Wind energy incentives: leveling the playing field

Mr. Bradley has been attacking renewable energy sources for more than a decade. This time, he uses as ammunition [a recent] EIA [Energy Information Administration] report that was initially withheld for quality concerns, then issued with a long string of qualifiers because it leaves out decades of fossil fuel advantages.

Fossil fuels have been subsidized for more than 90 years through permanent measures in the tax code. American taxpayers have paid well over $500 billion to fossil-fuel industries over the years, and they are still paying.

Fossil fuels also receive billions of dollars of hidden subsidies each year in the form of health and environmental costs that are not reflected in fossil-fuel market prices or the price of electricity and gasoline produced from them. According to a National Academy of Sciences study released in 2008, fossil fuels annually cost Americans $120 billion in health damages alone.

Tom Gray, www.awea.org/blog/