Capacity calculations for wind on the grid

Operators of the electrical grid have to know how much power capacity they can county on when they need it. This creates a problem for wind energy, because only the wind determines its production rate and time. It's largely chance that wind and demand might coincide in any dependable way. Therefore, wind is largely a sideshow, or even an added burden, to the real work of the grid.

Here is how different grid operators look at wind power's actual value in their planning, as compiled by the Utility Wind Integration Group ("Wind Power and Electricity Markets", information compiled through September 21, 2007). For "Capacity Calculation":

• PJM (Mid-Atlantic plus northern IN and IL) initially assigns a value of 20% of the rated capacity and then uses the average output over the previous 3 years ot 4, 5, and 6 o'clock p.m. from June through August.


• NYISO uses the average capacity factor between 2 and 6 o'clock p.m. from June through August and between 4 and 8 o'clock p.m. from December through February.


• ISO-NE (New England) uses the overall capacity factor.


• Ontario IESO uses 10% of the rated capacity for long-term (e.g., seasonal) forecasting and 0% (zero) for 1 to 34 days ahead.


• MISO (Midwest) gives wind a 15% capacity value for transmission planning purposes.


• SPP (KS, OK, TX panhandle) uses the level of output equalled or exceeded for 85% of the top 10% load hours.


• ERCOT (TX) uses 8.7% of the rated capacity in capacity reserve margin calculations.


• CAISO uses the average monthly output over the previous 3 years between 12 and 6 o'clock p.m. from May through September.


• Alberta Electric System Operator assigns a 20% value.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Bush Wants Another $46 Billion for Wars

[headline and blurb from Ironic Times]

Dems pledge to whine “even louder” before giving it to him.

Corrections re: wind turbine foes

A story late last month by Lydia DePillis from Greenwire stated that Lisa Linowes organized the meeting in May 2005 at which a national coalition (namely, National Wind Watch [NWW]) against industrial wind energy development was formed. Whether that statement was due to confusion on the reporter's part or misinformation provided by Lisa, the fact is that Lisa was but one of the dozens of invited guests at that meeting, which was conceived and organized by David Roberson.

A story early this month by Kristi Swartz in the Palm Beach (Fla.) Post stated that the Industrial Wind Action Group (IWAG) was founded in 2005. Again, whether that statement was due to the reporter's confusion or misinformation provided by Lisa, the fact is that National Wind Watch, not IWAG, was founded in 2005. Lisa Linowes left National Wind Watch (after a failed coup followed by stealing NWW's web site and domain) to work independently (as IWAG) in 2006.

The coincidence that two reporters at the same time made similar incorrect statements about Lisa Linowes and National Wind Watch strongly suggests that Lisa was indeed the source of these errors.

wind power, wind energy

Wind energy proponents burn down opponent's barn

[Removed by request -- could've been hunters, too]

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, human rights, animal rights

Huge project takes huge parts

Report from the construction of the Smoky Hills Wind Farm in Kansas, on hills on both sides of state highway 14 south of Lincoln:

The crane standing atop a hill across the Ellsworth County line north of Interstate 70 soared 315 feet into the air.

Nearby stood two white tubes, one stacked on the other. These made up the bottom two sections of a four-section tower. When this and more than 50 other towers like it are operational, the Smoky Hills Wind Farm will go on-line ...

The wind farm is being developed by TradeWind Energy of Lenexa under the ownership of Enel North America, Inc., a subsidiary of Enel, SpA, the third largest utility in the world.

The components [that electricians, engineers, construction employees and others] are putting together to make the wind turbines are huge. For instance, each turbine will have three blades, each one 132 feet in length.

The towers, manufactured in Denmark, Canada and China, are shipped to the Gulf of Mexico, where they are loaded on rail cars and transported to Kanopolis, 10 miles to the south of the construction site.

Other information shared by [farmer, landowner (hosting 15 of the machines), and tour guide Richard Plinsky]:

• Ten special "low-boy trucks" were needed -- just to deliver the crane, which will hoist the tower components, including the nacelle or generation head, which holds the hub for the three blades.

• The turbines [are capable of producing] 1.8 megawatts of energy [sic -- megawatts are a measure of power], making them the largest producers in Kansas. The wind turbines at Spearville and Elk River, east of Wichita, are 1.5 megawatts.

• The cost of a finished turbine is between $3.5 and $4 million [$1.9-2.2 million per megawatt].

• Each base takes 500 cubic yards of concrete, which is poured 8 to 10 feet into the ground.

• Each tower has 77,000 pounds of reinforcement bar in the concrete. The towers stand 260 feet tall.

"It was such a large project that there was no way anybody local could handle it," Plinsky said.

• When construction started, about 140,000 gallons of water were needed daily to pour the concrete and build the roads. Plinsky said large amounts of water are still required to control the dust on the roads.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

Searsburg wind output misstated by officials

To the Editor, Brattleoro (Vt.) Reformer [published Oct. 12, 2007]:

The article "Answers blowing in wind" (Oct. 11) states that the current annual output of the existing Searsburg wind turbines is 27 percent of their capacity. That is incorrect.

For the last four years for which data are available, 2002-2005, the annual output has ranged between 20.4 and 21.7 percent of capacity.

There is no reason to expect a new facility in the same area to perform any better. The new machines are just bigger; they do not rewrite the laws of physics.

Searsburg's output for 2007 is likely to be much lower, since one of the machines -- its blades destroyed by lightning some time ago -- has not been repaired.

Such abandonment after the tax benefits expire and manufacturers have moved on to bigger machines is typical. It should be noted that "decommissioning" is superficial: all such agreements leave the huge steel-reinforced concrete foundation behind, permanently altering the terrain.

The extensive destruction of otherwise protected habitat necessary to erect the giant new wind turbines would be done to produce an annual total of barely one percent of Vermont's needs. It would, however, be practically idle for a third of the time and produce at or above its average rate only another third of the time -- depending on the wind and not grid demand, making its actual value for providing power almost nil. (Its real product is tax avoidance and green tags.)

It's time to admit that wind energy on the grid is a failure, not to stubbornly expand the folly. The only result has been the destruction of rural and wild lands that we and the earth can ill afford.

Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont

Facts and figures about Jiminy Peak wind turbine

The giant wind turbine on Jiminy Peak in the northern Berkshires has been on line for 2 months and has already broken down. At this rate, they won't even save their (our) investment, let alone the planet.

Type: General Electric 1.5-megawatt model SLE

Heights and weights
Base tower section: 72', 64.5 tons
Midsection: 85’, 47.5 tons
Top tower section: 97', 33.5 tons
Total tower: 253' (77 m), 144.5 tones
Nacelle: 12'2" high, 61.7 tons
Blade (x3): 122' long, 9'2" wide, 11.2 tons
Hub: 11' radius
Total blade assembly: 249' diam. (81 m), 134.6 tons, swept area 1.27 acres
Total: 386' (117.5 m), 236 tons

Foundation: 412 cubic yards of cement; 40' diameter; 8' deep in rock; 25 tons of reinforcing rod; 140 8’ anchor bolts

Likely output of this behemoth (when not broken down): about 325 kilowatts annually, reaching that rate or above only a third of the time, essentially idle another third of the time

See some pictures at National Wind Watch.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

NO industrial wind turbines in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom

Make sure the organizations listed below understand that they need to stand against industrial wind energy development in the Northeast Kingdom to protect the beauty and character of the area.

