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.”
BoonDoggle Analysis is the antithesis of clear CBA (Cost-Benefit Analysis) because one makes rational sense and the other is totally insane. In a normal business structure the objective of forward movement is to minimize costs and maximize profits, this is what is needed to employ people and keep the business operating. But, the public sector CBA is gauged by a different set of parameters; i.e., employment labor intensity. For example, if there are three prospective projects each measured to produce a fixed quantity of EPU (Employee Produced Units) and Project-A requires 100 labor units, Project-B 150 labor units, Project-C 200 labor units a clearly measured analysis would register Project-A to be the most efficient, but if the cause of the analysis is labor intensity then Project-B or Project-C are the more desirable. So it is with government sponsored and promoted “Green Energy” boondoggle projects they are all designed for operational failure and massive labor employment.
The best argument to be made on behalf of wind power is that it is a new technology and needs to work out some of the “kinks” but reality tells a different tale. The underlying truth of wind power indicates that it will always be an intermittent power source .. great for charging batteries, running water pumps to fill tanks, and the like. But as a truly useful reliable power source, it was always come up short.
@Neo:
Wind power, as Solar Power, will never be able to become part of “Base load” on the power grids. It is too intermittent to be considered as such, and no amount of technology on Man’s part can change the fact that the wind doesn’t always blow, nor the sun always shine. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have a place in the makeup of power supplies to the grid, as it does, just not as a main source of power.
Wind power has turned out not to be such a disaster, after all.
In the UK: 11 September 2017 – Offshore wind power cheaper than new nuclear
In the United States, as of March, 2017, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and North Dakota are generating 20 percent or more of their electrical power with wind turbines.
With Five States In ’20 Percent And Up’ Club, Wind Thrives In Rural U.S. That’s not at some peak output point; that’s 20 percent of all electrical power generated over a year.
Peak output records are also being set, however:
Wind Makes It Big In Central U.S.; SPP Sets New Record
@Greg: Gee all you can site is groups associated with wind power. No bias there.
Simple. When it’s dark and the wind isn’t blowing you are cold and in the dark. Your wind and solar are worth swat.
@Mully: heres one http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22662
anotherhttp://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1347145/annual-blade-failures-estimated-around-3800
@Mully, #5:
The numbers cited come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, not from “groups associated with wind power.” They collect and compile the most accurate statistical information on all of the nation’s energy industries, and are relied upon by both private sector business and public sector policy makers. The EIA’s function isn’t to make stuff up. It’s to present accurate facts and figures. They don’t make policy.
Facts aren’t considered helpful by right-wing propaganda outlets, but that’s no big surprise. Facts aren’t what they’re dealing in. Endlessly renewable energy with a much lower carbon footprint isn’t really what they’re interested in selling. Quite simply, it’s because that’s not what they’re being paid to sell. They’re paid to sell an increasingly dysfunctional status quo.
@kitt, #6:
The National Center for Policy Analysis is by no means a source of unbiased statistical information or analysis. This is what they say of themselves:
They present information and analysis that is carefully selected to promote a particular political agenda.
The article you’ve linked, The Failure of Wind Power, dates from December 2012. It cites a particular alternative energy project that was an economic failure. What is this supposed to prove? You can’t generalize based on one particular failure. Is the writer unaware that 90 percent of all private sector business start-ups end in failure? No one would present that statistic, or particular examples of start-ups that failed, as a legitimate argument that creating businesses is a bad idea. Failures are the necessary stepping stones to great successes. Renewable energy is turning out to be a winning concept, even though there will be inevitable failures along the way. It will be an increasingly important component of the nation’s long-term energy security.
If you click on the link to the original source of the article up above, you’ll discover that it was removed from the National Post. It’s no longer possible to make a convincing case that “Wind Power is a Complete Disaster.” Real-world developments since then prove otherwise.
@Greg: How many links do you need, its an expensive green boondoggle, the things scar the skyline and kill birds. Create only very expensive power, like solar panels with all costs factored in never pay for themselves before they need to be junked. http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/2015-turned-out-to-be-a-terrible-year-for-wind-power/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2199284/Wind-farms-Are-wind-farms-saving-killing-
Perhaps if all the genius climate scientists would get off scare mongering and invent something that would actually save our planet.
Could you mansplain whats wrong with the highlighted quote in your last post, I read it twice and thought it was brilliant.
March 30, 2018 — Wind and solar overtake nuclear as source of UK electricity for first time ever
Pop quiz: Who will own the future, and and who will own the past?
