously debunked information about wind power and other renewables.

In addition to citing the example of Solyndra, which has nothing to do with wind power, Pyle chooses to use a widely discredited CBS report that doesn’t mention wind power once as an indictment of the clean energy industry, a convenient, but fact-free attempt to fulfill his – and his funders’ – agenda.

Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), a national group composed of over 850 business leaders, responded to poorly assembled CBS report with their own rebuttal:

[S]uggesting clean tech has “crashed” is just plain wrong. The overall failure rate of DOE investments in clean energy projects is remarkably low. And for some reason, 60 Minutes chose to ignore the fact that renewable energy last year was the biggest supplier of new electricity in America. – E2

Pyle attacks the clean energy jobs created by wind power by citing an ancient report known as the “Spanish study.” As if stepping into his own personal time machine, Pyle travels half a decade into the past, searching for a moment when this report wasn’t so thoroughly debunked that there’s even a comprehensive list of everything wrong with it. Using a study so questionable that it was thrown out by both the U.S. and Spanish governments does not lend credibility.

Even if it were valid in Spain (which it’s not), it wouldn’t apply here because wind power costs less and is driving down consumer bills here.

Pyle tees off his collection of misinformation with the claim that some states receive no benefit from wind energy, so the federal PTC is somehow unfair to them. In fact all 50 states have either wind farms or factories in the supply chain, and many utilities source wind power from across state lines. Low-wind-speed technology is bringing turbines to many more areas.

cleantechnica

[Graeme]

Even more dirty tricks described in this article (please read all of it).

The Koch Brothers vs regulation and responsible government

They aren’t elected; they don’t even run for office. But they have more influence than any significant combination of elected officials. That’s the billionaire Koch brothers, David H. and Charles G.

The brothers have built a fortune around their empire, Koch Industries; Charles, chairman and chief executive, ranks fourth in the nation’s top ten billionaires, at $36 billion, and David, executive vice president, shares the spot. Koch Industries has oil, timber, chemical and other energy interests and is the second-largest privately-held company in the United States. Evidently, the empire is expanding into vital industries like food, water and personal technology (according to Christopher Leonard in Fortune Magazine (January, 2014).

They do their best to keep their cover, creating one organization after another to advance their causes but doing their best to keep their names and faces out of the public eye; they provide huge cash infusions to other organizations and individuals who measure up to their demands for right-wing, radical orthodoxy, Koch-style.

They provided much of the money behind last year’s government shutdown, did you know? And, they’ve been actively involved in planning and financing the overall effort to thwart the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

One of their creations, for example, Americans for Prosperity ('Whose prosperity?' you may well ask) spent millions on ads fighting health reform and it was particularly interested in doing what it could do to delay the act once it became law.

Of late, the brothers are financing an aggressive, early assault in the mid-term elections. Americans for Prosperity, alone, spent some $20 million on television advertising in an effort to defeat House and Senate Democrats, by name, for supporting the Affordable Care Act. Their spending on insurgent conservatives seeking to pull the Republican Party to the right has far exceeded spending by the party establishment.

Their influence was manifest this past week as the Boehner-led Republicans were forced to give up on their plan for comprehensive immigration reform. The battle was lost virtually before it began thanks to the onslaught of Koch-supported groups determined to prevent it from seeing the light of day. Immigration reform? Not on their watch!

The brothers deploy funds to serve their corporate interests and political views and they appear to have a supply of money that is as unlimited for this purpose as their ideology is rigid. Their playbook is followed by their ultra-rich colleagues and by Tea Partiers, among others, including the folks they’ve secured in Congress. There is no way they are going away. Their philosophy, such as it is, goes back to their father, Fred Koch, one of the founders of the virulently anti-communist, anti-Soviet, John Birch Society.

An ardent and consistent Koch follower, New Jersey’s own Steve Lonegan, former candidate for the U.S. Senate and about to be carpet-bagger as he seeks a House seat, heads the NJ chapter of Americans for Prosperity and in that capacity venomously argued against any federal aid to NJ in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Seriously. Here is the lowdown.

