Outsmarting the Smart Grid

by William Tucker, February 18, 2009

The latest delusion about energy is the “smart grid.” This bright new technological miracle will once again help us overcome the realities of physics and allow us to live in a world run on wind and sunshine.

... Ever eager to show they are “green” and hip it is, General Electric is now running an ad that shows how “the smart grid” will help us forget the difficult choice of whether to power our economy with coal or nuclear.

... The first premise is that, by conveying real-time pricing the smart grid will encourage people to redistribute their consumption of electricity to off-peak hours of the day. This will “level loads” and solve the perennial problem of utilities in meeting demand that occurs a few hours of the day or a few days of the year.

The second premise is that the smart grid will help integrate wind and solar energy - the two balky “renewables” that have the disadvantage of not being dispatchable when we want them. With the smart grid, wind and solar generation will always be available somewhere and so can be conveyed to where it’s needed.

Notice these are different things. The true “smart grid” will be a digitalized distribution system that conveys real-time information. Incorporating remote wind and solar, on the other hand, will require an upgraded grid, something entirely different. Our present 345-kilovolt, AC transmission wires can’t do it without unacceptable line losses. We will need to rebuild to 765 kV DC system – something that could take decades and easily cost several trillion dollars.

One has very little to do with the other. However they are often described as the same thing. Thomas Friedman effortlessly conflates them in Hot, Flat and Crowded when he writes:

[The smart grid] has made large-scale renewable energy practical for the first time ever. Why? Because the flatter your utility’s load profile gets, the more it is able to go out and buy or generate renewable energy and sell it to you and your neighbors instead of energy powered by coal or gas.

This is not true. A flattened utility profile has nothing to do with incorporating wind and solar. In fact it is just the opposite. The one great virtue of solar energy is that it peaks exactly when it is needed – in mid-afternoon and on hot summer days. If we level loads, we will be taking away solar electricity’s greatest advantage.

Let’s go back and examine these issues one at a time. First, start with the premise that the smart grid will enable us to redistribute energy consumption throughout the day. It’s fitting that the girl [in the GE ad] is standing in front of a clothes dryer, because that and washing dishes are the only examples anyone has ever been able to come up with about how residential users are going to “redistribute” their energy consumption.

What else can they do? Are they going to wait until after midnight to watch prime-time television? Are they going to heat up dinner at 4 a.m.? Are they going to turn on lights at sunrise instead of sunset? And how about air conditioning, that most voracious consumer of electricity? One suggestion floated by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in “The Green Grid,” a study published last June, is that people might “pre-cool” their homes by running the air conditioning in the morning in anticipation of hot afternoons. This may indeed level peak loads. But it will also consume more energy, since some of the pre-cooling will obviously dissipate.

There’s one more thing about drying your clothes at 10 p.m. Have you ever noticed what happens if you leave wet clothes sitting in the washer too long? They start smelling a little moldy, don’t they? Maybe this thing about drying your clothes just after you've washed them isn't such a bad idea after all.

Getting people to redistribute their energy consumption sounds suspiciously like those perennial suggestions for relieving rush-hour traffic by staggering work hours. It may look good on paper, but most people still like to get up in the morning, eat breakfast, work 9-to-5, come home, have dinner, watch some TV and go to bed. And so rush hour traffic – and patterns of electrical consumption – will probably remain much the same.

Although GE carefully avoids saying it, the underlying presumption of the smart grid is that it will somehow help us conserve significant amounts of energy. In that light, the EPRI study – although full of the usual enthusiasm - is also a very sobering document.

First, the study examined all the possible smart-grid savings - from shaving residential voltage to 114 V from 120 V to not having to send meter readers out to homes every month. Even then, its most optimistic prediction was that by 2030 we could reduce electrical consumption by 7 to 11 percent below what is now being projected. That’s not an absolute reduction in consumption but only a slowing of its anticipated rise. Second, as the study concludes, “shift[ing] load from on-peak to off-peak periods may not necessarily save energy.” It will only save money. And when you make electricity cheaper, people may consume more of it. Nor will any of this necessarily reduce carbon emissions. In fact, it may just as likely increase them.

Utilities don’t like peak loads because they have to meet them by building generators that may be used only two or three weeks of the year. These are almost inevitably gas turbines – essentially jet engines bolted to the ground. Because they don’t boil water, turbines can be started up and adjusted almost instantly, enabling them to follow loads. Steam generators, on the other hand, may take the better part of an hour to get to full speed. But turbines run on natural gas, the most expensive fuel. In addition, they sit idle most of the year, a costly way to employ capital.

So if we shift more uses to off-peak hours, we may save the utilities lots of money. But we won’t be saving energy. At best, we’ll be using the same amount. If some kind of electrical storage is employed – another often mentioned component of the “smart grid” – then we will be consuming more energy, since power is always lost in the transitions. And if leveling loads means shifting consumption from relatively clean natural gas turbines to base-load coal plants, there will be an increase in carbon emissions. [emphasis added]

Finally, as we said before, the great virtue of large-scale solar installations will be that they coincide with hours of peak demand. If we ever get to that point, we won’t want to flatten loads. We will want to keep them the way they are.

Wind, of course, is an entirely different animal. Although completely unpredictable, the wind does tend to blow stronger at night and in the fall and spring, exactly when it’s not needed. A strong, steady wind in North Dakota might allow Illinois to cut some coal consumption but it won’t obviate the need for fossil fuels because the wind will always need backup. “The Green Grid” concludes that wind will work best in tandem with - wouldn't you know it - natural gas turbines. They can be adjusted instantly to compensate for the wind's vagaries.

So the prospect that a smart grid is somehow going to save huge amounts of energy and pave the way for a solar future is an illusion. At best it will make electricity a bit cheaper and perhaps shave 5 to 10 percent off the anticipated growth in consumption. But the smartest of smart grids can’t distribute power that isn’t already there. ...

The Dangers of ‘Cap and Trade’

By BEN STEIN

WHENEVER I pull up to my neighborhood service station in Rancho Mirage, Calif., or anywhere else lately, I have a strange feeling. Because gasoline is so incredibly cheaper than it was just eight months ago, I almost feel as if I am getting something free.

I keep wondering when someone in government will award some kind of stimulus prize to the oil companies for that. After all, by cutting the price of gasoline and other fuels by roughly half, the oil companies are giving consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in new purchasing power for other goods and services. Isn’t that worthy of praise?

What’s that, you say? It isn’t the oil companies? It’s just the free market correcting itself after a huge oil price bubble last year? Well, I agree. But I have a lot of angry e-mail burned into my brain from readers insisting that those high prices were an oil-company conspiracy.

So, are the lower prices now a conspiracy to help the consumer? If that’s silly — and it is — then let’s go back to the free-market explanation. It might actually work. The free market can make us crazy, but it can also explain a lot.

Still, when I go to my local gas station, I am amazed that there is any gasoline there at all. Yes, I can see how the big oil companies happily made gasoline when oil was $140 a barrel. But how can they do it when oil is in the $30s? That takes some fancy planning.

How do the oil companies manage to keep going when the price of their basic source product changes so much? Again, that takes fancy planning.

Such planning has allowed this country to get by without major supply disruptions since the shah of Iran was overthrown. But the situation is about to become much trickier, as we confront the need to reduce carbon emissions on the way to a cleaner environment. Indeed, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency now seems likely to act within months to begin restraints on carbon dioxide. This move had been resisted by the previous administration.

Obviously, oil and gasoline are a big part of the emissions problem, and something needs to be done. I seem to have trouble breathing on too many days. Part of the solution involves more efficient cars and furnaces, and better technology at all levels. But what about a direct financial restraint on burning hydrocarbons? Might that not reduce hydrocarbon emissions, too? It is hard to believe that it wouldn’t.

