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On October 8, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that nations around the world must cut their greenhouse-gas emissions drastically to reduce the possibility of catastrophic climate change. The report emphasizes “fast deployment of renewables like solar and wind” and largely ignores the essential role nuclear energy must play in any decarbonization effort. Four days earlier, to much less fanfare, two Harvard researchers published a paper showing that trying to fuel our energy-intensive society solely with renewables would require cartoonish amounts of land. How cartoonish? Consider: meeting America’s current demand for electricity alone—not including gasoline or...

Those ugly, unreliable, heavily subsidized windmills that dot the landscape in increasing numbers not only kill millions of birds, but actually increase global warming, if you buy into the assumptions used by the warmist cult.  We have this on the authority of scientists bearing the imprimatur of prestigious universities.  From Technology Review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: [A] new study by a pair of Harvard researchers finds that a high amount of wind power could mean more climate warming, at least regionally and in the immediate decades ahead.  The paper raises serious questions about just how much the United States or other nations should look to wind...

Ramping up wind power in America would also dial up the nation’s temperatures, a new study out of Harvard found. While wind energy is widely celebrated as environmentally friendly, the researchers concluded that a dramatic, all-out expansion in the number of turbines could warm the country even more than climate change from burning coal and other fossil fuels, because of the way the spinning blades disturb the layers of warm and cold air in the atmosphere. Some parts of the central United States are already seeing nights that are up to 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer because of...

Let’s pass a federal law to end all poverty by the year 2040. That will fix everything. Oh wait – we already have hundreds of laws attempting to eradicate poverty that were instituted several decades ago. Funny thing – we still have poverty, and at about the same percentage as when the war on poverty began over a half a century ago. It’s a clear example of the fact just because the government passes a law, it doesn’t magically make it so. But that’s what leftists do. They see a perceived problem, which usually isn’t, and then set about to...

Some nights, Sean Harris is sitting watching the TV and he thinks he hears the fridge humming. On other occasions, he has been out on the road around his home in Ballyduff in West Waterford, and the engine sounds as if it’s a car approaching him from behind. Those are the more benign effects of the Barnafaddock Wind Farm, as he sees it. He is not alone, but neither are his problems shared with huge numbers in his rural community. In most people’s view, the wind farm is in the mountains and its developer has compensated the community with funds...

The number-one challenge of our times is to separate the wheat from the chaff. To assist in this task, we are blessed with more information than ever before – but we are also simultaneously burdened with more misinformation than any prior generation has ever had to deal with. We look back and wonder how trusting citizens were so easily victimized by snake oil salesmen, but today, in the golden age of cons, we are being duped on a daily basis. As a representative matter (and a national issue of great significance), let's look at what's happening with industrial wind energy....

A prominent environmental activist took the unusual road of not only blaming rising electricity costs squarely on renewable sources, but also for deriding the mainstream media for ignoring the connection. Michael Shellenberger, the president and founder of Environmental Progress, explained in a Forbes blog post Monday how the unreliability of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, is the main reason why electricity bills around the world have been getting higher. Despite renewable energy technology slowly becoming more affordable, Shellenberger notes, electricity costs are still rising because of the unpredictable nature of wind and solar. Both sources produce excess...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico ranked as the nation’s fastest-growing state for wind-energy construction last year, according to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association. The state added enough new turbines to produce 571 megawatts of electricity, growing installed capacity by 51 percent to 1.68 gigawatts, according to the association’s 2017 annual market report, released this morning in Santa Fe. That’s enough electricity to power about 422,000 average U.S. homes every year. And New Mexico could maintain front-running status for another couple of years, with 1.7 GW of new wind construction projects now in the pipelines for installation...

During a recent trip to Maine, my wife and I noticed the large number of wind turbines cluttering the peaks of the ridges around the otherwise scenic New England countryside, particularly in Vermont. There really are a lot of them, and that’s the result of an ongoing push to get the region onto renewable energy as much as possible. Vermont in particular has been hammering wind power as the path to cut carbon emissions and make the state truly green in nature. And they’ve achieved an admirable level of success, despite the fact that people living near the wind farms...

Have you ever wondered what kind of sadistic, totalitarian mentality you might need to want to carpet the countryside with bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes in order to save the planet from an imaginary problem? This book, unearthed by David Archibald at American Thinker, offers a clue: It’s by a Nazi inventor and industrialist called Dr. Franz Lawaszeck, whose proposed solution to Germany’s energy problems in the 1930s was the wholesale adoption of wind turbines. In his book, he writes: Wind power, using the cost-free wind, can be built on a large scale. Improved technology will in the future make it...

