They are probably just tools of Big Oil...

Backlash against Big Wind Continues

Last month, 60 residents of New York’s Herkimer County filed a lawsuit in Albany that provides yet another example of the growing backlash against the wind-energy sector...

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The Answer Really Isn't Blowing in the Wind

FROM-American Thinker

 By William Sullivan

 Ninety billion is a rather large number. To get a gauge of just how large, consider that 90 billion minutes ago equates to roughly 171,090 years, the moment in history when scientists believe our ancestors began preening their bodies of lice.

 Three hundred thousand kilometers per second is the speed of light. We all know that's pretty fast. Well, 90 billion kilometers per second is the speed of light-squared.

 And the vast, seemingly infinite yonder of the entire universe, some scientists postulate, is 90 billion light-years across.

 In the natural world, 90 billion goes a long way. But as we've discovered, a $90-billion investment to subsidize renewable energy sources in the natural world does surprisingly little. This amount, allocated in 2009's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to subsidize green energy initiatives, has thus far yielded today's bustling "renewable-energy sector" that employs roughly 140,000 Americans. And even that dismal figure is wildly inflated. Consider that according to Hans Bader of the Examiner, "most of America's existing green jobs predate the Obama administration, which did not create them."

 That is not to say that this investment our politicians made on your behalf did not have positive results -- it just didn't have positive results for you. In the first year of this green stimulus, an estimated 79% went to foreign nations; among the larger of these payments went to Babcock & Brown, an Australian company that went bankrupt just two months after the passage of the stimulus bill. Couple this fact with notorious domestic failures like Solyndra and Beacon Power Corp., and the obvious conclusion is that this administration's green energy initiative has been a spectacular failure to this point.

 But in no other floundering green energy sub-sector is that failure so strikingly apparent as in wind energy. According to Andy Sullivan of Reuters, the wind industry has actually "shed 10,000 jobs since 2009 even as the energy capacity of wind farms has doubled." Andy then takes the liberty of giving us context for those results by reminding us that meanwhile, "the oil and gas industry has added 75,000 jobs since Obama took office." And one can only imagine how much larger that figure could be if the president had not cauterized job growth in that time frame with a senseless drilling moratorium to appease environmentalists.

 To punish their success, the Obama administration is now seeking to hamstring the oil and gas industry further with a bevy of new taxes. The clearly impotent wind industry, on the other hand, may enjoy continued subsidization to the tune of $3.5 billion per year. Of this prospect, Louis Woodhill of Forbes has a different suggestion for Congress. "First, we end the subsidies" to the wind industry, he says. He continues:

This will stop new turbines from being built, and, over time, cause all of the existing ones to shut down. Second, we allow the free market to replace the electricity obtained by wind energy with power produced by burning cheap natural gas. Third, we hire 17,500 unemployed veterans at $100,000/year each, and put them to work as snipers to kill the 400,000 birds (including 70 golden eagles) that are now hacked to death by wind turbines each year. Voila, the same results as wind power, and a savings of $1.75 billion/year for the taxpayers.

Clearly, the devotion to wind power is not due to the fact that it's a lucrative investment. It's a Western fallacy that is the fiscal equivalent of selling your home to buy a much less efficient one for twice the price. And beyond being economically wasteful, global events have proven this fallacy to actually be deadly.

 In The Independent, Kevin Myers relates that on a weekend in late January, widespread blizzards hammered Europe. During this time, the Russian natural gas company, Gazprom, was unable to meet the demand, and 300 people died in the conditions. He asks, "Did anyone even think of deploying our [Europe's] wind turbines to make good the energy shortfall from Russia?"

 "Of course not," he says. "We all know that windmills are a self-indulgent and sanctimonious luxury whose purpose is to make us feel good. Had Europe genuinely depended on green energy on Friday, by Sunday thousands would be dead from frostbite and exposure."

 Europeans, like American environmentalists, have an affinity for anything green. But that warm and fuzzy feeling that they get when they think about the good that wind turbines do for the planet will not keep them warm and "alive" when natural disasters strike and reliable electricity is the difference between life and death. Wind, he says, is "not so much a Renewable as it is an Unusable, and also an Unpredictable, an Unstorable, and - normally when it is very cold - an Unmovable."

 In frigid temperatures, wind typically does not blow, meaning turbines do not generate power in such conditions. Even when wind is generating power, there is a need to plan for the risk of those times it does not, meaning that you will still have to create "a parallel and duplicate energy supply to provide cover for when the wind stops." So the only way to possibly view wind power as a reliable energy source is to have another, more reliable power source readily available with a greater potential for delivery. And that should immediately raise the question as to why unreliable wind power is expected to be relied upon at all.

 Europe's devotion to the doctrine of environmentalism has compromised its energy independence -- much like American devotion to environmentalism has compromised America's energy independence through environmentally justified sanctions on domestic drilling. "To play such games with our energy systems to satisfy the whimsical gods of climate change," Myers offers, "is as intelligent and unscientific as the Aztec sacrifice of the young."

 And he is right. Thankfully, we in America have not become so devout in our efforts to appease the gods of climate change, and legislatively, we are in an earlier stage of transition to these inefficient and costly "renewable" systems. We can only hope that the winds of change are blowing in 2012, and with them we can put an end to the crippling subsidization of "renewable" systems like wind power -- until such time that free-market innovations dictate that they can be a viable addition to our energy infrastructure.