Two main ways to address the issue are under discussion. One would involve a nationwide system of credits for carbon burning, with a total cap. The credits would be traded in national and maybe world markets. Entities that emit more carbon gases would have to pay more to buy these credits, and those who saved carbon would pay less and be able to sell credits to heavier users.

The other idea is a direct tax on carbon emissions of a stable amount. The proceeds might be refunded in whole or in part to energy producers to help with other goals, such as producing cleaner fuels.

Both ideas have merit, but there is a tricky little history to “cap and trade,” which seems to be President Obama’s favored approach. Because the credits would be traded on an exchange, or somewhere else, their prices would fluctuate. They could even fluctuate wildly, as prices of traded items often do. (See the stock, bond and commodity markets if you’re looking for examples.)

The European system of cap and trade has seen large fluctuations. Right now, because of the recession in European manufacturing, the cost of these carbon credits has fallen fantastically, rendering the cost of carbon emissions low. That doesn’t do much for reducing emissions.

[Also see: "Climate change paradox: Wind turbines in Europe do nothing for emissions-reduction goals", Der Spiegel, Feb. 10, 2009, which describes the failure of German emissions trading.]

Why add another element of uncertainty to energy production, especially if the goal of suppressing carbon-based fuel burning can be accomplished by another means? Energy companies have enough problems as it is — including reduced supplies, political risks and wildly changing prices for raw materials.

Of course, the new system would be a great benefit to the people who traded the credits. But how about the rest of us? Haven’t we just had a big lesson in what happens when we put traders ahead of producers and consumers? Have we forgotten that lesson already?

Why not do what governments usually do to reduce consumption — namely, impose a tax that punishes the production of carbon emissions? That would also be much less sensitive to manipulation by speculators — and the types of extremes that have led to our country’s recent undoing.

It seems a more direct and simpler way to go, and would help ensure that gasoline will always be there when we need it.

environment, environmentalism

Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

To the President of the State of Israel and the Director of the Yad Vashem Memorial: Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Following the example of Jean-Moise Braitberg, we ask that our grandmother's name be removed from the wall at Yad Vashem. Her name is Gertrud Neumann. Your records state that she was born in Kattowitz on June 6, 1875, and died in Theresienstadt.

M. Braitberg delivers his request with excellent reasons and eloquent personal testimony. His words are inspiring, but they give you – and those who stand with you - too much credit. I will instead be brief. Please take this as an expression of my disgust and contempt for your state and all it represents.

Our grandmother was a victim of that very ideal of ethnic sovereignty in whose cause Israel has shed so much blood for so long. ... I do not believe that the Jewish people, in whose name you have committed so many crimes with such outrageous complacency, can ever rid itself of the shame you have brought upon us. Nazi propaganda, for all its calumnies, never disgraced and corrupted the Jews; you have succeeded in this. ...

Michael Neumann

I join my brother, Michael Neumann, in asking that any reference to our grandmother be removed from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. ...

Israel has twisted the Holocaust into an excuse for perpetrating more holocausts. It has spent the treasure of the world's sympathy for the victims of the Holocaust on a fruitless effort to shield itself from all criticism as it massacres and tortures Palestinians and suffocates them under a brutal occupation. I do not wish to have the memory of my grandmother enlisted in this misbegotten project.

I grew up believing that Jews were that ethnic group whose historical mission was to transcend ethnicity in a united front against Fascism. To be Jewish was to be anti-Fascist. Israel long ago woke me from my dogmatic slumber about the immutable relationship of Jews to Fascists. It has engineered a merger between the image of Jewish torturers and war criminals and that of emaciated concentration camp victims. I find this merger obscene. I want no part of it. You have forfeited the right to be the custodian of my grandmother’s memory. I do not wish Yad Vashem to be her memorial.

Osha Neumann

human rights

U.S. electricity down 0.9%

Though not as dramatically as oil use (12.8% decrease), November 2008 electricity generation in the U.S. was 0.9% lower than in November 2007 (Electric Power Monthly, February 2009, Energy Information Administration).

Coal and nuclear generation were both lower, while natural gas, hydro, oil, and non-hydro renewables (mostly wind) were higher.

Although wind generation was 42.4% higher, that represents only a 0.07% increase as part of overall electricity generation. (Note that the EIA multiplies wind generation by three for accounting purposes to correlate with thermal inefficiency; therefore, at first glance wind's 42.4% increase represents a 0.21% increase in total electricity generation (assuming that wind represents two-thirds of nonhydro renewables), but calculating back from the total leaves wind with 0.07%.)

Meanwhile, the 6.1% increase in hydro generation represents 0.39% of total generation and the 1.0% increase in natural gas generation represents 0.21%. Oil generation increased 4.8%, which represents only 0.05%.

So it would appear that the use of renewables increased, and the use of coal and nuclear correspondingly decreased. But there are other aspects to these figures, namely actual resource consumption.

Although coal generation decreased 2.7%, the consumption of coal for electricity decreased only 1.3%. And despite an increase in natural gas generation of only 1.0%, the consumptiion of natural gas for electricity increased 3.4%.

This suggests greater inefficiency, likely caused by the integration of more wind-generated electricity, which is intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable, thus requiring other plants to be ramped up and down or run at a less efficient level of production. The use of more wind may also explain the increase in oil-fired generation, because such plants are typically the quick-response sources more often needed to help balance the fluctuations of wind generation. It may also account for part of the increase in hydro, which is another source able to respond quickly to the variations caused by wind.

In summary, the good news is that demand was down from a year before, and coal and nuclear were both lower, together accounting for a decrease of 1.75% of total electricity production. Despite a 50% increase in wind capacity from November 2007 to November 2008, wind contributed only 0.07% towards the difference between the 0.9% net decrease and the 1.75% decrease in coal and nuclear, or 8% of that 0.85% difference. Twenty-five percent of the difference was provided by increased natural gas, and 36% by increased hydro.

But, again, natural gas consumption increased more than three times more than its increase in generation, and likewise coal consumption decreased only half as much as its decrease in generation.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Pulling spokes out of the wheel

The director of the Audubon Society is also chair of the wind industry's "American Wind Wildlife Institute" (AWWI), where she provides a face of concern to allow industrial wind development to continue without serious scrutiny.

This is well beyond weighing pros and cons, or making the best of inevitable development, because not only are the cons accepted as necessary, the pros are assumed and unquestioned.

Thus it is not much concern that Levin puts forth. In the February North American Windpower, she sounds like a corporate spokesperson rather than a defender of birdlife: "At AWWI, we don't propose shutting down and not building wind farms while we study impacts, but we do need to have a better understanding of where these impacts occur the most."

As the article notes, "AWWI was created last year with support from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) board of directors and the AWEA siting committee to address regional -- rather than site-specific -- issues related to wind development and wildlife and habitat protection." In other words, by looking at the big picture, they hope to ignore the many -- cumulative -- local pictures.

Another part of the plan is to "educate" people, which is to say that environmentalists and conservationists who thought they had legitimate ecological concerns have to "get on board" to help promote an industry that directly threatens those areas of concern. In the eyes of AWWI, that is the only responsible thing to do: Don't question the logic and record of large-scale wind energy, question instead your own defense of the voiceless.

Levin: "We need to separate the [not-in-my-backyard] concerns from the legitimate concerns. We can't say 'no' to all energy development. ... This isn't esoteric. We don't know what spoke in the wheel we can pull out without the wheel collapsing. That's why this is such important work."

No. Important work is trying to keep the wheel of life intact, not joining the predatory developers in kicking out its spokes. Studying the results is not going to put those spokes back.

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

Corporate stimulus, si! Societal stimulus, no!

After an 8-year toot shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars to military contractors, sacrificing American, Iraqi, and Afghani lives to their continuing profits, and running up the biggest debt "in human history", it's impossible to take seriously the people responsible who now decry the expense of the stimulus package which is hoped to remedy some of the destruction they've wrought. It's a little late to be worried about "borrowing from our grandchildren".

