Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Developer cancels plan for WI wind farm because of Walker

This is what happens with predatory capitalism. Powerful, reactionary corporations drive out new competitors. In Wisconsin, the dirty-energy company Koch Industries controls Gov. Scott Walker. And so Walker, doing Koch Industries' bidding, proposes to make it nearly impossible to site windfarm projects.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has the story:
Chicago energy development firm Invenergy on Monday notified state regulators that it’s withdrawing plans to build a large wind power project south of Green Bay.
The project, announced in October 2009, would have seen construction of 94 to 100 turbines in and generated 150 megawatts of electricity. Based on energy output, it would have been the second-largest wind project in the state, after the Glacier Hills Wind Park in Columbia County...
The company said it was concerned about moving forward because of the state of flux in Wisconsin’s regulatory climate when it comes to wind siting. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a bill that would sharply curtail wind development, and a legislative committee moved this month to block a less restrictive wind siting standard from taking effect.
As economist James K. Galbraith wrote,
Where the reactionary branches of business, the worst polluters, the flagrant monopolists, the technological footdraggers, are given control over the system and capital markets reward them, their more progressive counterparts will eventually give up, disappear or move away. Bad business practices will drive out good. Ultimately the country will become a repository of the worst business practices and correspondingly unable to asert leadership in the world economy at large.