CRONIES: Leaked Memo Details Wind Industry Campaign Against A Major Energy Dept Study.

“Wind energy is helping diversify our energy mix and makes the power grid more reliable and secure, as well as bringing good jobs and billions of dollars of investments to rural and Rust Belt America,” the memo reads.

“That’s old news at this point,” AWEA spokesman Evan Vaughan told TheDCNF, referring to the strategy laid out in the leaked memo.

“Since then we’ve had some good meetings with the Department of Energy team working on the study, and we’re making sure they have all the facts about how cost-effective and reliable wind has become,” Vaughan said.

“That has been confirmed by our own research and by experts who run the grid every day, such as the Southwest Power Pool and Xcel Energy,” he said.

On April 15, Perry ordered Energy Department officials to see if regulations, mandates, and tax subsidies “are responsible for forcing the premature retirement of baseload power plants.”

Forcing traditional power sources offline is certainly one way to make wind power more cost-effective — just not to consumers.