Congress has approved a total of about $864 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

--The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11; Amy Belasco, Federatio of American Scientists, Oct. 15, 2008

The U.S. government has already spent $904 billion since 2001 to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ... And even if the number of combat troops declines as planned, the final price tag for the wars by 2018 will be between $1.3 trillion and $1.7 trillion, according to a study released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

--Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan Wars Tops $900 Billion, Report Finds; Alex Kingsbury, U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 15, 2008

The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate ... A previous CBO estimate put the wars' costs at more than $1.6 trillion. This one adds $705 billion in interest, taking into account that the conflicts are being funded with borrowed money.

--War costs may total $2.4 trillion; Ken Dilanian, USA Today, Oct. 25, 2007

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq is not only the second longest war in U.S. history (after Vietnam), it is also the second most costly -- surpassed only by World War II. ... These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month -- $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we'll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion. But the costs to our society and economy are far greater. ... By the end of the Bush administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the cumulative interest on the increased borrowing used to fund them, will have added about $1 trillion to the national debt.

--The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More; Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz (authors of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict), Washington Post, Mar. 9, 2008

human rights

Snowmobiling into the apocalypse

Chris Kelly begins "Sarah Palin's $159,050 Conflict of Interest" at Huffington Post:

While you read this, Alaska's First Dude, Todd Palin, is riding a snowmobile -- I'm sorry, snow machine -- 1,971 miles from Big Lake to Fairbanks. In the course of performing this awesome feat, his Arctic Cat's powerful two-stroke engine will emit the same amount of hydrocarbons as an automobile driving from Chicago to San Francisco and back 150 times.

A small price for the rest of us to pay to honor the indomitability of the human spirit and one man's ability to sit and hold on.

It's not just a blaze of glory and aromatic hydrocarbon. A conventional two-stroke engine emits as much as a quarter of its fuel unburned, directly into the air. This week, as a participant in the Iron Dog snow machine race, Todd Palin will release as many cancer-causing and smog-forming pollutants as a Chevy Malibu driven around the Earth at its equator 28 times.

Click the title of this post for the rest of the article.

environment, environmentalism

Vt. Yankee: 2% of New England's power

Yesterday, the State Committee of the Vermont Progressive Party voted unanimously to support the following resolution, modeled after the resolutions being warned across the state for town meeting day:

"The State Committee of the Vermont Progressive Party requests the Vermont Legislature to:

"1. Recognize that the 2% of our New England region’s power grid supply that is provided by Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant can be replaced with a combination of local, renewable electricity and efficiency measures, along with the purchase of hydro generated electricity, and excess power already in the New England electricity market; ..."

Note the welcome lack of hysteria or pushing of other agendas. This is in stark contrast to other campaigners for shutting down Vt. Yankee when its license expires in 2012 (it is, after all, a very old plant that has had numerous problems -- apart from the nuclear waste piling up on the site and the contamination and warming of the Connecticut river).

Most notably, Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) is proposing to replace the ~200 MW that the plant provides to Vermont with several ridgeline wind energy plants, of which it would require ~1,000 MW installed capacity (because of the variability and intermittency of the wind) -- and even then we would still need 200 MW from other sources, because the wind isn't always blowing when it's needed. In fact, 60% of the time wind turbines generate power at a rate below their annual average (which is 21% at Searsburg) and one-third of the time they are idle.

One thousand megawatts of wind means industrializing 100 miles of ridgelines, which are otherwise off limits to development. It means clearing trees, blasting for foundations, cut-and-fill heavy-duty roads, and transmission lines replacing important ecosystems and habitat. And it would not even achieve the intended goal of replacing any other source of electric power.

Therefore, it is refreshing to see the Progressive Party put Vt. Yankee in the context of the actual grid, not just Vermont's small corner of it. It is not a crisis. It does not justify blatant land grabs by profiteering developers and opening up our mountaintops to sprawl. When Vt. Yankee is shut down, Vermont's need to replace our share of it will represent 1% of the New England grid. We are also long-time customers of Hydro Quebec. We should have no trouble finding other sources. With continued efficiency and conservation, it will be even easier.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Wind Turbine Defects - Incidence and Implications

For 394 euros, you can download a September 2008 market research report on the many mishaps at wind energy facilities. Or you can click the links below to their source stories or visit the record of accidents maintained at Caithness Windfarm Information Forum.

Summary

Wind turbines have to face the irregular force of the wind. As a result, the drive train of a wind turbine is subject to very high dynamic loads. This makes virtually all components of a wind turbine subject to damage, including everything from the rotor blades to the generator, transformer, nacelle, tower and foundation.

Recent Developments

• July 12, 2008: Suzlon Announces Refurbishment Of Turbines At Gentry County Wind Farm


• July 11, 2008: Suzlon Plans To Pay INR5.9 Billion To Clients For Wind Turbine Blade Defect


• Jan 07, 2008: J. Stobart & Sons Launches Inquiry On Collapsed Wind Turbine In Cumbria


• Nov 15, 2007: Enel NA Announces Wind Turbine Blade Breakage At Fenner Wind Farm


• Nov 11, 2007: ScottishPower Investigates Collapsed Wind Turbine At Beinn an Tuirc Wind Farm


• May 11, 2007: Gamesa Announces Wind-Turbine Blades Breakage On Allegheny Ridge Wind Farm


• Jan 29, 2007: Vestas To Begin Repair Work On Wind Farm At Kent

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms

Sacred cow exploiters

Michael Colby exposes some of the hypocrisy of Vermont progressives by recalling his fight against recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) almost 15 years ago as head of the nonprofit organization Food & Water. This is on the occasion of Cabot Creamery's recent announcement that they will no longer allow its use for their milk supply.

Click here for the first article. Click here for the second.

It took 15 years for Cabot to finally hear the customer demand? No -- it took a simple request from Wal-Mart, which now accounts for one-quarter of Cabot's sales.

Colby's campaign began with Land O'Lakes, as Cabot was claiming a "wait-and-see" policy. But then an employee leaked an internal memo acknowledging that some of their suppliers were already using rBGH. So Colby brought the campaign home. And the politicians, press, and corporate nonprofits came to Cabot's defense.

Then-governor Howard Dean condemned Food & Water as a "terrorist group". Then–state senator Elizabeth Ready essentially told them to leave the state. Cabot's spokesperson, Roberta McDonald, compared Food & Water to the Unabomber and suggested that public safety would be better served by locking up its leaders.

Now Wal-Mart demands the same thing, and Cabot meekly says "OK". That's great news, of course, but it doesn't say good things about our democracy when only another behemoth can say no to Monsanto and the concerns of individual citizens are derided, mocked, and condemned -- not just by the self-interested corporations but also by those who nominally represent the people against the powerful.

((( )))
Part 2 recounts Food & Water's effort more than 10 years ago to get Ben & Jerry's to go organic, or at least to refuse milk from cows fed on grain treated with the likely carcinogen atrazine. In this case, there has been no Wal-Mart to convince them, and Ben & Jerry's, that paragon of hip capitalism, still shuns organic production for their milk supply. Food & Water met with them to explain how such a move could transform Vermont dairy farming and drastically improve the environment of this rural state, consistent with the company's own progressive activism.

In response, Ben Cohen offered Colby a job in their public relations department, and then any paraphernalia he wanted, such as the oxymoronic hippie ties. And just as Cohen said that going organic was off the table, Vermont's progressives considered Ben & Jerry's to be off limits for criticism. Food & Water lost some of their donors -- for trying to protect our food and water!

