As reported in the newspapers yesterday, Conservation Law Foundation and Vermont Public Interest Research Group have spoken up against governor Jim Douglas's energy policy.
They say, on the one hand, that Douglas's plan does not sufficiently protect the rural landscape from development and, on the other hand, that his plan does not sufficiently promote the development of industrial wind energy facilities, which by necessity must be sited in rural or wild areas.
These groups decry Douglas's effort to "simplify" the Act 250 environmental permitting process, but call for permanent clearcutting, blasting, and heavy-duty roads for wind energy facilities on otherwise protected ridgelines.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
October 2, 2008
Wind energy for tax avoidance
"Before declaring itself bankrupt on 15 September, US investment bank Lehman Brothers was one of several major firms that invested in wind projects in exchange for the tax credit, which they used to reduce their federal tax bill."
--1 October 2008, Nature 455, 572-573
wind power, wind energy
September 30, 2008
Philosophical interlude
It's not religion versus science, or faith versus reason, or hope versus despair, or order versus chaos. We walk along a knife's edge between certainty and doubt. At a pathological extreme, it is between mania and depression. Faith is not about god or reason, but the necessary idea that we can -- and ought to -- maintain our balance as we continue forward. Whether it derives from religion or science or art or community doesn't matter; each of those is only as good as the persons who make it up. Each is equally subject to certainty and doubt. The difference between religion and science is in the former tending too often toward certainty and the latter too often toward doubt. Life "without god" isn't any harder than life "with god". In fact, they are not different.
September 14, 2008
Green means consuming less, not more.
'[An holistic perspective, says Dartmouth College sustainability director James Merkel,] would correct a common misconception that heating and generating with biomass -- namely, wood chips -- are carbon-neutral activities.
'"It’s anything but green," Merkel contends, because burning wood chips releases more carbon dioxide per BTU than does coal, and because logging often destroys natural habitats and contributes to today’s species extinction rate, which is occurring 1000 times faster than the natural rate. Biomass believers assert that the carbon dioxide emitted during combustion is offset by the planting of replacement trees. Merkel's response is that replanting creates a monoculture, and that it takes 40 years to reap any benefit, assuming the land is not bulldozed and developed. But if biomass, the darling of heavily forested northern New England, is not the answer, where can colleges turn for clean energy? ...
'Not so fast, Merkel cautions. "Thoreau said, 'Simplify three times,' you know?" he begins. "But that was 1853, so I think we need to say, 'Simplify 30 times' now, before you talk about what kind of energy you use."'
'"It’s anything but green," Merkel contends, because burning wood chips releases more carbon dioxide per BTU than does coal, and because logging often destroys natural habitats and contributes to today’s species extinction rate, which is occurring 1000 times faster than the natural rate. Biomass believers assert that the carbon dioxide emitted during combustion is offset by the planting of replacement trees. Merkel's response is that replanting creates a monoculture, and that it takes 40 years to reap any benefit, assuming the land is not bulldozed and developed. But if biomass, the darling of heavily forested northern New England, is not the answer, where can colleges turn for clean energy? ...
'Not so fast, Merkel cautions. "Thoreau said, 'Simplify three times,' you know?" he begins. "But that was 1853, so I think we need to say, 'Simplify 30 times' now, before you talk about what kind of energy you use."'
--"A second opinion on biomass," by Kirk Kardashian, Seven Days, Sept. 10-17, 2008
environment, environmentalism
September 13, 2008
Thoreau on hunting
Paul Theroux ends an excellent essay (click the title of this post) about Republican cruelty (cynically and perversely called "pro-life") with this quote from Henry David Thoreau:
"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve life than destroy it."
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, ecoanarchism
"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve life than destroy it."
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, ecoanarchism
September 11, 2008
Wind increases dependence on natural gas
Edgar Gärtner of Germany writes:
... Wind turbines generate electricity very irregularly, because the wind itself is inconsistent. Therefore wind turbines always need backup power from fossil fuels to keep the electricity grid in balance. Gas turbines are the best way to do this. They are able to respond quickly and push power production when wind generators stop suddenly. They can be turned on and off almost instantly [though at a cost of extra fuel consumption --Ed.], whereas traditional coal-fired plants need to be maintained in a very inefficient standby mode if they are to respond to large fluctuations in power demand.
A proliferation of windmills, then, can become a windfall for gas sellers. Just look at the cases of Spain and Germany, Europe’s leading producers of wind power.
By the end of 2007 Spain had 14,700 megawatts (MW) of installed wind capacity, according to Enagás, which manages the national gas network, producing 8.7% of the country’s total power supplies. Most of these wind generators are located in sparsely populated areas, while the power consumption is concentrated in big cities with their many air-conditioned buildings. The peak load of the Spanish power grid is thus in the hot summer months -- but this is precisely the time of year when there usually isn’t much wind.
For this reason, more and more gas turbines are being installed near consumers in the suburbs of Spain’s cities. Only last year, Spanish power providers added 6,400 MW of gas-turbine power capacity, taking the total installed capacity of gas turbines to 21,000 MW. Natural gas has become the main source of electricity generation in Spain, and according to Enagás, 99.8% of the gas used in Spain is imported. Most of this comes via pipeline from Algeria, but the import of liquid natural gas (LNG) by ships will increase.
In Germany, more than 20,000 wind turbines with a total capacity of 21,400 MW are now “embellishing” landscapes. Wind power’s share of total electricity generation has risen in line with that of natural gas since 1990. Germany’s gas consumption for power generation more than doubled between 1990 and 2007, and now represents 11.7% of the country’s total power generation. The country imported 83% of its natural gas supplies. ...
In the U.S. ... [t]his may explain why Shell, BP, Chevron and T. Boone Pickens are investing in wind power. It’s a clever strategy to add value to their gas assets by boosting demand.
These gas players can afford to lose money on wind power in the short term to reap huge profits in the long term. In fact, this was the strategy first implemented by Ken Lay of Enron in 1990s. Enron was the power and gas company that started the first large-scale manufacturing of wind power in the U.S. It also brought up the ideas for a cap-and-trade system, to increase the competitive edge of gas over coal.
Wind power is clearly not reducing the dependence on imported fuel, contrary to the frequent claims of its proponents. In fact the experience from Germany and Spain shows that it is increasing the dependence of imported natural gas.
wind power, wind energy
... Wind turbines generate electricity very irregularly, because the wind itself is inconsistent. Therefore wind turbines always need backup power from fossil fuels to keep the electricity grid in balance. Gas turbines are the best way to do this. They are able to respond quickly and push power production when wind generators stop suddenly. They can be turned on and off almost instantly [though at a cost of extra fuel consumption --Ed.], whereas traditional coal-fired plants need to be maintained in a very inefficient standby mode if they are to respond to large fluctuations in power demand.
A proliferation of windmills, then, can become a windfall for gas sellers. Just look at the cases of Spain and Germany, Europe’s leading producers of wind power.
By the end of 2007 Spain had 14,700 megawatts (MW) of installed wind capacity, according to Enagás, which manages the national gas network, producing 8.7% of the country’s total power supplies. Most of these wind generators are located in sparsely populated areas, while the power consumption is concentrated in big cities with their many air-conditioned buildings. The peak load of the Spanish power grid is thus in the hot summer months -- but this is precisely the time of year when there usually isn’t much wind.
For this reason, more and more gas turbines are being installed near consumers in the suburbs of Spain’s cities. Only last year, Spanish power providers added 6,400 MW of gas-turbine power capacity, taking the total installed capacity of gas turbines to 21,000 MW. Natural gas has become the main source of electricity generation in Spain, and according to Enagás, 99.8% of the gas used in Spain is imported. Most of this comes via pipeline from Algeria, but the import of liquid natural gas (LNG) by ships will increase.
In Germany, more than 20,000 wind turbines with a total capacity of 21,400 MW are now “embellishing” landscapes. Wind power’s share of total electricity generation has risen in line with that of natural gas since 1990. Germany’s gas consumption for power generation more than doubled between 1990 and 2007, and now represents 11.7% of the country’s total power generation. The country imported 83% of its natural gas supplies. ...
In the U.S. ... [t]his may explain why Shell, BP, Chevron and T. Boone Pickens are investing in wind power. It’s a clever strategy to add value to their gas assets by boosting demand.
These gas players can afford to lose money on wind power in the short term to reap huge profits in the long term. In fact, this was the strategy first implemented by Ken Lay of Enron in 1990s. Enron was the power and gas company that started the first large-scale manufacturing of wind power in the U.S. It also brought up the ideas for a cap-and-trade system, to increase the competitive edge of gas over coal.
Wind power is clearly not reducing the dependence on imported fuel, contrary to the frequent claims of its proponents. In fact the experience from Germany and Spain shows that it is increasing the dependence of imported natural gas.
wind power, wind energy
September 8, 2008
Top 3 Reasons for Opposing Industrial Wind Turbines
1. They do not do what they claim, i.e., reduce the use of thermal fuels or their emissions.
2. They have significant negative impacts -- on people, wildlife, landscape -- which are currently ignored, belittled, or denied.
3. They are very expensive, even for their claimed benefit, let alone their actual benefit (which is virtually nil). That money should be spent for real solutions, not dramatic but fruitless symbols.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
2. They have significant negative impacts -- on people, wildlife, landscape -- which are currently ignored, belittled, or denied.
3. They are very expensive, even for their claimed benefit, let alone their actual benefit (which is virtually nil). That money should be spent for real solutions, not dramatic but fruitless symbols.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
September 6, 2008
Republican convention modeled after Staylene commercial
Particularly, the calendar scenes in the background.
September 5, 2008
Sarah Palin wrecks economy
Since Sarah Palin introduced herself to the nation and the world Wednesday night (by reading a speech written by Matthew Scully) (Thursday morning in Europe, mid-day in eastern Asia), followed by John McCain's insipid acceptance speech the next night, stock markets around the world have plummeted. That's probably not the convention bounce that Republicans were hoping for.
September 4, 2008
Trisomy Nation
It is said that compared to John S. McCain, Barack Obama has no experience.
But with McCain's selection of Sarah Palin for vice president, he doesn't appear to think experience is that important anymore. And Obama has national and foreign policy experience that Palin completely lacks.
Palin has more executive experience than Obama.
She has more executive experience than McCain.
How dare you?! McCain has been tested like no one else ...
What exactly does "Country First" mean?
It means that anybody that raises the facts of the past 8 years is a narcissistic traitorous big-city elite. Anybody that questions the paranoid misinformed lies of this Republican campaign is a threat to American freedom and prosperity. It means that democracy is for pansies who can't take care of themselves. Our duty is to die at our leaders' command because freedom isn't free. As long as there's guns, gas engines, and jesus in it. This sign means you are excused of and honored for anything you've done or might do. It's for me and mine. It means submission.
[brain explodes]
But with McCain's selection of Sarah Palin for vice president, he doesn't appear to think experience is that important anymore. And Obama has national and foreign policy experience that Palin completely lacks.
Palin has more executive experience than Obama.
She has more executive experience than McCain.
How dare you?! McCain has been tested like no one else ...
What exactly does "Country First" mean?
It means that anybody that raises the facts of the past 8 years is a narcissistic traitorous big-city elite. Anybody that questions the paranoid misinformed lies of this Republican campaign is a threat to American freedom and prosperity. It means that democracy is for pansies who can't take care of themselves. Our duty is to die at our leaders' command because freedom isn't free. As long as there's guns, gas engines, and jesus in it. This sign means you are excused of and honored for anything you've done or might do. It's for me and mine. It means submission.
[brain explodes]
September 3, 2008
"What about animal rights?"
As reported in January for the AP by Nedra Pickler, that question was posed to Barack Obama at a meeting in Henderson, Nevada.
He closed his reply with:
"I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other. And it's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals."
human rights, animal rights
He closed his reply with:
"I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other. And it's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals."
human rights, animal rights
August 27, 2008
Carefully listening to critics of wind energy
The Oklahoma-based industrial wind energy development company Energy For Generations has "Wind Energy Critics" as one of the topics on their links page.
But if you click on that topic, nothing happens, and scrolling down the page, no links to critics appear.
But if you look at the page source, there they are: links to organizations like National Wind Watch, Protect the Flint Hills, and Audubon of Kansas.
Along with a note:
Perhaps the critics' concerns are all in fact legitimate, and "compromise" would in fact have to be made, compromising the economic viability of these sprawling power plants in rural and wild places, and opening the door to doubting their own legitimacy.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
But if you click on that topic, nothing happens, and scrolling down the page, no links to critics appear.
But if you look at the page source, there they are: links to organizations like National Wind Watch, Protect the Flint Hills, and Audubon of Kansas.
Along with a note:
Energy development of any type inevitably has a range of impacts. Minimizing wind’s visual and environmental impact requires careful site selection and site specific development planning. Critics of wind development are numerous and while some may choose to ignore or contest them we feel careful listening is the best approach. Sorting out legitimate concerns from simple objection to any change and where appropriate reaching a common sense compromise is an important part of wind energy development.So why, one wonders, is this entire section commented out so that it doesn't appear on the page?
Perhaps the critics' concerns are all in fact legitimate, and "compromise" would in fact have to be made, compromising the economic viability of these sprawling power plants in rural and wild places, and opening the door to doubting their own legitimacy.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
August 25, 2008
As the turbine turns
Rollins Wind Project [Lincoln, Maine]: Project Summary and Potential Environmental Impacts, prepared by Stantec for Aug. 20, 2008, public information meeting:
You'd think they'd be hard to miss, yet nobody has ever actually pointed them out.
Which means the claim that giant wind turbines reduce fossil fuel use is fraudulent. It's like watching my car idle in the driveway and claiming I've been somewhere ("the time that my car sat idling on the driveway is equivalent to the approximate time it takes to drive to Montpelier and back"). It's nonsense.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms
environment, environmentalism
Wind projects create zero air or water pollution. Each local, clean megawatt produced through wind energy means less produced through costly fossil fuels. To put this into perspective, the clean energy produced last year at the nearby Mars Hill Wind project in Mars Hill, Maine, is the equivalent of burning approximately 260,000 barrels of oil or 70,000 tons of coal per year, yet has none of the associated toxicity, health, or cost issues.Has anyone seen those unused 260,000 barrels of oil or 70,000 tons of coal?
