Nebraska says Wind not Renewable..."Not Nebraska Nice" and "a Scam and isn't green energy by any definition of the term."

If anything describes the state of the Republican Party today, this mind-bending idea is it. Who votes for these people anyway, my god...still, I just love this story:

Yes, this is a real ad on his site!

Nebraska State Senator Tom Brewer (R) has proposed a new bill that would restrict wind power development in the state and end the designation of wind power as “renewable.”

The bill would undo provisions the state has enacted in recent years to streamline wind power development ... provisions that have enabled the state to attract companies like Facebook with the promise of low-cost 100 percent renewable wind power.

If this doesn't make your head explode, nothing will:

It's just that easy...?

“Wind energy is not Nebraska Nice,” Brewer wrote in an opinion piece last October. “Wind energy is a scam that hurts people and animals, wastes billions in tax dollars, and isn’t ‘green’ energy by any definition of the term.”

The truth is a lot less crazy:

In fact, wind power is one of the least polluting power sources available today — and thanks to smart government policies, it has become so cheap that building new wind farms with battery storage is now cheaper than running existing coal plants.

Republicans "Jobs" Myth: It's never been about creating jobs, it's been about some twisted out-of-limits ideological dystopia that...heck, I can't come up with anything else.

The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) opposed Brewer’s bill noting the strategy of offering companies 100 percent renewable power had landed “a lot of national and international companies in the pipeline” for local job-creating projects.

Walker's reliance on Coal hurts Rural Farmers, their Income and Job Creation.

Wind energy is a great rural job creator across the country, but not in Walker's Wisconsin. I'm just hoping a few Democrats will read this and decide to ride the wind wave into rural voter support. Unlike most GOP rhetoric, this is a real issue they can get behind.

Hate to bring it up, but it looks like Minnesota is at it again. Midwest Energy News:

A new report says proposed renewable energy investments in Minnesota could create

From 1923...Wisconsin's not there yet...

more than 5,000 construction jobs and $7 billion in economic activity, largely in conservative, rural parts of the state.

“We are clearly seeing a bigger (political) divide in Minnesota and clean energy is a way to bridge that divide,” said Chris Kunkle, Wind on the Wires regional policy manager for Minnesota. “You’re talking about advancing policies and investments from the Twin Cities that benefit rural Minnesota and create new jobs and tax revenue. These are in really red areas, this is rural America."

And just like Wisconsin, rural voters in Minnesota "wanted to try something different:" 

President-elect Donald Trump — who has called climate change a hoax and whose senior advisor, Steve Bannon, holds radical anti-climate views — won in most rural Minnesota counties.

You'd never know it by anything Republicans say in Wisconsin, but wind technology has dramatically changed: 

The reason for newly proposed projects in those counties stems from improved turbine technology that allows for greater production out of less wind, policy manager Chris Kunkle said.

The report shows that more than 3,300 megawatts (MW) of wind projects could create 12,573 jobs, including those in construction, while paying property owners $9 million annually in lease payments and local governments in excess of $9 million in taxes.

But if Republicans finally get their way, failed bills from the past will pass and dramatically change everything, at their own peril:

Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas, believes perils exist for any move by Trump to push for the removal of tax credits. 
“All those rural districts in America’s wind corridor might not be thrilled if their preferred candidate seeks to undermine one of their most important sources of economic growth,” he wrote recently in the New York Times.

Wyoming Republicans "No Tax Pledge" doesn't apply to Wind Energy manufacturers and their cunstomers.

So much for the “no tax pledge."

Republicans seem to have no problem raising taxes and killing jobs if it involves an industry challenging the big money special interests in the fossil fuel industries.

Hypocrites? Think they care? Come on folks, their voters feed on having it both ways.

Wyoming Republicans, just like here in Wisconsin, have decided to put up road blocks to kill wind energy. And if that doesn't work, raise taxes to pay down their deficit. LA Times:

Who owns the wind? We do, Wyoming says, and it's taxing those who use it … Then, with great efficiency for a conservative state not traditionally tilted toward burdening the energy industry, they did something no other state has done, before or since: They taxed it … a state trying to close a budget gap that could reach $500 million.

But now, as one of the world’s largest wind farms is about to begin construction aimed at providing clean electricity to nearly a million homes in California and the Southwest — potentially transforming this fossil fuel state into a major player in renewables — some powerful state lawmakers are looking to raise those taxes.

The company that has spent nine years trying to build the wind project ... “Just about every legislator we’ve met with asks us, ‘You tell us how much we can tax you before we put you out of business,’” said Bill Miller, chief executive of the Power Co. of Wyoming.

In their view, the tax increase is more about politics — Wyoming lashing out at clean energy as payback for federal policy aimed at scaling back the coal industry on which the state has always relied.

Republicans there are also recycling an argument used to oppose the XL Pipeline; not enough jobs: 

Supporters of the tax increase say that it likely will not provide anywhere near the jobs and other benefits fossil fuels have. They also say Wyoming doesn’t necessarily need clean energy.

Odder still, the wind company is a subsidiary of company involved in fossil fuels and is owned by a major Republican donor, Philip Anshutz.

Ray Peterson, a contractor who hopes his rig company will get work with the new wind project, wrote to the revenue committee this month to oppose any move to raise taxes further.

“We expected the Obama Administration to wage war on coal and oil as they promised,” he wrote. “What is most alarming, and completely unexpected, is realizing Wyoming state officials are willing to threaten killing the creation of new business, much needed jobs, a generous amount of tax revenue and diversification of our state’s energy dependent economy to wage war on renewable energy sources.”

