Posted on 02/27/2012 4:13:35 PM PST by raptor22
Green Energy: Bypassing abundant supplies of environmentally friendly and reliable natural gas, the Bay State forces its utilities to buy energy from offshore wind farms. The tilting at windmills continues.
It is instead found in the vast resources locked up in the Outer Continental Shelf, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska and in the vast shale formations that bless the U.S. with an abundance of oil and natural gas.
A nationwide boom in natural gas production is set to fuel nearly 900,000 jobs and add roughly $1,000 to annual household budgets by 2015, according to a study by HIS Global Insight, a Denver energy research firm.
It is estimated that we have at least a 100-year supply of the relatively cheap, cleanest-burning fossil fuel.
To the 36 states that, like Massachusetts, have embraced what are called renewable portfolio standards, they will continue pursuing green energy sources despite their heavy subsidies, uneven and unreliable capacity, and the simple fact that you cannot store wind energy for when the wind is not blowing.
After decades of subsidies, wind provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear power and 7% for hydroelectric.
Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear power plants.
With the Green Communities Act of 2008, the state legislature enacted a clean energy mandate requiring that 20% of Massachusetts' power come from renewable sources by 2025. A prime source of Bay State wind power is to come from the Cape Wind project, an offshore wind farm that was controversial because it threatened to block the ocean view of the 1% ensconced on the shores of Nantucket Sound.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Is this counting land right on the seashore?
How close to the ocean is this?
Altamont Pass is in the Livermore, CA area, and is about 20 miles from the coast. Most of the installed massive windfarms in CA are in mountain passes, 20-30 miles from the Coast. Tehachapi, San Gorgonio, and Altamont. The world’s largest windfarm is now being assembled near Mohave, where the Tehachapi farm is already covering the mountainside/pass. The additional 9000 acres of propellers will add to the “Environmentally friendly” (/sarc) landscape there as you drive for miles on Rte. 58 past the propeller fields.
Looks yucky to fill a mountainside with turbines, and is it even an optimum wind spot? Why aren’t the turbines leaned in order to face more squarely into the winds traveling up the slopes, if that’s where they are?
sorry, don’t know the answer (and I’m late getting back to you)
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