Another View: Wind power column does not give accurate picture of subsidy

Professors Charles Colgan and Gary Hunt were not forthcoming in their Feb. 12 Maine Voices column, “Getting the economics of wind power right.”

Wind is a new source of power for the Northeast. Colgan and Hunt are looking at historic figures for subsidies from the past 25 years. Please. Let’s be honest and up-front with the figures.

The Energy Information Agency of the Department of Energy published figures in August 2011 showing that for the fiscal year 2010, the federal subsidies were as follows: Hydro received 1.8 percent of the federal subsidies for renewable energy; nuclear received 21 percent; coal received 10 percent and wind a whopping 42 percent.

In dollars, this translates into wind receiving $4.9 billion in federal subsidies in the year 2010.

Colgan and Hunt evidently either know how to present warped figures and make them sound real or they are getting a little graft from the wind companies. I would honestly hate to say that I think there may be a payoff in the works between possibly First Wind and either of these professors or the schools they represent, but something is going on.

The information I stated is presented clearly at: http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/

I do not see any source for Colgan and Hunt’s numbers.

– Merrylyn Sawyer is a resident of Wayne.

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