You'd think they'd be hard to miss, yet nobody has ever actually pointed them out.
Which means the claim that giant wind turbines reduce fossil fuel use is fraudulent. It's like watching my car idle in the driveway and claiming I've been somewhere ("the time that my car sat idling on the driveway is equivalent to the approximate time it takes to drive to Montpelier and back"). It's nonsense.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms
environment, environmentalism
August 17, 2008
Wind industry donors to Gaye Symington
Financial disclosure statements for the gubernatorial candidates have been posted on line by the Vermont Secretary of State. Since Gaye Symington neglected to mention it at her announcement last week at wind energy supplier NRG Systems of her plan to remove regulatory limits on ridgeline development and limit citizen participation in the permitting process for industrial wind projects (as if it would stop there), the following donors to her campaign through July 31 should be noted:
Jan Blittersdorf (NRG Systems)
David Blittersdorf (NRG Systems)
Matthew Rubin (EMDC [East Mountain Development Corp.])
Thomas Gray (American Wind Energy Association)
Linda Cleek Gray
Stephen Kimbell (Kimbell Sherman Ellis LLP -- UPC/First Wind lobbyist)
Kimbell Sherman Ellis LLP (UPC/First Wind lobbyist)
Jan Blittersdorf (NRG Systems)
David Blittersdorf (NRG Systems)
Matthew Rubin (EMDC [East Mountain Development Corp.])
Thomas Gray (American Wind Energy Association)
Linda Cleek Gray
Stephen Kimbell (Kimbell Sherman Ellis LLP -- UPC/First Wind lobbyist)
Kimbell Sherman Ellis LLP (UPC/First Wind lobbyist)
August 15, 2008
Companies face crackdown on electricity greenwash
Someone appears to have wised up to the fact that companies "buying wind power" are in fact getting exactly the same electricity as those who don't ...
From David Adam in The Guardian (U.K.), August 13 (again, thanks to National Wind Watch):
Dozens of companies face having to report embarrassing sharp increases in their carbon pollution under government plans to crack down on greenwash.
The move could undermine the environmental claims of firms such as BT, which have invested heavily in so-called green electricity tariffs to cut their carbon footprints.
Under the proposed changes, companies using such green tariffs, which are also popular with eco-friendly domestic customers, will no longer be able to claim massive carbon savings by using power coming from renewable sources.
BT, which could be forced to double its reported carbon emissions and to scrap an ambitious target to cut carbon 80% by 2020 under the plan, is lobbying heavily against the move, and says other companies back its position. Johnson and Johnson, Vodafone and several banks including HSBC also buy green electricity tariffs.
Hilary Benn, environment secretary, said the change was to make the system more transparent and to ensure that such tariffs brought genuine environmental benefits. "It is increasingly difficult to demonstrate that buying a renewable electricity tariff is offering additional carbon emissions reductions," he said. "Businesses signed up to green tariffs based on the evidence available at the time, but their choices have been producing only limited additional renewable generation capacity."
Individual consumers opting for green tariffs may also "not have been generating the environmental benefits they anticipated", he added.
Green tariffs have become a popular way for firms and individuals to cut their carbon footprints. They exploit the 5% of UK grid electricity generated from clean hydroelectric and wind sources, which suppliers claim they can effectively ringfence and sell separately.
In 2005, the government said companies buying such renewable electricity tariffs could report them as producing zero emissions. It hoped that wide take-up of green tariffs would drive investment in further renewable sources.
But environmental campaigners and energy experts have long questioned the benefits of some green tariffs. Harry Morrison of the Carbon Trust, which advises companies on climate issues, says the market in them has been "a bit cowboy" and needs clearing up. He compared the use of green tariffs to the sale of carbon offsets, with concern over transparency, double counting and additionality – ie whether they cut carbon emissions over and above what would have happened anyway.
He said: "Many companies bought these tariffs in good faith but there are no guarantees that they actually save carbon. They didn't pay much of a premium for the carbon savings they could claim in their marketing statements, so they have basically been given a free ride."
Morrison said many companies were concerned about how the government's changes would affect their green credentials and corporate image. It could also cost them money. From 2010, thousands of UK companies will be forced to calculate, publish and reduce their emissions as part of a domestic carbon trading scheme. "They're worried about being ranked badly. Nobody wants to come bottom of a table of their peers," he said.
Richard Tarboton, energy and carbon programme director at BT, said: "This is a serious problem for a number of companies who have followed the government's guidelines and gone out and purchased green electricity, and are now being told that green source is no longer valid."
BT, one of the country's largest users of electricity, has used the zero-carbon rating given to green tariffs to claim it has reduced its emissions 58% over the last decade. Tarboton said the new rules would see its reported emissions double, and that the increase would pose "communication" problems for the firm.
He agreed that the existing scheme was flawed but said the suggested solution put too much responsibility on energy suppliers and let customers off the hook. BT says the answer is better labelling, with different tariffs given a carbon rating similar to electrical appliances such as dishwashers. It held a meeting of 30 companies this week to discuss the idea.
Defra, the environment department, which announced the changes to the company reporting guidelines in June, now says it will launch a consultation on the proposal. A spokesman denied this was down to corporate pressure and said the department had always planned to consult.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
From David Adam in The Guardian (U.K.), August 13 (again, thanks to National Wind Watch):
Dozens of companies face having to report embarrassing sharp increases in their carbon pollution under government plans to crack down on greenwash.
The move could undermine the environmental claims of firms such as BT, which have invested heavily in so-called green electricity tariffs to cut their carbon footprints.
Under the proposed changes, companies using such green tariffs, which are also popular with eco-friendly domestic customers, will no longer be able to claim massive carbon savings by using power coming from renewable sources.
BT, which could be forced to double its reported carbon emissions and to scrap an ambitious target to cut carbon 80% by 2020 under the plan, is lobbying heavily against the move, and says other companies back its position. Johnson and Johnson, Vodafone and several banks including HSBC also buy green electricity tariffs.
Hilary Benn, environment secretary, said the change was to make the system more transparent and to ensure that such tariffs brought genuine environmental benefits. "It is increasingly difficult to demonstrate that buying a renewable electricity tariff is offering additional carbon emissions reductions," he said. "Businesses signed up to green tariffs based on the evidence available at the time, but their choices have been producing only limited additional renewable generation capacity."
Individual consumers opting for green tariffs may also "not have been generating the environmental benefits they anticipated", he added.
Green tariffs have become a popular way for firms and individuals to cut their carbon footprints. They exploit the 5% of UK grid electricity generated from clean hydroelectric and wind sources, which suppliers claim they can effectively ringfence and sell separately.
In 2005, the government said companies buying such renewable electricity tariffs could report them as producing zero emissions. It hoped that wide take-up of green tariffs would drive investment in further renewable sources.
But environmental campaigners and energy experts have long questioned the benefits of some green tariffs. Harry Morrison of the Carbon Trust, which advises companies on climate issues, says the market in them has been "a bit cowboy" and needs clearing up. He compared the use of green tariffs to the sale of carbon offsets, with concern over transparency, double counting and additionality – ie whether they cut carbon emissions over and above what would have happened anyway.
He said: "Many companies bought these tariffs in good faith but there are no guarantees that they actually save carbon. They didn't pay much of a premium for the carbon savings they could claim in their marketing statements, so they have basically been given a free ride."
Morrison said many companies were concerned about how the government's changes would affect their green credentials and corporate image. It could also cost them money. From 2010, thousands of UK companies will be forced to calculate, publish and reduce their emissions as part of a domestic carbon trading scheme. "They're worried about being ranked badly. Nobody wants to come bottom of a table of their peers," he said.
Richard Tarboton, energy and carbon programme director at BT, said: "This is a serious problem for a number of companies who have followed the government's guidelines and gone out and purchased green electricity, and are now being told that green source is no longer valid."
BT, one of the country's largest users of electricity, has used the zero-carbon rating given to green tariffs to claim it has reduced its emissions 58% over the last decade. Tarboton said the new rules would see its reported emissions double, and that the increase would pose "communication" problems for the firm.
He agreed that the existing scheme was flawed but said the suggested solution put too much responsibility on energy suppliers and let customers off the hook. BT says the answer is better labelling, with different tariffs given a carbon rating similar to electrical appliances such as dishwashers. It held a meeting of 30 companies this week to discuss the idea.
Defra, the environment department, which announced the changes to the company reporting guidelines in June, now says it will launch a consultation on the proposal. A spokesman denied this was down to corporate pressure and said the department had always planned to consult.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
Indigenous farmers in Oaxaca duped out of land by wind companies
Karen Trejo writes in Latinamerica Press, August 14 (also published at National Wind Watch):
A wind power project on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southeastern Mexico has stripped massive amounts of land and natural resources from hundreds of indigenous campesinos in Oaxaca. Those affected are mostly from non-Spanish speaking indigenous communities.
Members were manipulated into giving up their lands in up to 60-year tenancy contracts through misinformation.
Faustina López Martínez, originally from the village of Juchitán, complained that the companies promised agriculture aid without ever following through. On the lands where she used to plant corn to sell, the Spanish company Union FENOSA plans to install windmills to generate wind energy for the next 30 years, and possibly extending to double the term. In exchange, López will receive 150 pesos (less than US$15) each year for the rent of each of her 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of land.
Javier Balderas, director of the Tepeyac Human Rights Center located in Tehuantepec, signaled that the project to build wind parks on the Isthmus, which has been imposed on the native peoples by displacing them from their lands, is part of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) strategy — an ambitious integration and development project launched in 2001 whose objective is to link nine Mexican states to Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Panama.
Indigenous rights violated
According to Balderas, the Mexican government violates International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples by denying them the right to consultation to determine whether they will be jeopardized before pursuing any program to exploit their lands’ resources. The state further impedes their right to participate in utilizing, administrating and conserving their natural resources.
Based on these arguments, a team of lawyers from human rights organizations in Oaxaca and Mexico City have filed a lawsuit to annul at least 185 tenancy contracts for the wind park construction by transnational companies, principally from Spain, including Iberdrola, Endesa, Preneal, Gamesa and Union FENOSA.
In response, the companies say that they operate in Mexico backed by an agreement signed by the Federal Electricity Commission, which is directed at encouraging development through large capital investment in the region to generate jobs.
However, Eduardo Zenteno, president of the Mexican Wind Energy Association, presents figures that seem to contradict this statement.
“In the next three years, the companies will invest $3 billion in Oaxaca in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Wind Tunnel in the following way: 78 percent will be invested in purchasing wind turbines, 14 percent in the electrical system, 6 percent in civil work and 2 percent in other spending.” He added that the electrical energy produced will be sold to companies with chain stores like Wal-Mart and Soriana, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola and Cemex.
Transnationals were attracted to the isthmus since it is a geographically strategic area for wind park construction. According to the Atlas for Wind Resources in Oaxaca, an investigation sponsored in 2004 by the US Energy Department and the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, the best areas to develop wind resources in Oaxaca are on the Isthmus and the greatest resources are in the hills, cordillera and coast.
The La Venta Wind Park II was constructed in 2003 on one of the hills, named La Venta, in the Juchitán area and is currently the biggest wind park in the region with over 98 windmills installed over 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres). La Venta is a rural indigenous community that lacks basic services where the state government periodically sends doctors and lawyers to attend the community.
Balderas explained that this is clear evidence that the transnational business model is not encouraging development or bringing about jobs for the Isthmus communities. Furthermore, during the three-month long construction of La Venta II, only 200 local workers were hired, which dwindled down to three hires at present: two janitors and one secretary.
Communal lands are not to be rented
Unlike what happened in La Venta, where there are no agrarian authorities to watch over communal lands, in the Santiago Niltepec community, east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the fear of losing lands has prevented campesinos from leasing their lands to Union FENOSA.
José Santiago Ramírez, secretary of the Santiago Niltepec Community Goods Commission, says the Spanish transnational offered 30-year contracts and 1,000 to 1,200 pesos — $98 to $117 — per hectare (2.5 acres) to the campesinos annually to rent their lands. But no company can have a contract directly with the landowner since 95 percent of the population’s lands is communal.
For Marco Antonio Velásquez, the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade technical secretary, the Isthmus case is not the only one. In Acapulco, Jalisco and Nayarit there has also been social resistance to damn construction which would result in thousands of displaced persons.
“It’s not just a few companies who maliciously want to strip the communities [of their lands]. It’s a policy that has been deliberately applied with the help of the municipal, state, and federal governments that has usurped power with the clear intention of protecting transnational corporations to move forward with their businesses,” he said.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, human rights
A wind power project on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southeastern Mexico has stripped massive amounts of land and natural resources from hundreds of indigenous campesinos in Oaxaca. Those affected are mostly from non-Spanish speaking indigenous communities.
Members were manipulated into giving up their lands in up to 60-year tenancy contracts through misinformation.
Faustina López Martínez, originally from the village of Juchitán, complained that the companies promised agriculture aid without ever following through. On the lands where she used to plant corn to sell, the Spanish company Union FENOSA plans to install windmills to generate wind energy for the next 30 years, and possibly extending to double the term. In exchange, López will receive 150 pesos (less than US$15) each year for the rent of each of her 3 hectares (7.4 acres) of land.
Javier Balderas, director of the Tepeyac Human Rights Center located in Tehuantepec, signaled that the project to build wind parks on the Isthmus, which has been imposed on the native peoples by displacing them from their lands, is part of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) strategy — an ambitious integration and development project launched in 2001 whose objective is to link nine Mexican states to Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Panama.
Indigenous rights violated
According to Balderas, the Mexican government violates International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples by denying them the right to consultation to determine whether they will be jeopardized before pursuing any program to exploit their lands’ resources. The state further impedes their right to participate in utilizing, administrating and conserving their natural resources.
Based on these arguments, a team of lawyers from human rights organizations in Oaxaca and Mexico City have filed a lawsuit to annul at least 185 tenancy contracts for the wind park construction by transnational companies, principally from Spain, including Iberdrola, Endesa, Preneal, Gamesa and Union FENOSA.
In response, the companies say that they operate in Mexico backed by an agreement signed by the Federal Electricity Commission, which is directed at encouraging development through large capital investment in the region to generate jobs.
However, Eduardo Zenteno, president of the Mexican Wind Energy Association, presents figures that seem to contradict this statement.
