Wind energy saves 0.077% of California’s water

The trade lobby American Wind Energy Association has asserted that “wind energy saves 2.5 billion gallons of water annually in drought-parched California”, which is “around 65 gallons per person in the state (200 gallons per household)”. With the state now requiring households to reduce their water use by 25%, “wind energy’s water savings are therefore equivalent to what would be saved by nearly one week’s worth of the required reductions for a typical household”.

Nearly 1 week! That’s nearly 2%! Of household use — which represents only 4% of the total water use in California!

In short, wind energy theoretically (the displacement of water use by thermal plants is far from the simple one-for-one picture that AWEA implies) “saves” less than eight 100ths of one percent of California’s water.

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The relatively small, albeit mostly unnecessary (almost all of it representing lawn watering), residential use not only illustrates the absurdity of AWEA’s boast, it also underscores the futility of the state’s emergency measures.

Here is the breakdown by sector of California’s water use in 2012, according to the Pacific Institute.

As one can see, besides the small amount used for lawn watering, there is another completely unnecessary use, but this one accounts for almost half of the total: meat and dairy: 47% of California’s water use.

What about almonds, it’s been hysterically asked?

Yes, among the plant crops, water use for almonds is highest, just above rice. And just above residential use in 2012. From 2012 to 2014, almond growing expanded by less than 5%. In other words, almonds are hardly the cause of the drought. It should also be noted that all nut crops (e.g., walnuts and pistachios, as well as almonds) use a lot of water. It’s because California grows more than 80% of the world’s almonds that the latter represents such a large proportion.

And again one sees the picture dominated by far by one culprit: the crops to feed meat and dairy animals: using almost 10 times as much water in California as almonds. As the Water Footprint Network has stated, “The water footprint of any animal product is larger than the water footprint of a wisely chosen crop product with equivalent nutritional value.”

wind = natural gas

On May 1, 2012, Windpower Monthly published an interview by Ros Davidson with Denise Bode, CEO of industry lobby American Wind Energy Association. Besides her incoherence about the Production Tax Credit (the industry will die without it! the industry no longer needs it!), here is an interesting excerpt about natural gas. Before moving to the AWEA in 2009, Bode was CEO of natural gas lobby American Clean Skies Foundation.

RD: You and Texan oil billionaire T Boone Pickens have promoted the idea of a wind–natural gas partnership, using both sources for generation and natural gas for vehicles. You co-authored an article on the issue with Pickens on Politico (the political journalism website) just before the 2011 AWEA conference. Yet, many people are increasingly uncomfortable with natural gas because of questions about the environmental safety of fracking - a procedure that releases gas from underground shale rocks - and because of methane emissions. Where does that leave AWEA and the prospect of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to a low-carbon future?

DB: You're talking to somebody who was a state regulator of oil and gas. You can safely frack. You can regulate and manage it. The natural gas industry really got ahead of itself because they were drilling in places that did not have a mature regulatory structure. They also didn't have the infrastructure to properly address the fracking. Over time that will change, whether it is through federal or state regulation. It can be managed.

RD: So the controversy over fracking and methane emissions doesn't change your view of wind and gas collaborating?

DB: It's a matter of fact that wind and gas will be the two largest new sources of electricity generation.

RD: But doesn't the public perception of natural gas fracking make the partnership more difficult to sell?

DB: You know, we're focused on the PTC and don't spend a lot of time promoting our partnership. We try not to tear somebody else down and build ourselves up. We talk about the benefits of wind. Natural gas has to pretty much make its own case, although we do need to work together. We need each other to balance utilities' portfolios. Natural gas provides peak power in a way that wind can't. We need each other and should work together as much as possible.

It is obvious that wind needs natural gas, not just to ensure power on demand, but also to effectively balance wind's high degree of variation. However, natural gas does not need wind. In fact, without wind, natural gas turbines can operate about twice as efficiently - ie, with about half the emissions. In other words, to support wind on the grid is not only to support more fracking for natural gas, but also to support less efficient use of that natural gas.

Bode's comment that "You can safely frack" reminds us of this statement from the AWEA strategy memo leaked from its November 2011 board meeting:

We need to create a space for the wind energy industry without defining it as an alternative to fossil fuels and coal and that goes beyond being one of many "renewables." "Renewables" in general are saddled with weaknesses that we don’t want to have to carry.

That is to say, wind has moved from serving as atonement for consumerism to now being little more than the greenwashing arm of the natural gas industry.

Cf  "Breaking Up with the Sierra Club", in response to the discovery that the wind industry cheerleader had accepted more than $25 million dollars from fracker Chesapeake Energy.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

War criminals for Wind

Click the title of this post for a report of George W. Bush's keynote at the American Wind Energy Association's annual conference in Dallas. He received a rousing standing ovation for a speech that included defenses of his lies and wars — all forgiven in this crowd of industrialists for his "free market" philosophy as governor of Texas that, guided by pal Kenneth Lay of Enron, created the modern system of transfering millions of dollars of public money into private bank accounts and allowing the sale of wind energy twice (i.e., "green tags", yes a scam invented by Enron).

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism