Time to blow off 20 years of wind tax credits

After 20 years of taxpayer subsidies and unrealized benefits, Congress should allow tax credits for wind energy to expire Dec. 31. The credits, created in 1992, were supposed to jump-start a nascent wind industry, but have only propped up an uneconomical, inefficient sector at great cost by diverting taxes to subsidize jobs that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Congress can save $12 billion next year alone by defeating efforts to extend the tax credits.

This doesn’t even consider the annual 440,000 shredding deaths from spinning windmill blades of eagles, hawks, geese, bats and other birds, many prot...