Showing posts with label renewable energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label renewable energy. Show all posts

May 1, 2018

Renewable energy undermine

Jeff Rice @EvolvingCaveman asked on Twitter: Hi @windwatchorg, Haven't you guys got anything better to do than try to undermine clean, green #RenewableEnergy? Enlighten us - what would you like to see make up our energy mix? Expensive nuclear? #ClimateChange causing #FossilFuels? @GeorgeMonbiot

National Wind Watch @windwatchorg answered:

The unfortunate fact is that renewable energy does not meaningfully replace fossil and nuclear fuels.

And such diffuse (low-density) sources as wind and solar require massive plants to capture even enough to make selling virtue-signaling green tags profitable.

That means wind and solar on an industrial scale necessarily have adverse effects of their own, particularly as they need huge tracts of previously undeveloped rural and wild land, including mountain ridge lines.

And being intermittent and, in the case of wind, highly variable, they still require backup, which is forced to run much less efficiently (ie, with more carbon emissions) than it could without having to contend with wind's erratic generation.

So for such utter lack of actual benefit coupled with substantial harm, no, we do not support wind and work to protect the environment from its depredations.

We advocate conservation, which reduces fossil and nuclear fuel use much more than wind and solar do.

Jeff Rice replied: I notice that you haven't answered my question...

National Wind Watch answered: That's a separate issue from National Wind Watch's mission to educate people about wind's shortcomings and harm. We do not take a position for any over any other except to note that wind is not a solution.

Jeff Rice: Campaign organisations have long recognised the need to promote solutions to the problems they campaign against. Your anti #WindPower campaign lacks substance and comes across as NIMBYism. It also looks like you are apologists for the #FossilFuels industry. #NIMBY

National Wind Watch:

That is of course a risk we take. On the other hand, there are plenty of groups already proposing solutions, and those who question wind power represent people of very different views, from off-grid deep green to pronuclear free marketers.

Our role is to provide a resource for all of them on the issue of industrial-scale wind power. If people see that as being apologists for fossil fuels or giving comfort to climate skeptics or NIMBYism, that is a failure of imagination on their part.

It is a failure of environmentalists, driven by the "need to promote solutions", that they have forgot their role is to challenge and question solutions, especially those promoted by government and industry and banking in collusion.

Jeff Rice: Various forms of #RenewableEnergy are the solution! Although, do you think that we don't need to tackle #ClimateChange or air pollution? And as for renewables being supported by the establishment - what utter nonsense. Governments are very much wedded to #FossilsFuels!

National Wind Watch:

Wind and solar would be great if their benefits far outweighed their harm, but, as already noted, on a large scale their harm far outweighs their benefits, because they do very little to alleviate carbon emissions, pollution or fossil fuel dependency.

As to government support for wind, it is hardly a secret that subsidies, regulatory favoritism and special market structures are necessary for wind development.

Jeff Rice: Why do you think wind and solar DON'T reduce carbon emissions? A gross inaccuracy on your part.

National Wind Watch: How much have carbon emissions decreased with the massive industrialization of rural and wild places with wind turbines around the world since the 1990s? It's madness to continue.

Jeff Rice: Why you are wrong: It's a myth that wind turbines don't reduce carbon emissions

National Wind Watch: Goodall and Lynas point to a passing reduction of electricity generation from CCGT plants, not to any actual reduction of fuel use or carbon emissions.

March 29, 2015

The Lie of “100% Renewable”

It’s been recently reported that Georgetown “plans to be the first city in Texas entirely powered by renewable energy”. Of course, “plans to be” is a long way from “is”, but the first problem in most such reports is that they are talking only about electrical energy. Other energy consumption, such as for heating and transport, is not affected, so it is misleading indeed to say “entirely powered by renewable energy”.

Earlier this year, it was more accurately reported that the city of Burlington, Vermont, “became the first in the country to use 100 percent renewable energy for its residents’ electricity needs”. The news was further spread with far less care (and predictably) as, e.g., “the first city in the U.S. to be powered 100 percent by renewables”. Again, it is about electricity only, which is only about a third of our overall energy use. (Note should also be taken of the qualifier of “residents’ needs”: The University of Vermont, for example, is not included in this accounting.)

Even stated accurately, however, it remains misleading. Georgetown will be purchasing wind and solar power from faraway facilities. That means that they will in fact be using the same electricity on the grid as neighboring towns. The decision was strictly financial, not because wind and solar are cheaper, but because the country as a whole subsidizes them and the required new powerlines so that they can sell the power relatively cheaply. Furthermore, for Georgetown to find the price particularly attractive, as well as considering their non-ideological view, they will probably not be buying the Enron-invented “renewable energy credits”, i.e., they will not actually have the “right” to claim the purchase as “renewable”. (Instead, someone else, who also gets the same electricity from the grid as everyone else, will buy the RECs to claim the “green credit”.)

Sale of RECs also benefits Burlington, which sells them for its woodchip-fired plant and their ownership of wind plants in Georgia and Sheffield. Technically, they can therefore no longer claim that electricity themselves as “renewable”, although they account for almost two-thirds of the city’s electricity. As Burlington Electric itself shows, in 2013, ignoring their selling of RECs, 95% of their electricity was renewably sourced. After selling the RECs, that percentage dropped to 39%. And 67% of that was represented by the purchase of RECs.

Again, everything these cities do not generate themselves is taken from the regional grid, a pool of electrical energy that does not distinguish among its many sources. Georgetown will be using the same electricity as its “nonrenewable” neighbors. Burlington generates about half of its own electricity from wood chips, a little hydro, and negligible solar and wind. The rest is from the same pool as its “less renewable” neighbors.

And besides the charade of exclusive claims on renewable electricity that everyone shares equally on the grid, electricity is itself only about a third of their total energy use.