Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of the Energy Policy Act of 199 under president George H. W.
Bush, Sr. Such policies, however, primarily favoured those that
have “passive income” taxes to ofset, those in the top income
brackets. The result of these policies meant that only rich people
or capital corporations with taxes to avoid could benefit from wind
turbine ownership. In order to maximise profits, these policies
allowed wind projects to be sold to new owners after five to seven
years after most of the tax advantages and profits are accounted
for.
It is the opinion of the authors that this financial model led
wind manufacturers, especially with General Electric buying into
the wind market, to cut corners and costs by reducing the durability
of the gearboxes and other components—as nothing else much
mattered to investors after seven years of operation. The results
of these policies and their version of planned obsolescence came
to fruition when large series of gearbox failures pushed major
wind turbine manufacturers to the brink of financial failure in the
following decade.
These tax-based policies, which come and go with the changing
political winds, are not healthy for the wind industry in the
long run. A strong wind turbine manufacturing base cannot be
built with such uncertainty. Durable renewable energy generation
systems will not be built with short-term profit maximisation as
the primary economic motivation. Renewable energy policies such
as the German feed-in tarifs which guarantee a 20-year fair power
price to make a market like agriculture crops, with guaranteed
access to the electric grid, are what are required to build a solid
wind turbine industry. With fair price policies such as the feed-in
tarifs, wind power markets and ownership are open to all citizens,
not just for the 1% of the population who can aford it.
25.10
The Matter of Scale
The middle part of the first decade of 2 000 saw rapid growth in
the installation of the multi-megawatt wind turbines. In 007 it
was a seller's market—the prices were high for commercial wind
turbines with delivery times of over two years. The wind industry
raced for larger rotors on taller towers, with 100 m rotors on
100 m towers becoming more common for MW and 3 MW
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