Posted on 01/11/2025 2:31:25 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
President-elect Donald Trump caused quite a stir this week with his comments about the wind industry during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Trump compared wind farms to “dropping garbage in a field” and said wind developers are “getting rich” off of government subsidies that the projects receive.
Trump also argued that wind energy is the most expensive form of energy, far more expensive than “clean natural gas.” Experts doing full analyses of all the costs associated with putting wind and solar farms on the grid tell Just the News that Trump is correct.
Electricity rates
The New York Times called the press conference “meandering” and, though Trump made no mention of the amount of wind energy the U.S. has on the grid, the Times reporters stressed that wind accounted for 22% of the electricity generated in Texas and 59% in Iowa.
The Times reporters also claimed that wind power is one of the “lowest-cost sources of electricity in the United States,” citing the Department of Energy. While they provided figures of the growth of wind energy in the U.S., the Times reporters never discuss electricity rates, which would be expected to be falling if increased wind was producing cheaper electricity.
A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report released this week finds that between 2019 and 2023, the average U.S. retail electricity prices, which includes costs to homes, businesses and industries, increased in line with inflation. But the rates for residential customers rose higher than inflation. Some states, such as renewable-powered California, saw rates increase more than 8% compared to the national average of 4.8%, and there was no decrease in electricity prices anywhere.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
*** Trump compared wind farms to “dropping garbage in a field” and said wind developers are “getting rich” off of government subsidies that the projects receive. ***
I haven’t read the rest of the article, but Trump is totally right in this regard. There are several wind farms within an hour’s drive from my house. Those ginormous blades are heavy and dangerous.
Trump also argued that wind energy is the most expensive form of energy, far more expensive than “clean natural gas.”
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Here’s the basic problem... in order to accommodate the intermittency of wind and solar (IUs... interruptible and unreliable), many locations have to use open loop gas turbines to pick up the slack since they can react quite quickly when clouds come in and/or the wind dies. If there were no IWTs and solar, the generation of choice would be combined cycle gas turbines.... these can’t react nearly as quickly as open loop but they are much more efficient (60% as opposed to 40%). Bottom line is that whatever the IWTs and solar generate is about offset by this inefficiency with the gas turbines... if there were no IWTs and solar, the same amount of electricity would be generated by the same amount of gas if done using the more efficient combined cycle. The above isn’t intended to be a completely accurate and definitive statement but for all intents and purposes, it’s close enough....
You do realize that if you stand on one foot, squint in darkened room after a few drinks, there is a slight resemblance between Taylor Swift and Stacey Abrams….
.... and if you want to follow someone who analyzes this stuff to the nth degree, go this website and follow an analysis named Parker Gallant. https://parkergallantenergyperspectivesblog.wordpress.com/ His location of interest is Ontario but the issues are essentially the same anywhere....
Solar Energy is the most expensive form of energy every night.
Michael Trebilcock
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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."
The U. S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2008, on a dollar per MWh basis, the U. S. government subsidizes wind at $23.34 -- compared to reliable energy sources: natural gas at 25¢; coal at 44¢; hydro at 67¢; and nuclear at $1.59, leading to what some U. S. commentators call "a huge corporate welfare feeding frenzy." The Wall Street Journal advises that "wind generation is the prime example of what can go wrong when the government decides to pick winners."
The Economist magazine notes in a recent editorial, "Wasting Money on Climate Change," that each tonne of emissions avoided due to subsidies to renewable energy such as wind power would cost somewhere between $69 and $137, whereas under a cap-and-trade scheme the price would be less than $15.
Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system creates incentives for consumers and producers on a myriad of margins to reduce energy use and emissions that, as these numbers show, completely overwhelm subsidies to renewables in terms of cost effectiveness.
The Ontario Power Authority advises that wind producers will be paid 13.5¢/ kwh (more than twice what consumers are currently paying), even without accounting for the additional costs of interconnection, transmission and backup generation. As the European experience confirms, this will inevitably lead to a dramatic increase in electricity costs with consequent detrimental effects on business and employment. From this perspective, the government's promise of 55,000 new jobs is a cruel delusion.
A recent detailed analysis (focusing mainly on Spain) finds that for every job created by state-funded support of renewables, particularly wind energy, 2.2 jobs are lost. Each wind industry job created cost almost $2-million in subsidies. Why will the Ontario experience be different?
In debates over climate change, and in particular subsidies to renewable energy, there are two kinds of green. First there are some environmental greens who view the problem as so urgent that all measures that may have some impact on greenhouse gas emissions, whatever their cost or their impact on the economy and employment, should be undertaken immediately.
Then there are the fiscal greens, who, being cool to carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems that make polluters pay, favour massive public subsidies to themselves for renewable energy projects, whatever their relative impact on greenhouse gas emissions. These two groups are motivated by different kinds of green. The only point of convergence between them is their support for massive subsidies to renewable energy (such as wind turbines).
This unholy alliance of these two kinds of greens (doomsdayers and rent seekers) makes for very effective, if opportunistic, politics (as reflected in the Ontario government's Green Energy Act), just as it makes for lousy public policy: Politicians attempt to pick winners at our expense in a fast-moving technological landscape, instead of creating a socially efficient set of incentives to which we can all respond.
These comments were excerpted from a submission on April 8, 2009 to the Ontario government's legislative committee On Bill 150.
Right Again!
I figured the experts would get something right someday.
The National Weather Service offers wind forecasts.
Wind offshore the eastern US is highly variable in intensity and location.
Tapping the Gulf Stream might be practical.
Hindering the course of the Gulf Stream would most definitely lead to "climate change."
The US has about 100 million bovines and about 3 million square miles.
You don’t believe one belching bovine per 20 acres would change the climate?
Trump knows quite a lot about wind power. Before he ran in 2015, he was involved for years in building his golf resort in Scotland, whereupon Scotland located a wind farm right near the resort, resulting in dead birds, noise and unsightliness. Naturally he learned all about the technology during his struggles with the Scottish officials.
Wind power is relatively cheap - UNTIL you need it when the wind isn’t blowing - then it gets VERY EXPENSIVE.
“The US has about 100 million bovines and about 3 million square miles.”
At one point there was 95 million plus bison on the Great Plains that are twice the body mass of modern bovines...the planet was fine ,in fact the Great Plains were better off then , than now because those bison stirred up the soil, recycled and spread nutrients via their excrement and spread seeds for a diverse range of grasses far and wide. It was the original regenerative agriculture that worked for millions of years before human monoculture blighted the land with pesticides,synthetic fertilizers and stripped topsoils via mechanized deep till row farming.
Ping
The Oklahoma Energy Alliance is pure wind and solar lobby promoting development with imminent domain rights to land acquisition since so many are now sick of both wind ans solar myth and eyesores.
What is the amount of gas, coal or nuclear generation to build the turbine components, truck them to the site, dig a hole in the ground, fill it with concrete and rebar, then erect 1 turbine? Tell me how much CO2 is produced to do that, compared to “Old school” production? I am thinking it takes many years to break even, if ever. Has there been a study done?
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