Wind, solar subsidies 85+ times those for oil, gas

Institute for Energy Research:
recent report of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has put the kaput to the argument that natural gas and coal receive more federal subsidies than politically correct energies (wind, solar, and not much else). In FY 2010, wind’s $5 billion swamped oil and gas’s $654 million. Even tiny solar out-received oil and gas by one third.
But when you look at the subsidies on an energy production basis, the disparity becomes stunning (or scandalous from a taxpayer viewpoint).  Wind’s 5.6 cents per kilowatthour is more than 85 times that of oil and gas combined. And solar … would you believe 13 times that of wind, making the disparity north of a thousand times?
But a second argument of renewable advocates has crept up: that government subsidies over many decades allowed the oil and gas industry to cement its perch atop the energy chain. The implication is that wind and solar may need the same long-lived subsidization to achieve commercial viability too.
This argument from history is errant as well.
The commercial oil industry dates to 1859, the year of the Drake well in Pennsylvania. The U.S.petroleum industry matured in the next decades and then shifted to the southwest with the discovery of the Spindletop gusher in Beaumont,Texas in 1901.
Meanwhile, a commercial petroleum industry developed abroad, a development that would lead to increasing oil imports to the U.S.and price “demoralization” for domestic producers by the late 1920s. From this period through the 1960s, the “problem” was too much oil, not too little.
Does this sound like an infant industry? Hardly! It was an industry that was ‘too good for itself’ in some ways, and certainly not one threatened by a cheaper energy source as, say, electricity was to manufactured (coal) gas in this era.
So when did government oil and gas subsidies begin in the U.S.?
Corporate taxation began in 1909, and the depletion tax writeoff began in 1913. The intangible drilling and development cost deduction began in 1917. So the classic subsidies cited by renewable apologists began a half-century after the industry was born. Direct government subsidies, such as checks written on the U.S. Treasury, were virtually nonexistent in the history of the petroleum industry.
... 
There is more.

We are being asked to pay a very high price for less efficient energy which is then further subsidized by tax payers.  This is a formula that bankrupted Spain and led to unemployment of about 20 percent.  It is clearly a bad investment for the government and for the companies like Solyndra who invest in it.  The problem is that it is just too inefficient and undependable.  Even if you put in the infrastructure you still need natural gas to produce energy when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow or it blows to strongly or its too cold or the snow covers the panel or ....

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