From "Vermont's Northeast Kingdom", National Geographic Geotourism Map Guide:

Also see travelthekingdom.com/geotourism.

Geotourism Travelers' Tips:

1. What is geotourism?

The formal definition is, "Tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of the place being visited -- its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage, and the well-being of its residents." In other words, travel for people who like distinctive places and care about protecting them.

2. Who are geotravelers?

... they support local businesses and travel organizations that care about conservation, preservation, beautification, and benefits to local people.

3. How can I be a good geotraveler in the Northeast Kingdom?

The Kingdom got its name from its natural beauty. Residents are determined to retain that beauty. ...

9. What should I do, and not do, if I want to buy property or build a home in the Kingdom?

The Geotourism Alliance is committed to preserving sense of place in the Kingdom. If you decide to purchase a home or move to the area, please consider local values and the effect you and your house have on the landscape, culture, environment, and communities. ...

[Who makes up the Geotourism Alliance?]

National Geographic
Northeast Kingdom Travel and Tourism Association
Nulhegan Gateway Association
University of Vermont Tourism Data Center
Cabot Creamery
Connecticut River Byway
Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium
Kingdom Trails Association
Northeastern Vermont Development Association
Northeast Kingdom Collaborative
Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont
The Northern Forest Canoe Trail
NorthWoods Stewardship Center
Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge
USDA Rural Development
Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife
Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing
Vermont Fresh Network
Vermont Maple Foundation
Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund
Vermont WoodNet

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont

NO industrial wind turbines in National Forest

Dear Bob Bayer, Project Coordinator, USDA Forest Service --

Please do not allow the construction of industrial wind turbines on National Forest lands in Readsboro, Vt., as proposed by PPM Energy.

Such construction would be a permanent loss of the land for any other purpose. It would require acres of clearing for each turbine, new heavy-duty roads, and excavation (including blasting) for steel-reinforced concrete bases that would remain in the ground forever.

The motion and consequent noise and vibration of the giant turbines are a threat to flying animals -- birds, bats, and insects -- and would disturb the lives of animals on and in the ground.

Their height and required safety lighting would adversely transform the character of a rare natural landscape.

These and other impacts far outweigh the potential benefit of the facility as a source of nonpolluting renewable energy.

As you know, wind energy is highly variable, intermittent, and nondispatchable. Thus, integrating it into the grid is problematic.

Other sources must be kept available to balance the infeed from wind. They may continue to burn fuel in standby mode, burn fuel at lower efficiency in a ramped down state, or burn extra fuel in more frequent starts.

The beneficial effect of wind as a clean source of energy is therefore substantially diminished as a supplier to the grid.

In many cases, the infeed from wind may simply be absorbed as a tolerable variation in line voltage, thus not displacing any other source at all.

In sum, forest land and habitat should not be sacrificed for such a negligible potential benefit that will not measurably alter our energy use.

Reject the proposal of siting wind turbines in the National Forest.

The forest is not renewable.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont

Protected wolves and hyenas disappearing in Indian district

From newindpress.com, via National Wind Watch:

Three years ago, Gajendragad [in Gadag district] was recognised as a safe haven for highly endangered species like the Indian grey wolf and striped hyenas, but then came wind farming and wind mills with huge noisy fans and human traffic to maintain these machines. It drove away these species from their habitat.

Dr H N Kumara, wildlife biologist, observed the changes during his visits to the place. ‘‘Some years ago, I could sight huge packs of animals during my visits. My week-long stay here had revealed that these places were an ideal den for the wolves. But after a couple of years, the habitats were destroyed and wolves disappeared,’’ he explained.

The hills were destroyed for the construction of roads and huge mills by a private firm, replacing the dry decidous place. The only beneficiary is cattle, for they can graze free and without fear. ‘‘There were a lot of wolves here. And the sight of grazing sheep was rare. Now the situation is the reverse. The wolves have gone,’’ said Goni Basappa Koralahalli, a shepherd.

[Poachers also take advantage of the new roads. --Ed.]

Prashant Rathod says he had sighted wolves several times, but it was more than a year ago. Now no one comes across wolves. The status of the Indian striped hyena, an endangered species, is no different. They have disappeared since the past three years.

‘‘This is a significant habitat for these hyenas and we had seen some near goshalas around Kalakaleshwar temple. But they are gone. It is possible that too much human interference might have driven them away,’’ he said.

Power generation is permitted on this government land and about five megawatts of power is generated. Officials from the forest department were not available for comment on the alarming migration of animals. The forest department had reported many incidents where bears made life miserable for people in Arasikere and parts of Hiryur recently.

The Indian grey wolf (Canis lupus) is found in the Deccan plateau and differs from its Himalyan cousin. Though considered secondary predators with significant roles in the food chain, the numbers of this nocturnal and diurnal species is dwindling rapidly due to poaching, loss of habitat and threat from feline species.

The species is protected under Wildlife Act Schedule 1.

The Indian striped hyena, a scavenger species was sighted in places like Gajendragad, Chitradurga, parts of Tumkur region, around Doroji, Sandur and Bidar.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism,, animal rights

Corrosion grounding off-shore wind

From Environmental Data Services (U.K.), via Friends of the Irish Environment, comes a report of a Sept. 20 article in the Norwegian engineering journal Teknisk Ukeblad about off-shore wind energy facilities being shut down because of corrosion damage to gearboxes, rotor blades, and other mechanical components. Affected sites include Nysted and Horns Rev off the Danish coast, Barrow in the Irish sea, and Kentish Flats in the Thames estuary. Vestas has suspended sales of its 3-MW off-shore turbine.

The Swedish engineering journal Ny Teknik also carried an article on the subject on Sept. 19, confirming Vestas' problems and noting that the technology still needs a lot of work (how much more money will we throw down this dead end?) to withstand the harsh environment off shore.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines

Non Aux Eoliennes!

Demonstration this Friday, October 6, in front of the Environment Ministry in Paris at 2:00 in the afternoon

Community and environmental groups from all over France will be demonstrating against the madness of industrial wind turbine development. They will be demanding that the Environment Ministry protect the environment instead of wreck it.

For details, go to the Collectif 6 Octobre web site.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Wind turbines and noise

From abstracts of papers presented at the Wind Turbine Noise 2007 conference, Sept. 20-21, Lyon, France:

"In wind turbines the drive train, especially the gear box, is a significant source of noise. Significant contributions come from the gear mesh and from resonances of the structure like the main frame or the torque arm. The structure-borne noise from these sources is transferred either to the rotor or to the tower and radiated to the environment. The contributions to the noise spectrum from these sources are single tones in the frequency range from about 100 Hz to about 600 Hz."

--paper describing passive and active vibration absorbers manufactured by the German company ESM

"The larger proportion of the general population who live far from them think wind turbines are great -- while the smaller proportion representing people with homes near where wind turbines were subsequently erected have concerns, particularly about noise. On a popular vote basis, as seen by elected officials, the choice is clear, but on a justice basis, who looks out for the impacted few? ...