When Colby was invited to speak at an anti-nuclear rally in Brattleboro, he was told not to mention Ben & Jerry's, who funded the event -- and Ben and Jerry themselves were going to speak (and not to be challenged). After promising not to so that he could get on stage, Colby jumped right into the issue by opening a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby and intoning "Doing bad and feeling good about it" between spoonfuls. His microphone was quickly cut off. But the fire was lit, and people flocked around to learn more, ignoring the next speaker.

And Ben & Jerry's still makes no effort to make their actual product better for the planet, absolving their own contributions to dirty agriculture by supporting progressive causes that might not cause any trouble for their own bottom line.

((( )))
Enron, also, bought off environmentalists. Many of them came to its defense with kind words about their progressive energy programs as the company was revealed to be a scam from top to bottom. Unfortunately, industrial wind power continues apace, with coal giant Florida Power & Light, nuclear giant General Electric, oil giant British Petroleum, and budding natural gas mogul T. Boone Pickens, among many others of their ilk, leading the way. And the corporate environmentalists readily follow.

Progressives everywhere resort to cutting the microphone rather than hear any word against Big Wind. "Oh, it could be so much worse," they say. Except it will be so much worse, because progressives and environmentalists are letting so much pass as they "work with" developers hungry to open up our remaining undeveloped rural and wild areas. They are supporting more development, not less, more consumption, not less.

They sport hippie ties in a twisted evocation (for it is also a cautionary reminder) of what they once might have been. They are smug in their self-censorship, their self-repression, their "success", their hypocrisy. They are scared, because they don't know who they are anymore.

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

Political Judaism

Questions: If political Islam is bad, why is political Yahedut, or Zionism, good? How can one be encouraged but the other damned? How can anyone be surprised that the triumph of one leads to the reaction of the other?

Tribalism is tribalism.

human rights

It's not destruction if it's "green"?

Robert Redford writes at Huffington Post ("Utah Lands Win a Reprieve at the Dawn of a Cleaner, Greener Future") that "a federal court acted last weekend to protect more than 110,000 acres of stunning Utah wilderness that otherwise would have been sold by the outgoing Bush administration to the dirty fuels industry."

He says that "What inspired me most was when Judge Urbina wrote that the 'development of domestic energy resources ... is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment.' Finally, the greater good has prevailed over the profit of the few."

Then it starts to fall apart:

Destroying our natural heritage will do nothing to solve our energy challenges for the long-term, which to me, is even more reason to act. I will continue to keep a vigilant watch over these lands, while working to build a cleaner, greener energy foundation for America. With endless untapped reserves of efficiency, solar, and wind power, we do not need to choose between affordable electricity and one-of-a-kind landscapes. We can have both.

Because meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management plans to establish coordination offices to expedite the permitting of renewable energy projects and associated transmission facilities on BLM-managed lands. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for the development of 10,000 MW of non-hydropower renewable energy projects on public lands by 2015.

How did Mr. Redford think those reserves of wind and solar would be tapped to a degree that would do something that might appear "to solve our energy challenges for the long-term"? How much of our natural heritage is he ready to see destroyed for large-scale solar and wind power development?

(10,000 MW of installed wind capacity requires at least 500,000 acres, or almost 800 square miles, plus heavy-duty roads (opening the land to more development and its flora and fauna to more abuse) and transmission infrastructure). 10,000 MW of actual production -- on average (wind turbines actually produce at or above their average rate, which is 20-30% of their installed capacity, only 40% of the time) -- would require 4 times that amount of land, to produce nominally only about 2% of the country's electricity, which 40,000 MW of wind would be nullified by 1 year of average growth in demand. Obviously, big wind is a dead end that could easily be obviated by the less photographically iconic options of efficiency and conservation.)

"The development of domestic energy resources ... is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment."

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

How many divisions has the Pope?

Uri Avnery, of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, writes (click the title of this post for the complete essay):

NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population and to impose a total blockade, which caused the death of hundreds of thousands.

Some time before that, a similar crime was committed in England. The Churchill gang hid among the population of London, misusing the millions of citizens as a human shield. The Germans were compelled to send their Luftwaffe and reluctantly reduce the city to ruins. They called it the Blitz.

This is the description that would now appear in the history books – if the Germans had won the war.

Absurd? No more than the daily descriptions in our media, which are being repeated ad nauseam: the Hamas terrorists use the inhabitants of Gaza as “hostages” and exploit the women and children as “human shields”, they leave us no alternative but to carry out massive bombardments, in which, to our deep sorrow, thousands of women, children and unarmed men are killed and injured. ...

War – every war – is the realm of lies. Whether called propaganda or psychological warfare, everybody accepts that it is right to lie for one’s country. Anyone who speaks the truth runs the risk of being branded a traitor.

The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself. And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification reality, you can no longer make rational decisions. ...

People with moral insanity cannot really understand the motives of normal people and must guess their reactions. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin sneered. “How many divisions have people of conscience?” Ehud Barak may well be asking.

As it turns out, they do have some. Not numerous. Not very quick to react. Not very strong and organized. But at a certain moment, when the atrocities overflow and masses of protesters come together, that can decide a war.

The failure to grasp the nature of Hamas has caused a failure to grasp the predictable results. Not only is Israel unable to win the war, Hamas cannot lose it.

Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.

If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.

What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.

In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.

Hamas made me do it!

No matter how one feels about Hamas, the elected representatives of Palestine, resorting to racism and propaganda -- as in this shockingly vile cartoon printed, e.g., in Sunday's Valley News (Vt./N.H.) -- is uncalled for. It demeans not its intended target, but the artist and those who cheer him on.

Even Hamas's critics can not deny that it is Israel, not Hamas, who is killing the women and children of Israel.

Hamas has not sponsored a suicide attack since 2005.

[[[ ]]]
The death toll at the time of this writing is about 905 Gazans dead (275 of them children) and 13 Israelis (3 of them not soldiers, and 4 of the 10 soldiers killed by "friendly fire") since the invasion began 2 weeks ago.

[[[ ]]]
If Hamas did not exist, Israel would have had to invent it to justify their continuing race war.

Indeed, they helped Hamas to oppose Yasser Arafat's PLO and the threat of peace.

human rights

George Monbiot trashes animal rights movement

A few weeks ago, George Monbiot, the bold defender of all that is middle-class left, wrote a very good article about the monstrously vague Protection from Harassment Act in the U.K., which can be invoked to outlaw pretty much any protest as "alarming" or "distressing". He writes how the security forces, as well as industry and developers, use it for just that purpose. As he notes,

With the exception of animal rights protests, these campaigns in the UK have been overwhelmingly peaceful.

And so The Guardian continues its own campaign against the animals rights movement, tarring an overwhelmingly peaceful group with the "distressing" tactics of a very few. Monbiot and the rest have cheered on the very harassment of animal rights protesters that he now decries against causes he agrees with. Whoops!

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

New York Times portraying big wind more truthfully?

Today's New York Times included to pictures with a wind turbine. The illustration by Guido Scarabottolo accompanying "The End of the Financial World as We Know It" by Michael Lewis and David Einhorn in the Week in Review section includes an industrial wind turbine as part of the system of financial shenanigans of the past decades:



And in the front news section, the continuation of the front-page article on Obama's intended aid to workers includes a photo by Larry W. Smith for the European Pressphoto Agency of a wind turbine in Kansas, clearly establishing it as an industrial construction and suggesting its futility in the shadow of established truck and car transport:



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

A problem with truth: Wind Works Long Island

Promoters of an industrial wind energy plant off the shore of Jones Beach, Long Island, New York, attempted some time ago to debunk a few of the findings of Eric Rosenbloom's paper "A Problem With Wind Power". It is a weak effort, but since it is occasionally cited as definitive, it requires refutation. Below is the entire piece, with answers inserted below each "distortion" and "truth" pair.

The Distortion
"No power plants have been shutdown in other countries with wind turbines because wind is an intermittent resource.