Painful Lessons for Wind Power

FROM-Human Events

by Brian Sussman

Wind energy took another blow—this time in Massachusetts.

Wind One is the 400-foot-tall wind turbine owned by the town of Falmouth, on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod. The residents of Falmouth initially welcomed Wind One as a symbol of green energy and a handy way to keep local taxes down. Electricity generated by the turbine would be used to power the municipality’s infrastructure, thus shaving about $400,000 a year off its utility costs.

Installed in the spring of 2010 at a cost of $5.1 million (with some $3 million derived through grants, government kickbacks, and credits), the huge turbine cranks out 1.65 megawatts of electricity during optimum conditions.

The topography of Falmouth is stunningly beautiful. Small ponds, creeks, pines, and oaks rest adjacent to the rocky beachfront. What’s totally out of place is a monstrous pillar of white steel rising from the countryside, topped with its whirling three-bladed rotor. However, proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, one local told a Public Radio reporter the turbine is “quite majestic.”

But as soon as her majesty was switched on, residents began to complain—Wind One was as loud as an old Soviet helicopter.

Neil Anderson lives a quarter of a mile from the turbine. He’s an avid supporter of alternative energy, having owned and operated a passive solar company on Cape Cod for the past 25 years. “It is dangerous,” he told WGBH in Boston. “Headaches. Loss of sleep. And the ringing in my ears never goes away. I could look at it all day, and it does not bother me … but it’s way too close.”

Tired of the constant chopping sound, pained residents decided to lawyer up. This month a deal was struck with the town to disengage the turbine when winds exceed 23 miles an hour. This is problematic because giant windmills such as Wind One operate at optimum efficiency at about 30 miles an hour.

So now Falmouth’s investment has taken a hit. According to Gerald Potamis, who runs the wastewater facility, shutting off the turbine during higher winds will cost the town $173,000 in annual revenue, because now they’ll have to rely more on natural gas.

Truth is, wind turbines have always suffered from the NIMBY—not in my backyard—syndrome. Look no further than the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world, constructed in the 1970s just east of the San Francisco Bay. Some 4,500 windmills are ensconced atop 50,000 acres of grassy hills, generating a modest 576 megawatts of power. Officially known as the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, one would suppose the wind farm is an icon of greenness. But instead, Altamont Pass is the poster girl of eco-infighting.

Ever since the multitude of windmills was installed, a significant increase in the numbers of dead birds has been reported. Activists immediately went ballistic, demanding action. Over the decades, lawsuits have been filed and millions of dollars spent procuring studies to track the bird body count in an effort to determine how to address the problem.

In 2008, a two-year, taxpayer-funded examination of the problem was conducted by the Altamont Pass Avian Monitoring Team. During the study period, the monitoring team determined that 8,247 birds were wacked dead by the turbine blades.

In 2010, a settlement was finally reached between the Audubon Society, Californians for Renewable Energy, and the company running the wind farm, NextEra Energy. Nearly half of the smaller turbines will now be replaced by newer, more bird-friendly models. The project is expected to be complete by 2015 and includes $2.5 million for raptor habitat restoration, all of which is expected to increase the price of energy being supplied to the grid by this portrait of green power.

Painful to the ears, and especially painful to the birds, the painful lesson environmentalists need to learn is that the answer to America’s growing energy needs is not blowing in the wind.

Wind Energy’s Overblown Prospects

FROM-Forbes

LARRY BELL

Unfortunately, wind doesn’t afford the benefits marketers promise. It isn’t an abundant, reliable power source; doesn’t appreciably reduce fossil dependence or CO2 emissions; isn’t free, or even cheap; doesn’t produce net job gains; nor does it cool brows of feverish environmental critics.

Many green energy advocates have exaggerated the capacity of wind power to make a significant impact on U.S. electrical needs. Any euphoric fantasy that an unlimited, free and clean alternative to carbon-cursed fossil-fuel sources is blowing by with scant notice is exceedingly naïve and misguided.

A major point of public confusion in this regard lies in a failure to differentiate maximum total capacities, typically presented in megawatts (MW), with actual predicted kilowatt hours (kWh), which are determined by annual average wind conditions at a particular site. Wind is intermittent, and velocities constantly change. It often isn’t available when needed most — such as during hot summer days when demands for air-conditioning are highest.


According to a 2009 Energy Information Agency Report on Electricity Generation, wind power provided only 70 billion kWh of the total U.S. 3,953 kWh supply (1.79% of generated power). Yet in May 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it is feasible to increase wind capacity to supply 20% of this nation’s electricity and enough to displace 50 % of natural gas consumption and 18% of coal use by 2030.

The report, drawn up by its national laboratories said that meeting this target presumed some important assumptions. It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in the pace of wind turbine installations. What exactly does that mean in terms of real, available kWh generating output? Actually, it means very little if merely a minor percentage of that technical feasibility provides electricity when needed.

To be extremely optimistic, let’s assume that actual average output would be 25% of that projected installed capacity. In that case, the real output would be less than 5% of the country’s electricity, and more realistically, about half of even that amount under optimistic circumstances.

