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 They all share a strong bias and outdated, discredited information.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