“In the next three years, the companies will invest $3 billion in Oaxaca in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Wind Tunnel in the following way: 78 percent will be invested in purchasing wind turbines, 14 percent in the electrical system, 6 percent in civil work and 2 percent in other spending.” He added that the electrical energy produced will be sold to companies with chain stores like Wal-Mart and Soriana, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola and Cemex.
Transnationals were attracted to the isthmus since it is a geographically strategic area for wind park construction. According to the Atlas for Wind Resources in Oaxaca, an investigation sponsored in 2004 by the US Energy Department and the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, the best areas to develop wind resources in Oaxaca are on the Isthmus and the greatest resources are in the hills, cordillera and coast.
The La Venta Wind Park II was constructed in 2003 on one of the hills, named La Venta, in the Juchitán area and is currently the biggest wind park in the region with over 98 windmills installed over 800 hectares (nearly 2,000 acres). La Venta is a rural indigenous community that lacks basic services where the state government periodically sends doctors and lawyers to attend the community.
Balderas explained that this is clear evidence that the transnational business model is not encouraging development or bringing about jobs for the Isthmus communities. Furthermore, during the three-month long construction of La Venta II, only 200 local workers were hired, which dwindled down to three hires at present: two janitors and one secretary.
Communal lands are not to be rented
Unlike what happened in La Venta, where there are no agrarian authorities to watch over communal lands, in the Santiago Niltepec community, east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the fear of losing lands has prevented campesinos from leasing their lands to Union FENOSA.
José Santiago Ramírez, secretary of the Santiago Niltepec Community Goods Commission, says the Spanish transnational offered 30-year contracts and 1,000 to 1,200 pesos — $98 to $117 — per hectare (2.5 acres) to the campesinos annually to rent their lands. But no company can have a contract directly with the landowner since 95 percent of the population’s lands is communal.
For Marco Antonio Velásquez, the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade technical secretary, the Isthmus case is not the only one. In Acapulco, Jalisco and Nayarit there has also been social resistance to damn construction which would result in thousands of displaced persons.
“It’s not just a few companies who maliciously want to strip the communities [of their lands]. It’s a policy that has been deliberately applied with the help of the municipal, state, and federal governments that has usurped power with the clear intention of protecting transnational corporations to move forward with their businesses,” he said.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, human rights
August 6, 2008
Symington Says
Vermont Democratic Party press release, Aug. 6, 2008:
First, the figures, being careful to avoid using the word "energy" when we mean only electricity, which represents only about a fifth of Vermont's total energy consumption. (So Symington is talking about 20% of 20%, or 4%, a savings we could easily achieve through conservation and efficiency at a fraction of the cost and without having to industrialize our rural and wild landscapes.)
In 2006, Vermont used almost 5,800 gigawatt-hours of electricity. Growing at a very modest 1% annually (2% is the usual national rate used for planning), consumption will be 6,500 GWh in 2018 (ten years from now, Symington's target). Twenty percent of that is 1,300 GWh, representing an average rate (or load) of 150 megawatts (1,300,000 megawatt-hours divided by 8,760, which is the number of hours in a year). The average output of the existing turbines at Searsburg is 21% of their capacity (because the wind doesn't always blow within the range of ideal speeds for the turbines or exactly perpendicular to the ridgelines on which they are erected), so, being generous to the claims of newer technology, let's plan for an average 25% output. That would require 600 MW of wind energy capacity, not the 500 Symington claims.
At today's prices, that would require an investment of $1.2 billion, not counting new and upgraded power lines and substations. Imagine how many homes could be insulated with that money, or rural bus routes established, or trains.
At about six turbines per mile, 600 MW (of 1.5- to 2-MW turbines) would use 50-65 miles of ridgelines. Each turbine needs about 5 acres of clearance around it (for a total of up to 2,000 acres of lost habitat and an impact extending much farther), and the site requires not only massive cut-and-fill but often blasting to create a level area for the huge concrete base and construction/maintenance equipment. The turbines would be accessed by heavy-duty all-season roads, with their own extensive impacts on fragile ecosystems.
"Our governor stubbornly resists and claims erroneously that Vermonters don't want it."
In fact, true to form, Governor Douglas deftly manages to have it both ways. He pays lip service to opposition by the people actually affected by the industrial construction of giant wind turbines, while his Department of Public Service casually supports development applications. It was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that had to halt the UPC/First Wind (who are currently under investigation by the New York Attorney General) project in Sheffield to properly determine the impact on wetlands (until they were forced by Senator Bernie Sanders, pressured by Douglas's Agency of Natural Resources and the developer, UPC, to back off; in keeping with the politicization of public agencies, Vernon Lang, the official from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who took seriously his mandate to protect wetlands and wildlife in the northeast, has been removed from working on wind projects).
Symington is accurate that Vermonters as a whole want wind energy. The vast majority of Vermonters won't ever have to live with the consequences of its visual and auditory intrusion. But in every community that has been threatened by industrial wind energy development, opposition has been clear and well grounded on evidence of big wind's low benefits and substantial adverse impacts.
That is why Symington says "we must standardize and fast-track the process by which we study, test, plan, obtain public input and issue permits." It is to avoid due oversight to protect our ridgelines and wildlife. It is to avoid effective citizen input from the people who would have to live in the shadow of the towering machines, their turning blades day and night, their flashing lights. Vermont, famous for its billboard ban and strict protection of its ridgelines, would throw it all away for a symbolic "feel-good" and ultimately meaningless gesture to "alternative" energy.
Because wind energy is intermittent, highly variable, and generally unpredictable, large amounts of it on the grid would make us more dependent on other sources, not less. And it would force those other sources to be used less efficiently, i.e., with more fuel consumption and more emissions, thus largely defeating the entire purpose of erecting giant wind turbines.
It is not an example of environmental concern to call for discarding a hard-fought rigor in siting industrial structures and infrastructure on prominent and sensitive ridgelines -- especially in the name of supporting an industry that, since the days of Enron, has banked on exaggerated claims and denial of negative impacts. It is politically convenient idiocy.
The fact that it has been difficult to site large-scale wind turbines in Vermont means the regulations are working and the people affected have had a decent chance to weigh in during the decision making.
Symington would fundamentally rewrite Vermont's environmental laws on the dubious and self-serving advice of one industry. That would effectively end any principle with which our natural heritage might be protected from any industry or development. That is why giant energy companies and predators like T. Boone Pickens are so interested in it.
Industrial wind, besides being fraudulent and destructive on its own merits, opens the door to further depredations on the rural character and wilderness of Vermont. And for nothing.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
Symington proposes dramatic shift in energy policySymington for Governor web site:
Speaker of the House Gaye Symington proposed a dramatic shift in Vermont's energy policy today by calling for an aggressive ramp-up of wind power. ...
"Deriving twenty percent of our power from wind generation in ten years is an ambitious, but achievable goal that will jump-start our economy and provide a critically needed new source of power," said Symington. ...
Symington unveiled the second half of her energy plan today on the factory floor of NRG Systems, Inc. in Hinesburg, a major supplier of equipment to the wind power industry that does very little business in Vermont because of the state's lack of wind projects.
"It is simply inexcusable that Vermont derives only 0.2 percent of its electricity from wind. While our neighboring states, oil states and nearly all developed countries are embracing the wisdom of wind power, our Governor stubbornly resists and claims erroneously that Vermonters don't want it. It is time for Jim Douglas to stop tilting at windmills and let me build them instead," Symington said.
20% from Wind in Ten YearsComments:
Wind power is the fastest growing energy source in the world, but Vermont gets only 0.2% of its power from wind sources. 500 megawatts of wind power would provide approximately 20% of Vermont’s energy needs. ...
To achieve this vision, we must standardize and fast-track the process by which we study, test, plan, obtain public input and issue permits. ...
First, the figures, being careful to avoid using the word "energy" when we mean only electricity, which represents only about a fifth of Vermont's total energy consumption. (So Symington is talking about 20% of 20%, or 4%, a savings we could easily achieve through conservation and efficiency at a fraction of the cost and without having to industrialize our rural and wild landscapes.)
In 2006, Vermont used almost 5,800 gigawatt-hours of electricity. Growing at a very modest 1% annually (2% is the usual national rate used for planning), consumption will be 6,500 GWh in 2018 (ten years from now, Symington's target). Twenty percent of that is 1,300 GWh, representing an average rate (or load) of 150 megawatts (1,300,000 megawatt-hours divided by 8,760, which is the number of hours in a year). The average output of the existing turbines at Searsburg is 21% of their capacity (because the wind doesn't always blow within the range of ideal speeds for the turbines or exactly perpendicular to the ridgelines on which they are erected), so, being generous to the claims of newer technology, let's plan for an average 25% output. That would require 600 MW of wind energy capacity, not the 500 Symington claims.
At today's prices, that would require an investment of $1.2 billion, not counting new and upgraded power lines and substations. Imagine how many homes could be insulated with that money, or rural bus routes established, or trains.
At about six turbines per mile, 600 MW (of 1.5- to 2-MW turbines) would use 50-65 miles of ridgelines. Each turbine needs about 5 acres of clearance around it (for a total of up to 2,000 acres of lost habitat and an impact extending much farther), and the site requires not only massive cut-and-fill but often blasting to create a level area for the huge concrete base and construction/maintenance equipment. The turbines would be accessed by heavy-duty all-season roads, with their own extensive impacts on fragile ecosystems.
"Our governor stubbornly resists and claims erroneously that Vermonters don't want it."
In fact, true to form, Governor Douglas deftly manages to have it both ways. He pays lip service to opposition by the people actually affected by the industrial construction of giant wind turbines, while his Department of Public Service casually supports development applications. It was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that had to halt the UPC/First Wind (who are currently under investigation by the New York Attorney General) project in Sheffield to properly determine the impact on wetlands (until they were forced by Senator Bernie Sanders, pressured by Douglas's Agency of Natural Resources and the developer, UPC, to back off; in keeping with the politicization of public agencies, Vernon Lang, the official from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who took seriously his mandate to protect wetlands and wildlife in the northeast, has been removed from working on wind projects).
Symington is accurate that Vermonters as a whole want wind energy. The vast majority of Vermonters won't ever have to live with the consequences of its visual and auditory intrusion. But in every community that has been threatened by industrial wind energy development, opposition has been clear and well grounded on evidence of big wind's low benefits and substantial adverse impacts.
That is why Symington says "we must standardize and fast-track the process by which we study, test, plan, obtain public input and issue permits." It is to avoid due oversight to protect our ridgelines and wildlife. It is to avoid effective citizen input from the people who would have to live in the shadow of the towering machines, their turning blades day and night, their flashing lights. Vermont, famous for its billboard ban and strict protection of its ridgelines, would throw it all away for a symbolic "feel-good" and ultimately meaningless gesture to "alternative" energy.
Because wind energy is intermittent, highly variable, and generally unpredictable, large amounts of it on the grid would make us more dependent on other sources, not less. And it would force those other sources to be used less efficiently, i.e., with more fuel consumption and more emissions, thus largely defeating the entire purpose of erecting giant wind turbines.
It is not an example of environmental concern to call for discarding a hard-fought rigor in siting industrial structures and infrastructure on prominent and sensitive ridgelines -- especially in the name of supporting an industry that, since the days of Enron, has banked on exaggerated claims and denial of negative impacts. It is politically convenient idiocy.
The fact that it has been difficult to site large-scale wind turbines in Vermont means the regulations are working and the people affected have had a decent chance to weigh in during the decision making.
Symington would fundamentally rewrite Vermont's environmental laws on the dubious and self-serving advice of one industry. That would effectively end any principle with which our natural heritage might be protected from any industry or development. That is why giant energy companies and predators like T. Boone Pickens are so interested in it.
Industrial wind, besides being fraudulent and destructive on its own merits, opens the door to further depredations on the rural character and wilderness of Vermont. And for nothing.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
"A boon for Pickens, not for America"
Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security writes:
At a time of economic decline and record-high gas prices, there is something refreshing in an oilman turning into one of the nation's leading advocates of renewable energy. This could explain why T. Boone Pickens' multibillion-dollar efforts to reduce America's oil dependence and develop clean energy have garnered so muchpublic attention.
Pickens is right to suggest that America's oil dependence is a source of economic ruin and that Congress must act to stop the biggest transfer of wealth in human history. But Pickens stands to benefit from his own campaign -- and his proposal could do more damage than good to U.S. energy security.
Pickens' proposal involves a California ballot initiative to provide $5 billion in subsidies for developing clean-energy fuels on top of a $58-million public relations campaign to reduce America's oil dependence through wind power. Not coincidentally, the Texas oilman is heavily invested in natural gas and wind power.
The Pickens plan promises to dramatically reduce oil use by shifting the transportation sector from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to natural-gas-powered vehicles. This would allegedly reduce oil imports by more than 30% and would supposedly save the U.S. economy $300 billion that otherwise would end up in the coffers of oil-rich foreign countries. According to the plan, wind energy would substitute for natural gas, now generating 20% of the nation's electricity, freeing natural gas to power a third of the vehicles in the U.S. ...
Pickens' assertion that increased use of wind power would displace natural gas is based on wishful thinking. Our energy system is not a Lego game -- one piece can't replace another at whim. Even if 78 [actually, more like 124 --Ed.] other billionaires were willing to follow Pickens' footsteps and build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm -- that's the number needed to displace the current electricity production from natural gas -- there's no way to guarantee that natural gas would be the only energy source that would be displaced by all those turbines. Why not coal, or [hydro]?
Furthermore, implementation of the Pickens plan might actually tie more natural gas to the power sector. Wind is an intermittent source of power -- the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- and until and unless our electricity grid has sufficient power storage capacity, utilities counting on wind need to have backup power plants that can be powered up to fill in the gaps when the wind does not blow. This back-up power is today generally provided with natural gas.
Pickens also claims that a shift from oil to natural gas would strengthen U.S. national security. But contrary to Pickens' proclamations, in relation to its need, the U.S. is not rich in natural gas. Just as with oil, the U.S. consumes 23% of the world's natural gas but it only has 3% of the world's reserves. Its reserve-to-production ratio is less than 10 years. ...
A shift to natural gas could even weaken U.S. national security: More than 60% of the world's reserves are concentrated in five countries -- Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries that are already engaged in discussions on the establishment of an OPEC-like natural-gas cartel. Shifting from dependence on one authoritarian regime's energy source to another's is like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. ...