"The results for one wind farm, the Kingsbridge wind farm near Goderich Ontario, which has the closest distance between the wind turbines and the Environment Canada weather office monitoring station, show that about 31% of the hours of the year show an unmasked noise output above the Ontario Standard, and for nearly 10% of the hours of the year, the noise is significantly above the provincial standard (over 3 dBA), in many cases about 10 dBA above the background level produced by the wind at the receptor. In the 6 months from October 2006 to March 2007, on 64% of the days, there were hours of unmasked noise. This demonstrated the problem to be chronic and significant in nature. For another Ontario wind farm, the results in the summer period between May 1st and August 31st, 2006 showed 59% of the days demonstrated the problem, with it occurring 48% of the nights, and 33% of the nights showing the condition sustained for 3 or more hours. ...

"The presentation will go through the results in detail. They will show that the current Ontario interpretation by the Ministry of the Environment is not adequate to protect the public from excessive annoyance."

--William K. G. Palmer, Canada

"Previous studies have shown that wind turbine noise could be annoying at sound pressure levels lower than those known to be annoying for other community noise sources, such as road traffic. This could be due to the special characteristics of wind turbine noise (amplitude modulation) that make the sound easily perceptible. It could furthermore be due to atmospheric situations influencing large modern wind turbines more than older ones, leading to higher sound exposure than accounted for in the planning process."

--Eja Pedersen, Sweden, and Jelte Bouma, Roel Bakker, and Frits van den Berg, the Netherlands

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, human rights, animal rights

Save the Rupert River from hydro and wind power

To members of the Save the Rupert coalition:

I am in complete solidarity with your opposition to yet more destruction of the James Bay region by Hydro-Québec.

I must, however, note that wind power, although it certainly should have been mentioned in the EIA, is not a viable or desirable alternative.

And like big hydro, which was initially considered to be green and turned out not to be, big wind is not green, either.

At $1.5 million per installed megawatt, the alternative wind projects represent perhaps 3,000 megawatts of nameplate capacity. The American Wind Energy Association's "rule of thumb" for onshore wind turbines is that they require 60 acres of clearance for every installed megawatt.

So the alternative to a 135-square-mile hydro reservoir would be 280 square miles of wind turbines.

Along with the impacts of clearing, heavy-duty roads, and massive steel and concrete platforms, the environmental toll would continue with a broad spectrum of noise that disturbs wildlife (and people), and blades sweeping up to 2 acres of vertical airspace at tip speeds of 150-200 mph that kill substantial numbers of birds, bats, and insects.

The adverse impacts of large-scale wind power are increasingly documented, including by some of the groups in the Save The Rupert coalition. Again, like big hydro, big wind can no longer be thought of as green.

Furthermore, wind is an intermittent and variable energy source, which requires balancing by other sources. The ideal partner for wind is hydro. In fact, wind is likely the reason for the Rupert River project. Hydro-Québec recently called for offers to provide 2,000 megawatts of wind power (they received almost 8,000 MW of proposals). If those projects were to be built, adding to the hundreds of megawatts already installed in Québec, they would need new balancing power from another source.

Thus the company's need for new hydro capacity -- not to provide needed electricity (which, as you say, is not in fact necessary), but to make wind viable so that they can profit from the unwarranted perception that it is a green alternative.

Again, wind is not an alternative to the Rupert River project but the reason for it.

I join you in opposing this latest assault on wilderness. And hope that you also oppose the same assault by wind power projects.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Sibylline gesture

The first image is from 1473 Ulm, Germany. The second is a painting by Dirck van Baburen from the 1600s. They are both found in From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, by Marina Warner (1994).

Around the world: two days of the wind energy depredation news

India: Vultures hounded by windmills

Suthari village in Abrasa Taluka, Kutch, used to have 10 to 15 nests of the white backed vultures till a couple of years ago. This year, just a lone nest has been found. Where once there were more than 70 birds, now only 10 to 15 remain. When birdwatchers got together to look for a possible reason for the sudden drop in number of these birds, they attributed it to the wind farms that have come up in the area in the last year. ... In India, no Environmental Impact Assessment is done before setting up windmills as they are [presumed to be] a source of clean energy.

California: Riverside County supervisors doubt necessity of bird-safety rules

Two supervisors in Riverside County, one of California’s top producers of wind energy, want the region to be exempt from new statewide guidelines aimed at reducing the deaths of hawks, bats, owls, and other animals from windmills.

Illinois: Study puts focus on bird deaths by wind turbines

Despite proof that birds and bats are being killed by the rotating blades of wind turbines, a new state report says more studies are needed to determine if anything should be done about it.

Scotland: Council accused of ripping up rulebook over windmills plan

Wind turbines will be built close to a road and a stone circle after councillors over-ruled policies set out to prevent their construction on sensitive sites. The decision paves the way for a Turriff pig farmer to diversify his business with income from three 262ft-high windmills.

Iowa: Wind turbines raise some legal questions for landowners

Roger McEowen, an extension specialist at Iowa State University, says wind energy farming presents legal issues landowners need to carefully consider before entering into an agreement with developers.

India: Maharashtra ignoring tribal rights over forest land

Senior leaders of the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) and the Janata Dal, N. D. Patil and Mrinal Gore on Tuesday alleged that the Maharashtra government was favouring companies over the rights of poor Adivasis in Dhule district. ... Since January, there have been several protests in Dhule over the allotment of forest land for wind energy projects. Earlier this month the government issued notices to extern five activists championing the cause of the Adivasis and ban their entry into Dhule and four other districts.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Wind energy on the grid is not green

An associate has written to the Climate Trust's climatecounter.org, regarding their support of wind energy green tags from Bonneville Environmental Foundation:

"The electricity generated by the co-funded wind facility displaced electricity that otherwise would have been generated by burning fossil fuel at other power plants."

That may or may not be the case (if the amount of wind is a small enough percentage, the grid most likely just allows the line voltage to rise withing tolerable limits). Isn't the true measure, however, the amount of fuel burning that is reduced? The calculation of displacement has to account for: 1) the preference of hydro to balance wind; 2) switching thermal plants to standby, in which they still burn fuel to stay warmed up and ready to switch back to generation; 3) the extra fuel necessary for more frequent ramping or less efficient operation of those plants that are able to switch more quickly; and 4) the likelihood that the addition of wind energy is simply absorbed as a tolerable rise in line voltage.

These factors may explain why there is no evidence from anywhere in the world that wind energy on the grid actually reduces fossil fuel use or emissions, despite more than a decade of extensive experience, and casts serious doubt on wind's green credentials.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

A couple wind energy quotes from insiders

"We have three windmill parks in Norway, and we have pinpointed two countries to look for building more wind parks, that's the U.K. and Sweden. That's mainly because of the green certificate market they have there." --Ragnvald Nærø, executive vice president of communications, Statkraft (Sweden)

"The US Department of Energy said that you would need to cover four states with wind farms to supply America's energy needs." --Jim Dehlsen, chairman and CEO, Clipper (U.S.)

wind power, wind energy

Threat to fungi, worms, and insects from wind turbines

A Scottish news story yesterday publicized concerns being raised about the effect of industrial wind turbine noise and vibration might have on "our tiniest and rarest creatures". Click the title of this post for the article archived at National Wind Watch.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Disappearance of wildlife around wind turbines

At most wind energy projects, people have noticed a decline in wildlife, presumably because of the noise disturbance. Don Woods continues:

