Free Republic

President Biden’s offshore-wind scheme will be terrible for consumers. If those 30,000 megawatts of capacity get built — which, given the history of scuttled projects like Cape Wind, is far from a sure thing — that offshore juice will cost ratepayers billions of dollars more per year than if that same power were produced from onshore natural-gas plants or advanced nuclear reactors. Of course, offshore wind will create an armada of problems that go well beyond the price of power. As Rockefeller University environmental expert Jesse Ausubel told me recently, it will require “massive industrialization” of the oceans. Indeed, building...

Proven technologies for a net-zero energy system already largely exist today, according to a report published Tuesday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The report predicts that renewable power, green hydrogen and modern bioenergy will shape the way we power the world in 2050. Adopting such solutions would set world leaders on track to meet their target of keeping the planet from heating by more than 1.5 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels this century, according to the World Energy Transitions Outlook report. The UN had warned in November that pledges to meet this goal were so far “woefully inadequate.”...

Sen. Ted Cruz is under attack for flying to Mexico while Texas is facing severe winter weather and power outages. Cruz explained why he went there: With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.If true (and I’m unaware of any reason to believe it isn’t), this is a complete defense to...

(CNSNews.com) - Coincidentally, but right on cue, the generator-supplied power went out in the home of former Texas Governor and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry Monday night, just as Perry began his interview with Fox News's Tucker Carlson. Carlson said the power outage was "proving the point that we're making" -- that it's the government's responsibility to provide reliable power during life-threatening cold snaps, and green energy is not up to the job. "So the point is, you need to have a diversity of energy sources, no matter where you are, and it couldn't be a greater example of...

In an epic case of poor foresight, the “clean, green” wind industry forgot to come up with a plan for what to do with wind turbine blades after they stop working. Like all things, they get old and stop functioning properly after a while, but the plastic used to make them lasts virtually “forever.” The industry has found ways to recycle the steel used to build the towers, but not the fiberglass (a type of plastic) used to build the blades of the high-tech windmills. Now that the first generation of wind turbines has reached the end of their “lives,”...

Boris Johnson has declared that wind power is the future of Britain's energy .. But an investigation has revealed turbine owners are being paid over the odds .. Civil servants set subsidy rate so high it's been branded ‘licence to print money’.. A botched green scheme is paying wind turbine owners seven times the value of the electricity they generate – and it is set to cost UK consumers an estimated £1.4billion. The Daily Mail can reveal the eyewatering fiasco in the week Boris Johnson declared that wind power was the future for the nation’s energy generation. The scheme was...

Environmentalists and wind energy opportunists (entrepreneurs who take advantage of overly generous tax credits and multiple other subsidies) want you to believe wind energy is as pure “green” as newly driven snow is white, and as cheap as Taco Bell. They never tell you about the costs – or the environmental destruction – that they have hidden from you for decades. But neither do most governments, news media or social media.Ars Technica science editor John Timmer says wind hardware prices are dropping, even as new turbine designs are increasing the typical power generated by each turbine. Timmer did admit that “wind is...

Australia’s obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar has left it with a power pricing and supply calamity. It’s a disaster that was as predictable, as it was avoidable. To date, the Federal Liberal/National Coalition’s feeble attempts to resolve it provide a study in practised inertia, mixed with a series of pointless Band-Aid ‘solutions’. Last week, the PM, Scott Morrison announced a raft of policy initiatives aimed at purportedly unlocking Australia’s gas reserves (locked up by recalcitrant State Premiers) and using that gas to fuel new power plants.

Wind energy companies will have the option of using decommissioned wind turbine blades as backfill material when reclaiming surface coal mine sites soon, thanks to a new bill signed into law earlier this year. But first, the state needs to set the rules. ... The blades.. are made of fiberglass. Fiberglass is a tricky material that can’t be recycled or easily repurposed. And as utility companies look to replace aging wind turbines, the machines’ blades are being buried in stacks at a handful of landfills around the country, ... old mine sites to suddenly become a landfills, which could affect...

Seabird feces poses a serious health risk to offshore wind workers, due to its highly carcinogenic qualities, and is also very expensive and unpleasant to remove. But installing a ‘scaretech’ system on the substation at the 56-turbine project has led to guano coverage being reduced from 50-60% to zero, according to Galloper operator RWE Renewables. The ‘scaretech' system is based on the centuries-old concept of a scarecrow – using a model to scare birds away from crops – and is installed on a stainless steel base and powered by a lithium-drive cell battery and floating solar panels. It consists of...

