Leading Bird Conservation Group Formally Petitions Feds to Regulate Wind Industry

[kristopher]

37. No wonder you are gaga over nuclear power.

Such a total lack of awareness of basic economics could lead anyone to erroneous conclusions. Taking a look at the elements of market competition and comparing the effect of those elements on potential profits from nuclear power vs wind (and solar) gives a clear picture of why any existing provider of nuclear technology (a near monopolistic enterprise) would be insane not to try to protect that technology from a mass produced commodity like wind power.

From wiki:

In economic theory, perfect/pure competition describes markets such that no participants are large enough to have the market power to set the price of a homogeneous product. Because the conditions for perfect competition are strict, there are few if any perfectly competitive markets. Still, buyers and sellers in some auction-type markets, say for commodities or some financial assets, may approximate the concept. Perfect competition serves as a benchmark against which to measure real-life and imperfectly competitive markets.

Generally, a perfectly competitive market exists when every participant is a "price taker", and no participant influences the price of the product it buys or sells. Specific characteristics may include:
Infinite buyers and sellers – Infinite consumers with the willingness and ability to buy the product at a certain price, and infinite producers with the willingness and ability to supply the product at a certain price.
Very few entry and exit barriers – It is relatively easy for a business to enter or exit in a perfectly competitive market.
Perfect factor mobility - In the long run factors of production are perfectly mobile allowing free long term adjustments to changing market conditions.
Perfect information - Prices and quality of products are assumed to be known to all consumers and producers.[1]
Zero transaction costs - Buyers and sellers incur no costs in making an exchange (perfect mobility).[1]
Profit maximization - Firms aim to sell where marginal costs meet marginal revenue, where they generate the most profit.
Homogeneous products – The characteristics of any given market good or service do not vary across suppliers.
Non-increasing returns to scale - Non-increasing returns to scale ensure that there are sufficient firms in the industry.

In the short term, perfectly-competitive markets are not productively efficient as output will not occur where marginal cost is equal to average cost, but allocatively efficient, as output will always occur where marginal cost is equal to marginal revenue, and therefore where marginal cost equals average revenue. In the long term, such markets are both allocatively and productively efficient.

Under perfect competition, any profit-maximizing producer faces a market price equal to its marginal cost. This implies that a factor's price equals the factor's marginal revenue product. This allows for derivation of the supply curve on which the neoclassical approach is based. (This is also the reason why a monopoly does not have a supply curve.) The abandonment of price taking creates considerable difficulties to the demonstration of existence of a general equilibrium[4] except under other, very specific conditions such as that of monopolistic competition.


.....Profit

In contrast to a monopoly or oligopoly, it is impossible for a firm in perfect competition to earn economic profit in the long run, which is to say that a firm cannot make any more money than is necessary to cover its economic costs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition

Nuclear power is an oligopoly.

"In contrast to a monopoly or oligopoly, it is impossible for a firm in perfect competition to earn economic profit in the long run, which is to say that a firm cannot make any more money than is necessary to cover its economic costs."

If the world turns to nuclear power we must buy all of the related production and fuel resources as well as disposal services, from highly specialized vendors that are able to exact extremely high profits relative to those in the renewable sector which can be truly mass produced.

The world's undisputed leading birding group, the Audubon Society, has strongly endorsed wind energy.
Every environmental group around the world that has established their bona fides by being in existence before renewables became a threat to the entrenched energy interests likewise endorses renewables (including wind) over fossil fuels and nuclear.

The messaging of the ABC and the structure of its board make it highly likely it is, at heart, an astroturf group serving the interests of the entrenched energy industries.