I have also noticed a steep decline of almost all other wildlife in this area. Deer and turkey populations have declined by about 80% since the turbine installation. I firmly believe they are having adverse health effects on the local citizens, myself included. There are many, many unknowns about the problems of wind farms that definitely need to be addressed by the proper authorities before it becomes impossible to stop them, if it isn't already! Specifically, the problems associated with low frequency vibrations. If the moth decline is due to wind turbines it is very serious. This could cause a total collapse of the ecosystem to include the whole food chain. It is definitely worthy of further study.


wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont

Disappearance of moths around wind turbines

Don Woods writes:

I live in the Appalachian mts. of West Virginia. My property borders the vast Monongehela natl. forest. Each year we delight in the hundreds of different moth species we observe here. For some unknown reason they seem to be on a serious decline over the past 5 years or so, to the point of near extinction this year. Last weekend after 4 hrs with the outside lights on not a single moth of any kind was seen! We do not know if the forest service has possibly been spraying for gypsy moth infestation and killed all moth species. Is that possible or might there be some other reason for their disappearance? Recently giant wind turbines have been erected in this area at about the same time the moths started to disappear.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights,

Resistance Is Fertile

Your editor was interviewed on Matt Soltys's "Healing the Earth" program today, hosted by CFRU, University of Guelph, Ontario.

Click here for the MP3 recording (36 minutes, 25 MB).

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism<, human rights, animal rights, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Taste for Meat Marches On

Tim Flannery writes in the June 28 New York Review of Books:

Many readers will doubtless ask whether vegetarianism is better still. [Michael] Pollan [The Omnivore's Dilemma] tells us that even vegan lifestyles result in animal cruelty. Just think of the the thousands of field mice shredded by harvesters, the woodchucks crushed in their burrows by tractors, and the songbirds poisoned by pesticides when farmers grow the wheat for our bread. Pollan's message seems to be that to live we must kill, and the best we can do is both treat animals decently while they live and kill them humanely.

This is moral argument?!

Your ethical vegan practices ahimsa, or "do the least harm". Choosing organically grown food eliminates the harm from pesticides. Choosing food from small farmers reduces the harm done to animals in the fields. Growing one's own food reduces it yet more.

Michael Pollan, apparently with Tim Flannery's agreement, goes in the other direction. In recognizing that our sustenance does harm to the sustenance of other creatures, he justifies willful harm beyond unavoidable necessity.

His premise is that we must eat the corpses of other animals, and it is commendable that he would like to reduce the brutality of that practice. But that premise is invalid and based only on his unquestioned appetite.

The fact is, most of us do not need to eat the corpses of animals to survive. Many people live very well without eating flesh. So to continue eating flesh is a choice to kill unnecessarily. All the coddling of your "meal" while it is alive doesn't change the brutal fact of that choice. One can raise them and kill them less brutally, but the practice can never be called humane. The result of the feedlot is the same as that for the "happy" grass-grazing beef cow.

Flannery also reviews Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, in which we learn that McKibben is a corpse-eater, too. Has the pre-eminent voice about the dangers of global warming not heard that raising animals for food is responsible for more greenhouse gas effect than transport? Let alone the inexcusable pollution and waste of water, energy, land, and other resources.

How can anyone take these men seriously?

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Wind energy would not reduce coal emissions

Dan Boone, a naturalist in Maryland, explains in a letter to the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News published Aug. 24 that air pollution would not be affected by adding wind turbines to the grid.

This is because air pollution is regulated under a "cap and trade" system that has very effectively reduced nitrous oxides (NOx) which create ozone and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) which causes acid rain emitted by electricity plants. It has even reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main greenhouse gas contributing to global warming: by 19% from 1995 to 2003 in Pennsylvania, according the the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

If thousands of giant turbines were erected in different regions so that between them there would be some predictably steady electricity generation, wouldn't that reduce coal emissions even more?

No, because even if that happened, the cap and trade system relies on an already established total cap on emissions. The incentive for a plant to reduce its emissions below its assigned cap is that it can then sell that extra to another plant to allow it to pollute more. Thus the total pollution remains the same.

And the cap is unlikely to be lowered because of wind energy. The potential contribution of wind is very small (the Dept. of Energy projects will will generate 0.89% of the total electricity in the U.S. by 2030) and the effect on fuel burning even smaller (because of ramping inefficiencies).

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Cape Wind would not reduce use of Canal Generating Plant

Wendy Williams, in yet another self-promotional piece, this one at Renewable Energy Access (Aug. 20), writes unconvincingly: "I'm not very polished when it comes to publicity." Another howler is this:

"Cape Wind would reduce the use of the oil-fired power plant on the Cape Cod Canal."

Cape Wind's massive turbines may reduce the electricity generated from that plant, but not necessarily the oil it burns.

The Canal Generating Plant in Sandwich is a traditional thermal plant. It can't be simply switched on and off as needed, because starting up first requires heating up water to make the steam that powers the generators, and that can take hours. As a back-up to wind, therefore, it would be switched to standby mode when the wind rises, in which mode it continues to burn fuel to create steam but the steam is released and not used to generate electricity. Thus, the plant would be ready to switch back to generation mode as soon as the wind drops again.

That's the sad fact. The 24-square-mile Cape Wind facility would not clean the air or reduce oil barge traffic.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Ironic Times

Headline:  Angry Dems punish Gonzales by expanding his powers.

Animals and morality

Apparently it has been a central problem of philosophy to explain "morality" as a uniquely human attribute. Philosophers, however, are keen to show that they are still equal to scientific thinking, so it has been hard to reconcile a unique human morality with related behaviors among other animals, i.e., with morality necessarily being an evolutionarily derived characteristic and not so unique after all.

And so reason is evoked as the essence of morality. Reason, we reason, is uniquely human, so everything that involves it must also be uniquely human.

This is, of course, a fine example of circular reasoning. Reason is uniquely human, morality requires reason, therefore morality is uniquely human. Neither premise is proven and exists only for the benefit of the other.

How much reasoning must we expend to justify what most people would inarguably see as a moral act, such as helping someone who is hurt? Reason, it seems, is more necessary to rationalize immoral acts, such as torture, the bombing of civilians, or ignoring from a seat of relative comfort the economic plight of others.

It is immorality, it seems, that is uniquely human and requires human reason.

[] [] []

I have written before in this space about Michael Pollan's confusion of morality with appetite. His dilemma, as it is sometimes said about taste, is in his mouth. For him, being an omnivore is what makes one human, and therefore he is committed to being the most conscientious omnivore he can be without denying his humanity.

But just because we can kill and eat anything we want doesn't mean that we should. We don't eat each other, for example, and it is generally not acceptable behavior to kill or even assault one another either. So what seems to make us human is the ability to deny our appetites, not gratify them, no matter how refined the gourmet. There is, of course, a balance -- we ought to enjoy what we eat and the communion of meals -- but one thing that is uniquely human, as Michael Pollan makes clear, is to recognize the immorality of one's actions and, instead of curtailing such behavior or even accepting it as a weakness or imperfection, to write whole books to justify it as right and necessary.

[] [] []

The first section above was written after reading an article by John Gray in the May 10 New York Review of Books, reviewing a couple of books about the evolution of morality.

The second section comes after reading an incisive and very readable review in the September Atlantic of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: "Hard to swallow: the gourmet’s ongoing failure to think in moral terms" by B.R Myers.