At a time of economic decline and record-high gas prices, there is something refreshing in an oilman turning into one of the nation's leading advocates of renewable energy. This could explain why T. Boone Pickens' multibillion-dollar efforts to reduce America's oil dependence and develop clean energy have garnered so muchpublic attention.
Pickens is right to suggest that America's oil dependence is a source of economic ruin and that Congress must act to stop the biggest transfer of wealth in human history. But Pickens stands to benefit from his own campaign -- and his proposal could do more damage than good to U.S. energy security.
Pickens' proposal involves a California ballot initiative to provide $5 billion in subsidies for developing clean-energy fuels on top of a $58-million public relations campaign to reduce America's oil dependence through wind power. Not coincidentally, the Texas oilman is heavily invested in natural gas and wind power.
The Pickens plan promises to dramatically reduce oil use by shifting the transportation sector from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to natural-gas-powered vehicles. This would allegedly reduce oil imports by more than 30% and would supposedly save the U.S. economy $300 billion that otherwise would end up in the coffers of oil-rich foreign countries. According to the plan, wind energy would substitute for natural gas, now generating 20% of the nation's electricity, freeing natural gas to power a third of the vehicles in the U.S. ...
Pickens' assertion that increased use of wind power would displace natural gas is based on wishful thinking. Our energy system is not a Lego game -- one piece can't replace another at whim. Even if 78 [actually, more like 124 --Ed.] other billionaires were willing to follow Pickens' footsteps and build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm -- that's the number needed to displace the current electricity production from natural gas -- there's no way to guarantee that natural gas would be the only energy source that would be displaced by all those turbines. Why not coal, or [hydro]?
Furthermore, implementation of the Pickens plan might actually tie more natural gas to the power sector. Wind is an intermittent source of power -- the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- and until and unless our electricity grid has sufficient power storage capacity, utilities counting on wind need to have backup power plants that can be powered up to fill in the gaps when the wind does not blow. This back-up power is today generally provided with natural gas.
Pickens also claims that a shift from oil to natural gas would strengthen U.S. national security. But contrary to Pickens' proclamations, in relation to its need, the U.S. is not rich in natural gas. Just as with oil, the U.S. consumes 23% of the world's natural gas but it only has 3% of the world's reserves. Its reserve-to-production ratio is less than 10 years. ...
A shift to natural gas could even weaken U.S. national security: More than 60% of the world's reserves are concentrated in five countries -- Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries that are already engaged in discussions on the establishment of an OPEC-like natural-gas cartel. Shifting from dependence on one authoritarian regime's energy source to another's is like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. ...
August 5, 2008
Puttin' the Boone (Pickens) in Boondoggle
A three-part analysis of the "Pickensplan" by Steven Milloy:
The Wind Cries 'Bailout!'
July 10, 2008
Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens launched a media blitz this week to announce his plan for us "to escape the grip of foreign oil." Now he's got himself stuck between a crock and a wind farm.
Announced via TV commercials, media interviews, a Wall Street Journal op-ed (July 9) and a web site, Pickens wants to substitute wind power for the natural gas currently used to produce about 22 percent of our electricity and then to substitute natural gas for the conventional gasoline currently used to power vehicles.
Pickens claims this plan can be accomplished within 10 years, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce the cost of transportation, create thousands of new jobs, reduce our carbon footprint, and "build a bridge to the future, giving is time to develop new technologies."
It sounds great and gets even better, according to Pickens.
Don't sweat the cost, he says, "It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."
What's not to like?
First, it's worth noting Pickens' claim made in the op-ed that his plan requires no new government regulation. Two sentences later, however, he calls on Congress to "mandate" wind power and its subsidies.
Next, Pickens relies on a 2008 Department of Energy study claiming the U.S. could generate 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.
Setting aside the fact that the report was produced in consultation with the wind industry, the 20-by-2030 goal is quite fanciful. Even if wind technology significantly improves, electrical transmission systems (how electricity gets from the power source to you) are greatly expanded, and environmental obstacles (like environmentalists who protest wind turbines as eyesores and bird-killing machines) can be overcome, the viability of wind power depends on where, when and how strong the wind blows -- none of which are predictable.
Wind farm siting depends on the long-term forecasting of wind patterns -- but climate is always changing. When it comes to wind power, it is not simply, "build it and the wind will come."
Even the momentary loss of wind can be a problem. As Reuters reported on Feb. 27, "Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency." The electric grid operator was forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers within 10 minutes.
Wind isn't a standalone power source. It needs a Plan B for when the wind "just don't blow."
This contrasts with coal- or gas-fired electrical power which can be produced on demand and as needed. A great benefit of modern technology is that it liberates us from Mother Nature's harsh whims. Pickens wants to re-enslave us with 12th century technology. ...
... So what's up with him?
Not only does Pickens' firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build the world's largest wind farm in west Texas, capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.
The federal government currently subsidizes wind farm operators with a tax credit worth 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour -- potentially making for a tidy annual taxpayer gift to Pickens based on his anticipated capacity.
But all is not well in Wind Subsidy-land.
Since Congress didn't renew the wind subsidy as part of the 2007 energy bill, it will expire at the end of this year unless reauthorized.
Subsidies are perhaps more important to the wind industry that wind itself. Without them, wind can't compete against fossil fuel-generated power. As pointed out by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (July 9), "In 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress temporarily killed the credits, the number of new turbines dropped dramatically."
It's little wonder that Pickens is waging a $58 million PR campaign to promote his plan. If it works, his short-term gain will be saving the tax credit and his wind farm investment. In the long-term, he stands to line his already overflowing pockets with hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
What will the rest of us get from this T. Boone-doggle? That's anybody's guess, but it probably won't be cheaper energy, energy independence or a cleaner environment.
Is T. Boone Pickens 'Swiftboating' America?
July 24, 2008
Liberals have done a U-turn on conservative billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens.
Formerly reviled for funding the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign against Sen. John Kerry, he's now adored by the Left -- unfortunately, for trying to gaslight the rest of us on energy policy.
Already having addressed the proposal's flaws -- and Pickens' plan to profit at taxpayer expense from it -- let's consider how Pickens' marketing shades the truth.
On his Web site and in TV commercials, Pickens tries to frighten Americans about being "addicted to foreign oil."
"In 1970, we imported 24 percent of our oil. Today, it's nearly 70 percent and growing," he intones.
Aside from the fact that the Department of Energy (DOE) puts the import figure at a more moderate 58 percent, Pickens gives the impression that imported oil is scary because it all comes from the unstable Mideast.
His TV commercials feature images of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and he likens the annual $700 billion cost of foreign oil to "four times the annual cost of the Iraq war."
But hold the phone. Only 16 percent of our imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf -- barely up from 13.6 percent in 1973, according to the DOE. Imports from OPEC countries are actually down -- from 47.8 percent in 1973 to 44.5 percent in 2007.
Contrary to Pickens' assertion that oil imports are growing, the DOE expects oil imports to decrease by 10 percent by 2030.
Pickens tries to shame Americans because, "America uses a lot of oil ... That's 25 percent of the world's oil demand, used by just 4 percent of the world population."
Some might think these figures make us sound greedy and wasteful.
But what Pickens omitted to mention is that the size of the U.S. economy in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion and the size of the global economy was $54.3 trillion.
This means that the U.S. economy represents about 25.4 percent of the global economy. ...
Finally, Pickens laments the $700 billion (less at current oil prices) "wealth transfer" from America to foreigners every year because of our "addiction."
But is he also concerned about our "addiction" to other imports?
In 2007, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit -- the difference between imports of goods from and exports of goods to foreign countries -- exceeded $815 billion.
Contrary to Pickens' demagoguery, "wealth transfer" is a term generally used in the context of estate planning, where money is simply "gifted" to heirs.
Our purchases of foreign oil, in contrast, are more reasonably known as "trade" ...
Then there's Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, who not only flies in Pickens' private jet but writes paeans about him on the liberal Huffington Post blog.
"T. Boone Pickens is out to save America," Pope wrote on July 3. ...
Machinations
July 31, 2008
Simply put, Pickens' pitch is "embrace wind power to help break our 'addiction' to foreign oil." There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens' plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site -- water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there's more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here's where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming -- and what if landowners won't sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens' route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain?
Are you sitting down?
At Pickens' behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens' wife and the manager of Pickens' nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel's three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens' employees.
A member of a local water conservation board told Bloomberg News that "[Pickens has] obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It's supposed to be for the public good, not a private company."
What's this got to do with Pickens' wind-power plan? Just as he needs pipelines to sell his water, he also needs transmission lines to sell his wind-generated power. Rights of way for transmission lines are also acquired through eminent domain -- and, once again, the Texas legislature has come to Pickens' aid.
Earlier this year, Texas changed its law to allow renewable energy projects (like Pickens' wind farm) to obtain rights-of-way by piggybacking on a water district's eminent domain power. So Pickens can now use his water district's authority to also condemn land for his future wind farm's transmission lines.
Who will pay for the rights-of-way and the transmission lines and pipelines? Thanks to another gift from Texas politicians, Pickens' water district can sell tax-free, taxpayer-guaranteed municipal bonds to finance the $2.2 billion cost of the water pipeline. And then earlier this month, the Texas legislature voted to spend $4.93 billion for wind farm transmission lines. While Pickens has denied that this money is earmarked for him, he nevertheless is building the largest wind farm in the world.
Despite this legislative largesse, a fly in the ointment remains.
Although Pickens hopes to sell as much as $165 million worth of water annually to Dallas alone, no city in Texas has signed up yet -- partly because they don't yet need the water and partly because of resentment against water profiteering.
Enter the Sierra Club.
While Green groups support wind power, "the privatization of water is an entirely different thing," says the Sierra Club. Moreover, the activist group has long opposed further exploitation of the very groundwater Pickens wants to use -- the Ogallala Aquifer.
"The source of drinking water and irrigation for Plains residents from Nebraska to Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer is one of the world's largest -- as well as one of the most rapidly dissipating ... If current irrigation practices continue, agribusiness will deplete the Ogallala Aquifer in the next century," says the Sierra Club.
In March 2002, the Sierra Club opposed the construction of a slaughterhouse in Pampa, Texas, because it would require a mere 275 million gallons per year from the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet Pickens wants to sell 65 billion gallons of water per year -- to Dallas alone. In a 2004 lamentation about local government facilitation of Pickens' plan for the Ogallala, the Sierra Club slammed Pickens as a "junk bond dealer" who wanted to make "Blue Gold" from the Ogallala.
But while the Sierra Club can't seem to do anything about Pickens' influence with state legislators, they do have enough influence to make his water politically unpotable. This opposition may soon abate, however, now that Pickens has buddied up with Sierra Club president Carl Pope.
As noted last week, Pope now flies in Pickens' private jet and publicly lauds him. The two are newly-minted "friends," since Pope needs the famous Republican oilman to lend propaganda value to the Sierra Club's anti-oil agenda and Pickens needs Pope to ease up on the Ogallala water opposition.
This alliance isn't sitting well with everyone on the Left.
A TreeHugger.com writer recently observed, "... I am left asking myself why the green media have neglected [the water] aspect of Pickens' wind-farm plans. Have we been so distracted by the prospect of Texas' renewable energy portfolio growing by 4000 megawatts that we are willing to overlook some potentially dodgy aspects to the project?" ...
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
The Wind Cries 'Bailout!'
July 10, 2008
Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens launched a media blitz this week to announce his plan for us "to escape the grip of foreign oil." Now he's got himself stuck between a crock and a wind farm.
Announced via TV commercials, media interviews, a Wall Street Journal op-ed (July 9) and a web site, Pickens wants to substitute wind power for the natural gas currently used to produce about 22 percent of our electricity and then to substitute natural gas for the conventional gasoline currently used to power vehicles.
Pickens claims this plan can be accomplished within 10 years, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce the cost of transportation, create thousands of new jobs, reduce our carbon footprint, and "build a bridge to the future, giving is time to develop new technologies."
It sounds great and gets even better, according to Pickens.
Don't sweat the cost, he says, "It will be accomplished solely through private investment with no new consumer or corporate taxes or government regulation."
What's not to like?
First, it's worth noting Pickens' claim made in the op-ed that his plan requires no new government regulation. Two sentences later, however, he calls on Congress to "mandate" wind power and its subsidies.
Next, Pickens relies on a 2008 Department of Energy study claiming the U.S. could generate 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.
Setting aside the fact that the report was produced in consultation with the wind industry, the 20-by-2030 goal is quite fanciful. Even if wind technology significantly improves, electrical transmission systems (how electricity gets from the power source to you) are greatly expanded, and environmental obstacles (like environmentalists who protest wind turbines as eyesores and bird-killing machines) can be overcome, the viability of wind power depends on where, when and how strong the wind blows -- none of which are predictable.
Wind farm siting depends on the long-term forecasting of wind patterns -- but climate is always changing. When it comes to wind power, it is not simply, "build it and the wind will come."
Even the momentary loss of wind can be a problem. As Reuters reported on Feb. 27, "Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency." The electric grid operator was forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers within 10 minutes.
Wind isn't a standalone power source. It needs a Plan B for when the wind "just don't blow."
This contrasts with coal- or gas-fired electrical power which can be produced on demand and as needed. A great benefit of modern technology is that it liberates us from Mother Nature's harsh whims. Pickens wants to re-enslave us with 12th century technology. ...
... So what's up with him?
Not only does Pickens' firm, BP capital, have significant investments in natural gas, but last June he announced plans to build the world's largest wind farm in west Texas, capable of producing 4,000 megawatts of electricity.
The federal government currently subsidizes wind farm operators with a tax credit worth 1.9 cents per kilowatt hour -- potentially making for a tidy annual taxpayer gift to Pickens based on his anticipated capacity.
But all is not well in Wind Subsidy-land.
Since Congress didn't renew the wind subsidy as part of the 2007 energy bill, it will expire at the end of this year unless reauthorized.
Subsidies are perhaps more important to the wind industry that wind itself. Without them, wind can't compete against fossil fuel-generated power. As pointed out by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (July 9), "In 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress temporarily killed the credits, the number of new turbines dropped dramatically."
