Wind power runs into the “headwinds” of rising costs, higher interest rates and removal of tax-payer subsidies and reacts by letting some air out of its future plans

I was tempted to title this article “farting in the wind” .. or “letting the air out of the balloon inflated by taxes and subsidies”

From here:

Wind Power Has A Profitability Problem | OilPrice.com

“Ben Backwell, CEO of the trade group Global Wind Energy Council, stated “What I’m seeing is a colossal market failure.” Backwell added, “The risk is we’re not on track for net zero [emissions] -- and the other risk is the supply chain contracts, instead of expanding.”

How could this possibly be true? The narrative from the “greens” is that renewable energy is the best hope for saving mankind from the evils of hydrocarbon fuels. (Note neither natural gas or oil is a fossil. Do they look like fossils?)

“Many wind companies have felt the triple whammy of inflation, reduced tax incentives, and rising interest rates of the last year, adding to the supply chain disruptions of the pandemic.”

“By November 2022, GE was predicting $2 billion in losses in its renewable energy division, largely due to inflation and supply chain challenges. This has led the company to make cuts, with plans to reduce its global headcount at onshore facilities by 20 percent over a year.”

“estas, the world's biggest wind turbine maker, reported its first annual loss in almost a decade in 2022, of around $1.68 billion. The firm said that its sales last year fell by around 7 percent, and it faced rising costs across several areas.”

“Siemens Energy reported a net loss of more than $943.48 million.”

“Aaron Barr, an industry analyst at Wood Mackenzie, stated “The wind energy market is stuck in this very strange paradox right now… We have the best long-term climate policy certainty ever, across all the largest markets, but we’re struggling through a period where the whole industry, particularly the supply chain, has been hit by issues that have culminated in destroying profit margins and running many of the top OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and their component vendors into negative profitability territory.”

Strange choice of words “best long-term climate policy certainty ever” = perpetual tax credits and direct payments – subsidies – from governments, plundering scarce tax dollars to create higher energy prices and inflation?

Acres and acres of eye-sores spread across land and sea – removing these acres from any other use and killing all sorts of birds and insects above ground (and who knows what under the sea).

Still, there is a white knight for these eco-warriors assisting the greens to meet Don Quixote 2030 emissions targets (the great Don Quixote like to “tilt” (joust) with windmills.

Guess how?

The usual – misdirected taxes to reward doomed and useless political dogma.

“In the U.S., this has partly been driven by the new tax credits and subsidies expected to arrive from Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.”

Uh huh.

The last sentence in the article says it all.

“But governments around the globe must continue to provide incentives to encourage greater development to ensure that companies are not deterred by major recent losses from rolling out new wind projects.”

Onwards!

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