And while we're on the subject of treating animals decently as fellow creatures on this earth (not as potential meals), the American Vegan Society has a good article by Dale Lugenbehl in the Summer 2007 American Vegan about the massive impacts on the planet from raising animals to eat. It is available on line here. That issue of American Vegan also includes the report from the U.N. about animal husbandry's substantial contribution of greenhouse gases (more than transport) and other related material.

environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Wind "ought" to help -- but won't

To the Editor, Rutland (Vt.) Herald:

The key word in your August 10 editorial, "Wind win," is "ought." You conclude that the PSB approval of the Sheffield wind project is a "positive step that ought to improve Vermont's energy future." The fact is, unfortunately, that it won't.

Although you admit that the wind turbines would not be generating at full capacity all the time, you let stand the figure of the project's 40-megawatt installed capacity as meaningful. In fact, the facility would rarely, if ever, generate at full capacity. Its average annual output is more likely to be a fifth of that, as it is for the existing Searsburg facility and the average through the U.S. and the world: 8 megawatts. Even the developer projects an average output of only 13 megawatts.

Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed, however, any wind energy facility generates at or above its average rate only a third of the time. And those times are at the whim of the wind, not necessarily corresponding to actual need on the grid.

Consequently, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority plans for wind energy to provide useful energy at the rate of a third of its average output. This is in line with estimates from similar studies in Europe. The Sheffield project would thus represent a contribution of only about 3 to 4 megawatts for Vermont's energy planning.

Yet this potentially small source requires blasting for foundations and roads, tons of cement for each turbine, acres of forest clearing, and the erection of 419-feet-high towers with 162-feet-long turning blades and strobing safety lights over miles of ridge line where any other development would never even be considered, much less praised by the likes of Bill McKibben and VPIRG. This is a win for industry and the robber barons that run our country again, not for the environment. And not for our energy future, either.

[Published in the Rutland Herald, Aug. 14]

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Michael Ignatieff still doesn't get it

To the Editor, New York Times Magazine:

Michael Ignatieff ("Getting Iraq Wrong," August 5) absolves his own ideology-driven mistake of supporting the Iraq war by asserting that ideology also -- not facts or reasoned analysis, or simple morality -- was behind opposition to the invasion. He caricatures anti-war voices as Bush or America haters, implying that he at least was driven by love of Bush and America.

He is still as wrong as he was then. There was one simple reason for opposing this war. It was a war of choice, not of necessity. One does not start wars. One does not invade other countries. It is the difference between self-defense and murder.

As Bush goes down in history as our most disastrous president, as our country lies in economic and social ruin in counterpoint to Iraq's physical ruin and bloodshed, Ignatieff lamely acknowledges that "a politician's mistakes are first paid by others" (and a pundit gets paid twice, first for beating the drum and then for trying to explain his mistake). But the invasion of Iraq was not a mistake. It was a deliberate aggressive act. Working in the halls of Harvard is not an excuse for pretending that war does not mean death and mayhem.

Alas, Ignatieff still longs for a "daring" leader. Has he learned nothing? What we need are daring citizens, who have not lost the habit of thinking for themselves.

Screw the environment and communities for wind industry

Here's a couple more examples of industrial wind developers convincing lawmakers that the law is not necessary for them (which only proves that it is especially necessary -- why does the wind industry find it so hard to pass environmental muster?!).

In Massachusetts, governor Deval Patrick wants to restrict citizens' right to appeal wetlands decisions. This is in response to the successful challenge by Green Berkshires of the permit for a wind energy facility on the Hoosac Range.

In Sweden, the industry minister wants permitting laws changed to ignore local objections. The government has already relaxed environmental regulations for industrial wind facilities.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights

The Casualties of Green Scare: The Feds' War on the Animal Rights Movement

By Kelly Overton

Late last year President Bush signed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) into law days after six young Americans began serving federal prison sentences on charges they caused economic damage to Huntington Animal Sciences, an animal-testing corporation. Sadly, jailing activists is the American way.

The imprisonment of the group, known as SHAC 7, is nothing more than history repeating itself. Those who first called for an end to slavery were imprisoned. Those who believed women should vote went to jail. Civil rights activists, supporters of gay and lesbian rights, and now animal rights activists have all been jailed. The only thing sadder than the imprisonment of animal rights activists is that they are fighting for a losing cause; for we now live in a society that slaps the wrist of a person who harms the neighbor's dog yet subsidizes the systematic annual killing of billions of other animals for food, clothing, research and sport.

The recent allegations of both illegal wire-tapping and politically motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush administration should set off an alarm regarding the legality of the green scare, the administration's monitoring and imprisonment of environmental and animal welfare activists. And AETA isn't the only new tool corporations have to eliminate pesky activism.

The NYSE's recent decision to trade Life Sciences Research (an animal testing corporation) on the ARCA exchange -- an electronic platform that provides market makers anonymity -- signals that financial markets have also joined the war against social activism. With help from the Bush administration and the NYSE, we may be nearing a day when all of our country's flora, fauna, and public land will exist as little more than raw materials for corporate profit.

The reason nonhuman animals lack protection is simply due to the economic repercussions that would accompany such protection(s). Compassionately caring for animals is expensive and by demanding corporations treat food and research animals humanely activists are asking nothing less than a fundamental reworking of the world economy.

Sadly, any further success activists achieve at home will only expedite sending corporations that mistreat animals offshore where animal welfare regulations and activism can be made non-factors.

We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy, where right and wrong is determined not by fairness, but by profitability -- and where the law no longer dictates corporate behavior, but corporate behavior dictates the law.

AETA, Three Strikes laws and toothless environmental regulations protect profits -- not people (or animals). A society would care if animal protection activists (including the SHAC 7) were right about corporate mistreatment of animals -- but in an economy only the financial cost of activism matters.

The truth is that nonhuman animals don't need rights or legal standing. Such rights have done little to improve the lives of the majority of the world's people. For it is not just nonhuman animals that are losing their habitats and their ability to live with dignity -- the majority of the planet's humans now live truly desperate lives.

Today it is not legal but economic standing that protects a life -- and it is not a lack of rights (human, civil or animal) but a lack of empathy that is the problem, a problem that promises lives of misery and despair for an overwhelming majority of the earth's creatures. Instead of fighting to establish rights for animals, maybe activists should work to instill compassion in humans.

As a society we need to imagine others' horrors as our own. What if the sex worker was our child? The homeless woman our mother? The research dog our family pet? The unjustly imprisoned activist our child?

Only when we decide the pain and humiliation of others is not worth economic gain will the need for rights, human and animal, disappear.

Kelly Overton is Executive Director of People Protecting Animals & Their Habitats -- Sign their petition to make animal rights an issue in the 2008 elections.

Liberals Standing in the Way of Change

By Sam Smith, Progressive Review

Bill O'Reilly may be closer to the truth than usual in describing the DailyKos crowd as a hate group. After all, the mundane middle of the Democratic Party defines itself to an extraordinary degree by what it dislikes far more than what policies it supports. There is a mythology among liberals that if we just get rid of Bush, Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Bill O'Reilly everything will be fine. In fact, when you follow their advice and vote as they suggest, you find yourself stuck with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

If you spend a lot of time talking with liberals, you find their rhetoric full of anger at certain individuals. You won't hear much talk of single payer healthcare or pension return or credit card usury. Putting Scooter Libby in jail is far more important.

