Renewable energy must continue to rely on government subsidies to survive, according to a Californian energy analyst who has studied energy issues for four decades.

“That’s basically correct,” said Robert Michaels, a retired Cal State University, Fullerton economics professor. Michaels said that explains why Congress included money to support wind and solar power in the $2.3 trillion omnibus spending bill passed on Dec. 21.

The package included extending the Production Tax Credit (PTC) through 2022, and the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) through 2023, with a five-year extension for offshore wind projects which start before Jan. 1, 2026.

Robert Michaels | California State University, Fullerton

The massive spending package also extended the tax credit for carbon capture and sequestration projects through 2025, and made the commercial building energy efficiency tax deduction permanent, with annual cost of living adjustments. It was to end at the end of 2021.

Michaels said wind and solar must have such subsidies to survive.

“Because it’s impossible to have reliability unless you’ve got things backed up and made reliable,” he told Lone Star Standard.

Michaels said renewable energy requires a steady source of “capital expenditures and operating expenditures” to ensure wind and solar power sources can provide the necessary power. But that fact is obscured, he said.

“They are omitted from most of the comparisons that involve wind power,” he said.

Michaels discussed his view of wind power problems during an April 16, 2013, appearance before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Energy.

“Wind power’s inability to increase production at times of high power demand means that the most inefficient (and often most polluting) fossil-fuel generators must operate to maintain reliability and cannot be replaced by wind units,” he testified. “Even if wind turbines are widely dispersed around a region, the operator cannot expect with near-certainty that high wind power output in one subregion will make up for low wind power output elsewhere.”

Michaels told Lone Star Standard that storage is another major issue. During an outage, he said, wind power sources require a backup.

“Then you’ve got to have a full-scale electrical system operating in the background at all times,” he said. “It might not be the old-fashioned electrical generators are going to be used very often, but they’re going to have to be used a fraction of the time.”

Batteries don’t provide power to plug a gap during a typical outage, Michaels said. A new form of longer-lasting battery is needed but that technology is not currently in development.

“That’s not on the horizon yet, as far as I and anyone else has been able to tell,” he said.

Michaels has studied power issues for more than 40 years. He has testified before congressional committees, state legislatures and utility commissions in California, Texas, Mississippi, Vermont and Illinois.

He has served as a senior fellow for energy research and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and as an independent consultant in electricity and natural gas. 

Michaels is the author of “Transactions and Strategies,” a managerial economics text, and writes "Power Moves," a biweekly column on transmission and risk management. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals, law reviews and industry publications.