Output volatility due to wind’s intermittency varies greatly according to location and time of year, typically ranging from 0% to about 50%. Texas, one of the most promising wind energy states, averages about 16.8% of installed capacity, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas assigns a value of 10% due to unpredictability. Only about 20% of that capacity is generally available during peak demand periods (about 5:00pm), while average generation during off-peak time averages about 40% of capacity.

Electricity must be instantaneously available day and night to meet “base load” requirements. When peak loads exceed supplies bad things quickly happen. Electrical frequencies and voltages drop as power line currents increase, necessitating automatic or manual interruption of loads (blackouts) to protect grids.

But unlike such workhorse power generators as coal-fired and nuclear plants designed to constantly run at peak load capacities, wind (and solar) power requires incorporation of “spinning reserve” backup systems to provide continuity. These are typically gas-fired turbines, much like those used for jet aircraft engines that are connected to generators. That’s where it gets particularly expensive.

Wind power must be integrated as part of a larger, balanced, grid network. When that wind generation component increases, the temperatures of fossil-fueled boilers must be dropped to maintain demand-supply equality. This involves wasteful shedding of heat for cooling — then more wasting to add heat back into the system without accomplishing any additional work. And since the spinning reserves don’t stop consuming fuel when wind generation is occurring, claims of energy savings or CO2 emission reductions are largely mythological.

But assuming that wind is always blowing somewhere, won’t “smart grids” balance it all out? That is good in theory only. Ed Hiserodt, writing in an October 2010 New American .com. article titled “Wind Power: An Ill Wind Blowing” cites an example of 18 interconnected wind farms located in Southeast Australia. Covering a large area of approximately 40,000 square miles, those installations benefited from sites near a coast where winds are stronger and more constant than inland placements. Yet their combined total capacity was still insufficient to even begin to keep pace with base load demands.

Another major limitation of individual wind farms is that they don’t produce power on massive scales needed in large cities and industrial areas where necessary space is at a premium and land is expensive. The most ideal locations are typically remote from areas where demands are highest, requiring large investments for power transmission lines and land right-of-way use.

Wind turbines are also very expensive to build and maintain. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that “Despite reasonable adherence to those accepted design practices, wind turbines have yet to achieve their design life of 20 years, with most requiring significant repair before the intended life is reached”. Those in offshore locations are even more costly to install, and fare much worse from corrosion damage.

Will the construction and maintenance of wind power produce the many thousands of “high-quality green jobs” touted by the industry? Not according to a report from Spain released by researchers at King Juan Carlos University. It concluded that every “green job” created by the wind industry killed off 4.2 jobs elsewhere in the Spanish economy through missed opportunities to put that money towards more useful and productive ends.

While research director Gabriel Calzada Alvarez didn’t fundamentally object to wind power, he did find that when a government artificially props up the industry with subsidies, higher electrical costs (31%) and tax hikes (5%), along with government debt follow. Each of those jobs was estimated to cost $800,000 per year to create, and 90% of those were temporary. A few months after the study was released, researchers at the Danish Center for Politiske Studier reached similar conclusions based upon their country’s experience: “It is fair to assess that no wind energy would exist if it had to compete on market terms.”


Just how environmentally friendly is that “green” wind energy? Depends a lot on whom you ask and where they live. The best energy-generation sites are typically along mountain ridges and coastal areas–the same types of locations prized for scenic views and overflown by bird and bat species that become turbine blade casualties. And while some national environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have become staunch wind power advocates in their war against fossils, others who live in proposed wind farm locations have launched strong legal opposition.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of a popular president and prominent lawyer for the Natural Defense Research Council, has fought hard against a proposed 130-turbine offshore “Cape Wind” development in Nantucket Sound. Another uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, along with Senate colleague and fellow Massachusetts resident John Kerry, didn’t want Cape Wind disturbing his vistas either.

Then there’s the concern about whales. Yes, you read this right! On June 25, 2010, environmental groups filed a suit to block the Nantucket Sound project because it will endanger migratory birds and whales. Are they possibly underestimating whale intelligence?

But what about risks to our economy and the well-being of ratepayers and taxpayers who must cover wind power costs? More than half of all revenues for companies that install and operate the systems come from federal, state and local tax benefits. Some state programs also legislate mandatory renewable portfolio standards that require electric utility companies to purchase designated amounts of energy from wind, solar and bio-fuel providers, typically at premium costs that are passed on to customers.

So long as industry survival depends upon those preferential government-imposed benefits, two things are clear. Wind is certainly not a competitive free market source of energy, or a charity we can continue to afford.

The wind-energy cover-up

FROM-Washington Times

The Obama administration works with lobbyists to distort reality

By Chris Horner

Barack Obama promised many things on his way into office. Key among these was transparency and a vow to banish lobbyists from insider roles in the policy process.

Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute has confirmed that both promises are being aggressively violated.

In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Obama told Americans on no fewer than eight occasions to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany" to see his model for successful "green jobs" policies, and what we should expect here.

Some Spanish academics and experts on that country's wind- and solar-energy policies and outcomes took Mr. Obama up on his invitation, revealing Spain's policies to be economic and employment disasters. The political embarrassment to the administration was obvious, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asked about the Spanish study at a press conference, and the president hurriedly substituted Denmark for Spain in his stump speech.