The Truth
Both Germany and Sweden have shut down nuclear reactors with the intent of supplying the loss of capacity with wind power (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8058171/)&(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4536203.stm)

Intent is very different from what actually happens. In fact, Germany has essentially halted their planned shutdowns of nuclear plants and will now extend their operations. Germany is planning 26 new coal plants, 8 of them on a fast track for 2010. Sweden has not in fact shut down any nuclear plant and is now planning to build new ones.

The Distortion
If you build wind turbines you need backup generation

The Truth
Electric grid systems can handle a certain percent of wind power without needing additional generation. The 140MW able to be produced by the wind park is within these parameters. The grid is already designed to compensate for loss-of-load contingencies when large power plant units suddenly become unavailable.

Because a system can handle contingencies doesn't mean that's the way it should be operated normally. Furthermore, as the system is already designed to handle dropouts of major suppliers, then it would have to be expanded to also be able to handle sudden drops in production from a wind energy plant. In other words, most of the time the system can indeed already deal with large fluctuations of wind production, but it then also has to still be able to handle the loss of a major supplier or two -- so more excess capacity is needed to ensure reliability.

The Distortion
Because other electric generators need to be running at lower efficiencies in ‘spinning reserve’ they will actually pollute more than the avoided emissions from the wind turbines

The Truth
The fact is: electrical generating units are constantly varying their outputs, starting and stopping, as the demand for electricity rises and falls throughout the day. When not running or burning less fuel, they pollute less!

This "distortion" isn't even in Rosenbloom's paper. Nevertheless, the fact is that running thermal plants at a lower output than their ideal, running them in spinning reserve, ramping them up and down, and starting and stopping them -- all of this increases carbon emissions per unit of electricity supplied. It is like stop-and-go city versus smooth highway driving. Wind -- intermittent, highly variable, nondispatchable -- on the system would increase all of these inefficient uses. Whether or not that inefficiency would cancel the theoretical savings of taking wind energy into the system is easily determined by records of fuel use. And so far, there is no such evidence of less fuel use per kilowatt-hour provided on any grid. In fact, coal use in the U.K. and the U.S. has increased in recent years relative to electricity use.

The Distortion
Other countries are reducing their subsidies for wind power

The Truth
This is what is supposed to happen with any industry as it reaches a sustainable point in any market. E.g. Spain began to reduce subsidies in 2002 and their wind generating capacity still grew 33% in the last two years. (in the USA fossil fuels still receive very large subsides despite overwhelming market penetration)

Development in Germany has slowed dramatically with a decline in subsidies, and development in the U.S. has gone up and down with the existence of the Production Tax Credit. Spain continues to fund its wind industry with future carbon credits sold to others. The fact is, the wind industry lobbies hard for subsidies and could not thrive without them. In the U.S., compared with 44 cents for coal, $1.59 for nuclear, and 25 cents for natural gas (the three main sources of electricity in the U.S.), wind received $23.37 per megawatt-hour of its electricity production in 2007, according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (click here). And that's only federal (not state or local) financial (not legislative) intervention and ignores the 5-year double-declining-balance accelerated depreciation that is available to wind.

The Distortion
The German Energy Agency report issued in February 2005 said increasing wind generation would raise costs by 3.7 times

The Truth
Completely false. We encourage you to visit the agency's website and read their report to see for yourself that Mr. Rosenbloom’s claim was uniformed [sic] (http://www.deutsche-energie-agentur.de). The true additional cost per household is 12 euro a year.

Obviously, this means that projected increases of electricity costs would be 3.7 times more with a large wind program than without. Dena's page for the publication states that "[t]he expansion of wind energy will cost private households between 0.39 and 0.49 euro cents per kWh in 2015". That's up to 25 euros for 5,000 MWh. Table 8 in the English-language summary shows the different costs between expanding wind and not from 2007 to 2015 under three pricing scenarios: While the cost increase from 2007 to 2015 for private households ("nonprivileged consumers") is 1.9-2.8 times more with wind, for industry ("privileged consumers") it is 3.8 to 5 times more.

Rosenbloom's paper also puts this economics issue in the context of several studies having concluded that the goal of CO₂ mitigation can be achieved much more cheaply by other means. The Long Island [N.Y.] Power Authority rejected the project in Long Island Sound for simple economic reasons.

The Distortion
The US Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the use of monopole towers as a means to mitigate bird deaths

The Truth
Completely False, the document Mr.Rosenbloom cites, actually promotes the use of monopoles to mitigate bird deaths. It appears he didn’t read his own citation. (http://www.fws.gov/habitatconservation/wind.pdf, pg.6 statement #1)

The FWS recommendation to use monopole towers (on page 3 of the document) is simply an acknowledgement that lattice towers provide roosts. It does not suggest that using a monopole tower makes it safe to operate a wind turbine in flyways and feeding and gathering areas. While the industry points to the tower design to absolve itself, the problem remains the giant blades, both directly and by the turbulence behind then, not to mention habitat fragmentation, degradation, and destruction.

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

La nueva Conquista: Parques eólicos en Oaxaca

En el mes de noviembre de 2008 se llevo a cabo el Encuentro Voces y resistencias para comentar las diversas problemáticas que atraviesan los pueblos de Oaxaca por los proyectos neoliberales y capitalistas que se imponen sin consentimiento en la zona. El encuentro tuvo cita en Juchitan Oaxaca cabecera municipal de esta región donde el aire atrajo no un proyecto ambiental como podría pensarse de la energía eolica, sino de la ambición mezquina de interés capitalistas (como la familia del fallecido Secretario de Gobernación Camilo Murino.

Estas empresas en su mayoría europeas están aprovechándose de la pésima situación en que viven los campesinos debido a las malas políticas de los gobernantes, para vender o rentar su tierra por poco dinero y rompiendo así el tejido social comunitario, debido a la migración y la desigualdad económica.

La forma en que se han llevado a cabo esta nueva conquista ocupa la mentira y el engaño hacia los ejidatarios y campesinos. Los beneficios de la tecnología ocupada no es para el goce colectivo sino de unos cuantos.

Cuando pasó el recorrido de la Otra Campaña, eran menos de 10 transformadores eolicos introducidos por la Comisión Federal de Electricidad, dos anos mas tarde son cientos de transformadores cerca de centros poblacionales, así como zonas agrícolas y de pastizal.

Pero los problemas no paran ahí, por todo Oaxaca, así como en todo el país, la política del gobierno es un diseño de la política global neoliberal, que quiere despojar a los campesinos de su tierra y convertirlos en los miserables de las ciudades. No comprende ni admite las formas y tradiciones democráticas de las comunidades indígenas, no busca el beneficio.

Lunes 29 de diciembre de 2008

Wind energy multimillionaires: "immoral, unjust, scandalous"

This is a translation, as near as I can make it out, from an interview with Roberto García, Secretary general of Unións Agrarias, in the Dec. 26 El Pais (click the title of this post for the Spanish original).

"It is immoral, unjust, scandalous, that in making multimillionaires from wind energy development, the Xunta [Galicia, Spain] takes its percentage of business, the contractors talk of how much they are going to reinvest in replacing Ence in the area and creating who knows how many companies, and the only ones left with nothing are the landowners of Chousas and Leiras, where the wind blows at a certain speed, where they will install the windmills."

"Isn't that standard for industry?"

"They have expropriated our land by emergency and we have no other choice than to go to trial on a question that should have been part of that standard. Our farms are not valued for the toxos, only for the value of the air passing through at a certain speed."

wind power, wind energy, human rights

Against Utilitarianism

There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never beof anyuse whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the epxression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and disgusting like hos own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.