A tax reform plan drafted in part by incoming Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin bodes poorly for wind industry lobbies hoping once again to extend current federal production tax credits (PTCs) which are set to expire by 2021. Now set at 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, the original subsidy intent was to "level the energy market playing field" by stimulating technology development to achieve competitive costs, reduce fossil fuel "climate pollution," and advance American energy independence. None of these goals are really any closer to realization now than when these subsidies were first enacted in 1992.

President Donald Trump has disputed climate change, pledged a revival of coal and disparaged wind power, and his nominee to head the Energy Department was once highly skeptical of the agency’s value. What this means for states’ efforts to promote renewable energy is an open question. States that are pushing for greater reliance on wind and solar power are not quite sure what to expect as Trump takes over. Many of them depend heavily on federal renewable-energy tax credits, grants and research, much of which comes from the Energy Department. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Trump’s pick to lead the...

EDITOR’S NOTE: Waterfront Park turbines are expected to generate $1.39 per day and therefore about $41.58 per month in electricity. The information was incorrect in this story. PORT ANGELES — Three windmill-like turbines loom motionless over the city of Port Angeles’ new Waterfront Park. The $107,516 spires stand immobile more than two months after they were erected and more than a year after the city council approved them. Once they are working to generate electricity, they will produce so little power — $1.50 worth of electricity a month in savings — that at least one council member is regretting her...

Two green energy companies contributed a quarter of a million dollars to the American Indian tribe spearheading a months-long demonstration against an oil pipeline in North Dakota. Standing Rock Sioux voted unanimously April 5 to accept two $150,000 donations from ConEdison Development and Fagen Inc., both of which have partnered up to build windmills in the North Dakota area, according to internal documents kept by the tribe. ConEdison Development acquired land near Standing Rock’s reservation and began construction on a wind power facility last year. Fagen was a contractor on the project. The $250,000 donations to the tribe were meant...

A New York utility plans to approve a wind farm off eastern Long Island that it says would be the nation’s largest offshore wind energy project built to date. The project would be the first phase of a more ambitious effort to construct hundreds of electricity-producing turbines in the Atlantic Ocean in the coming years. The announcement that the Long Island Power Authority plans to approve a proposed 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm in U.S. waters east of Montauk at a meeting next week was greeted enthusiastically by energy experts, elected officials and environmentalists. […] The U.S. lags behind Europe and...

Liberals love to tout how great alternative energy is compared to fossil fuels. What the same environmentalists refuse to acknowledge is the costs that will be paid by the energy companies customers. While people such as Obama and Clinton continue to push for alternative energy by acting as if it’s a surefire way to lower energy costs, Germany has proven that a lie. The German government has officially declared it will cease building any new offshore wind turbines in an effort to lower energy costs for the European Union’s richest nation.

Liberals and eco-warriors in the United States often point to Germany as a model for the future when it comes to questions of renewable energy. That’s because the Germans have massively increased their output of wind and solar resources to the point where they account for nearly a third of their total production. During periods when demand and wind/solar supply peak at the same time they have briefly managed to supply virtually the entire country’s needs from such resources. That’s great news, right? Well… if that’s the case, why are they halting construction of any further wind farms? (Daily Caller...

The Obama administration is revising a federal rule that allows wind-energy companies to operate high-speed turbines for up to 30 years, even if means killing or injuring thousands of federally protected bald and golden eagles. Under the plan announced Wednesday, companies could kill or injure up to 4,200 bald eagles a year without penalty -- nearly four times the current limit. Golden eagles could only be killed if companies take steps to minimize the losses, for instance, by retrofitting power poles to reduce the risk of electrocution. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe said the proposal will "provide a...

In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions. “If we don’t adopt new policies, we’re not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground,” says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “We need both a policy...

The island of Juist off Germany’s North Sea coast is testing out a new idea for alternative energy: self-sufficient wind-powered street lamps, which could be a model even for developing countries. The blustery shores of Juist in the North Sea certainly have no shortage of wind, which has given the island reason to launch a new energy-saving pilot project. In the next two weeks, the island will be setting up the first wind-powered street light created by a designer based in Schleswig-Holstein, Peer Langemak, a spokesman from Juist told The Local on Monday. Langemak and his team “noordforce” spent a...