It's little wonder that Pickens is waging a $58 million PR campaign to promote his plan. If it works, his short-term gain will be saving the tax credit and his wind farm investment. In the long-term, he stands to line his already overflowing pockets with hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
What will the rest of us get from this T. Boone-doggle? That's anybody's guess, but it probably won't be cheaper energy, energy independence or a cleaner environment.
Is T. Boone Pickens 'Swiftboating' America?
July 24, 2008
Liberals have done a U-turn on conservative billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens.
Formerly reviled for funding the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign against Sen. John Kerry, he's now adored by the Left -- unfortunately, for trying to gaslight the rest of us on energy policy.
Already having addressed the proposal's flaws -- and Pickens' plan to profit at taxpayer expense from it -- let's consider how Pickens' marketing shades the truth.
On his Web site and in TV commercials, Pickens tries to frighten Americans about being "addicted to foreign oil."
"In 1970, we imported 24 percent of our oil. Today, it's nearly 70 percent and growing," he intones.
Aside from the fact that the Department of Energy (DOE) puts the import figure at a more moderate 58 percent, Pickens gives the impression that imported oil is scary because it all comes from the unstable Mideast.
His TV commercials feature images of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and he likens the annual $700 billion cost of foreign oil to "four times the annual cost of the Iraq war."
But hold the phone. Only 16 percent of our imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf -- barely up from 13.6 percent in 1973, according to the DOE. Imports from OPEC countries are actually down -- from 47.8 percent in 1973 to 44.5 percent in 2007.
Contrary to Pickens' assertion that oil imports are growing, the DOE expects oil imports to decrease by 10 percent by 2030.
Pickens tries to shame Americans because, "America uses a lot of oil ... That's 25 percent of the world's oil demand, used by just 4 percent of the world population."
Some might think these figures make us sound greedy and wasteful.
But what Pickens omitted to mention is that the size of the U.S. economy in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion and the size of the global economy was $54.3 trillion.
This means that the U.S. economy represents about 25.4 percent of the global economy. ...
Finally, Pickens laments the $700 billion (less at current oil prices) "wealth transfer" from America to foreigners every year because of our "addiction."
But is he also concerned about our "addiction" to other imports?
In 2007, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit -- the difference between imports of goods from and exports of goods to foreign countries -- exceeded $815 billion.
Contrary to Pickens' demagoguery, "wealth transfer" is a term generally used in the context of estate planning, where money is simply "gifted" to heirs.
Our purchases of foreign oil, in contrast, are more reasonably known as "trade" ...
Then there's Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, who not only flies in Pickens' private jet but writes paeans about him on the liberal Huffington Post blog.
"T. Boone Pickens is out to save America," Pope wrote on July 3. ...
Machinations
July 31, 2008
Simply put, Pickens' pitch is "embrace wind power to help break our 'addiction' to foreign oil." There is, however, another intriguing component to Pickens' plan that goes unmentioned in his TV commercials, media interviews and web site -- water rights, which he owns more of than any other American.
Pickens hopes that his recent $100 million investment in 200,000 acres worth of groundwater rights in Roberts County, Texas, located over the Ogallala Aquifer, will earn him $1 billion. But there's more to earning such a profit than simply acquiring the water. Rights-of-way must be purchased to install pipelines, and opposition from anti-development environmental groups must be overcome. Here's where it gets interesting, according to information compiled by the Water Research Group, a small grassroots group focusing on local water issues in Texas.
Purchasing rights-of-way is often expensive and time-consuming -- and what if landowners won't sell? While private entities may be frustrated, governments can exercise eminent domain to compel sales. This is Pickens' route of choice. But wait, you say, Pickens is not a government entity. How can he use eminent domain?
Are you sitting down?
At Pickens' behest, the Texas legislature changed state law to allow the two residents of an 8-acre parcel of land in Roberts County to vote to create a municipal water district, a government agency with eminent domain powers. Who were the voters? They were Pickens' wife and the manager of Pickens' nearby ranch. And who sits on the board of directors of this water district? They are the parcel's three other non-resident landowners, all Pickens' employees.
A member of a local water conservation board told Bloomberg News that "[Pickens has] obtained the right of eminent domain like he was a big city. It's supposed to be for the public good, not a private company."
What's this got to do with Pickens' wind-power plan? Just as he needs pipelines to sell his water, he also needs transmission lines to sell his wind-generated power. Rights of way for transmission lines are also acquired through eminent domain -- and, once again, the Texas legislature has come to Pickens' aid.
Earlier this year, Texas changed its law to allow renewable energy projects (like Pickens' wind farm) to obtain rights-of-way by piggybacking on a water district's eminent domain power. So Pickens can now use his water district's authority to also condemn land for his future wind farm's transmission lines.
Who will pay for the rights-of-way and the transmission lines and pipelines? Thanks to another gift from Texas politicians, Pickens' water district can sell tax-free, taxpayer-guaranteed municipal bonds to finance the $2.2 billion cost of the water pipeline. And then earlier this month, the Texas legislature voted to spend $4.93 billion for wind farm transmission lines. While Pickens has denied that this money is earmarked for him, he nevertheless is building the largest wind farm in the world.
Despite this legislative largesse, a fly in the ointment remains.
Although Pickens hopes to sell as much as $165 million worth of water annually to Dallas alone, no city in Texas has signed up yet -- partly because they don't yet need the water and partly because of resentment against water profiteering.
Enter the Sierra Club.
While Green groups support wind power, "the privatization of water is an entirely different thing," says the Sierra Club. Moreover, the activist group has long opposed further exploitation of the very groundwater Pickens wants to use -- the Ogallala Aquifer.
"The source of drinking water and irrigation for Plains residents from Nebraska to Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer is one of the world's largest -- as well as one of the most rapidly dissipating ... If current irrigation practices continue, agribusiness will deplete the Ogallala Aquifer in the next century," says the Sierra Club.
In March 2002, the Sierra Club opposed the construction of a slaughterhouse in Pampa, Texas, because it would require a mere 275 million gallons per year from the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet Pickens wants to sell 65 billion gallons of water per year -- to Dallas alone. In a 2004 lamentation about local government facilitation of Pickens' plan for the Ogallala, the Sierra Club slammed Pickens as a "junk bond dealer" who wanted to make "Blue Gold" from the Ogallala.
But while the Sierra Club can't seem to do anything about Pickens' influence with state legislators, they do have enough influence to make his water politically unpotable. This opposition may soon abate, however, now that Pickens has buddied up with Sierra Club president Carl Pope.
As noted last week, Pope now flies in Pickens' private jet and publicly lauds him. The two are newly-minted "friends," since Pope needs the famous Republican oilman to lend propaganda value to the Sierra Club's anti-oil agenda and Pickens needs Pope to ease up on the Ogallala water opposition.
This alliance isn't sitting well with everyone on the Left.
A TreeHugger.com writer recently observed, "... I am left asking myself why the green media have neglected [the water] aspect of Pickens' wind-farm plans. Have we been so distracted by the prospect of Texas' renewable energy portfolio growing by 4000 megawatts that we are willing to overlook some potentially dodgy aspects to the project?" ...
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
August 4, 2008
Dark (K)night
James Howard Kunstler writes (click title of this post for his site):
The most striking thing about the new Batman movie, now smashing the all-time box office records, is its emphasis on sado-masochism as the animating element in American culture these days. It must appeal to the many angry people in our land who want to hurt others, even while they themselves feel deserving of the grossest punishments. In other words, the picture reflects the extreme depravity of the current American sensibility. Seeing it all laid out there must be very validating to the emotionally confused audience, and hence pleasurable, in all its painfulness. ...
At the center of all this is the character called "The Joker." Judging by the reams of reviews and reportage about this movie elsewhere in the media, the death of actor Heath Ledger, who played the role, adds another layer of juicy sadomasochistic deliciousness to the proceedings -- we get to reflect that the monster on screen may have gotten away, but the anxiety-ridden young actor who played him was carted off to the bone orchard before the film even officially wrapped (and therefore deserves extra special consideration for America's greatest honor, the Oscar award, while the audience deserves its own award for recognizing the lovely ironies embroidered in this cultural phenomenon.)
The Joker is not so much a person as a force of nature, a "black swan" in clown white. He has no fingerprints, no ID, no labels in his clothing. All he has is the memory of an evil father who performed a symbolic sadomasochistic oral rape on him, and so he is now programmed to go about similarly mutilating folks, blowing things up, and wrecking everyone's hopes and dreams because he has nothing better to do. He represents himself simply as an agent of "chaos." Taken at face value, he would seem to symbolize the deadly forces of entropy that now threatens to unravel real American life in the real world -- a combination of our foolish over-investments in complexity and the frightening capriciousness of both nature and history, which do not reveal their motivations to us.
By the way, forget about God here or anything that even remotely smacks of an oppositional notion to evil. All that's back on the cutting room floor somewhere (if it even got that far). And I say this as a non-religious person. But the absence of any possible idea of redemption for the human spirit is impressive. In the world of "the Batman," humanity at its very best is capable only of being confused about itself. This is perhaps an interesting new form of dramaturgy -- instead of good-versus-evil you only get befuddlement-versus-evil. Goodness has lost its way in the dark night of the American psyche, as might be understandable considering the nation of louts, liars, grifters, bullies, meth freaks, harpies, and tattooed creeps we have become. The best we can bring to this predicament is the low-grade pop therapy that passes for thinking nowadays in educated circles. Any consideration of the heroic is off the menu here. We can't ask that much of ourselves. It's too difficult to imagine. Meanwhile, The People -- that is, the citizens of Gotham City -- literally banish even the possibility of heroism from town at the end of the movie -- they take an axe to it! -- perhaps indicating that they deserve whatever befalls them or, shall I say, "us."
A few other striking elements of this spectacle deserve attention. One is the grandiosity that saturates the story elements, and the remarkable impotence of it all. The Batman possesses every high-tech weapon and survival implement ever dreamed up, yet they avail him nothing ...
Finally there is the derivation of all this sadomasochistic nihilism out of a comic book. How appropriate, since we have become a cartoon of a society living on a cartoon of a North American landscape, that the deepest source of our mythos comes from cartoons. We're so far gone that real human emotion is beyond us. We're too far gone -- and even without shame -- to care how this odious movie portrays us to the rest of the world. It is already making a fortune out there.
The most striking thing about the new Batman movie, now smashing the all-time box office records, is its emphasis on sado-masochism as the animating element in American culture these days. It must appeal to the many angry people in our land who want to hurt others, even while they themselves feel deserving of the grossest punishments. In other words, the picture reflects the extreme depravity of the current American sensibility. Seeing it all laid out there must be very validating to the emotionally confused audience, and hence pleasurable, in all its painfulness. ...
At the center of all this is the character called "The Joker." Judging by the reams of reviews and reportage about this movie elsewhere in the media, the death of actor Heath Ledger, who played the role, adds another layer of juicy sadomasochistic deliciousness to the proceedings -- we get to reflect that the monster on screen may have gotten away, but the anxiety-ridden young actor who played him was carted off to the bone orchard before the film even officially wrapped (and therefore deserves extra special consideration for America's greatest honor, the Oscar award, while the audience deserves its own award for recognizing the lovely ironies embroidered in this cultural phenomenon.)
The Joker is not so much a person as a force of nature, a "black swan" in clown white. He has no fingerprints, no ID, no labels in his clothing. All he has is the memory of an evil father who performed a symbolic sadomasochistic oral rape on him, and so he is now programmed to go about similarly mutilating folks, blowing things up, and wrecking everyone's hopes and dreams because he has nothing better to do. He represents himself simply as an agent of "chaos." Taken at face value, he would seem to symbolize the deadly forces of entropy that now threatens to unravel real American life in the real world -- a combination of our foolish over-investments in complexity and the frightening capriciousness of both nature and history, which do not reveal their motivations to us.
By the way, forget about God here or anything that even remotely smacks of an oppositional notion to evil. All that's back on the cutting room floor somewhere (if it even got that far). And I say this as a non-religious person. But the absence of any possible idea of redemption for the human spirit is impressive. In the world of "the Batman," humanity at its very best is capable only of being confused about itself. This is perhaps an interesting new form of dramaturgy -- instead of good-versus-evil you only get befuddlement-versus-evil. Goodness has lost its way in the dark night of the American psyche, as might be understandable considering the nation of louts, liars, grifters, bullies, meth freaks, harpies, and tattooed creeps we have become. The best we can bring to this predicament is the low-grade pop therapy that passes for thinking nowadays in educated circles. Any consideration of the heroic is off the menu here. We can't ask that much of ourselves. It's too difficult to imagine. Meanwhile, The People -- that is, the citizens of Gotham City -- literally banish even the possibility of heroism from town at the end of the movie -- they take an axe to it! -- perhaps indicating that they deserve whatever befalls them or, shall I say, "us."
A few other striking elements of this spectacle deserve attention. One is the grandiosity that saturates the story elements, and the remarkable impotence of it all. The Batman possesses every high-tech weapon and survival implement ever dreamed up, yet they avail him nothing ...
Finally there is the derivation of all this sadomasochistic nihilism out of a comic book. How appropriate, since we have become a cartoon of a society living on a cartoon of a North American landscape, that the deepest source of our mythos comes from cartoons. We're so far gone that real human emotion is beyond us. We're too far gone -- and even without shame -- to care how this odious movie portrays us to the rest of the world. It is already making a fortune out there.
July 30, 2008
Safe setbacks: How far should wind turbines be from homes?
Let's start with what one manufacturer considers to be safe for its workers. The safety regulations for the Vestas V90, with a 300-ft rotor span and a total height of 410 feet, tell operators and technicians to stay 1,300 feet from an operating turbine -- over 3 times its total height -- unless absolutely necessary.
That already is a much greater distance than many regulations currently require as a minimum distance between wind turbines and homes, and it is concerned only with safety, not with noise, shadow flicker, or visual intrusion.
In February 2008, a 10-year-old Vestas turbine with a total height of less than 200 feet broke apart in a storm. Large pieces of the blades flew as far as 500 meters (1,640 feet) -- more than 8 times its total height.
The Fuhrländer turbine planned for Barrington, R.I., is 328 feet tall with a rotor diameter of 77 meters, or just over 250 feet (sweeping more than an acre of vertical air space). According to one news report, the manufacturer recommends a setback of 1,500 feet -- over 4.5 times the total height. In Wisconsin, where towns can regulate utility zoning for health and safety concerns, ordinances generally specify a setback of one-half mile (2,640 ft) to residences and workplaces.