Liberals didn't used to be like this. There was a time when - instead of just hating Dewey, Taft and Nixon - they actually accomplished things like these:

- Regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms cheating their customers

- Protection of your bank account

- Social Security

- A minimum wage

- Legal alcohol

- Right of labor to bargain with employers

- Soil Conservation Service and other early environmental programs

- National parks and monuments such as Death Valley, Blue Ridge, Everglades, Boulder Dam, Bull Run, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, Mount Rushmore, Jackson Hole, Grand Teton, Cape Cod, Fire Island, and San Juan Islands just to name a few.

- Tennessee Valley Authority

- Rural electrification

- College educations for innumerable veterans

- Housing loans for innumerable veterans

- FHA housing loans

- The bulk of hospital beds in the country

- Unemployment insurance

- Small Business Administration

- National Endowment for the Arts

- Medicare

- Peace Corps

Part of the problem is that liberals have become more of a demographic than a movement, and a pretty upscale one at that. Thus the groups that Democrats used to worry about have been left on their own or to be victimized by conservatives who offer them salvation in lieu of a decent job.

It isn't that the non-elite is more religious these days, it's just that liberals used to have something to profide in the here and now to compete with the vagaries of the conservative hereafter.

The DailyKos crowd is having their annual meeting and getting fond attention from a media that clearly likes their willingness not to rock the boat and to treat politics as a semiotic rather than substantive enterprise.

For the record, however, it should be noted that many of those celebrated at this event:

- Voted for the Iraq war

- Supported the egregious No Child Left Behind law

- Have backed to the hilt the cruel and unconstitutional war on drugs, forerunner of the cruel and unconstitutional war on terror.

- Supported the Clintons who dismantled social democracy and turned the Democrats into GOP Lite.

- Backed NAFTA, the WTO and other assaults on the domestic economy.

- Have refused to support single payer healthcare.

- Have been remarkably complacent as Bush dismantled the Constitution.

In short, it's the sorriest bunch of liberals in over 70 years, which is why the corporate media is so tolerant and the conservatives can continue merrily on their way, often with the help of Democratic votes

Opposing Bush and his capos is a necessity but it is not a policy. Until liberals are willing to support something more than a minimum wage that doesn't even bring us back to where we were in 1956, they're really just one more thing standing in the way of change.

Which side are you on?

Industrial-scale wind development is not green. No development can be green. It can only be necessary and less harmful than it or an alternative might. As in Maryland, where a wind developer's political connections got his and other facilities exempted from environmental review, many developers assert the presumption that wind's benefits trump any other concern and therefore -- despite carving wide strong roads through wildlife habitat and wetlands, clearing several acres per turbine, blasting and filling sites for each platform, pouring tons of cement into the ground, erecting 400-feet-high machines with blades sweeping up to 2 acres at tip speeds up to 200 mph in bird and bat migratory pathways -- they claim that they do not need to be subject to the same review that any other project would have to face.

They also resent local concerns about noise and visual intrusion, and so look to faraway bureaucrats to bypass the democratic process and people's control of their own communities.

In Britain, the national government is poised to shove several projects through against local opposition, claiming them as vital infrastructure (like invading Iraq was vital to our security). These projects include huge waste incinerators, major road schemes, new and expanded nuclear power stations, airport expansions, tidal barrages, and water reservoirs (such as one that would flood 5 square miles in Oxfordshire).

And 16 wind energy facilities.

This is the company they keep. If industrial wind were green, they would not need to pull favors to strong-arm their way into our neighborhoods. But once anyone looks beyond their spiel, that is the only recourse they have.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Corporatized America

What corporate America wanted was nothing less than the Third Worlding of the US, a collapse of both present reality and future expectations. The closer the life and wages of our citizens could come to those of less developed nations, the happier the huge stateless multinationals would be. Then, as they said in the boardrooms and at the White House, the global playing field would be leveled.

And so the greatest surrender of sovereignty in US history is chalked up as an inevitable result of a better world. This abandonment was not initially controversial, nor even readily apparent, because Americans simply were not told that it had occurred. They did not know that their country -- which defeated in turn the British, the Mexicans, the Confederacy, the Spanish, the Germans (twice), the Japanese, and outlived the Soviet Union, had surrendered without a whimper to a junta of trade technocrats armed with nothing more menacing than cell phones and Palm Pilots.

Once having capitulated on economic matters, Americans would be taught to accept a similar diminution of social programs, civil liberties, democracy, and even some of the most basic governmental services. Free of being the agent of our collective will, government could then concentrate on the real business of a corporatist state, such as reinforcing the military, subsidizing selected industry, and strengthening police control over what would inevitably be an increasingly alienated and fractured electorate. We would be taught to deny ourselves progress and to blame others for our loss. --Sam Smith

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." --Benito Mussolini (maybe)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. --Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1935

Government confirms wind turbine noise regulations inadequate

The families of Kevin and Dwayne Bailey, father and son, of Elmira, Prince Edward Island, have been forced to abandon their homes because of the intolerable noise from new wind turbines about a kilometer (about 1100 yards) away. From a visit by Paul and Ruth Downing:

When we first drove into their yard, our initial impression was that their one kilometer setback distance should be fine. However, their problems began within weeks after the turbines started operating. When they were downwind from the turbines, and the air was moving just enough to turn them (12-15 knots from the northeast), the noise was loud. It was a repetitive modulated drone of sound. Dwayne and Kevin both claimed it sometimes was loud enough to rattle the windows of their homes. The sound was even worse in the field behind their homes. Distances from 1 to 1.5 kilometers were the areas of the most annoying sounds. This spring the winds created constant misery.

Dwayne developed headaches, popping and ringing ears, and could not sleep. He tried new glasses, prescription sleep aids and earplugs, to no avail.

Dwayne’s two year old was sleeping well prior to the wind farm, but began waking up, 5-6 times a night.

Kevin Bailey stated, “When you are outside working and absorbed in what you are doing, you are OK. If inside, resting or reading, it’s a problem. Forget about sleeping at night. The repetitions would go away, you think that it is gone, and it comes back again.” Kevin tried sound dampening by draping the front walls inside his house, and sleeping in the back, but this did not work.

Kevin had problems with his electrical appliances. The fridge, water heater and power meter all vibrated. He purchased a new fridge, and it was just as bad. When the fridge was moved to the new house, the vibrations were gone. ...

Kevin noted, “All we ever had here was peace and quiet, and poverty. Now we only have poverty.” ...

We toured the wind farm site. Initially the winds were 12-14 knots. Downwind at 500 meters there was a loud rhythmic whooshing sound coming from each of the turbines that could be easily identified with their rotation. At least three or four turbines could be heard at once. The sounds were out of sync and confused. At 300 meters each turbine was very noisy from any direction. There is absolutely no way you could live next to a turbine at this distance. We stood at the base. There were many sounds. Electrical high pitched humming, the deep whoosh of the sails or rotors as they sweep past every 5 seconds, a steady swish of the rotor tips, which are cutting through the air at 240 kilometers per hour. When the wind changed, the rotors made a sound like a jet engine taking off, until they were in position again. ...

We went 1 km downwind and the loud rhythmic sounds could be heard from various turbines at different speeds, again, all out of sync with each other. A curiosity for a few minutes, but you could never live with this noise.