The extent of the Koch reach is at least partially revealed in tax filings. It’s ‘clearinghouse’ for money and message strategy, Freedom Partners, functions, conveniently, as a trade or business association, a “business league” (501 (c) 6), in order to keep secret the donors who, along with the Koch brothers themselves, fund their organizations of choice. Donors, called members, can make contributions that in many cases are--you guessed it--tax deductible as “business expenses.” In 2012, some 200 or so donors, excuse me, “members,” managed to cough up $250,000,000 for the effort.

We may not get to know who gave the money but we do know, thanks to Politico, who got the money. The list includes the following:

• Center to Protect Patient Rights, a group that vehemently opposes Obamacare: a total of $115 million, from three grants;

• Americans for Prosperity, an organizing and advocacy group that is courted by Republican presidential candidates: $32.3 million;

• The 60 Plus Association, a free-market seniors group that also opposes Obamacare: $15.7 million;

• American Future Fund, an Iowa group that spent a lot of money on ads in 2012, many for Mitt Romney: $13.6 million;

• Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, which gets involved in a number of social policy debates: $8.2 million;

• Themis Trust, a Koch-based voter database that is made available to other conservative organizations: $5.8 million;

• Public Notice, a fiscal policy think tank: $5.5 million;

• Generation Opportunity, a group for “liberty-loving” young people: $5 million;

• The LIBRE Initiative, which targets a free-market message to Hispanic immigrants: $3.1 million;

• The National Rifle Association: $3.5 million;

• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $2 million;

• American Energy Alliance: $1.5 million;

• And several groups — including the State Tea Party Express, the Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action for America got less than $1 million each.

Members are drawn from the Koch brothers’ semiannual conferences, a 10+ year-old tradition that includes conservative activists, donors and top politicians--including, last August, 2013, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Many seminar attendees also give directly to Koch-approved groups. The Freedom Partners' funds, by the way, do not include the Kochs’ many gifts to various so-called think tanks at universities.

Any effort to make sense of the success of right-wing politics can’t be understood without paying attention to who pays. As best as one can judge, it’s business people motivated by ideology. And, they support an unflinching brand of libertarian conservatism. Some lobby against environmental regulation, or seek to undermine public perception of the threat of climate change; others battle taxes, trade unions and, as noted, Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.

The Koch brothers and their feeders and followers can’t be dismissed as fringe players by any means because their well-funded efforts are not only affecting elections and thwarting governance, they are hurting human beings by seeking to deprive them of unemployment benefits, a fair wage, food stamps and insurance coverage, of course, but also by compromising the safety and health of their environment. Efforts on both state and national levels to resist regulation and to lobby against funds for regulatory agency oversight--monitoring and inspection--may well have led to the actual loss of lives.

blog.nj

[yellowcanoe]

American wind industry people should take a visit to Ontario. Our wind industry people have demonstrated that they are quite capable of misrepresenting the truth, spouting half-truths and making all kinds of misleading statements. Kind of makes me wonder what industry they worked in before they got into the wind industry.

[Graeme]

Solar Quotes

This first one is in the footer of our website, and I use it quite often, so I think you can probably tell it’s one of our favorites:

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” Thomas Edison, 1931


For a modern-day one, this one from the solar advocacy organization Vote Solar is about as good as it gets:

“When there’s a huge solar energy spill, it’s just called a ‘nice day’ ”Vote Solar billboard, 2012

“The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.” Ralph Nader

“I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun’s energy. If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.” George Porter, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, 1967.

“On cloudy days I just want to raise my arm up, stand on my toes, and screw a light bulb into the sky. Don’t worry, my light bulb is energy efficient—it runs on solar power.” Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I’ve ever written, and it still sucks (This isn’t really my best book), 2012

“Texas has the potential to be a MASSIVE solar market. To put it into perspective, the sunshine that falls on Texas each month has more energy than all of the oil that has ever been pumped out of this state. If you think oil made Texas great, just wait till you see what they do with solar.” Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), 2011

“Rush Limbaugh says that the solar industry doesn’t even exist. So I would to take this opportunity to set him straight: The Solar Foundation’s jobs census released just today shows that we employ more than 100,000 Americans. And no industry in the country is growing faster than solar.” Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), 2011

cleantechnica