Team Obama was not amused, and they decided to do something about it. The crew that campaigned on change pulled out the oldest plan in the book - attack the messenger. The U.S. government's response to foreign academics, assessing the impact in their own country of that foreign government's policies, was to come after them in a move that internal e-mails say was unprecedented. They also show it was coordinated with the lobbyists for "Big Wind" and the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP).

What emerged was an ideological hodgepodge of curious and unsupported claims published under the name of two young non-economist wind advocates. These taxpayer-funded employees offered green dogma in oddly strident terms and, along the way, a senior Obama political appointee may well have misled Congress.

Congress was naturally curious about how the administration would end up attacking foreign academics, so Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, asked how these unprecedented offensives were launched, given that National Renewable Energy Lab and the Energy Department immediately offered conflicting statements to the media and a congressional oversight office.

Mr. Sensenbrenner asked for details from Cathy Zoi, assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Department of Energy (DOE) and until recently, the CEO of Al Gore's climate-advocacy group. She dodged four pointed questions.

However, the documents we uncovered reveal that her office was fully aware of the answers to these questions, but elected to keep the information to itself.

What transpired is difficult to discern with precision, as DOE continues to withhold numerous responsive documents. But it is clear that senior staff in Ms. Zoi's office, and another under her authority, were told by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) of its concern over the foreign economic analysis because of the media and policymaker attention it was receiving.

The questions raised about green jobs also threatened the vast increase in Department of Energy spending to pursue green jobs. The Obama administration has poured cash into renewable-energy efficiency and renewable energy with abandon. One such program at the department has grown from a budget of $1.7 billion in 2008 to $18 billion in 2009.

What is clear is that the Department of Energy then worked with Center for American Progress and the industry lobby AWEA to produce an attack that would serve all their interests.

That may not be all because we have appealed energy's decision to withhold numerous documents. Incredibly, it refuses to release documents exchanged between it and the pressure group CAP and lobbyist AWEA on the grounds that these are "inter-agency memoranda."

So, lobbyists and lavishly funded political advocacy groups are, for purposes of secrecy, mere extensions of the Obama administration. Transparency in the Age of Obama means so transparent, you can't see it.

Chris Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the best-selling "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed" (Regnery, 2008).


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Our Wrong-Headed Approach to Utilizing Alternative Energy Sources

First, do the science to determine if it works. Then support it with public funds if necessary and not the other way around.

FROM-Pajamas Media

by John Droz, Jr.


I just had an interesting correspondence with the editor of an energy publication. Here’s a story that should put it into perspective. Tell me if I’m crazy.

Let’s say some investors and developers step forward with a reportedly new type of commercial grade electrical power. They named it “Zephyr Integrated Power” (ZIP). Since these people are clever types, they spent a lot of time and money on the marketing aspect of ZIP. (They knew that this was necessary to be able to break into the system — and they want on the grid in a big way.)

So they tell us that ZIP is “free, clean, and green.” Sounds good!

Oh yes, for good measure they also add that implementing ZIP will create oodles of jobs.

So the basic question is this: exactly what do we do before we allow these people and their new product on the electric grid?

We wouldn’t be so gullible to just take their word for ZIP’s purported benefits, would we?

At the current time, the disturbing answer is yes, that is exactly what we do!

And there is more: our politicians are so enamored with ZIP that they tell these promoters that we will not only allow them on the grid, they will force utilities to use ZIP. (Hmmm. Wouldn’t utilities want to use ZIP if it was so great?)

How are utilities going to be forced to use ZIP? Lobbyists have sold our politicians a clever tool called RPS to do just that.

Despite the supposed benefits (which a free market would obviously jump on) they offer the ZIP people the promise that something like a trillion dollars of taxpayer and ratepayer money will be spent to support their product!

Even the ZIP lobbyists have a hard time believing how easy this has become. The incentives offered amount to ZIP investors earning an annual 25%, government guaranteed.

Remember, all this is without independent proof that ZIP has any real benefits.

This astounding state of affairs is how our current lobbyist driven system operates.

My Pollyanna vision is that such complex technical matters should instead be solved by science. It would go something like this:


1. The ZIP promoters would be sincerely thanked for their efforts, and asked to submit their information to a federal energy agency that would be roughly equivalent to the FDA. Let’s call it the EAA (Energy Assessment Agency) – which would have some similarities to the former OTA (Office of Technology Assessment). The EAA would do one thing: make a scientific assessment as to whether or not ZIP met the standards (reliability, etc.) of our existing sources of electrical power.

2. The “scientific” part means that there would be a comprehensive, independent, and transparent assessment of the merits of such proposals like ZIP. It would be up to the promoters to provide whatever information is needed for a proper assessment (just as pharmaceutical companies are required to do for the FDA).

3. All new industrial electrical power sources would be scientifically evaluated in three areas: 1) technology 2) economics 3) environment (which includes human impact) Again, they would be compared to verify that they meet (or exceed) our existing options. (Why would anything be approved that was an inferior choice to what we already have?)

4. If ZIP passes with flying colors, then (and only then) will it be allowed on the grid, and supported (as appropriate) with any public funds.

That’s it! None of this is currently done. This process (called using the scientific method) would be a radical departure from the political (lobbyist) approach we now use.

The end results would be profoundly different — not only making real contributions to the energy and environmental issues we have, but in truly benefiting citizens and businesses.