But that may just be enough to protect the turbines from each other, not to adequately protect the peace and health of neighbors. When part of an array, turbines should be at least 10 rotor diameters apart to avoid turbulence from each other. In the case of the proposed 77-meter rotor span in Barrington, that would be 770 meters, or 2,525 feet. For the Gamesa G87, that's 2,850 feet; for the Vestas V90, 2,950 feet -- well over half a mile.
Since the human ear (not to mention the sensory systems of other animals or the internal organs of bats, which, it is now emerging, are crushed by the air pressure) is more sensitive than a giant industrial machine, doubling that would be a reasonable precaution (at least for the human neighbors -- it still doesn't help wildlife).
Jane and Julian Davis, whose home is 930 m (3,050 ft) from the Deeping St. Nicholas wind energy facility in England, were forced by the noise to rent another home in which to sleep. In July 2008 they were granted a 14% council tax reduction in recognition of their loss. It appears in this case that the combination of several turbines creates a manifold greater disturbance.
Sound experts Rick James and George Kamperman recommend a minimum 1 km (3,280 ft) distance in rural areas. James himself suggests that 2 km is better between turbines and homes, and Kamperman proposes 2-3 km as a minimum. German consultant Retexo-RISP also has suggested that "buildings, particularly housing, should not be nearer than 2 km to the windfarm"; and that was written when turbines were half the size of today's models.
Both the French Academy of Medicine and the U.K. Noise Association recommend a minimum of one mile (or 1.5 km, just under a mile) between giant wind turbines and homes. Trempealeau County in Wisconsin implemented such a setback. National Wind Watch likewise advocates a minimum one-mile setback.
Dr. Michael Nissenbaum and colleagues surveyed residents near wind turbines in Maine and found significantly worse sleep and mental health among those living 1.4 km or closer than those living farther from the machines.
Dr. Nina Pierpont, the preeminent expert on "wind turbine syndrome", recommends 1.25 miles (2 km). That is the minimum the Davises insist on as safe as well. In France, Marjolaine Villey-Migraine concluded that the minimum should be 5 km (3 miles). In June 2010, Ontario's environment ministry proposed requirements that offshore wind turbines be at least 5 km from the shoreline.
To protect human health, these distances are simply crude ways to minimize noise disturbance, especially at night, when atmospheric conditions often make wind turbine noise worse and carry it farther even as there is a greater expectation of (and need for) quiet. The World Health Organization says that the noise level inside a bedroom at night should be no greater than 30 dB(A) or 50 dB(C) (the latter measure includes more of the low-frequency spectrum of noise, which is felt as much as, or even more than, heard). A court case in Great Britain resulted in the “Den Brook” amplitude modulation conditions, which define and limit pulsating noise, which is especially intrusive, as any change, outside the dwelling, of >3 dB in the LAeq,125ms (125-millisecond averaged sound level) in any 2-second period at least 5 times in any minute with LAeq,1min (1-minute averaged sound level) ≥28 dB, and such excess occurring within at least 6 minutes in any hour.
Updates:
Since 2008, Queensland, Australia, has limited night-time noise indoors to 30 dB(A) (1-hour average), with limits of 35 dB(A) no more than 10% of the time and 40 db(A) 1%. Respective daytime limits are 5 dB(A) above the night-time limits. They also specify that existing continuous 90% sound levels should not be increased and that variable noise averages should not increase existing sound levels more than 5 dB(A) in the same time period.
Scottish Planning Policy “recommends” a distance of 2 km between wind energy developments and the edge of cities, towns, and villages to reduce visual impact. Since August 2011, Victoria, Australia, has allowed wind turbines within 2 km of a home only with the homeowner's written consent. In April 2013, the Québec, Canada, government approved a 2-km setback from homes in the municipalities of Haut-Saint-Laurent, Montérégie. Citizens groups in Germany suggest a minimum distance of 10 times the total turbine height to residential areas (see this story). Since July 2013, the state of Saxony has required 1 km between wind turbines and residential areas.
In February 2014, Newport, North Carolina, established a 5,000-ft (1.5-km) setback from property lines, a 35-dB limit for noise at the property lines, and a total height limit of 275 feet. The latter two conditions were also established by Carteret County, North Carolina, in February 2014, as well as a 1-mile setback from property lines.
Also see: “Wind turbine setback and noise regulations since 2010”
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, human rights, animal rights
July 29, 2008
Wind Turbines: Offensive industrialization of human space
By Brian L. Horejsi, behavioral scientist and citizen advocate for democratic process, Calgary, Alberta; Barrie K. Gilbert, wildlife Ecologist and conservation activist, Wolfe Island, Ontario; and George Wuerthner, ecologist and writer, Richmond, Vermont; 28 July 2008:
People are barking up the wrong tree by promoting, or succumbing to, wind turbine construction regardless of where it is proposed and how many there might be. Many North Americans are infected with tunnel vision and erroneously appear to believe that turbine generated energy is somehow linked to reversing the growth in and impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
There exists NO evidence anywhere that [wind] turbine energy is substituting for or displacing fossil fuel dependence, nor is there any evidence that it is in any material way slowing the rate of GHG emission growth. [Wind] turbine energy is a non-factor in the never ending growth agenda of the fossil fuel industry, and it is not a factor in the agenda of governments promoting growth in and dependence on oil and gas consumption. There can be no better example than North America of the failure of turbine energy to slow growth in anything.
People have been hoodwinked into promoting wind turbine energy as some sort of Nirvana all while human population growth and per capita energy consumption continue to spiral upward. Turbine energy generation is fueling growth in human population and energy consumption and growth in a false “economy”. It is NOT doing the opposite.
Matching the folly of the energy replacement misunderstanding is denial by governments and promoters of the ecological impacts and health effects of turbines; the ugly reality is that they are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement, and recreation.
The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are now being recognized; they are far from meaningless, but they have been trivialized by turbine promoters and politicians that have systematically tilted the deck sharply in the developers favor. Environmental costs have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth. These costs, and those who stand by them, are treated with contempt; how dare they influence the decision to grant some landowner a chance to make a buck by carving your backyard and your space into fragments with giant chopping machines?
Wind turbines are an assault on human well being and act to degrade the human “gestalt”. Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of serious misjudgment by those who fraudulently use green wash to promote their commercial aspirations.
Buried deep within the human genome is an innate recognition and suspicion of monsters – large objects – looming on the horizon. Wind turbines are today's versions of a threatening monster, jammed down the throats of neighbors and localities. 30% of the human cortex occupies itself with processing visual information, far more than any other sense, and nothing delivers a more intrusive and intense visual picture than the tower and blades of wind turbines. Turbines erode freedom of the human mind hour after hour, night after day, virtually forever, like a cell phone ringing incessantly and yet no one is able to turn it off. To many people this intrusion into their physical and physiological space is an insidious form of torment. The mental effect is analogous to the physical effects of a heavy smoker sitting next to you essentially for life!
We do not subscribe to the managerial/market approach to democracy or conservation with its deeply entrenched bias against human values such as an unadulterated horizon. This largely corporate view denigrates the value of freedom of the human spirit – the very pedestal upon which human dignity, character and strength are built.
In an honest and fair regulatory and political environment, local citizens and communities would bury turbine projects long before they get to the serious implementation stage. Once again, however, citizens are being forced to try to employ the very tools that degrade our quality of life and humiliate us as mere pawns of some corporate created market economy. ...
The commercial private sector is forcing itself into your life, and that constitutes a taking of your rights, benefits and well being. We propose that each person impacted by a turbine receive, as a starting point for negotiations, $3000 annually, to be paid by the developer for the loss of private and citizen rights, a very large portion of which includes peace and satisfaction, a critical part of your state of mind. We all know that is a significant part of personal, social and democratic well being. The concept is simple; if the developer and some uncaring land owners want to destroy your rights and those of other citizens, inflicting on you suffering and mental distress, the good old “free” enterprise system developers and local governments love to hide behind, comes into play; they pay to destroy part of your life. There has to be pain and resistance in the system for those who knowingly exploit the public and individual vulnerability, a now institutionalized vulnerability which commercial and private sector interests worked hard to establish.
The recent proliferation of wind turbine farms is just one more case of the serious aggression and destruction that reflects the continuing expansion of an extremist private property and commercialism agenda. This socially, legally and politically defective agenda and process is being exploited by corporations, some local residents, and local governments. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not freedom and it is not democracy; it is vandalism and oppression in the name of commercialism. As citizens we have the right, and we say the obligation, and we must marshal the courage, to reject wind turbine invasions as a corruption of our well being that is cached “in our spirit rather than in our wallet”.
[Our thanks to National Wind Watch for bringing this essay to our attention]
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights
July 22, 2008
Pickens plans to pull one over u
Thomas Pickens has a plan to replace the electricity we currently generate from natural gas with wind-generated electricity, to free it up for fueling transport (via his Clean Energy Fuels Corporation). The fawning coverage of the "Pickensplan" and his own proposed giant wind energy facility in northern Texas (not on his own land, however -- "They're ugly", he says) has been pathetic, especially from environmentalists (read, Sierra Club) who should be a little more skeptical about someone who self-importantly boasts, "I know more about energy than anybody."
The following claim is made on the Pickensplan web site: "At 4,000 megawatts — the equivalent combined output of four large coal-fire plants — the production of the completed Pampa facility will double the wind energy output of the United States."
That's comparing Pampa's rated capacity (which would not be on line until some years in the future) to the actual output (about 25% of capacity) of existing wind plants at the end of 2007.
An accurate statement would begin: "Despite a rating of 4,000 megawatts, covering 400,000 acres, and costing taxpayers $6 billion -- not counting hundreds of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines and heavy-duty roads -- the completed Pampa facility will have an average rate of output of only 1,000 megawatts. And it will generate at or above that average rate only one-third of the time, answering to the wayward wind, not to the actual needs of the grid."
But the real flaw in the Pickensplan is the idea that wind would replace natural gas in the production of electricity. In fact, the addition of substantial wind energy plant would require the addition of a similar amount of natural gas plants, because those are the only ones that are flexible enough to start quickly and operate over a wide range of loads to balance the fluctuating and largely unpredictable infeed from wind turbines.
Of course, that would work out even better for Pickens' natural gas company.
[What would 20% of our electricity (the proportion currently generated from natural gas) from wind mean? Click here for earlier post about the Department of Energy/American Wind Energy Association paper saying it's "feasible".]
wind power, wind energy
The following claim is made on the Pickensplan web site: "At 4,000 megawatts — the equivalent combined output of four large coal-fire plants — the production of the completed Pampa facility will double the wind energy output of the United States."
That's comparing Pampa's rated capacity (which would not be on line until some years in the future) to the actual output (about 25% of capacity) of existing wind plants at the end of 2007.
An accurate statement would begin: "Despite a rating of 4,000 megawatts, covering 400,000 acres, and costing taxpayers $6 billion -- not counting hundreds of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines and heavy-duty roads -- the completed Pampa facility will have an average rate of output of only 1,000 megawatts. And it will generate at or above that average rate only one-third of the time, answering to the wayward wind, not to the actual needs of the grid."
But the real flaw in the Pickensplan is the idea that wind would replace natural gas in the production of electricity. In fact, the addition of substantial wind energy plant would require the addition of a similar amount of natural gas plants, because those are the only ones that are flexible enough to start quickly and operate over a wide range of loads to balance the fluctuating and largely unpredictable infeed from wind turbines.
Of course, that would work out even better for Pickens' natural gas company.
[What would 20% of our electricity (the proportion currently generated from natural gas) from wind mean? Click here for earlier post about the Department of Energy/American Wind Energy Association paper saying it's "feasible".]
wind power, wind energy
July 19, 2008
Turning wilderness over to development in Maine
Bob Weingarten and Nancy O’Toole of Friends of the Boundary Mountains write in the July 10 Daily Bulldog:
The Maine Legislature created the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) in 1971 to serve the people of Maine and act as the authority over 10.4 million acres of unorganized lands, and one of the largest contiguous undeveloped areas in the Northeast. Among LURC’s responsibilities are the promotion of orderly development, and the protection of natural and ecological values.
In 1974, to ensure the protection of fragile and irreplaceable soil and habitat, Maine’s mountainous areas above 2,700 feet were given zoning protection from ecological-damaging development by LURC. That protection stood the test of time until January 2008 when LURC reversed the protection of our mountains.
Now, before us we have the biggest industrial project being approved, by LURC, which will change the western Maine mountains forever. A project so huge it’s difficult to sum up the total environmental impact, but let us provide a brief overview.
LURC is about to give final approval to TransCanada’s Kibby Wind Power Project based on a final design plan that doesn’t have final surveys, core testing completed, or hydrology mapping finished. (Which means add at least 20 percent to the following figures). There will be 47 intermittent and 38 perennial streams impacted by bridgeways and culverts that will divert streams up to 225 feet. For road building and towers, a total of 423.6 acres will permanently be impacted. Another 310 acres will be cleared and changed from forest and wetland to right-of-ways for transmission lines. The estimate for total road length is 30.5 miles, with widths ranging from 25 to 35 feet, and for 21.75 miles a 150-foot wide “right of way” for the kV line. A 60-foot “right-of-way” for the 34.5 kV buried collector system that runs from turbine to turbine, and then moves to overhead poles moving down the slopes and ridges to the substation. There will be new buildings, temporary batch plant that will be producing 700 yds3 of concrete per turbine pad, rock crushers, and at least 20 acres will be filled by the unused rock and dirt from blasting and road construction.
The project will impact many species of Maine. The northern bog lemming is among Maine’s rarest mammals and listed as threatened. The Atlantic Salmon and the Canadian Lynx is listed as endangered and its habitat will be impacted by this development. Five state-listed plants species have been identified in the project through the wetlands that will be impacted by the transmission lines. The accumulation downstream due to unforeseeable erosion from all these disturbances will greatly impact the fish and natural vegetation forever. Over time the culverts will fill with sediment, silt fences washed out and the environmental damage will accelerate in magnitude and increase in intensity. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of migratory birds, bats and raptors that will perish each year as a result of the 400-foot high turbines. ...
The Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power Development is promoting 2,000 MW by 2015 and 3,000 MW by 2020, by establishing an Expedited Review and Permitting Area in Maine, which includes at least one-third of LURC’s jurisdiction. In the unorganized areas a rezoning would not be required and the DEP will assume jurisdiction for permitting on any proposal that goes through an organized area; the expedited process should take only 185 days.
An Executive Order required LURC to draft a Commercial Industrial Development Subdistrict (D-CI) to streamline permitting and do away with rezoning hearings. In the draft there are two full pages of townships and plantations on the expedited wind energy development area. ...
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
The Maine Legislature created the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) in 1971 to serve the people of Maine and act as the authority over 10.4 million acres of unorganized lands, and one of the largest contiguous undeveloped areas in the Northeast. Among LURC’s responsibilities are the promotion of orderly development, and the protection of natural and ecological values.
In 1974, to ensure the protection of fragile and irreplaceable soil and habitat, Maine’s mountainous areas above 2,700 feet were given zoning protection from ecological-damaging development by LURC. That protection stood the test of time until January 2008 when LURC reversed the protection of our mountains.
Now, before us we have the biggest industrial project being approved, by LURC, which will change the western Maine mountains forever. A project so huge it’s difficult to sum up the total environmental impact, but let us provide a brief overview.
LURC is about to give final approval to TransCanada’s Kibby Wind Power Project based on a final design plan that doesn’t have final surveys, core testing completed, or hydrology mapping finished. (Which means add at least 20 percent to the following figures). There will be 47 intermittent and 38 perennial streams impacted by bridgeways and culverts that will divert streams up to 225 feet. For road building and towers, a total of 423.6 acres will permanently be impacted. Another 310 acres will be cleared and changed from forest and wetland to right-of-ways for transmission lines. The estimate for total road length is 30.5 miles, with widths ranging from 25 to 35 feet, and for 21.75 miles a 150-foot wide “right of way” for the kV line. A 60-foot “right-of-way” for the 34.5 kV buried collector system that runs from turbine to turbine, and then moves to overhead poles moving down the slopes and ridges to the substation. There will be new buildings, temporary batch plant that will be producing 700 yds3 of concrete per turbine pad, rock crushers, and at least 20 acres will be filled by the unused rock and dirt from blasting and road construction.
The project will impact many species of Maine. The northern bog lemming is among Maine’s rarest mammals and listed as threatened. The Atlantic Salmon and the Canadian Lynx is listed as endangered and its habitat will be impacted by this development. Five state-listed plants species have been identified in the project through the wetlands that will be impacted by the transmission lines. The accumulation downstream due to unforeseeable erosion from all these disturbances will greatly impact the fish and natural vegetation forever. Over time the culverts will fill with sediment, silt fences washed out and the environmental damage will accelerate in magnitude and increase in intensity. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of migratory birds, bats and raptors that will perish each year as a result of the 400-foot high turbines. ...
The Governor’s Task Force on Wind Power Development is promoting 2,000 MW by 2015 and 3,000 MW by 2020, by establishing an Expedited Review and Permitting Area in Maine, which includes at least one-third of LURC’s jurisdiction. In the unorganized areas a rezoning would not be required and the DEP will assume jurisdiction for permitting on any proposal that goes through an organized area; the expedited process should take only 185 days.
An Executive Order required LURC to draft a Commercial Industrial Development Subdistrict (D-CI) to streamline permitting and do away with rezoning hearings. In the draft there are two full pages of townships and plantations on the expedited wind energy development area. ...
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights
July 15, 2008
Not So Fast With Wind Power
An editorial:
Climate change, dwindling resources, and the geopolitics and ecology of fossil fuels and nuclear power figure prominently in today's worries. As part of any solution, most people unhesitatingly include large-scale wind energy. Wind power companies promise to break our dependence on other fuels and to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Teaming up with the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. Department of Energy has promoted providing 20 percent of our electricity from wind by the year 2030.
With handsome subsidies and regulatory support, the U.S. thus faces a push to erect hundreds of thousands of giant wind turbines in the coming years. Does wind energy live up to such enthusiasm? Does it reward such generosity? A look beyond the hype reveals that wind's actual record does not come close to its claims. In addition, big wind has its own substantial adverse impacts on the environment and people's lives.
[] [] []
In Denmark, where wind turbines already produce electricity equal to 20 percent of what the country uses, no conventional power plant has been shut down as a result, and it is hard to find evidence that they are using other fuels any less. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, natural gas use in Denmark increased more than wind as the latter's turbines went in, and coal has been on the rise in recent years.
Wind turbines produce only 15 to 30 percent of their capacity annually and reach that average rate only one-third of the time. They are essentially idle another third of the time. Because wind is so intermittent and variable, much of its theoretical benefit appears to be cancelled out because the rest of the grid still has to provide electricity as needed in addition to the extra burden of balancing the unpredictable wind-generated supply. Or the spurts of energy from wind are simply tolerated as slight rises in voltage and eventually dissipated over a large grid as heat. Wind is only a symbolic add-on that replaces nothing.
[] [] []
The real results of giant wind turbine facilities have been the opening up of rural and wild places to industrial development and the destruction of communities powerless to stop them. Today's wind turbines are well over 400 feet high, with a rotor span of almost 100 yards, cutting a vertical air space of up to 2 acres. The blades are connected to a bus-sized housing (the "nacelle") for the gears and generator (along with hundreds of gallons of oil) at the top of the tower. The whole assembly weighs 250-350 tons, requiring wide straight heavy-duty roads to transport the parts and cranes for installation and continued maintenance. A large underground foundation, often requiring blasting of bedrock, of hundreds of tons of steel-reinforced concrete, most of which would be left after decommissioning, is necessary to hold it all up. Each tower requires acres of clearance and cannot be close to other turbines, to avoid turbulence. New high-voltage transmission lines and pylons are needed to handle the potential surges and to carry the promised power to distant population centers (or to let it dissipate as heat).
The destructive impact of such construction on, for example, a wild mountain top is obvious: erosion, alteration of wetlands and watersheds, and destruction of wild habitat and plant life.
Other negative impacts follow from this physical reality. At their tips, the rotor blades are slicing through the air at 150 to 200 mph. Substantial numbers of bats (mostly, it seems, by high air pressure rather than collision) and birds (eagles and other raptors being of particular concern) are killed. For two recent examples, at least 2,000 bats were killed by turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia in just 2 months during their 2003 fall migration. And the 195-turbine facility on the Tug Hill plateau in Lewis County, N.Y., will kill at least 8,500-16,000 birds and bats annually, according to data from its first year of operation.
Other animals are adversely affected as well. The breeding and nesting of prairie birds are especially disturbed by disruption of their habitat. Construction on mountain ridges reduces important forest interior habitat far beyond the extent of the clearings themselves. In 2005, several abandoned and dead seal pups were found off Great Yarmouth, England -- investigating biologists concluded that noise from offshore wind turbines disrupted feeding and nurturing. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society recently warned of the threat to cetaceans of low-frequency noise from off-shore wind turbines. In many places, people notice a drastic reduction of wildlife after the turbines go in.
Human neighbors, too, are victimized by the noise of the giant machines. Developers commonly get neighbors to sign gag orders in return for a small "forbearance" payment. Leasing landowners are also required to keep quiet. Thus knowing the problems that will arise, the developers set things up to allow denial of them.
Yet everywhere that people live near industrial wind turbines, they are shocked at the noise. It is unnatural and rhythmic, intrusive and unpredictable. People say they can never get used to it. It's typically worse at night, when not only is the normal noise level much lower but sound also carries much farther. Stress and lack of sleep -- and often more serious health problems, such as migraines, dizziness, and disorientation -- are common. Researchers in Portugal have found that conditions for developing vibroacoustic disease exist in homes near wind turbines. A set of symptoms called "wind turbine syndrome" has been extensively documented by Dr. Nina Pierpont in the U.S. Airplane safety lights at night and strobing shadows when the sun is low add to the turbines' invasive presence.
[] [] []
If there were clear benefits from industrial-scale wind energy, the extra burden on our already diminished landscape, on wildlife, and on people's right to enjoy their homes would have to be weighed. Careful siting and nuisance regulations would have to be established and enforced to minimize the impacts. We sorely need such guidelines.
But as Denmark and other countries have already shown us, benefits from wind on the grid remain elusive. There is no meaningful benefit to weigh against the substantial negative impacts on communities, individual lives, and the environment. The destructive boondoggle of industrial wind should be roundly rejected wherever its promoters try to gain a foothold.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
Climate change, dwindling resources, and the geopolitics and ecology of fossil fuels and nuclear power figure prominently in today's worries. As part of any solution, most people unhesitatingly include large-scale wind energy. Wind power companies promise to break our dependence on other fuels and to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Teaming up with the American Wind Energy Association, the U.S. Department of Energy has promoted providing 20 percent of our electricity from wind by the year 2030.
With handsome subsidies and regulatory support, the U.S. thus faces a push to erect hundreds of thousands of giant wind turbines in the coming years. Does wind energy live up to such enthusiasm? Does it reward such generosity? A look beyond the hype reveals that wind's actual record does not come close to its claims. In addition, big wind has its own substantial adverse impacts on the environment and people's lives.
[] [] []
In Denmark, where wind turbines already produce electricity equal to 20 percent of what the country uses, no conventional power plant has been shut down as a result, and it is hard to find evidence that they are using other fuels any less. In fact, according to the International Energy Agency, natural gas use in Denmark increased more than wind as the latter's turbines went in, and coal has been on the rise in recent years.
Wind turbines produce only 15 to 30 percent of their capacity annually and reach that average rate only one-third of the time. They are essentially idle another third of the time. Because wind is so intermittent and variable, much of its theoretical benefit appears to be cancelled out because the rest of the grid still has to provide electricity as needed in addition to the extra burden of balancing the unpredictable wind-generated supply. Or the spurts of energy from wind are simply tolerated as slight rises in voltage and eventually dissipated over a large grid as heat. Wind is only a symbolic add-on that replaces nothing.
[] [] []
The real results of giant wind turbine facilities have been the opening up of rural and wild places to industrial development and the destruction of communities powerless to stop them. Today's wind turbines are well over 400 feet high, with a rotor span of almost 100 yards, cutting a vertical air space of up to 2 acres. The blades are connected to a bus-sized housing (the "nacelle") for the gears and generator (along with hundreds of gallons of oil) at the top of the tower. The whole assembly weighs 250-350 tons, requiring wide straight heavy-duty roads to transport the parts and cranes for installation and continued maintenance. A large underground foundation, often requiring blasting of bedrock, of hundreds of tons of steel-reinforced concrete, most of which would be left after decommissioning, is necessary to hold it all up. Each tower requires acres of clearance and cannot be close to other turbines, to avoid turbulence. New high-voltage transmission lines and pylons are needed to handle the potential surges and to carry the promised power to distant population centers (or to let it dissipate as heat).
The destructive impact of such construction on, for example, a wild mountain top is obvious: erosion, alteration of wetlands and watersheds, and destruction of wild habitat and plant life.
Other negative impacts follow from this physical reality. At their tips, the rotor blades are slicing through the air at 150 to 200 mph. Substantial numbers of bats (mostly, it seems, by high air pressure rather than collision) and birds (eagles and other raptors being of particular concern) are killed. For two recent examples, at least 2,000 bats were killed by turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia in just 2 months during their 2003 fall migration. And the 195-turbine facility on the Tug Hill plateau in Lewis County, N.Y., will kill at least 8,500-16,000 birds and bats annually, according to data from its first year of operation.
Other animals are adversely affected as well. The breeding and nesting of prairie birds are especially disturbed by disruption of their habitat. Construction on mountain ridges reduces important forest interior habitat far beyond the extent of the clearings themselves. In 2005, several abandoned and dead seal pups were found off Great Yarmouth, England -- investigating biologists concluded that noise from offshore wind turbines disrupted feeding and nurturing. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society recently warned of the threat to cetaceans of low-frequency noise from off-shore wind turbines. In many places, people notice a drastic reduction of wildlife after the turbines go in.
Human neighbors, too, are victimized by the noise of the giant machines. Developers commonly get neighbors to sign gag orders in return for a small "forbearance" payment. Leasing landowners are also required to keep quiet. Thus knowing the problems that will arise, the developers set things up to allow denial of them.
Yet everywhere that people live near industrial wind turbines, they are shocked at the noise. It is unnatural and rhythmic, intrusive and unpredictable. People say they can never get used to it. It's typically worse at night, when not only is the normal noise level much lower but sound also carries much farther. Stress and lack of sleep -- and often more serious health problems, such as migraines, dizziness, and disorientation -- are common. Researchers in Portugal have found that conditions for developing vibroacoustic disease exist in homes near wind turbines. A set of symptoms called "wind turbine syndrome" has been extensively documented by Dr. Nina Pierpont in the U.S. Airplane safety lights at night and strobing shadows when the sun is low add to the turbines' invasive presence.
[] [] []
If there were clear benefits from industrial-scale wind energy, the extra burden on our already diminished landscape, on wildlife, and on people's right to enjoy their homes would have to be weighed. Careful siting and nuisance regulations would have to be established and enforced to minimize the impacts. We sorely need such guidelines.
But as Denmark and other countries have already shown us, benefits from wind on the grid remain elusive. There is no meaningful benefit to weigh against the substantial negative impacts on communities, individual lives, and the environment. The destructive boondoggle of industrial wind should be roundly rejected wherever its promoters try to gain a foothold.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
July 6, 2008
20% wind by 2030
The U.S. Department of Energy, in a recent report sponsored by the wind industry, says that it is possible to achieve 20% wind "penetration" by 2030.
Accepting the possibility as valid (which it isn't without massively increasing grid interconnection and excess non-wind capacity), what does that mean?
The Dept. of Energy estimates that electricity production will be 5,397 billion kilowatt-hours in 2030, or an average rate of 616,096 megawatts (MW). Twenty percent of that is 123,219 MW. With a capacity factor of 25% (the ratio of actual output to rated capacity), 492,877 MW of wind turbines would have to be installed.
There is currently about 20,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the U.S. (according to the American Wind Energy Association, 16,818 MW were installed by the end of 2007). So more than 470,000 MW more is needed, more than 21,000 MW a year, a rate of building more than four times that of 2007's record breaker.