Do you really think they’re doing this because it’s all a scam?
@Greg: No one said it was a scam, just not as efficient as they promised. They wear out before they are paid for and high maintenance. Next time you drag this up a blog from 2011 show us they are getting smaller electric bills.
@Greg: Yes, because the Sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. The land requirement for wind and solar to provide just basic power will restrict agriculture so much that people will starve. Your references do not say how much it costs to also maintain a fossil fuel powered power plant to quickly come on line when the Sun and wind fails to cooperate. Reliability is every bit as important as gross power produced. It is a scam. Look at the solar companies who failed to pay back the loans Obama provided to them. Those were his buddies.
@Randy, #13:
The Amount Of Land Required To Run America On Solar Power Is Shockingly Small
It only takes 0.6% of the country’s land to provide electricity to the United States.
I would suggest America’s southwestern desert, where there’s a lot of empty and a lot of sunshine. Clever creatures that we are, we can figure out how to store power for use when it’s dark.
The Chinese are not stupid. Nor are they standing still, or walking backwards.
@Greg: No, they are burning coal and sending their solar panels to the US!
China has only recently become an industrial nation. They’re transitioning from their dependence on coal to renewable energy as quickly as possible. At least one motivating factor should be obvious.
That CO2 drives climate change is less obvious. Unlike the United States, there has been no national campaign in China to convince the public that global warming is a scam. China was cut some slack on CO2 emissions in acknowledgement of the fact that they’re in an earlier stage of industrial development and necessarily more dependent on fossil fuels. They’re working to change that.
@Greg: No they are not. They have greatly increased their fossil fuel use considerably. Why do you think they have started claiming and developing the Spratling Islands?
A good example is the Air Force Academy under Obama mandate cut down a pine forest and installed $40,000,000 solar system. They are so proud that they are saving $300,000 of electricity per year. The life of the system is 20 years. It will take over 1oo years to make the system pay provided there is not any hail storms.
@Greg: You should actually read past the headlines of the stories you post. The BBC article states the obvious. Due to the intermittent nature of wind power nuclear power is still needed. And it will need to be available 100% of the time.
As for your solar article I have some first hand knowledge of this. Near me we have two rather new power plants. One is a solar farm of 235 acres of panels that can generate 10 megawatts. (Provided the sun is shining). It used to be agriculture. The other is a natural gas power plant about 10 miles away from the solar farm. The natural gas plant sits on 39 aces and generates 1300 megawatts.
@Greg: If you have read some of the latest CO2 data, it has little or no impact on global warming. There is more evidence that CO2 actually causes global cooling than warming. The manufacturing of wind machines and solar panels carbon foot print is many times the foot print of fossil fuel use. Unfortunately, when people like you spout “saving the world”. you somehow forget about that.
Greg https://www.good.is/infographics/solar-power-all-of-america
It isnt viable.
@kitt: Pueblo, CO is not a rich city. They wanted to put in street lights to minimize crime. The electric bill was much more than they had anticipated. They first threatened to sue the power company. They then found out that the Democrat legislators made it mandatory that every bill include 20% renewal energy. So, that almost doubled the electrical bill.
@Mully, #18:
Our nation’s southwestern deserts are not used for agricultural purposes. Nor, I suspect, is your nearby natural gas plant a free-standing energy source covering a mere 39 acres. It’s more likely a generating station producing electrical power from gas that’s piped in from other locations. Directly comparing the efficiency of the two doesn’t really make for a valid argument.
@Randy, #19:
What latest data? Nothing credible has come up contradicting the generally accepted conclusion that global warming is occurring, and that that the increasing atmospheric CO2 level is the primary cause of it.
There are numerous websites such as that of “Friends of Science” that will assert otherwise, of course. They’re part of an extensive and well-funded disinformation campaign that is attempting to trump legitimate science with a propaganda assault.
Propaganda is one thing; truth is another:
Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
@Greg: Trying to utilize the desert like you mention has a lot of issues. First of which is resistance in electrical transmission over distance. There aren’t a lot of deserts east of the Mississippi river. But I guess math is hard for some. There are reasons why it hasn’t been done before. But I suggest you and your friends pony up the money to do it. Go ahead put your money where your mouth is. Stop complaining and take action. By the way it still gets dark in the desert pretty often. So those solar panels might struggle to keep up pretty often. Most people, business’s and industries seem to like constant reliable 24/7 power. Maybe you and your friends prefer the more intermittent unreliable kind you advocate.