On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn. (snip) Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration just announced some spectacular news that should be banner headlines across the country: The price of natural gas has fallen to its lowest February level in 20 years. The data shows that natural gas prices fell to $1.77 per million British thermal units. In inflation-adjusted terms, the price of gas has plunged by some 80% since its high of $13.60 12 years ago. The price is down 90% since 2005, when prices hit nearly $20. (Quick: Can you think of anything else that now costs one-tenth of what it did 15 years ago?) The Energy...

Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. Environmentalists and the news media offered multiple explanations – except the most obvious and likely one: offshore wind farms. Indeed, that area has the world’s biggest concentration of offshore wind turbines, and there is ample evidence that their acoustic pollution can interfere with whale communication and navigation. However, Britain’s Guardian looked for answers everywhere but in the right place. That’s not surprising, as it tends to support wind energy no matter the cost to people or the environment. After...

Last week, the lobbying arm of the wind energy industry made an unsurprising, though somewhat embarrassing, announcement. It wants a longer lifeline with federal subsidies. So much for wind being the low-cost energy source of the future. Less than a year ago, the American Wind Energy Association with great fanfare issued a press statement that, as Bloomberg reported: "America's wind farms are ready to go it alone." Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has strongly supported the wind industry since the days of federal support began in 1992, boasted that the wind industry had finally "matured" and wind...

Michigan’s electric utilities gamble that the reliability of service won’t collapse. Consumers Energy would have to double the number of wind turbines currently operating in this state to replace the electricity produced by just one of the coal- and gas-fired power plants it intends to close as part of its plans to rely more on renewable sources. The problem, however, is that those additional turbines only spin about one-third of the time, leaving a big energy gap for the households and businesses that rely on the company for their electricity. .. regulated utilities and their vendors operate 1,107 industrial wind...

wind turbines only last for twenty years, and after that time the turbines must be torn down .. wind turbine blades cannot be recycled ... more than 100 wind turbine blades measuring 120 ft long have been dumped in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, landfill, but there’s a problem: the massive blades are taking up too much room ... A wind farm near Albert Lea, Minn., brought dozens of their old turbine blades to the Sioux Falls dump this summer. But City Hall says it won’t take anymore unless owners take more steps to make the massive fiberglass pieces less...

Yesterday we looked at the blame game going on in New York over the recent blackouts. Governor Cuomo is blaming utility giant Con Edison, while the company points out that there isn’t enough energy on the grid. I also examined the question of how the Governor plans on replacing all of the energy generated by the Indian Point nuclear power plant as he moves to shut down their two remaining reactors. Well, it turns out he does have a plan to do that and it involves “going green” with the construction of a massive wind farm off the coast....

Even $1.5 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees can’t save a “clean” energy company from bankruptcy. That’s the takeaway from the looming failure of SunEdison, a company that touts itself as the “largest global renewable energy development company.” Once a darling of Wall Street and the green Left because of SunEdison’s portfolio of wind and solar projects, the company’s stock is now in free fall. Furthermore, two related companies that were spun off from SunEdison — TerraForm Global and TerraForm Power — also appear to be in financial distress. On March 30, Brian Wuebbels, the CEO of both TerraForm companies,...

Preaching green faith, socialist trust, and pixie dust, the Green New Deal is more fantasy than fact.  America's new Green Energy Pixie, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been waving a magic wand, conjuring up the money for this fantasy, claiming that it will materialize out of thin air! Apparently, the physical impossibility of green energy-harvesting to generate America's electricity needs in less than a decade escapes Brooklyn's Tinkerbelle.  Prestidigitation aside, what would it take to green-generate all her home state's electricity?  Let's run some numbers in the real world.   New York State has always been a leader in renewable energy, currently generating 29% of all electricity...

Take, for instance, a wind farm in the Western Ghats region of India, where a group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science performed their study. In the area of the wind farm, raptors were around four times less common than in other areas. They kept dying to the turbines, which is not great for the raptors but good news for fan-throated lizards, the raptors’ prey. In and around the wind farm, lizard populations exploded, completely unchecked by predation. So few of them were being eaten that they even lost almost all fear of danger. The researchers found they...