Peter Behr and Jenny Mandel report for The New York Times that “wind power weathered a second year of recession to post new records of generation.”

But what Behr and Mandel do not report is that wind producers are also enjoying record subsidies. The 2009 stimulus bill includes $16.7 billion for renewable energy and energy efficiency and $4.0 billion towards loan guarantees for renewable energy. The government handouts already in place helped as well. An April 2008 study of subsidies for the energy industry finds that wind and solar receive over $20 per kilowatt hour in subsidies while more traditional, reliable sources of energy such as coal and natural gas receive less than 50 cents per kilowatt hour. Yet they want more. Dennis Bode, the American Wind Energy Association’s CEO, said, “”Our annual report documents an industry hard at work and on the verge of explosive growth if the right policies — including a national renewable electricity standard — are put in place.”

A renewable electricity standard mandates that a certain percentage of our country’s electricity must come from so-called renewable energy sources, mostly recognizably, solar and wind. In other words, it guarantees that wind production won’t fail even if the consumers end up paying higher electricity bills. As Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman puts it, “Of course, the reason wind energy needs all this government help is that it is too expensive to catch on otherwise. By some measures it is over 50 percent costlier than conventional coal.”

The question the New York Times should be asking is: Would wind energy beat the recession without the American taxpayers’ help?

If Denmark is an indicator, the answer is no. President Obama says Denmark is a country we should aspire to be like when it comes to renewable energy production. But according to a study from the Danish Centre for Political Studies (CEPOS), commissioned by the Institute for Energy Research, America should not go down the same road as Denmark. The study refutes the claim that Denmark generates 20 percent of its power from wind stating that its high intermittency not only leads to new challenges to balance the supply and demand of electricity, but also provides less electricity consumption than assumed. The new study finds that “wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark’s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%.” Furthermore, the wind energy Denmark exports to its northern neighbors, Sweden and Norway, does little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because the energy it replaces is carbon neutral. The study goes on to say that absent of government subsidies, Denmark would be absent a wind industry.