Andrew Follett of the Daily Caller highlights President Obama’s State of the Union remarks about the viability of wind power.
President Barack Obama stated the cost of wind power has dropped below that of natural gas, nuclear energy and other conventional sources during his last State of the Union address Tuesday.
“Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power,” Obama said. “On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills.”
The price of wind power has declined by 90 percent since 1980 as more turbines were installed with the help of subsidies. Proponents of wind power frequently cite this drop in price as a great accomplishment. However, electricity from new wind farms is still three times more expensive than power generated from existing conventional power plants and four times more expensive than power from nuclear reactors.
Wind power has been heavily subsidized since the 1980s and still gets 69 times more in subsidies than coal, oil, and natural gas per amount of energy generated. …
… Despite these massive subsidies, one in four wind suppliers have gone out of business in the past two years while wind power produced a mere 4.4 percent of all electricity generated in 2014.