Our current system is so dysfunctional that we are supporting sources that fail all three evaluation areas of item “3.” For instance, a key consideration in the technical part is the impact of any proposed new source (e.g., ZIP) on our existing electrical grid.

Carefully consider this challenge: “Compared to our other alternatives, name one consequential benefit that wind energy provides to our electrical grid”.

I am aware of some serious grid liabilities of adding wind energy to the grid, but zero benefits — but please correct me if I’m wrong. So it’s our choice: throw away hundreds of billions to support the agendas of lobbyists, or take a scientific approach and get an enormously higher bang for our buck More...

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“non-monetary benefits”

FROM- Roger Helmer MP

Green energy plan costs ten times its benefits


A story tucked into the Telegraph Business News (Aug 10th) deserves the widest circulation. The government’s Renewable Energy Strategy, published last month, gives figures for both the costs and claimed benefits of the plan (of which the largest element is, of course, a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power).

The plan, according to the government, will cost around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. But the benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion. That’s not per annum. That’s over the whole period. So the costs will exceed benefits somewhere between eleven and seventeen times.

The government claims that the loss (of around £65 billion) will be compensated by the “non-monetary benefits”. Yet those benefits were presumably estimated and included in the proposed “benefits” of the plan. That is what eco-economists do when they estimate the notional cost of CO2 emissions.

These figures illustrate the massive and disastrous costs of the government’s plans. British industry will be using the most expensive electricity in the world, while the French benefit from prices probably only a third of ours, with electricity from nuclear power (which, if it matters, also produces no CO2). We are of course pursuing this daft plan because our masters in Brussels have told us to.

This sounds like a worst-case scenario. But it gets worse still. The government’s plans for building wind capacity are, according to industry sources, entirely fanciful and unachievable. So rather than getting very expensive electricity, we risk getting none at all. Expect power outages and rolling black-outs. This is where our green obsessions are taking us.


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Making sauerKraut(s)

via-Insta Pundit

FROM- Future Pundit
Germans To Pay Much For Offshore Wind Power

Germany is phasing out nuclear power plants before the end of their useful lives, building more coal electric plants, and will make Germans pay thru the nose for expensive offshore wind electric power.

It was the revival of Kohl’s center-right Christian Democratic Union party under Chancellor Angela Merkel that delivered the concessions needed to kick-start the offshore-wind industry. In 2006 Merkel’s government—a coalition that also included the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Union—made power-grid operators responsible for running cables to offshore farms. That shaved about one-fifth off the average cost of a project. And last year Merkel improved the revenue side of the ledger, boosting the offshore tariff to 0.15/kWh (US $0.21/kWh).

The German government had to increase the payment to offshore wind operators in order to get enough investors to put up money to build offshore wind farms. Opposition to closer offshore facilities forced the wind farms into deeper water which drove up costs.

To put that 21 cents per kwh producers price in perspective at the time of this writing Americans on average are paying residential retail prices at 11.28 cents per kwh on average. The 21 cents per kwh that grid operators will pay will get marked up to higher residential retails prices to pay for distribution and billing costs.

But that cost number for wind electric is even worse than that. Wind is not dispatchable power. You can't order it up when you want it in response to demand spikes. You get it when the wind blows and you don't get it when the air is still. Electric power generators that can ramp up in response to demand spikes normally gets sold for a higher price than baseload power (like a nuclear power plant that runs all the time). But baseload power is at least there when the demand is greatest just like it is there when demand is least. By contrast, wind isn't as reliable as baseload power. So that 21 cents per kwh wholesale for an undependable power source is a really high price to pay.
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tsunami of lunacy

FROM- Christopher Booker


How can wind turbines generate so much lunacy?

To meet our peak demand of 56 gigawatts of electricity would require 112,000 turbines covering 11,000 square miles, or an eighth of Britain's entire land area, says Christopher Booker.

It would be hard to beat the sad gullibility with which the media last week reported the plans of Lord Mandelson and our Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband to cover our countryside and sea with 10,000 more huge wind turbines. According to one newspaper, it would need "an area of only 70 square miles to generate Britain's total power requirements".

Well, no, actually. To meet our peak demand of 56 gigawatts of electricity would require 112,000 turbines covering 11,000 square miles, or an eighth of Britain's entire land area.

Another newspaper solemnly reported that a new study shows that "a well-placed turbine could make enough energy to power 825,000 homes". Well, no, actually. The figure for a single 2 megawatt turbine would be just 825 homes, meaning that the newspaper was only 100,000 per cent wrong.

Even more alarming than the media's credulity is that of the ministers themselves, in seriously trying to pretend that their £100 billion dream of building three giant turbines every day between now and 2020 has the faintest practical hope of being realised, let alone that it would serve any useful purpose to do so.

Most alarming of all, however, in the desperation to reach EU "renewables" target, is the setting up of a new Infrastructure Planning Commission to force through thousands of these absurd objects over the wishes of local people and councils, who are now to be robbed of any right of appeal. Last week a Government inspector threw out a highly unpopular scheme for seven turbines in Shropshire which would have generated £43 million in subsidies alone for its owners over the next 25 years. The surrounding community was delighted. From next March, however, thanks to Lord Mandelson's all-powerful new Commission, such inquiries will be a thing of the past, thrown onto the scrapheap of history along with much of the rest of our democracy, We will no longer have any right to oppose this tsunami of lunacy, until our countryside is ruined to no rational purpose whatever.