Each megawatt of wind turbine capacity needs at least 50 acres around it. An installed capacity of 500,000 MW needs 25 million acres, or 39,000 square miles. With the space requirements, and because the machines are huge (now pushing 500 feet in total height), visually intrusive, and noisy, most of them would be erected in previously undeveloped rural and wild areas, along with heavy-duty roads, transformers, and new high-capacity transmission lines.
And after 2030: then what? Electricity demand will continue to grow. If it grows 2% per year, then 10,000 MW -- and more each year -- of new wind turbines would have to be erected every year after 2030 to keep their nominal share at 20%.
But here's the real futility: When the wind isn't blowing, we'll still need full-capacity backup generation -- the grid has to be planned as if the wind plant isn't even there, because quite often it won't be, especially at periods of peak demand. In other words, there won't be any less coal or nuclear, and probably a lot more natural gas (which is better suited to balancing the fluctuations of wind energy production).
The call for 20% wind by 2030 is for a colossal boondoggle that would drastically alter the landscape, adversely affect wildlife, and not significantly change anything for the better.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism
Accepting the possibility as valid (which it isn't without massively increasing grid interconnection and excess non-wind capacity), what does that mean?
The Dept. of Energy estimates that electricity production will be 5,397 billion kilowatt-hours in 2030, or an average rate of 616,096 megawatts (MW). Twenty percent of that is 123,219 MW. With a capacity factor of 25% (the ratio of actual output to rated capacity), 492,877 MW of wind turbines would have to be installed.
There is currently about 20,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the U.S. (according to the American Wind Energy Association, 16,818 MW were installed by the end of 2007). So more than 470,000 MW more is needed, more than 21,000 MW a year, a rate of building more than four times that of 2007's record breaker.
Each megawatt of wind turbine capacity needs at least 50 acres around it. An installed capacity of 500,000 MW needs 25 million acres, or 39,000 square miles. With the space requirements, and because the machines are huge (now pushing 500 feet in total height), visually intrusive, and noisy, most of them would be erected in previously undeveloped rural and wild areas, along with heavy-duty roads, transformers, and new high-capacity transmission lines.
And after 2030: then what? Electricity demand will continue to grow. If it grows 2% per year, then 10,000 MW -- and more each year -- of new wind turbines would have to be erected every year after 2030 to keep their nominal share at 20%.
But here's the real futility: When the wind isn't blowing, we'll still need full-capacity backup generation -- the grid has to be planned as if the wind plant isn't even there, because quite often it won't be, especially at periods of peak demand. In other words, there won't be any less coal or nuclear, and probably a lot more natural gas (which is better suited to balancing the fluctuations of wind energy production).
The call for 20% wind by 2030 is for a colossal boondoggle that would drastically alter the landscape, adversely affect wildlife, and not significantly change anything for the better.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism
June 30, 2008
How I installed OS X 10.4/Tiger on my Power Mac G4 after it refused to, and how I did so without a bootable DVD drive.
"BaseSystem cannot be installed on this computer." That's what the Tiger installer kept telling me.
My Power Mac G4 466 MHz "digital audio" has an external DVD drive connected by USB, so I was attempting to install by directly running the OSInstall.mpkg in System / Installation / Packages, since I can't boot from that DVD drive. I have 2 internal hard drives, with a bootable system on each, so this was feasible by booting into each drive in turn to install Tiger on the other.
Alas, "BaseSystem cannot be installed on this computer."
(Note: this refusal appears to be after the compatibility checks that can be edited in the OSInstall.dist file inside OSInstall.mpkg ("show contents") to allow installation on unapproved machines, such as G3s.)
XPostFacto to the rescue
An open-source project sponsored by Other World Computing, XPostFacto helps to install and boot Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, and Darwin on some unsupported systems.
But you still need a bootable installer disk, so here's what I did:
1. With Disk Utility, make a disk image of the Tiger install DVD. It doesn't matter where you save it -- as long as there's a few gigabytes (at least 3 GB) of space. (If you're on a network with a DVD-equipped machine, you could do this step on that machine and then copy the disk image to your machine.)
2. With Disk Utility, restore the install DVD disk image to a bootable hard drive (or partition) that doesn't have an OS X system on it already. I copied it to a Firewire-connected external hard drive. Again, you need at least 3 GB of space.
3. Launch XPostFacto. Consider donating to this excellent project. XPostFacto presents a list of disks to install to and a list of bootable installer disks. Pick one of each, and "Install".
XPostFacto will copy some kernel extensions to the target volume and then a modified version of BootX that will use these kernel extensions (along with the standard extensions on the installed disk). Then it will restart the computer and launch (after rebooting in verbose mode) the installer.
4. In the OS X installer, select as the target disk the same disk you selected in XPostFacto.
Success! This post was entered under 10.4 in Firefox 3.
My Power Mac G4 466 MHz "digital audio" has an external DVD drive connected by USB, so I was attempting to install by directly running the OSInstall.mpkg in System / Installation / Packages, since I can't boot from that DVD drive. I have 2 internal hard drives, with a bootable system on each, so this was feasible by booting into each drive in turn to install Tiger on the other.
Alas, "BaseSystem cannot be installed on this computer."
(Note: this refusal appears to be after the compatibility checks that can be edited in the OSInstall.dist file inside OSInstall.mpkg ("show contents") to allow installation on unapproved machines, such as G3s.)
XPostFacto to the rescue
An open-source project sponsored by Other World Computing, XPostFacto helps to install and boot Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, and Darwin on some unsupported systems.
But you still need a bootable installer disk, so here's what I did:
1. With Disk Utility, make a disk image of the Tiger install DVD. It doesn't matter where you save it -- as long as there's a few gigabytes (at least 3 GB) of space. (If you're on a network with a DVD-equipped machine, you could do this step on that machine and then copy the disk image to your machine.)
2. With Disk Utility, restore the install DVD disk image to a bootable hard drive (or partition) that doesn't have an OS X system on it already. I copied it to a Firewire-connected external hard drive. Again, you need at least 3 GB of space.
3. Launch XPostFacto. Consider donating to this excellent project. XPostFacto presents a list of disks to install to and a list of bootable installer disks. Pick one of each, and "Install".
XPostFacto will copy some kernel extensions to the target volume and then a modified version of BootX that will use these kernel extensions (along with the standard extensions on the installed disk). Then it will restart the computer and launch (after rebooting in verbose mode) the installer.
4. In the OS X installer, select as the target disk the same disk you selected in XPostFacto.
Success! This post was entered under 10.4 in Firefox 3.
June 25, 2008
Stop the noise!
From Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon, Jun. 25, 2008:
Modern cities can be so noisy that ornithologists have found birds warbling at the top of their lungs to be heard. Nightingales in Berlin have been documented singing up to 14 decibels louder than their counterparts in woody environs, in an attempt to make their songs audible above all the background noise. Yet the cacophony of modern life is hardly confined to metropolises like New York or Cairo, Egypt, where you literally have to shout on the street to make yourself heard.
In [the movie] "Noise," Bean's protagonist and his family escape to the country for the weekend. Their getaway is besieged by a neighbor's farting leaf blower. Getting away from it all just isn't that easy.
"For 50 years, if people didn't like noise, and they had money, the solution has been: Move to the suburbs. Now we've made our suburbs noisy. They're no longer quiet refuges," says Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Montpelier, Vt. "We got our half-acre lots, and now we have our weed whacker, our leaf blower, our hedge trimmer, our riding lawn mower, and then we hop in our car and drive on four- and six-lane highways past thousands of other suburbs to our place of work, noise-polluting every place we pass."
But you don't have to be an anti-noise crusader to suffer physical effects from noise, even if you're sleeping right through it. Scientists at Imperial College London monitored the blood pressure of 140 sleeping volunteers who lived near London's Heathrow airport. They discovered that subjects' blood pressure rose when a plane few overhead even when the subjects remained asleep. A study of 5,000 45-to-70-year-olds living near airports for at least five years found that they were at greater risk of suffering from hypertension, aka high blood pressure, than their counterparts in quieter realms. People with high blood pressure have an increased risk of developing heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and dementia. In 2007, WHO estimated that long-term exposure to traffic noise may account for 3 percent of deaths from ischemic heart disease among Europeans.
Not only can too much loud noise damage your hearing, or disrupt your sleep, it can literally suck the life out of you thanks to the human body's fight-or-flight response. "The human auditory system is designed to serve as a means of warning against dangers in the environment," explains Louis Hagler, a retired internal medicine specialist in Oakland, Calif. "Noise above a certain level is perceived by the nervous system as a threat." The body responds to that threat with an outpouring of epinephrine and cortisol, the so-called stress hormones. "Your blood pressure goes up, your pulse rate goes up, there is a sudden outpouring of sugar into the bloodstream so the body is prepared to meet whatever threat there is in the environment."
If exposures are intermittent or rare, the body has the chance to return to normal. But if the exposure is unrelenting, the body doesn't have a chance to calm down, and blood pressure and heart rate may remain elevated, Hagler explains. That's why what seems like a mere annoyance can actually have long-term health effects. "There is no question that people who live near a busy roadway are experiencing effects on their blood pressure," says Hagler.
... "There is no evidence that noise causes mental illness itself, but there is little doubt that it may accelerate or intensify some kind of mental disorders," explains Hagler. He adds that symptoms of exposure to noise pollution include anxiety, nervousness, nausea, headaches, emotional instability, argumentativeness and changes in mood. No wonder excessive noise has been used as a form of torture.
... In the United States, back in the '70s, when [psychologist Arline] Bronzaft was documenting how children studying in classrooms next to elevated train tracks had delayed learning, there was an outpouring of official concern about the effects of noise, on both health and quality of life. In 1972, Congress passed the Noise Control Act. The Environmental Protection Agency had its own Office of Noise Abatement and Control, which still exists today, but as an unfunded skeleton. What happened? "A man got elected president named Ronald Reagan and everything stopped," says Bronzaft. The Gipper decided that noise was best regulated by cities and states, but federal funding to help them evaporated. Attempts to re-fund the office have failed. ...
[The results of a 3-year study of the physical effects of living near giant wind turbines is planned for publication late this summer. Click here for more information.]
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism<, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
Modern cities can be so noisy that ornithologists have found birds warbling at the top of their lungs to be heard. Nightingales in Berlin have been documented singing up to 14 decibels louder than their counterparts in woody environs, in an attempt to make their songs audible above all the background noise. Yet the cacophony of modern life is hardly confined to metropolises like New York or Cairo, Egypt, where you literally have to shout on the street to make yourself heard.
In [the movie] "Noise," Bean's protagonist and his family escape to the country for the weekend. Their getaway is besieged by a neighbor's farting leaf blower. Getting away from it all just isn't that easy.
"For 50 years, if people didn't like noise, and they had money, the solution has been: Move to the suburbs. Now we've made our suburbs noisy. They're no longer quiet refuges," says Les Blomberg, executive director of the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse in Montpelier, Vt. "We got our half-acre lots, and now we have our weed whacker, our leaf blower, our hedge trimmer, our riding lawn mower, and then we hop in our car and drive on four- and six-lane highways past thousands of other suburbs to our place of work, noise-polluting every place we pass."
But you don't have to be an anti-noise crusader to suffer physical effects from noise, even if you're sleeping right through it. Scientists at Imperial College London monitored the blood pressure of 140 sleeping volunteers who lived near London's Heathrow airport. They discovered that subjects' blood pressure rose when a plane few overhead even when the subjects remained asleep. A study of 5,000 45-to-70-year-olds living near airports for at least five years found that they were at greater risk of suffering from hypertension, aka high blood pressure, than their counterparts in quieter realms. People with high blood pressure have an increased risk of developing heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and dementia. In 2007, WHO estimated that long-term exposure to traffic noise may account for 3 percent of deaths from ischemic heart disease among Europeans.
Not only can too much loud noise damage your hearing, or disrupt your sleep, it can literally suck the life out of you thanks to the human body's fight-or-flight response. "The human auditory system is designed to serve as a means of warning against dangers in the environment," explains Louis Hagler, a retired internal medicine specialist in Oakland, Calif. "Noise above a certain level is perceived by the nervous system as a threat." The body responds to that threat with an outpouring of epinephrine and cortisol, the so-called stress hormones. "Your blood pressure goes up, your pulse rate goes up, there is a sudden outpouring of sugar into the bloodstream so the body is prepared to meet whatever threat there is in the environment."
If exposures are intermittent or rare, the body has the chance to return to normal. But if the exposure is unrelenting, the body doesn't have a chance to calm down, and blood pressure and heart rate may remain elevated, Hagler explains. That's why what seems like a mere annoyance can actually have long-term health effects. "There is no question that people who live near a busy roadway are experiencing effects on their blood pressure," says Hagler.
... "There is no evidence that noise causes mental illness itself, but there is little doubt that it may accelerate or intensify some kind of mental disorders," explains Hagler. He adds that symptoms of exposure to noise pollution include anxiety, nervousness, nausea, headaches, emotional instability, argumentativeness and changes in mood. No wonder excessive noise has been used as a form of torture.
... In the United States, back in the '70s, when [psychologist Arline] Bronzaft was documenting how children studying in classrooms next to elevated train tracks had delayed learning, there was an outpouring of official concern about the effects of noise, on both health and quality of life. In 1972, Congress passed the Noise Control Act. The Environmental Protection Agency had its own Office of Noise Abatement and Control, which still exists today, but as an unfunded skeleton. What happened? "A man got elected president named Ronald Reagan and everything stopped," says Bronzaft. The Gipper decided that noise was best regulated by cities and states, but federal funding to help them evaporated. Attempts to re-fund the office have failed. ...
[The results of a 3-year study of the physical effects of living near giant wind turbines is planned for publication late this summer. Click here for more information.]
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism<, human rights, animal rights, Vermont
June 20, 2008
Many challenges for wind development
"For advocates who are trying to promote the adoption of wind power, there are many challenges: government regulations; transmission access policies; zoning, siting, and licensing restricitins; environmental, avian, noise, and aesthetic opposition; competitor politics; high costs; resistant funding sources; near-neighbor conflict; and radiofrequecy interference. This is just the short list."
--Timlynn Babitsky, Wind Project Community Organizing, an exposé of the manipulative hucksterism developers use to ram through a project.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms<, environment, environmentalism
--Timlynn Babitsky, Wind Project Community Organizing, an exposé of the manipulative hucksterism developers use to ram through a project.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms<, environment, environmentalism
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)