Posted on 07/20/2011 11:45:40 AM PDT by Hunton Peck
Reality has overtaken green hope.
Facts are pesky things. And they're particularly pesky when it comes to the myths about the wind energy business.
For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale.
Those are the findings of an exhaustive new study, released today, by Bentek Energy, a Colorado-based energy analytics firm. Rather than rely on computer models that use theoretical emissions data, the authors of the study, Porter Bennett and Brannin McBee, analyzed actual emissions data from electric generation plants located in four regions: the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Bonneville Power Administration, California Independent System Operator, and the Midwest Independent System Operator. Those four system operators serve about 110 million customers, or about one-third of the U.S. population.
Bennett and McBee looked at more than 300,000 hourly records from 2007 through 2009. Their results show that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and other wind boosters have vastly overstated wind's ability to cut sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.
Indeed, the study found that in some regions of the country, like California, using wind energy doesn't reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at all. But the most important conclusion from the study is that wind energy is not "a cost-effective solution for reducing carbon dioxide if carbon is valued at less than $33 per ton." With the U.S. economy still in recession and unemployment numbers near record levels, Congress cannot, will not, attempt to impose a carbon tax, no matter how small.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Wind industry officials like to claim that no property values are lowered due to turbines dropping into a neighborhood, but that's just another lie in their endless list of talking points.
Denmark's national energy policy states that any property value lowered by more than 1% must have the owner of the property fully compensated by the installers of wind turbines.
Another ugly truth not breathed by the wind blowhards.
**I have heard that sometimes the large blades crack (can’t confirm that).**
Apparently some people long for you to live the lifestyle of a 15th century peasant, while they live the life of a 15th century nobleman.
Several years ago, we went to the Big Island of Hawaii. On a trek to a secluded beach, we came across a wind farm with a couple dozen of Mitsubishi windmills, all of which were rusting and not working. This made me ask the locals how they generate electricity on the islands. They told me fuel oil is shipped in by tanker to power the generating plant.
As an island, thousands of miles from anywhere, transport cost for fuel have to be enormous. Being in the middle of the ocean with steady trade winds, plus a tropical temperate climate should make wind viable. Because of it’s small size, there are concentrated populations with minimal transmission cost. So if wind power is not economical in Hawaii, it can’t be economical anywhere.
No, some people long for other people to be living the lifestyle of a 15th century peasant. The kind of people who push this stuff never see themselves as having to "downgrade" their lifestyles --- just the other guys. Perfect example is Al Gore.
Wind is DOA.
Most of this “green energy” is organized looting of Federal and local treasuries by mobs of psudo-scientists sporting
an Ivy Certificate as their license to thievery and mendacity.
Most of this “green energy” is organized looting of Federal and local treasuries by mobs of pseudo-scientists sporting
an Ivy Certificate as their license to thievery and mendacity.
Green Sand Beach, southernmost point?
Yep, Green Sand Beach to the South.
You are right! I stand corrected. I forgot that our masters are far too important to follow the same rules they impose on the proles.
Whoa! That’s just what we need. And people think broken baseball bats are a problem. ;-)
They should locate more of them around Washington, D.C., where there’s plenty of hot air.
“They should locate more of them around Washington, D.C., where there’s plenty of hot air.”
One between 0bama and each of his teleprompters should supply the energy needs of the entire East Coast, I would think.
I've seen other videos similar to that one, but just happened to grab that one first. We've seen those towers and blades being moved up IH 37 between Corpus and San Antonio.
It is unfortunate to see the fossil fuel industry continue its misinformation campaign to muddy the waters about one of the indisputable benefits of wind energy – its success in reducing the use of fossil fuels and the harmful emissions associated with their use. It should be noted that Robert Bryce, the author of this article, is a senior fellow at the Exxon-Mobil-funded Manhattan Institute, and the report he is referencing was written by Bentek, a natural gas consulting firm whose President and CEO happens to be the Chairman and Director of the Natural Gas Committee of the fossil fuel lobby group the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, as well as a member of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
Unsurprisingly, the Bentek report is directly contradicted by a large body of government data and numerous studies by independent grid operators conclusively showing that the emissions savings of adding wind energy to the grid are substantially larger than had been expected. Bentek’s report is filled with a number of salient errors, most notably that the authors used a method that takes very small snapshots of the power grid in both time and geographic space, and thus overlooks a large share of the emissions savings produced by wind energy. As an example, Bentek’s methodology gives wind energy deployed in California or in the Pacific Northwest no credit for the emissions reductions achieved by reducing coal electricity imported from other states, which is a main reason why the report so grossly understated the actual emissions benefit of wind in those regions. As another example, their methodology gives wind energy credit for only one hour of emissions savings when it forces a coal power plant to turn off for a much longer period of time, and it gives no credit to wind energy when it allows the grid operator to store additional water behind a hydroelectric dam that is used to displace fossil generation later on, both of which are common events. The flaws in Bentek’s work are too numerous to discuss here, although the following fact sheet lists many of them as well as providing the detailed results of government data and grid operator studies that conclusively show that wind energy significantly reduces fossil fuel use and emissions:
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/realstories/The-Facts-about-Wind-Energy-and-Emissions.cfm
Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association
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