--Theophilé Gautier, May 1834

Efficiency 3 times cheaper than wind, payback in 1 year

Gary Parke, chief executive of energy services firm Evolve Energy, writes in Evolve Energy (Dec. 10, 2008):

Energy efficiency has often been seen as the ugly sister to renewable energy, but there is nothing ugly or unglamorous about saving money, reducing energy costs and lowering emissions. While the clean tech sector tends to focus on investment in renewables as a means of cutting carbon, there is growing evidence that investing in "negawatts", a term coined to describe a megawatt of power avoided or saved from use on the energy grid, will provide a better return.

According to Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, energy efficiency is “the largest, least expensive, most benign, most quickly deployable, least visible, least understood, and most neglected way to provide energy services”. While that may seem a strong statement, there is widespread agreement that increasing energy efficiency can bring both financial and environmental benefits.

The opportunity for energy efficiency investment is immense – the International Energy Agency calls it the "fifth fuel" after oil, coal, gas and nuclear. According to a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute, Curbing Global Energy Demand Growth: The Energy Productivity Opportunity, increased energy efficiency is the biggest and most cost-effective lever to attack greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It could deliver up to half of the reductions of global GHG required to cap the long-term concentration of GHG in the atmosphere to 450 to 550 parts per million – a level many experts believe will be necessary to prevent the mean temperature increasing by more than two degrees centigrade, leading to "dangerous" levels of climate change. ...

Perhaps even more importantly, there is the opportunity to boost energy productivity using existing technologies, in a way that pays for itself and frees up resources for investment or consumption elsewhere. McKinsey’s analysis suggests that annual investment of $170bn (£115bn) would result in a cut in energy demand of between 20 and 24 per cent by 2020 and a CO2 saving of 7.9 billion tonnes. McKinsey calculated that, at an oil price of $50 a barrel, $170bn annual investment would generate more than $900 billion in annual energy savings, a 17 per cent annual rate of return. This would reduce global oil consumption by 21m barrels a day, from today’s level of 86 million barrels a day.

While many energy efficiency market drivers are similar to those in the renewable energy market, Evolve Energy has found first hand that investing in energy efficiency delivers greater carbon reductions and financial return than investing in renewables.

We recently conducted some research on the return on investment for a typical 4GW wind turbine in comparison to energy efficiency measures implemented for a large supermarket brand. We found that to generate one megawatt of wind energy costs about £1m, while to save one megawatt through energy efficiency measures costs £350,000. For companies investing in wind technologies it could take 20 years to achieve payback, whereas it would only take just over one year through energy efficiency. On a wider environmental point, businesses can reduce up to three times the amount of CO2 for every £1 invested. This comparison shows that energy efficiency can provide a greater economic and environmental reward.

Note that per capita energy use in the U.S. is about twice that in the U.K.; there is obviously a huge potential for conservation as well as efficiency.

Denmark: no new wind energy since 2003

The world's leader in wind "penetration" -- with wind turbines producing energy equal to around 20% of the country's electricity use -- Denmark also leads in running up against the practical limits of erecting giant wind turbines to supply the grid. As Kent Hawkins has calculated, with the help of Vic Mason, who works in Denmark and has access to Danish-language reports, the actual penetration limit for wind, which is intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable -- all the very opposite of the grid's needs -- appears to be 6%, the rest being dumped into larger markets in Germany and the rest of Scandinavia.

In any case, Denmark has not added new wind energy capacity since 2003:

Year:	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Installed wind capacity (MW):	2,489	2,892	3,117	3,125	3,129	3,136	3,125

wind power, wind energy

Enron provided the model for buying off environmentalists

There are two kinds of environmentalist groups: activists and collaborators. They both have important roles to play. The collaborators, however, often get too cozy with the industrialists they mean to influence. Many of them, such as Conservation International, World Wildlife Fund, The Sierra Club, and The Nature Conservancy, also accept large donations from the companies they "work" with. They become, instead of the pragmatic arm of the environmentalist movement and corporate watchdogs, the "green" outreach office of those companies, industry's "useful idiots".

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that several of these groups have signed on with the new industry-initiated American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) (and its $3 million first-year budget). AWWI's board includes representatives from GE, BP, Iberdrola, Enxco, and NRG Systems, and its web site is registered by Wayne Walker, a consultant who works for Horizon Wind Energy and the American Wind Energy Association. Other industry members are AES Wind Generation, Babcock & Brown, Clipper Windpower, Eon, Horizon, Nordic Windpower, Renewable Energy Systems, and Vestas.

The goal, as seems apparent from Wayne Walker's work, is to come up with ways that industrial wind developers can "mitigate" their impact on wildlife, i.e., give money to cooperative environmentalist groups in return for letting them get on with industrializing the last of our rural and wild places.

It also comes as no surprise to learn that Enron, who created the modern wind industry (inventing "green tags", for example, to sell the energy twice), provided the model for AWWI. Christopher Morris wrote in August 2002, for the anti-welfare Capital Research Center:

... Enron executives worked closely with the Clinton administration to secure support for the Kyoto Protocol because the company believed the treaty could generate a financial windfall. An internal Enron memo circulated immediately after the 1997 Kyoto meeting (and first reported by the Washington Post) shows the company believed the treaty “would do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.”

So Enron philanthropy lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to reduce so-called global warming. From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars ($990,000) to the Nature Conservancy, whose “Climate Change” project promotes global warming theories.

The company did more than simply provide financial backing for groups supporting ratification of the Kyoto treaty:

• In 1997 Enron CEO Kenneth Lay was named a member of President Clinton’s “Council on Sustainable Development,” joining Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, EPA administrator Carol Browner, and Fred Krupp, executive director of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The task force also included representatives from the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

• The National Environmental Trust, a public relations organization heavily funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to promote environmental policies, worked with Ken Lay to place pro-Kyoto editorials under his signature in the Houston Chronicle, the Austin-American Statesman, and the Salt Lake City Tribune.

• Enron built ties to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). EDF lauded Enron’s “Enron Earth Smart Power,” a 39-megawatt wind farm in Southern California that was intended to offer consumers “environment-friendly” electricity. Daniel Kirshner, an EDF senior economic analyst, commended Enron’s achievement, saying, “The Environmental Defense Fund hopes that buying environmentally-friendly electricity will soon be as popular as recycling is now.”

• Representatives from Enron participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the Progressive Policy Institute to “discuss the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and politically viable strategies for tackling the larger threat of climate change.” Other panelists included Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and members of the Natural Resources Defense Council and EDF.

Enron’s activities were not limited to advancing the environmental agenda; the company also used its environmental friends to advance its business agenda. Enron solicited support from green groups for its own business ventures, such as the 1997 purchase of Portland General Electric. Enron urged Natural Resources Defense Council and a coalition of Oregon environmental groups to sign a memorandum of agreement endorsing the purchase, despite objections by the state Public Utility Commission. Portland’s Willamette Week newspaper reported that the groups subsequently received Enron grants totaling nearly $500,000. Among the beneficiaries: Northwest Environmental Advocates ($30,000), Salmon Watch ($15,000), and American Rivers ($5,000). . . .

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Bloomberg Wind Energy Index plummets

The Bloomberg Wind Energy Index is a multiple weighted index of the leading windpower stocks in the world, with a higher emphasis placed on the companies with the highest exposure to the wind industry and the key suppliers to the wind industry. The index is rebalanced quarterly.

Here is a chart of its value since its inception:

wind power, wind energy

U.S. oil use down 12.8%

According to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data (click the title of this post), the consumption of oil in September 2008 was 533,880,000 barrels, which was 12.8% lower than the oil used in September 2007, 612,438,000 barrels. It is the lowest September consumption since 1994.

Now how hard was that?

That drop represents, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 33,779,940 fewer metric tons of CO2 generated. That's equivalent to taking 6,186,802 cars off the road, or burning 176,397 fewer railcar loads of coal, or eliminating the carbon emissions from the electricity for 4,474,164 homes.

