The Wall Street Journal published an editorial this weekend: "The Wind Power Tax: A regulator socializes transmission-line costs, and a utility fights back."
It begins:
Should businesses and families have to pay higher electricity rates to underwrite the cost of wind energy they don't even use?
That is the issue as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission takes up a complaint by Interstate Power and Light Co. (IPL) that 500,000 rate payers in Iowa and Minnesota will have to pay $170.5 million from 2008-2016 for transmission lines and upgrades to connect wind farms to the electric grid.
The utility provides compelling evidence that "the burden of these huge costs is unrelated to any benefits that may accrue to IPL and its customers." And they are paying even though they "have not experienced any material improvements to reliability or lower energy prices."
The case has ramifications nationwide because the price tag for upgrading and expanding power lines to reach offshore and remote wind turbines could reach $150 billion. The green energy lobby and Obama Administration want to socialize these costs on the backs of all rate payers.
We criticized this stealth consumer tax two years ago ("The Great Transmission Heist," Review and Outlook, November 8, 2010). Michigan rate payers were asked to subsidize about 20% of the $16 billion cost to build wind-based power lines outside the state even though those customers received little benefit. These cost-shifting schemes would seem to violate the Federal Power Act, which says FERC should establish "just and reasonable" rates to cover transmission costs.
Read the rest of the article here.
