Romney Energy View is a Windy Mess
I am all for leveling the playing field when it comes to “all” energy sources competing with each other based on merit. I’m also a realist and know to do this we need to build an energy platform first firmly built on concrete, not sand. Apparently, Mitt Romney thinks otherwise and supports ending the wind production tax credit (PTC) incentive set to expire at the end of the year (the Senate Finance Committee voted to give wind power a life-line on Thursday for ONE more year; it now has to pass to House after summer recess). So while against the wind tax credit, the Romney campaign is still surprisingly committed to backing tax breaks for fossil fuels. At the end of the day that’s like the US Dream Team spotting Nigeria a few points in a basketball game. Fossil fuels would have such a massive financial support lead over alternative energy sources like wind that the words “level the playing field” would have to be considered comical.
The US is recovering from the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression so the time to pull tax breaks for energy resources is premature. Granted the lack of energy storage technology needed to fully harness the power generation of wind, solar and hydro still needs vast improvement but the innovation to create better technologies now more than ever needs both government and private funding. Without government incentives, companies that are already struggling due to the recent recession will look overseas to bring their alternative energy technologies to market. That scenario will cause the US to lose even more domestic jobs while further relying on foreign oil. This doesn’t sound much like a “level” playing field. It sounds like Romney is comfortable endorsing Big Oil despite record profits from the majors in recent years. Could this be why despite being born in Detroit, he has also said last December the Chevy Volt electric vehicle, a car made in the US, was “an idea whose time has not come”? We maybe need to look no further than Romney’s energy policy, Harold Hamm, to answer that question. Hamm is the head of Continental Resources, a company with the words “America’s Oil Champion” emblazoned on their website homepage.
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