Trump speaks truth to wind power
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Every once in a while Donald Trump says something that shocks Washington with its blunt truth. So it was during last week’s discursive press conference when he observed that wind power isn’t economic without subsidies.
Wind farms “only work if you get a subsidy," Mr. Trump mused. “The only people that want them are the people that are getting rich off windmills, getting massive subsidies from the U.S.
government. And it’s the most expensive energy there is. It’s many, many times more expensive than clean natural gas.
. . .
You don’t want energy that needs subsidy." The media’s fact-checkers pounced and proclaimed that wind energy is among the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources. But that’s only because of rich subsidies, which were sweetened by the Inflation Reduction Act. Federal tax credits can cover 50% of the cost of building an offshore wind farm and more than 80% of the cost onshore.
Even the Biden Energy Department, in a 2023 report, estimates that power from new onshore wind farms costs more than from gas-fired plants on a per-megawatt-hour basis if you exclude subsidies. Wind with tax credits is about 25% less expensive. On the other hand, offshore wind costs two to three times more than gas power even with subsidies.
These estimates notably don’t account for the cost of backing up wind generation. Power from so-called peaker plants and batteries costs three to four times more than from baseload generators. It’s far cheaper to run gas, coal and nuclear plants around the clock than to use wind (and solar) some of the time and have to back them up with other forms of energy.
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