Today’s Wall Street Journal features a special insert titled “Energy: The Journal Report” (subscription required) featuring 12 articles on the glories of renewable energy and energy conservation and the case for government subsidy thereof. Those articles are so bad that it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s look at the highlights.
Rebecca Smith’s lead story for the insert, “The New Math of Alternative Energy,” sets the tone. While she’s happy to report the fact that no renewable energy can compete effectively in the market at the moment, she understates the cost differential between renewable and conventional fuels and is happy to parrot the industry’s optimistic forecasts about the future. From her article, you’d never guess that there was anybody on planet Earth not bullish on 13th century energy technology.
Ms. Smith, for example, argues that wind energy costs 6–9 cents per kilowatt hour “not counting the subsidies,” which means that they are “approaching the point where wind power may be able to prosper without subsidies.” But not even wind energy investors would buy that. A recent presentation from Ed Feo of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, for instance, noted that two-thirds of the economic value of wind projects comes from federal and state tax benefits. The U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering likewise recently estimated that even with a $45 per ton carbon tax, wind was substantially more expensive than conventional energy.