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Don Quixote is English?

FROM-Times On Line

Tilting at Wind Farms
The Government’s plans to concentrate on wind power at the expense of other renewable energy sources could prove to be a costly mistake

If hot air could be harnessed and fed into the National Grid, the environmental rhetoric emanating from Westminster could power London. As an alternative energy source, climate change hot air would be cheap and limitless. Wind power, the great renewable energy hope of the Government, is neither cheap nor bountifulMore...
The Government’s aspiration to increase the amount of energy supplied by renewables from 2 per cent at present to 15 per cent looks increasingly fanciful. To meet its pledge, which will be restated in its Renewable Energy Strategy on Wednesday, the UK would need some 7,000 extra wind turbines. Critics already believe that these are dark Satanic turbines, blighting England’s green and pleasant land. Only a few hundred have been built in the past year, as projects have become mired in planning complaints. The great switch to wind power is a victim of a not-in-my-backyard mentality.

The cost of the move to wind is an even more serious issue. The Confederation of British Industry today says that the cost of meeting Britain’s 2030 carbon-emissions target will take the average British household bill from £1,243 today to £1,615.90. This contradicts yet another fanciful target — the pledge to eradicate fuel poverty entirely by 2016. A pensioner’s not-in-my-wallet defence against even higher fuel bills is compelling.

Britain’s energy needs must be addressed. Years of underinvestment mean that our energy supplies are in crisis, even without the threat of climate change. About 40 per cent of the UK’s power stations were built before 1975 and need to be urgently replaced. Renewed investment in the UK’s energy sector must address carbon emissions. But the setting of increasingly quixotic and contradictory targets is hampering a sensible debate on how to tackle the energy crisis. Besides, where is the evidence that wind works?

In an address to the Royal Society in May, Professor Jack Steinberger, a Nobel prize-winning director of the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, said that wind power was an uneconomic waste of resources. His is not a lone voice.

Any solution to the energy crisis must be firmly grounded in principles of economic law. The problem with wind is not just its refusal to co-operate reliably with the needs of the National Grid, but that it remains expensive. A new gas-fired station in Pembroke will cost £1 billion. It would cost six times as much to build a wind farm capable of generating similar power.

Left to the market, wind power would remain a niche element in our energy supply. No sane energy company would, while fossil fuels are still plentiful, voluntarily opt for a more expensive, less reliable energy source. The drive to wind will require a huge injection of public cash, and a new interventionist policy in a hitherto liberal energy market. But if a free market in energy would not support a wholesale switch to a ruinously expensive and volatile energy source, why should the taxpayer, or the electricity customer?

As we move to a planned energy economy which we are expected to pay over the odds for, we have the right to expect a serious, unsentimental debate on what we are paying for. Nuclear power must be brought into the centre of the planned economy, in from the cold. A wind farm producing the same amount of energy as a nuclear plant would cost up to three times as much. The Government is charging ahead with plans for wind farms, while its programme for the nuclear sector is far less ambitious. The aim is merely to replace ageing existing plants.

If the Government wants a target which is, for once, both sensible and achievable, it should aim to double our nuclear energy capacity. Nuclear may be unpopular with the green lobby, but it is still cleaner than coal and cheaper than wind.

Nickel and dimed

The ilconceived and unnecessary rush to change the country's energy network is going to cost the economy and individuals enormously. We will be nickle and dimed into economic stagnation. This is but an example. Equally as sad is this telling line from the article;

" ... electricity customers will pay an extra 71 cents per month and natural gas customers will pay an added $1.72 a month beginning with June bills to support the company's energy-optimization plan. The plan aims to increase energy efficiency for the utility and customers."

If the plan is to make energy more efficient for customers, why should it cost more? In the normal world efficiency equals savings, only in this new capitalist destruction regime we are being forced fed, does the consumer pay more for efficiency.

FROM-Detroit Free Press

Bills to rise for wind power

Consumers Energy surcharges OK'd

Consumers Energy customers will begin paying more on their bills to help pay for the utility's efforts to reach the state-mandated requirement of generating 10% of its power from renewable energy sources.

Electricity customers will begin seeing a $2.50 monthly surcharge on their September bills to support Consumers' Renewable Energy Plan, which calls for 900 megawatts of electricity coming from wind power by 2015. The utility plans to build between 250 and 500 wind turbines in Mason and Tuscola counties to generate 450 megawatts of power. The rest is to be purchased from contractors.

The cost to build the turbines will be $1.2 billion, said Consumers spokesman Jeff Holyfield. The utility is gathering meteorological data at 42,000 acres in the two counties to decide the best locations for the turbines.

In addition to the alternative energy surcharge, Consumers electricity customers will pay an extra 71 cents per month and natural gas customers will pay an added $1.72 a month beginning with June bills to support the company's energy-optimization plan. The plan aims to increase energy efficiency for the utility and customers.

The Michigan Public Service Commission approved the added charges Tuesday. The renewable energy and energy-optimization plans for DTE Energy, which serves most electricity customers in southeast Michigan, are to be considered by the PSC Tuesday.

In the last two months, the PSC also has approved renewable energy plans submitted by the other nine investor-owned utilities and 10 co-op utilities across the state.