Again, how hard was that? Why don't even environmental groups talk about conservation instead of promoting the construction of new power plants and transmission lines in wild and rural places?

energy, environment, environmentalism

Jeffrey St. Clair on today's environmental groups

'They [the large environmental groups] are shackled by their source of money, shackled by their relationship to the Democratic Party, shackled by the fact that their boards are controlled by corporate executives. ... The environment isn’t even talked about in political campaigns much anymore … aside from these airy homilies about global warming, or green jobs to try and reinvigorate the economy. ... It’s a tragic waste that hundreds of millions each year are going to these large organizations. What it means is that people are now left to fend for themselves, to mount their own resistance. ...'

Q: In the early 1990s, some journalists were talking about the limits to growth. As the ecological crises have gotten more dire and potentially more fatal to the human species, it seems like that’s not such a discussion any more in the mainstream.

'What they would like is sort of the Gore approach, which is painless optimism. And that’s not the way it is. These issues, down at the grassroots, are life and death issues. They’re not being reported, they’re not part of policy. There aren’t any easy solutions, there aren’t fifty easy ways you can save the planet. That’s what they want, but that’s not going to do it. And you can’t shop your way to a better planet.

'Difficult choices are going to have to be made in terms of growth, in terms of energy. I mean, California is essentially out of water. What are you going to do, are you going to spend billions of dollars to build a peripheral canal that won’t even solve your problem? Meanwhile, the ecology of your state is crashing. ...

'We’re not going to get our way out of this energy crisis as long as the energy system remains centralized. It’s just not going to happen. ... If you democratize energy production you can begin to enact the kind of fundamental changes we need. ... But if the question is the future of the atmosphere of the planet, I don’t think that’s going to get you very far. ... So frankly, I don’t think there are any solutions, because I think the climate crisis and the extinction crisis are beyond our control. Thirty years ago, if we’d made radically different choices, perhaps. There’s an element of hubris in this [that recalls] British philosopher David Ehrenfeld’s view of technology and the environment, the arrogance of humanism. The idea that a technological solution can stall or reverse climate change is almost the same kind of hubris that got us into this mess. ...

'What it’s going to require, even to feel good about yourself, as the planet careens toward a kind of climate Armageddon, is a radical downscaling. What we’re being offered is a kind of short-selling of the environment. The solutions from Gore, the solutions of many of the mainstream environmental groups, are a kind of profit-taking as the planet hurtles toward a radical reshaping of the global ecosystem which I think spells doom at the end of the line for mammalian species. That’s what these solutions are about. They’re about how to make money, how to capitalize off the anxiety and panic and guilt and hopelessness that many people feel about the state of the environment. ...'

Q: Will the economic crisis result in foundation money drying up for the big environmental groups and for smaller ones?

'Well, that is a positive. These major foundations have been like cloning shops for environmental groups. They control their agenda, they want all of them to look the same, behave the same, be utterly predictable, and dependent upon their money. Once you get on the foundation dole, it’s like becoming like a meth addict. A lot of them, certainly the smaller groups, will lose their funding first, and that’s going to be a very good thing. The weaning process is going to hurt for a while. But when they emerge from that, they’re going to be much better off. That’s what I’m interested in—the varieties of resistance to industrial capitalism and neoliberalism, the forces that are exploiting the planet. The first mission of the foundations was to take critiques of capitalism off the table. Hopefully in the future, you’re going to be seeing, five to ten years from now, much more indigenous radical and unpredictable, organic environmental groups that will end up being much more effective, much more healing for people.

'You want it to be fun, like Edward Abbey says… of all the movements out there, the environmental movement should probably be the most fun. You can see what you’re fighting for, the kind of direct actions and protests that you can engage in are much more exhilarating than a lot of other issues. And it has to be fun, otherwise you’re going to burn out. One of the things the foundations have done is turn it into a bureaucracy. It’s easier to control that way.'

Q: Do you see the environmental justice movement as holding hope for a shift toward that kind of activism?

'Yeah, I do. Environmental justice became a sort of passing interest of the foundations in the ‘90s. But the big money never came. It was the same old white Eastern elites pimping off of their issues, with the exception of Greenpeace, which probably was the only big environmental group that had a commitment on environmental justice issues in the Mississippi Delta Region, in Cancer Alley. They actually went there and listened to people living in the chemical soup bowl. And they put their expertise at direct action, how to train people in Cancer Alley, how to shut down a chemical plant for a day with a protest.

'The other groups remained in DC, they put out their White Papers, and when interest eroded in environmental justice they moved on to something else. I think people will be happy to extract themselves from the likes of the Environmental Defense Fund and the NRDC.'

Published in Terrain Magazine, Fall/Winter 2008

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Help the Obama transition team understand the negative aspects of industrial wind

Click here (change.gov/page/s/energyenviro) for a form to submit your thoughts to the Obama-Biden Energy and Environment Policy Team.

The Obama team needs to know that it is no longer excusable to pretend that large-scale wind is a meaningful part of our energy and environmental goals. Wind energy is intermittent, variable, and nondispatchable, so it can not replace other more reliable sources without correspondingly large-scale storage methods which don't yet exist and which would add to its cost and further reduce the amount of usable energy extracted. Wind power's ability to meaningfully reduce even slightly the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions is thus very limited. The money should be spent much more effectively than this.

Furthermore, big wind is largely incompatible with other environmental interests. It requires giant (400-500 feet high) moving machines spread out over a great expanse (at least 50 acres per rated megawatt), thus severely altering the rural and wild places where it is built, destroying and fragmenting habitat (with heavy-duty roads and high-voltage transmission lines as well) and presenting a direct threat to birds and bats (not just from the blades, but also from the low-pressure vortices created behind the blades). See www.wind-watch.org/documents/category/wildlife/.

Where there are human neighbors, the adverse effects on health from the intrusive rhythmic noise and shadow flicker are increasingly documented (see www.wind-watch.org/documents/category/health/. These people are the victims of the unquestioning support of industrial wind developers by politicians and, sadly, many environmentalists and progressives.

In short, industrial wind fails on many levels. Its potential benefits are at best minimal, and its adverse impacts to the landscape, animals, and people are many and only increase. Large-scale wind is a destructive boondoggle. It should be strictly regulated and certainly not encouraged.

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

Weighing Wind Energy

Meg Mitchell, Forest Supervisor, Green Mountain National Forest, writes:

The Green Mountain National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement [DEIS] for the proposed Deerfield Wind Project in September and we will accept public comment until November 28. The DEIS helps us make a final decision on approval or disapproval of the project by analyzing the effects of an expansion of wind energy development onto National Forest lands, next to the existing wind turbines in Searsburg.

Energy development such as oil and gas exploration and extraction, pipelines, and electricity transmission lines have all been permitted on portions of National Forest lands across the country. However, wind energy development is new to us. Like other activities, this development would have costs and benefits we look at closely before permitting.

As I move toward a final decision, I consider the feedback, comments, and suggestions from all the people who are interested in this project. At recent public meetings, participants requested additional information about spill prevention, restoration and facility removal plans integrated into any action alternative. We also have more work to do on mitigation and monitoring plans for each alternative. In making my final decision I will take all of this into account, consult with other agencies, and step back and look at the larger picture.

This is very likely one of the better places for wind energy in the State (and why there are already wind towers there). But this does not mean we should proceed with this particular project now. This proposal is for is a small wind energy facility. Yet, even with careful design, there are local environmental effects that can’t be avoided. The chief concern appears to be the potential impact to bear habitat. Bears, like people, react differently to uncertainty or something new in their environment. Some prefer being conservative and staying away from development, while others are more comfortable with unknowns and can adapt. Scientists do not agree on all aspects of impacts to bears, but most agree limiting the amount of human access to the area is important.

