With more than 72,000 wind turbines now operating across the U.S., congressional Republicans want to ensure landowners aren’t left holding the bag to decommission and remove the structures after their 25-year lifetime.
After all, the wind industry is being heavily subsidized by taxpayers to build and maintain the structures. Many landowners, especially farmers and ranchers in Colorado, can’t afford the cost to remove the towering turbines once they’ve outlived their usefulness.
The bill sponsored by Colorado’s U.S. Reps. Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming is called the Production Tax Credit Reform Act.
“The burden for removing and disposing of decommissioned wind turbines should not fall on landowners across the Eastern Pains,” said Buck. “Energy companies must remove retired turbines from leased land themselves and not leave it as a costly problem for hardworking landowners to solve.”
Added Hageman:
“Every square foot of land owned by farmers and ranchers is valuable, and an industry known for tight fiscal margins should not be responsible for disposing of wind turbines subsidized with taxpayer dollars,” said Hageman. “By making removal of decommissioned turbines a condition for Production Tax Credits, private landowners will no longer suffer the financial burden of abandoned or failed green bad deal energy projects.”
The social media overlords at PolitiFact say it is false to report there are 14,000 abandoned wind turbines littered across the U.S.
So unless we want this report to be censored, we better stick to their findings which is, they don’t know the number, but 14,000 is wrong.
Energy production is tracked and recorded, as is the installation of wind turbines, but no one is tracking the number of abandoned wind turbines.
Figures.