Chicago is a wind-power hotbed right now, with the American Wind Energy Association meeting there. But not everybody has both feet on the bandwagon. A columnist at the Chicago Tribune, fully aware of AWEA's event in his city, says the federal renewables mandates that wind power is looking for are too expensive and they are unnecessary. The wind industry is only looking to line its pockets, he says.
Here is the way David Greising started his column:
They have come here by the thousands, to the Windy City, to soak in a belief that wind is the power of the future, and that, just in case others do not see it that way, the law should make it so.
The wind power industry "wants us as customers," Greising says, and "So far, so good." But getting the federal government to require it is "not a good idea."
Greising is aiming at the federal renewables standard that major House and Senate bills are contemplating, and that the Obama administration is behind. "The fact of the matter is, the existing system is moving with all due haste toward the goals Obama has set," Greising says, and a mandate "would succeed only in strengthening the power and fattening the pocketbooks of the windmill builders that want the mandate."
He shouldn't be shy.
AWEA does not seem to recognize, Greising says, that "the very success the industry has enjoyed up to this point is a strong argument against the need for a federal mandate." Quite a number of lawmakers agree with him.
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