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Robbing from Peter to pay ...uh Peter

The absurdity is in the first paragraph. It is sort of like build it and they will come, but the they (taxpayers) are being asked to pay to build it, pay more to use it and pay more to get less than they already have. No wonder the promoters of these schemes have a problem with the free market system-they want everything given to them -for free.

FROM-Medill Reports

Wind power companies want federal renewable standards


Wind power developers say they need a greater commitment to renewable energy policy and more money from the federal government, as the country leans on alternative energy producers to bolster the sagging economy.

Industry leaders stressed the need for renewable energy standards at this week’s American Wind Energy Association’s WINDPOWER 2009 conference in Chicago, attended by some 21,000 wind developers, suppliers and advocates.

AWEA is calling on the Congress to pass a national Renewable Electricity Standard, which would require that a quarter of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2025 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spur economic development. European Union member-states and China have already established similar guidelines, and 28 U.S. states have also adopted their own measures.

“The beauty of renewable is we only need capital,” said Michael Polsky, CEO of Chicago-based Invenergy LLC on Wednesday.More...

“We don’t need fuel, we don’t need coal, we don’t need uranium, we don’t need natural gas,” he said. “If we have a policy, we can execute it.”

The wind industry voiced concerns that without solid national energy standards, the progress it has made toward becoming a viable competitor to fossil fuels may be set back by loss of investor confidence amid the global economic crisis.

Wind developers got a boost in the form of energy production and investment tax credits from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was passed in February. The stimulus perks have ushered in an opportunity for developers to access a wider pool of investment, according to retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who serves on the board of Emergya Wind Technologies and is the chairman of investment bank Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group Inc.

“Wall Street is just starting to recognize that this completely changes the wind financing market,” Clark said. “Now an entrepreneur can go in and offer something that not only big insurance and big banks can handle, but actually private equity can do.”

Foreign wind developers are seeing the Obama administration’s enthusiasm for alternative energy as encouragement to create American operations and develop viable supply chains based in the country.

Leading Denmark-based wind manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems A/S is currently investing one billion dollars in wind operations in Colorado, though the company long held back on U.S. investment because of inconsistent energy policies, said Ditlev Engel, Vestas president and CEO.

“We believe that things are changing,” he said Wednesday. “Some of the best wind resources on the planet are in this country, and it’s a bit like going to Saudi Arabia and deciding not to drill for the oil.”

Between September and December, the wind financing model weakened along with the total economy because of its base in passive income tax credits. With the failure of the real estate market, income losses made it difficult for companies to continue financing of wind turbine development.

Despite the infusion of capital from the federal stimulus package, uncertainty about the future of the RES has made investors timid. The U.S. has wavered on its commitment to a 2.1 cent-per-kilowatt-hour renewable energy production tax credit in the past, allowing it to lapse in 1999, 2001 and 2003. Congress has extended it until 2012 through the ARRA, but major investors want to see a stable environment for growth in the long term.

“People are nervous because they’ve seen the stop-go nature of government policies,” Clark said. “We don’t know exactly how the renewable standard will emerge from Congress.”

Opponents of subsidies for alternative energy argue against a national standard because of elevated costs of wind-produced electricity. Wind power currently costs as much as four or five times the power from sources like nuclear energy that Americans have become accustomed to.

Lobbying by traditional utility producers and energy consumers may pressure congressional leaders to deemphasize the standards AWEA says it needs.

But wind producers say the long-term benefits of wind production outweigh the current costs, especially with looming charges on carbon emissions, combined with and the strides in wind-power technology and the intangible benefits of reducing the carbon footprint.

“If we rely on the free market, we would never have a clean air act, we would never have a clean water act, we would never have highways,” Polsky said. “We would live still in dark ages, because the free market can only deal with execution, not with long-term policy.”

With adequate investments, developers believe they can make wind competitive on its own merits, using the global market to deliver wind power as cheaply as possible, said Declan Flanagan, CEO of E.On Climate & Renewables N.A. Inc.

“We’re in renewable because it works,” he said. “This is real power generation.”

By creating supply chains close to production in the U.S. and using emerging technologies, developers believe they can create stable jobs—including some from the faltering auto supply industry—while cutting production costs.

“Once we build them, the technician and operator jobs created by that wind farm aren’t going anywhere,” Flanagan said. “It’s a positive feedback loop once you get the policy right and the investment right.”

Captain of Green Industry Killing Tweety

Actually this does not surprise me. We in the Climate Change debate world live in an echo chamber, one way or the other, for most people they have little idea of what it is about. I have often said that people are so unaware it would not surprise me if the majority of people think CO2 is carbon monoxide. Obviously this appears to be the case with even the captains of Green Industry.


From Planet Gore

Discover This

Hmm. This might sound familiar. A Heritage economist writes in an e-mail:

In an article on the environmental impact of alternative energy, the CEO of [windmill company] Vestas displays amazing ignorance about CO2. He apparently thinks the harm from CO2 emissions is toxicity. You would think the top person at one of the world’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines would have the story straight on why humanity desperately needs his product. Ironically, he is adamant about getting "the facts on the table":

Ditlev Engel, president and chief executive of the Danish wind-energy company Vestas, said anecdotal evidence about birds being caught in turbine blades and other environmental horror stories do not usually hold up under scrutiny.

