Nearly all policy studies are undertaken by researchers with a bias or agenda. After all, few people do policy-relevant research just to satisfy intellectual curiosity. Plus, rigorous quantitative analysis is expensive and somebody has to pay for it. That “somebody” is almost always not an honest broker but a stakeholder — an organization with a material stake in the outcome of the policy battle.

Consider the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), which also sponsors studies. AWEA members benefit directly from market-rigging interventions like renewable electricity mandates and the wind energy production tax credit (PTC). Those policies transfer wealth from ratepayers and taxpayers to wind energy producers. So what are the odds AWEA would ever pay for a study critical of mandates and the PTC?

Nor should we look to “the government” for an unbiased assessment. The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) produces lots of studies and reports on wind energy. It too is a dog in the fight. The agency’s budget and very existence ultimately depend on persuading policymakers and the public that renewable energy and the policies supporting it are a great bargain. Don’t expect to find a bias-free zone there.

In short, policymaking, like litigation, is an adversarial process. We know in advance that the lawyer is an advocate, not an honest broker, and argues in the interest of his client. That, however, does not excuse the jury from listening to both sides of a controversy and attempting to reach a judgment based on the evidence presented.

Whether the Reason Foundation study makes a contribution to the debate or is deceptive garbage depends entirely on the validity of its assumptions, methods, data, and conclusions. You have not offered any evidence rebutting it. Dismissing the study out of hand because Reason gets funding from Koch is to argue ad hominem. It’s an argument not based on facts or logic but your particular bias!

Some quick additional points. Wind energy is one of the least cost-effective ways to improve air quality. It is much more efficient to attack air pollution directly via emission controls than to impose renewable energy quota. Nor is wind energy a cost-effective carbon mitigation policy. That’s why the Waxman-Markey bill included a national renewable electricity mandate in addition to a cap-and-trade program. Waxman and Markey are big boosters of wind, but they knew that simply putting a price on carbon to penalize fossil-fuel electric generation isn’t enough to make wind energy competitive.

As for $10 billion in oil subsidies, oil is a bit player in U.S. electric supply and has been since the 1970s. So even if oil gets all the subsidies you claim, that’s not a good reason to subsidize wind.

Moreover, most of the tax breaks often condemned as subsidies to “Big Oil” are in fact broadly available to many industries, as William O’Keefe explains (http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/10/should-oil-and-naturalgas-tax.php#2253278). For example, the Sec. 199 manufacturing tax credit is available to all domestic U.S. manufacturers. Similarly, the protection against double taxation for U.S. oil companies with operations overseas applies to all U.S. firms. The tax break for “intangible drilling costs” applies to drilling operations a basic principle of the tax code, namely, expenses are deducted from revenues to determine taxable income. The depletion allowance tax may or may not be a good idea, but it applies to all forms of mining, not just oil and gas.

O’Keefe used to be an executive of the American Petroleum Institute, so his bias may offend your bias. To repeat, that does not tell us whether his argument is valid or not, because identifying bias is not refutation.

Korchinski conclusions are accordingly suspect for a number of reasons. He fails to acknowledge that the fossil fuel industry gets at least $10 billion in annual subsidies http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
He fails to account for the pollution costs of fossil fuel energy including carbon pollution.

Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association

For typos, you say PJM several times instead of PMJ. I don’t even know which one is correct at this point.

Power from the sun is vastly greater than wind power and it is too costly for use on a large scale.

James Rust