Of course the natural gas is piped in at the local power plant. Just like all other natural gas plants. It’s constant power scalable and available 24/7 just like the demand for electricity. At night the solar facility is a large cricket farm. Crickets don’t produce anything other than more crickets.
@Mully, #23:
I understand that power loss with electrical transmission over 2,000 miles of high tension line is around 17.4 percent, and around 26.1 percent over 3,000 miles of high tension line. Given that the source of the energy would be essentially free and limitless—the Sun—such losses seem entirely acceptable. They would be terrible only if you were burning large quantities of expensive fossil fuels to produce the electricity being transmitted.
Without storage technology, you might “only” hope to supply the nation’s energy needs during daylight hours. (Quotation marks, because that in itself would be a really big deal.) But storage technologies exist. They could be decentralized on the distant receiving end of the solar power supply to whatever degree was most practical.
@Greg: Accepted consensus or conclusions are not science. Being a liberal, you would not understand what real science is. No, you would never see scientific papers that refute your beliefs. Unlike you, there are those of us who actually read scientific papers and have the capability to understand what is reliable and what is not. You are only a parrot who continues to repeat what you have heard. You lack the capability to read and reason. Friends of science are an activist group, not scientists. Then again, you are not knowledgeable enough to know the difference.
@Greg: Greg, if you want some excuses for losing, check out Hilary Clinton’s recent “reasons for losing” web site. She is up to 27 reasons now and none of them has anything to do with her ineptitude. You could take some lessons from her.
@Randy, #25:
Science did not arrive at the conclusion by way of conforming to a consensus. The consensus eventually emerged because the vast majority of climate scientists who looked at the data reached similar conclusions.
Being politically liberal or conservative does not enter into any legitimate scientific process. The political labeling also comes afterward. Labeling has been done in an effort to further one or another opposing political agendas, and has little or nothing to do with the science itself. True science is neither liberal nor conservative.
Actually, I figured the foregoing out for myself. There’s more I don’t know than I do know, which is part of the human condition, but am neither hypnotized nor a sleepwalker through this realm of illusion. The fact that many people reach and voice similar opinions does not make them a flock of parrots.
@Greg: Consensus is not science.no matter how many people agree. Being able to replicate is science. The consensus is a consensus of climate models run by computers. The actual data when plotted next to the computer models show the computer models show warming but actual data shows no warming. That is science. Computer models are only good to develop a hypothesis.
When you only read activist sites, there is quite a lot you do not know.
No, they didn’t, Greg.
But nice try.
The Mann, et al., research’s “data” was hidden from ALL who sought it with an eye toward confirming or refuting it.
I can remember when it was sought because there seemed to be consensus by so many so-called experts.
Since then Mann and his fellow hockey-stick team at University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit have been completely repudiated.
Michael Mann has been asked to resign.
His partner in crime, Phil Jones, has also been asked to resign.
2009:
CRU’s Phil Jones claimed in 2009 that all old temperature records collected by his organization were “destroyed” or “lost”, meaning researchers can now only access manipulated data. And that manipulated data showed things not true:
No one saw original data unless, like in New Zealand, the country saved it independently of Mann and Jones.
You might want to look into the accuracy of the information reported by Watts Up with That? It’s a disinformation website. Regarding Mann and “Climategate”, for instance:
(from Wikipedia; they footnote the paragraph with links to their sources.)
Want to talk about the eradication of data? Look no further than this:
Climate Web Pages Erased and Obscured under Trump
Scientific American is far more credible than Watts Up with That?
@Greg: Scientific American has recently had to delete many of the papers submitted and published by you climate activists. Trump didn’t erase any documents his administration generated. The previous regime was in bed with the climate activists. The even hired some of the activists who performed the “secret science” that is no longer going to be used to justify regulations. Again Greg, if the findings of a paper/research can not be replicated, then it is not science, only hypothesis.
September 25, 2019 – The world’s largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete. It can power 1 million homes
I wonder if migrating birds and marine mammals are better off, the huge blades create The low frequency noises may affect marine mammals and the massive blades kill thousands of birds including protected species every year.
Wind power isnt that grand, expensive maintenance and lower and lower output as they age. But poorly educated people are all happy with the dumb ideas so good for them. How long before they are underwater with sea levels rising?
December 9, 2019 – US wind capacity hits 100 gigawatts; Texas is No. 1 wind state