"Do people think it's better all those birds are breathing CO2? I'm not a scientist, but I doubt it," said Engel, whose company is expanding its U.S. manufacturing and distribution operations. "Let's get the facts on the table and not the feelings. The fact is, these are not issues."

Yes. In addition to being pretty humorous, that does seem to represent passion supplanting edification, which is something we see quite a bit from the global-warming industry, including today. One wag has noted in an e-mailed reply that possibly Engel meant "Do people think it's better all those birds are exhaling CO2? This would explain his machinery’s cavalier approach to shredding them into Chicken McNuggets."

At minimum we should expect more sneering from Discover’s blog any moment. Right?

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"We don't need no stinkun oil, wind is free" 2

In the NEW WORLD ORDER, there is no such thing as political correct oil, thus no such thing as sensible drilling. We are living in historic times, before our very eyes we are watching the willfull self destruction of an economic engine which has powered the greatest advance in human prosperity in history in order to protect us from our exhaled breathe. I hope there will be someone around to put this down with quill and parchment, for future generations to learn from.

Secretary Salazar must not be reading my blog

from Barrons
Sensible Drilling: Gone With the Wind?

Ignoring our oil potential.


INTERIOR SECRETARY KEN SALAZAR, THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S energy architect, apparently thinks the answer to all our energy worries is blowing in the wind.

Salazar has slammed the brakes on efforts to develop vast new gas and oil fields offshore and in his home state of Colorado. During the campaign, candidate Obama said he would drill to find oil offshore. But Salazar now says he needs six months to formulate a comprehensive offshore-energy plan and to have "an open and honest conversation" about it with the American people.

Increasingly, Salazar sounds like a man bedeviled by the winds. In speeches he suggests that huge wind turbines placed off major cities on the East and West Coasts will generate 1,900 gigawatts of clean and relatively cheap electric power, double the current total output of all U.S. power plants.

He doesn't say how long it would take to achieve this. But if it were so, there would be no need to build new coal or nuclear plants. We would, in Salazar's rumination, simply breeze along.

He must be thinking of a whole lot of windmills. I don't know for certain, because my multiple phone and e-mail entreaties for information from spokesman Frank Quimby went unanswered. But we can assume he is thinking half a million or more of the gigantic contraptions. I derive the estimate from a wind project planned off Nantucket involving 130 wind-driven turbines. These big machines will generate a total of 468 megawatts, which comes out to 3.6 megawatts per windmill, or .0036 gigawatts.

Divide Salazar's 1,900 gigawatts by 0.0036 and the result is 528,000 windmills. I threw in some extra turbines because on any given day some of these gadgets will break down.

Salazar argues offshore windmills would also help turn the economy around by creating millions of green jobs. Oil, gas, and coal will be part of the plan, he promises. But he adds that they alone are not enough.

"America's own oil and natural-gas supplies are limited," he pronounced in a speech on April 2. "We sit on 3% of the world's oil reserves. We consume 25% of its oil. Our dependence on foreign oil is a national security problem, an environmental security problem and an economic security problem."

Rightly or wrongly, oil men don't trust Salazar. They believe he means to extend the moratorium on oil and gas exploration indefinitely. He certainly does go out of his way to make the worse case for fossil fuels. Take the 3% number: "It is as old as Moses," says Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies in Virginia, a lobbying and public- relations firm. McKenna represents several drillers.

THE NUMBER DOESN'T ACCOUNT for recent oil and gas discoveries. Salazar in his speech conveniently ignored a study by the U.S. Geological Survey that estimates a total of 1.5 trillion barrels of oil in place in 17 oil-shale zones in the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Basin, which is located in northwestern Colorado.

He knew all about it, too. In a press release about the study the same day as his speech Salazar said, "The USGS scientific report shows significant quantities of oil locked up in the shale rock of the Piceance Basin. I think it demonstrates the need for our continued research-and-development efforts."

How "significant" is 1.5 trillion barrels?

"Let's see if I can put it in perspective," gibes McKenna in an e-mail. "Since oil was discovered in Titusville in 1857, we have used about one trillion barrels." He is talking about the entire planet, not just the U.S.

Not all of that shale oil can be extracted using current technology. Experts tell me that today's drillers might be able to get at 500 billion to 700 billion barrels. Still, when you consider that Saudi Arabia's known reserves are an estimated 250 billion barrels, that is a lot of black gold.

Andy Radford, a senior policy advisor at the American Petroleum Institute, says it is difficult to produce oil from shale in an economically sound and environmentally safe way, although drillers running R&D wells are employing promising new technologies that address both problems.

"Research-and-development drilling must be pursued," he says. He laments, however, that only six R&D leases were licensed by the Interior Department before it locked down the application process.

McKenna asserts that oil will dominate the transportation sector for a long time and that Salazar, as a consequence of his applying the brakes on oil and gas development on and offshore, is sustaining our dependency on oil from countries that hate us.

We would love to hear from Salazar or his staff to answer our pertinent questions.

"We don't need no stinkun oil, wind is free"

via Heliogenic Climate Change

from Financial Post

Wind power is a complete disaster

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character. On the negative side of the environmental ledger are adverse impacts of industrial wind turbines on birdlife and other forms of wildlife, farm animals, wetlands and viewsheds.

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario’s current rate of about 6¢). Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.” Aase Madsen , the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.”...........