Here in Rawlins, the seat of Carbon County, a name that now seems plenty ironic, local leaders support the wind project, but not the idea of taxing it further.

Republicans oppose Pipeline...that is, Wind Energy Pipeline through Arkansas.

After years of vilifying judges and justices who's decisions they disagree with as "liberal activists legislating from the bench," Republicans are admitting what they really wanted was "conservative activists legislating from the bench." Got it, loud and clear.

Republicans are about to blow up another myth, this time on jobs, energy pipelines and energy independence; Arkansas Republicans just came out against jobs and a 705 mile energy pipeline because it crosses right through their state and...wait for it, supplies electricity from WIND and not big oil. ArkTimes:

Wind Energy in 1923?

The Arkansas congressional delegation, all Republicans, quickly issued a statement decrying the decision. They said it usurped state control over transmission lines. They've been trying to pass legislation to prevent this.

The same Arkansas Republicans have been supportive of a pipeline carrying dangerous Canadian tar sands through the Great Plains in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, despite local opposition in those states. That line doesn't pass through Arkansas.

What happened to job creation and making the U.S. energy independent? 

The electrical pipeline will move wind energy produced in Oklahoma and Texas through Arkansas to Tennessee. First, let's shine a light on a few Republican hypocrites:

Arkansas Republican Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton, who are to the right of the right wing of the Republican Party and supporters of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, have filed a bill in Congress that would give the states veto power over electric lines, ostensibly to stop the federal government from exercising eminent domain. Given their position on Keystone, it's possible their financial support from the oil industry motivates them and others who oppose the project.

I'm not arguing for or against the wind pipeline, I just wanted to point a finger at the hypocrites who are in the back pocket of big oil, and the vacuous nature of their "principled" arguments. 

What happened to job creation and making the U.S. energy independent?

Opposition is coming from the Cherokee Nation and one specific and unlucky wind energy supporter. On the latter, I thought her story was oddly funny;  

Clara Dotson's 80 acres north of Dover is crisscrossed by utility easements: a natural gas pipeline, HVAC power line and an Arkansas Valley Cooperative electric distribution line. Last year, she learned that Valero/Plains All American planned run its pipeline shipping crude oil from Oklahoma to Tennessee through her property. Utilities have the power of eminent domain in Arkansas, which means that landowners can't stop them from building on their land. They can dicker over compensation, but that's it.

Still, you would think getting forever utility payments to use her property would more than make up any loss in property value to Dotson, or any future land owners, right? 

Millsaps and others — including the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma — believe the line will lower their property values a full 30 percent. (Clean Line says studies indicate that 10 percent is a more accurate figure) … The company will offer "the full market value" for acreage in its easement and would also pay the landowner $500 for a "mono" pole and $1,500 for a lattice pole, which requires a larger base. He said easements would be between 150 and 200 feet wide.

Jobs, jobs, jobs, Republican want to kill all the jobs....

Three Arkansas companies will get working making components of the line ... Also, a converter station will be built in Arkansas so that power can be supplied in the state, not just carried through to others. 

Wind Energy, both power and jobs, is happening despite what backward Wisconsin Republicans and WMC tell us.

I made an amazing discovery the other day while paging through a really old alternative Milwaukee newspaper, the American Bugle. The 1975 weekly featured an article about wind energy, pictured below. Imagine where we'd be today if big energy didn't keep wind from becoming a serious player. Of course they're still at it, with doom and gloom warnings about killing business and rising customer utility bills, never mind their continual requests at the PSC for hikes using cheap coal. So what's that all about? 

That myth gets trashed in the current article at the bottom that proves wind energy isn't just affordable now, but a job creator to boot. So let's take a look at what the "21st Century" will like. Click on the picture here to enlarge:

Now here's the latest good news that will once and for all end premature deaths due to fossil fuel pollution:

WaPo: Two new reports published Monday by the Department of Energy find that one key renewable sector — wind — including the 2014 Wind Technologies Market Report, published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — suggest that wind is being installed at a rapid rate, that its costs are plummeting, that its technologies are advancing, and that it is creating 73,000 jobs to boot.

Sad to say, Wisconsin is not one of those job creating states. Easing our energy dependence on coal isn't even a thought, and neither is being more self sufficient producing our own energy:

Wind energy in the U.S. is now providing roughly 5 percent of total U.S. electricity demand (66 gigawatts). And 13 more gigawatts are now “in the construction phase” and set to come online by 2016.

According to the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, “It really dispels some of the past myths that you cannot have significant amounts of wind energy in the system — a variable source in the system — without really affecting the overall efficiency.”  

And most striking, it found that the wholesale cost of wind energy — bought under a “power purchasing agreement,” or PPA, in which a utility or company buys power from a wind farm under a long term contract — is now … cheaper than the average price of wholesale electricity in many parts of the country,” says Ryan Wiser of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a lead author of the new report. Granted, it’s important to note that costs would not be so low without the wind production tax credit. Still, it’s impressive. With the wind production tax credit expired, beyond 2016 there may be less wind growth.

Distributed wind, like distributed solar, refers to wind energy — typically just one or two turbines — installed by private individuals or companies to allow them to generate a portion of the electricity they need onsite, rather than having to buy it from a utility company. Wind isn’t the only renewable sector booming — at least for rate of growth lately, solar greatly surpasses it, with the electricity generated from solar in the U.S. doubling between 2013 and 2014. However, thus far, wind contributes a larger percentage of our total electricity than does solar.