But never mind all that, because the PEI government hired a firm to measure the noise level at Dwayne's house and found that the noise from the turbines meets Canadian guidelines. Clearly, those guidelines are meaningless, because the evidence is that the noise is indeed intrusive and harmful.

The family of Nova Scotian Daniel d'Entremont, of Pubnico Point, similarly had to abandon their home. And they were similarly assured by government consultants that there was actually no problem.

But of course, there is a problem. But governments at every level are working to deny it to protect an industry whose dark side is beginning to catch up with it. A government that is no longer interested in protecting its people has more than lost its way. It no longer has a right to govern.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, anarchism

What's wrong with an RPS

Dear Congressman Peter Welch (Vt.) --

Your concern about climate change is not served by your sponsorship of H.R. 969 to establish a national RPS.

Since most of the lobbying in favor of this bill is by the industry group American Wind Energy Association, we can assume that most of the 20% renewables would be from wind. Wind on the grid is problematic, because of its high variability and significant unpredictability. It can not provide capacity, so it can not replace other plants. And its ramping and startup burden on those plants causes them to burn more fuel, which cancels to a great extent their being used less (if they are not simply switched to "spinning standby" -- burning fuel but not generating electricity).

Thus, a utility may provide 20% of its electricity from wind, but without anywhere near a corresponding reduction in fossil fuel burning.

Unlike the Safe Climate Act of 2007, H.R. 969 will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is unlikely even to reduce their growth significantly.

Please reconsider your sponsorship of H.R. 969 and vote AGAINST it.

[Track the bill at govtrack.us.]

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Worldwatch makes erroneous carbon savings claims for wind

A July 25 press release from the Worldwatch Institute claims that "2006 Wind installations offset more than 40 million tons of CO₂":

Calculations are based on U.S. data: average capacity factor for new wind power capacity (34%, from American Wind Energy Association); average capacity factor for coal-fired power plants (72%, from North American Electric Reliability Council - NAERC); average CO₂ emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants (0.95 kg/kWh, from U.S. Energy Information Administration); and average coal-fired power plant capacity (318 megawatts, from NAERC).

There are two big flaws in Worldwatch's calculation.

First, a more objective source than the industry itself for the average capacity factor for wind energy facilities in the U.S. is the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, the capacity factor for wind was 21% in 2005. The AWEA's figures of 34% is promotional spiel and not based on actual data.

Second, there are other sources of electricity on the grid besides coal, including relatively cleaner-burning natural gas and carbon-free nuclear and hydro. At the least, the relative contributions of these sources must be considered. The renewable energy certifier Green-E, has recently proposed to value renewable energy output in terms of actual greenhouse gas emissions from the equivalent output by the rest of the grid.

By Green-E's calculations, the total greenhouse gas (not just CO₂) emissions for different grid regions range from about 1,000 lbs/MWh generated to almost 2,200 lbs/MWh, or 0.47 kg/kWh for new (since 2000) facilities in the Southwest to 0.99 kg/kWh for all non-baseload facilities in the Midwest. The average among all regions in the U.S. for wind's theoretical equivalence according to Green-E is 0.66 kg/kWh.

Then there is the complication of how a highly variable and significantly unpredictable source such as wind actually affects the grid. Obviously, it can't replace any building of new capacity, because the grid still needs to be able to supply power when the wind isn't blowing. Its ability to reduce emissions from those other sources, particularly fossil fuel–fired sources, is also problematic for several reasons.

First, extra ramping and startups cause more fuel to be burned, with more emissions, cutting into whatever savings might have been achieved by using them less. Second, plants that can't ramp quickly may be switched to "spinning standby", in which they don't generate electricity but continue to burn fuel and create steam to be ready to switch back to generation when the wind dies. And third, all sources on the grid are not equally involved in the balancing of wind's variability. Hydro is the first choice to be ramped down, with no carbon savings, and natural gas plants are the second, with much less carbon savings than if coal were reduced.

In addition, the high cost per installed megawatt of wind reflects the energy required in its manufacture, transport, and construction. It may take several years before the theoretical carbon savings from a facility's output allows it to break even.

But now look again at what Worldwatch, with its very flawed formula, claims for wind: "Already, the 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced by the new wind plants installed last year equaled more than 5 percent of the year’s growth in global emissions. If the wind market quadruples over the next nine years -- a highly plausible scenario -- wind power could be reducing global emissions growth by 20 percent in 2015."

Global carbon emissions will continue to grow substantially, but not quite so much as they might without 300,000 MW (requiring 23,000 square miles) of new industrial wind energy facilities. That's pathetic even before considering the flaws in their calculation.

With the likes of Worldwatch watching out for it, the world indeed needs to watch out.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

How forest friendly is Karnataka's Wind Energy?

Ameen writes from Tumkur City, India (click the title of this post):

Among the areas where wind turbines have been erected in Karnataka are the hills and highlands of eastern parts of Chitradurga district and in western parts of Tumkur district. We saw these windmills first hand this month and I am sad to say that these windmills have had a very immediate negative impact in the forests where they have been setup.

1. Each such wind mill has a concrete base of at least 30 feet by 30 feet.
   
2. Each one of these has an individual road.
   
3. Hundreds of trees have been removed to accomodate these giant "fans".
   
4. The transportation of giant equipment requires huge trucks and causes enormous disturbance to the local flora and fauna.

This way almost every hill top of the 273 Sq. km. Mari Kanive state forest and other reserve forests along Tumkur-Chitradurga border has just been devastated. The building of these roads has also opened up the forests for tree looters and the situation according to a local forest watcher is "just out of control in Mari Kanive forests". These wind mills are atop the hills that extend for hundreds of kilometres north, up to Gadag district.

Due to their destructive nature, there already have been protests against the setting up of wind farms in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, namely Bababudan Giris (adjoining Bhadra Tiger Reserve) and Kudremukh National Park.

As a nature lover I have opposed hydro dams as being detrimental to forests. But, by witnessing the damage done by wind farms in Karnataka's forests, I doubt if wind energy in our country is really that green.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

Corporatism

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

--Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
"Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies",
April 29, 1938

Q & A: Wind Energy

The president of National Wind Watch sent us these answers to questions recently posed by a student in Texas.

1.  Most of the prevailing literature on wind energy has been relatively positive, can you comment as to why your organization has chosen to take an oppositional approach?

Answer:  Most of the prevailing literature on wind energy is wishful thinking. If you read it objectively, you begin to notice that all claims of success (other than sales figures) are not backed up by actual data. This is combined with a tendency to dismiss adverse impacts as insignificant or unlikely. Faced with the evidence of adverse impacts, many advocates of wind energy simply deny them. After a while, one realizes that the arguments for large-scale wind energy are for the most part intellectually dishonest and unable to withstand scrutiny.

Since there is little (if any) evidence of good from wind energy, it is our duty to oppose the fruitless and extensive industrialization of rural and wild places by the wind industry.

2.  As of late, Texas has taken the lead in wind energy production. Reports have highlighted the beneficial impact -- both economically and environmentally -- of this relatively recent wind energy "boom". The vast expanse of Texas lands seem ideal for wind farms. So, where is the problem?

Answer:  Where is the proof of these claimed economic and environmental benefits?