I am also searching for other options for those concerned with preserving wildlife habitat and supporting alternative energy development. One possibility is ensuring additional quality habitat on nearby lands is managed for bears. Because these bears range over large distances, yet depend on a variety of habitat, this could be one way to offset some risks. Such lands could be privately owned or managed by a nongovernmental group, Town or agency. This could also be a tool for future alternative energy projects that have broad benefits, and localized effects.

As the Forest Supervisor, I also must consider the health of the Green Mountain National Forest and the habitat it provides. We must change our energy consumption patterns by combining energy conservation with the development of cleaner sources to protect Forests, our health and all forms of life that depend on ecosystems and the services they provide. Even without the encouragement of the Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005, I feel a responsibility to be part of the solution.

I also need to know the full opinion of the Public Service Board; they are well versed in these matters and as the final Public Service Board hearings proceed, I’ll be listening for their opinion. It’s the right way to proceed since we both share jurisdiction and responsibilities for this project. I look forward to more feedback on our DEIS. As the final information and opinions flow in, I know this is an important decision and it will weigh heavily on my mind.

More information:
Kristi Ponozzo
Public Affairs Officer
Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forest
802-747-6760
kmponozzo@fs.fed.us
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/greenmountain/index.htm

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

Wisconsin "model" wind ordinance disappears from state web site

Here's an interesting bit of information from the press release announcing the unanimous approval of a large wind ordinance specifying strict noise limits and 1/2-mile setbacks:

An open records request from the town of Union study committee revealed that no medical or scientific data was used to set the 50 decibel noise limits or the 1000 foot setback the Public Service Commission recommends. Questions about the origins and authors of the State's draft model wind ordinance remain largely unanswered. The State has since pulled the draft model ordinance from its website and the Public Service Commission has been unable or unwilling to say who pulled the ordinance from the website and why. This draft model ordinance was used to site the turbines in Fond du Lac county where people are experiencing trouble with turbine related noise, shadow flicker and other negative impacts.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms

Gas and oil interests now openly in charge of American Wind Energy Association

Whose interests are being served? As many people have long pointed out, the industrial wind industry is not an alternative to but a symptom of big energy. . . .

On Nov. 14, the the industry trade group American Wind Energy Association announced a new chief executive officer (CEO) to replace Randall Swisher after nearly 20 years: Denise Bode, who will take over in January.

Denise Bode has been the CEO of natural gas lobby American Clean Skies Foundation. Before that, she was president of Independent Petroleum Association of America and legal counsel to former Senator David Boren of Oklahoma, who sits on the board of Conoco Phillips.

She was appointed to George W. Bush's Energy Transition Advisory Team, chaired by Dick Cheney, and has lectured at the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. When she ran for the Republican nomination in Oklahoma for U.S. Congress in 2006, she received almost $200,000 from oil and gas interests, the 6th highest amount in the entire country that year.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Graphic artists against big wind

Comeek artist Lynda Barry talks to City Beat in Los Angeles (via National Wind Watch):

The work I’m doing the most of to save the environment is getting the word out about the serious downsides of industrial scale wind turbines. If the goal of using renewable energy resources is to reduce CO2 emissions, industrial-scale wind turbines don’t do this. Because they need fossil-fuel burning power plants to function, and because those power plants are never powered up or down in response to the wind being there or not, the same amount of CO2 is going into the air. This conclusion was reached by the National Academy of Sciences and also a Norwegian study on Danish wind power. You will get more electricity to sell from wind turbines, but no real reduction in current CO2 levels. It’s the only renewable resource that keeps us completely dependent on power companies, fossil fuels (usually coal), and the grid. It’s the only one that doesn’t cause a loss of customers for the power companies. All the other renewable energy choices cause customer loss. Also, industrial wind is used as the justification for more and bigger transmission lines and use of eminent domain. Bigger and more transmission lines allow greater use of fossil-fueled power plants. So industrial- scale wind energy is just another way to say “MORE! MORE! MORE!” Most people don’t realize that unless the wind is blowing at a certain speed – at least 10 miles an hour – the turbines can use more energy than they produce. Most people don’t understand how much electricity it takes to run a machine that is 40 to 50 stories tall. Most people never even ask how the power is getting to and from the turbine. They don’t know about the thousands of miles of cables.

Apart from all this, consider the impact on flying creatures. Turbines are placed in migration corridors because that’s where the wind is. It’s maddening to me that wind developers are getting away with this, siting them in wildlife refuges, national parks, and other protected areas.

By the way, on-site wind turbines of the smaller scale are great. Small, on-site power generation is the best alternative, and it’s the one the power companies are going to fight the hardest against.

My favorite renewable resource option is manure digesters – for both animal and human manure. It’s the only renewable energy option that actually cleans up other environmental problems as it creates electricity. It’s also the least sexy of the choices and one no one wants to talk about.

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

Whitewave Foods Recognized For Renewable Energy Investment

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has honored the owner of Silk Soymilk, Horizon Organic, International Delight, and Land O'Lakes, Whitewave Foods, for its green power purchases:

"To date, the company's total wind energy purchases are the equivalent of eliminating more than 450 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions annually."

The problem is that they have not been purchasing green power, only renewable energy credits. They are donating money to wind power companies, but they are not buying actual energy from them.

Whitewave is using the same electricity as their neighbors. It is not eliminating any greenhouse gas emissions. It is not even adding wind energy to the grid to be used by others, because that is already paid for.

It is only padding the portfolios of wind energy investors. For which service it gets an award from the EPA.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

"Oceans of fluids"

An ad for Frontier Pro Services in the October 2008 issue of North American Windpower:

Running a wind farm is a massive task.
Scores of turbines, thousands of tons of metal and fiberglass, oceans of fluids. How does anyone keep up with it! ...

Protecting your assets is the most important job you have, and Frontier Pro Services is here to help.

Gearbox servicing
Fluids sampling
Oil and hydraulics changes
Blade repairs
Scheduled maintenance

Frontier Pro Servics
They keep your moneymakers spinning.

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

U.S. coal use for electricity, 2002-2007

Receipts of Coal Delivered for the Electric Power Industry -- Electric Power Annual, Energy Information Association, January 21, 2009

2002:   869,929,000 tons
2003:   949,191,000
2004:   965,057,000
2005:   986,213,000
2006: 1,043,681,000
2007: 1,016,236,000

Direct Use and Retail Sales of Electricity, Total Electric Industry -- Electric Power Annual, Energy Information Association, January 21, 2009

2002: 3,631,650,307 MWh
2003: 3,662,029,012
2004: 3,715,949,485
2005: 3,810,984,044
2006: 3,816,845,452
2007: 3,923,814,234

Coal delivered per electricity used (ratio of above figures)

2002: 0.2395410 ton/MWh
2003: 0.2591981
2004: 0.2597067
2005: 0.2587817
2006: 0.2734407
2007: 0.2589919

That doesn't look like less coal being burned because of increasing wind capacity (from 4,275 MW at the beginning of 2002 to 11,603 MW at the end of 2006), as claimed by the wind energy industry. In fact, the trend appears to be more coal burned per unit of electricity, a phenomenon seen in the U.K. as well, even as coal's share of electricity production is decreasing:

   GWh from coal--Total GWh--Proportion from coal
2002:  1,933,130  3,858,452  0.5010118
2003:  1,973,737  3,883,185  0.5082779
2004:  1,978,301  3,970,555  0.4982429
2005:  2,012,873  4,055,423  0.4963411
2006:  1,990,511  4,064,702  0.4897065
2007:  2,016,456  4,156,745  0.4851046

Wind on the grid may be having the exact opposite effect that its promoters claim.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Election endorsements

Vt. Governor: Anthony Pollina

Vt. Lieutenant Governor: Ben Mitchell

Vt. State Representative (Hartland–West Windsor): John Bartholomew

U.S. Representative (Vt.): Peter Welch