Economically, there may be local effects of rents paid to landowners and pay-offs to communities, but that is all paid for by federal and state taxpayers and local ratepayers, who must still pay for keeping up the rest of the grid as much as before along with the added burden of backing up the wind turbines and overbuilding transmission lines to accomodate their occasional surges and shunt their unpredictable supply somewhere it might be needed or until it dissipates as heat.

The environmental benefit is presumably in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which is assumed (though again without proof) to outweigh local negative impacts on wildlife and landscape. But the savings of greenhouse gas emissions that are claimed are theoretical only and ignore many aspects of the grid that complicate such a possible effect -- namely, an intermittent, variable, unpredictable source such as wind has to itself be balanced to maintain a steady voltage on the line. This adds inefficiencies to the use of fuel by other sources (from more frequent starting or ramping) or may require other sources to "stand by" -- burning fuel to keep the steam ready to generate electricity when the wind drops. In addition, hydropower is the most ideal source to balance wind, or wind's variations are simply allowed to modulate the line voltage within acceptable tolerances -- either case obviously does not affect the burning of fossil fuels.

Even in pro-wind theory, wind energy will never have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. In isolated systems, even the AWEA claims only that wind will slightly slow the growth of emissions, not reduce them. Globally, wind would barely keep up with expanding electricity needs to maintain its less than 0.5% contribution, according to the International Energy Agency's modeling to 2030 ("Renewables in Global Energy Supply", January 2007). Considering that electricity is but one source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, even the most hopeful theoretical benefit fades toward nothing. In reality, it's likely even less.

Until a significant global environmental benefit can be proven, we must act on the assumption that the local environmental effects can not be justified.

3.  Recently, the Texas General Land Office received funding and permission to start testing and research for offshore wind energy production and technology. What are your views on offshore wind farming?

Answer:  While siting them far offshore mitigates the impact on human neighbors, impacts on seascape and wildlife remain (besides interfering with birds, the turbines' low-frequency noise is likely to disturb fish and sea mammals), as do the very low possible benefits. Offshore construction is more difficult and expensive, and wear and tear on the turbines is much greater -- promising to make offshore wind even more of a boondoggle than onshore.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Wind turbine syndrome

To the editor, Hays (Kan.) Daily News:

Sam Zwengler apparently only sees (and hears) what he wants to hear ("Still looking for syndrome evidence," letter, July 14).

He cites a recent article in Nature, implying it as a peer-reviewed study of the impacts of living near wind energy facilities. In fact, it is only a news-section piece about the Spanish developer Acciona. Despite Zwengler's assertion, the article says nothing about residents living near the machines.

If he accepts that puff piece as scientific evidence that no ill effects exist, it is no wonder that he can only deny the increasingly frequent reports of serious health effects caused by wind turbine noise.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, human rights, animal rights

Half a percent of conservation, or 60,000 square miles of industrial wind turbines?

"Renewables in Global Energy Supply", International Energy Agency (IEA), January 2007:

Further expansion of wind power will promote significant reductions in greenhouse gases. (pp. 25-26)

The Alternative Policy Scenario presented in this year's World Energy Outlook ... shows how the global energy market could evolve if countries around the world were to adopt a set of policies and measures that they are now considering and might be expected to implement over the projection period. (p. 12)

In 2004, according to the IEA, wind generated 0.47% of the world's electricity, namely, 82 terawatt-hours* (TWh, or 1 million megawatt-hours) out of 17,450 TWh (a figure that is found in another IEA publication, "Key World Energy Statistics", 2006). They project that wind generation will grow about 18-fold by 2030, to 1,440 TWh (p. 12).

But how much will total electricity generation also increase by 2030? On page 13, they state that the share of all renewables will increase from 18% in 2004 to more than 25% of all electricity in 2030, and that the absolute amount will increase from 3,179 TWh in 2004 to 7,775 TWh in 2030. As 3,179 is 18% of 17,450, 7,775 is 25% of 31,100.

Wind's share of electricity generation, therefore, will rise from 0.47% in 2004 to only 4.6% in 2030.

Considering the destruction of landscape and communities, of wildlife and human health, by sprawling wind energy facilities, the responsible choice is obviously to increase conservation by that slight amount and say NO to big wind.

*According to the AWEA, 7,976 MW of wind capacity was added worldwide in 2004, for a total at the end of the year of 47,317 MW. The average for the year from the capacity at the end of 2003 (39,341 MW) to that at the end of 2004, therefore, is 42,329 MW. An output of 82 million MWh (average rate of 9,361 MW) represents 22% of that capacity. At a 22% capacity factor, 1,440 TWh would require an installed capacity of 750,000 MW. Requiring at least 50 acres per installed megawatt, that would be a total of 60,000 square miles. (Not to mention the millions of tons of materials, miles of roads and transmission lines, cement, etc.)

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Bush et al. crimes are institutional, not going away

From "The Grand Inquisitors", by David Cole, New York Review of Books, July 19, 2007:

Schwarz and Huq's Unchecked and Unbalanced provides a more structural critique of executive excess in the post–September 11 era. Presidential aggrandizement, they remind us, was not invented by George W. Bush. In 1975 and 1976, Congress's Church Committee, on which Schwarz served as legal counsel, revealed extensive abuses of executive power during the cold war, including widespread illegal spying on Americans. Schwarz and Huq suggest that the problem is not just that people like Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Gonzales have been in power, but that institutional flaws make it all too easy for such officials to get away with unconstitutional initiatives in times of crisis. The Church Committee diagnosed four such flaws that encouraged the cold war abuses: ambiguous laws and instructions; implicit orders from high officials to violate the law; secrecy; and feeble congressional oversight. Schwarz and Huq demonstrate that despite many post-Watergate reforms, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the same institutional factors are central to understanding the Bush administration's recent torture, rendition, and warrantless wiretapping policies.

In short, where [Joe] Conason [It Can Happen Here] stresses the actions of power-hungry politicians and enabling lawyers, Schwarz and Huq emphasize the importance of structural features in the organization of our federal government. Both diagnoses capture a significant part of the story. In some sense, we have had the worst of all possible combinations: Ashcroft and Gonzales, not to mention Bush and Cheney, came to power just when they could do the most damage. They arrived in office with strong ideological commitments to unchecked power, and they exercised authority at a time when the concept of restraint was most vulnerable. If Conason's focus on particular politicians and officials is right, we might expect the problems to subside with a new administration. But if, as I believe, Schwarz and Huq's structural criticism is equally if not more correct, the problems will continue, albeit perhaps less acutely, well after President Bush leaves office.

human rights, anarchism

Europe drying up for wind energy developers

'Wind energy in the U.S. "is like Europe was years ago," says Xavier Viteri, head of Iberdrola's renewable-energy business. "There's a lot of room for development there ...."' (Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2007, page A1)

That raises the question, Why isn't Europe like Europe was? Clearly, the momentum has slowed. Even "showcase" Denmark hasn't added new wind capacity since 2004. Doubts have arisen about the utility of wind energy on the grid. Adverse impacts (to wildlife, landscape, and human health) can no longer be denied. Instead of repeating Europe's mistakes, the U.S. and Canada ought to consider the limits of wind energy that European countries have already discovered.

There's a good reason Iberdrola and other European wind developers are moving their efforts to North America. Europe doesn't want them any more. Let's learn from that experience instead of repeating the same boondoggle.

wind power, wind energy