Umbra Fisk at Grist triumphantly parrots industry sales material

After Umbra Fisk at Grist Magazine had written in January about the wonders of industrial wind power, a reader wrote to ask about actual evidence of its positive impact. Yesterday, she replied "triumphantly."

With utter disregard for her claim of triumph, the reader has replied in the comments section:

The metaphor about unreliable babysitters is not quite accurate. Wind is indeed a "flaky" power source, in that only the wind determines when it contributes power. But as a "nondispatchable" source, it does not wait to be asked. This babysitter occasionally shows up at your door whether you need her or not. [And you still can't go out, because there's no way to know when she'll just leave again.] There are reports from western Denmark that 84% of the wind-generated power was in fact not able to be used and had to be dumped.

The metaphor also makes a wrong turn about reliability with age. The wind turbine cannot become more reliable, because it still generates power only when the wind blows. (And below the ideal speed of 25-30 mph the amount of power generated falls off exponentially -- so that about two-thirds of the time wind turbines produce much less than their already low average of around 25% capacity.) Like an abused mate, it is the grid operators who must go to great lengths to better predict the whims of the wind so they have some idea when and how much the turbines will be adding power.

It is also problematic that Umbra turns to the industry lobby group AWEA for her answers about wind's real contribution. For example, she says that the U.S.'s 6,740 MW of installed wind power capacity "is expected" to generate almost 18 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005. The basis for that estimate is only the theoretical 30% capacity factor that the AWEA insists on despite the actual record being significantly lower.

According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2002, wind and solar together generated only 0.17% of the electricity used in the U.S., less than 5 TW-h. Almost all of that is wind, so from the average installed capacity between the end of 2001 and the end of 2002 (according to the AWEA) of 4,480 MW that represents an output of only 12.7% of capacity.

The people of Lamar, Colorado, insist that the winds are not puny. Nobody has suggested otherwise. Nor are the turbines. It is the usable power produced by them that is puny. The apt metaphor is Aesop's trembling mountain that gives birth to a mouse. At the AWEA's imagined 30% capacity factor, the 12,000-acre 162-MW Lamar facility would produce the equivalent of 3% of Colorado's electricity use. Realistically, however, it may provide less than half of that. And it would produce at that low average rate or better only a third of the time, times that would only rarely correspond to actual need.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

The land of the free and equal

A question to the "Etiquette at Work" column, published in today's Boston Globe, asks:

My husband just came home from a business dinner attended by approximately 20 people. The occasion involved people from two companies dining with a speaker who'll be addressing both companies tomorrow. Here's the issue: Does a suit jacket always stay on, or can it come off during dinner? My husband had never seen this done before, but the principal owners in his company took off their jackets during the meal and others followed suit. Is this a new custom?

And an article in the New York Times about Costco as the anti-Walmart (by paying a decent wage and providing decent health insurance) quoted Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher: "It's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

These people seem to have forgotten something basic here: We, the people. We are not here to serve business or government -- they exist to serve us. What kind of society is being created when an individual is nervous about leaving his jacket on through dinner when his boss takes off his? What kind of society is possible when profits to shareholders are more valued than providing a respectable livelihood for one's employees, sharing with them some of the fruit of their own labors?

The great are great only because we are on our knees. -- Max Stirner

categories:  anarchism

Coal lobby supports wind power

It is often assumed that industrial wind power is a threat to the coal and nuclear industries and that any criticism of giant wind turbines effectively supports coal and nuclear power. Criticism is often dismissed with accusations that they are paid for by coal and nuclear lobbies. But how could an industry that even its most ardent advocates project could produce only 5% of the U.S.'s electricity be a threat to the industries that will still provide as much as ever?

In fact, the nuclear lobby is riding high on the obsessive focus on carbon emissions, presenting itself as carbon free while ignoring its many other problems that remain. And the coal lobby couldn't be happier that so many people believe wind energy will clean up the air by replacing coal-generated energy. They know that wind power won't replace anything, but as long as people keep thinking it will, the focus is not on actually cleaning up the power sources we use, such as coal.

A key lobbying firm for coal plants fighting emission controls has been Bracewell & Giuliani. Their man Frank Maisano ("Director of Strategic Communications") has recently been active in Highland County, Va., on behalf of a proposed project of up to 22 2-MW turbines (each of them 400 feet tall) on the Allegheny Ridge on the border with West Virginia. He issued a press release Thursday praising its approval by the county board of supervisors.

It seems it is the wind industry and its supporters, not those who oppose industrializing wild and rural places, who are in bed with coal.

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

A Word In Your Ear

A Word In Your Ear: How & Why To Read James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, by Eric Rosenbloom, is now available in print from BookSurge Publishing for $12.99.

Here is the back cover copy:

Whether you are new to the Wake or a long familiar friend, this humane essay will guide, refresh, and delight. It has been described as "smart and readable," "an excellent Wake Primer," "everything such an introduction should be," "the best intro to the Wake I've seen," "a stunning performance and of exemplary clarity," "intelligent, courteous and serene." [See www.kirbymountain.com/WIE/reviews.html.]

Part I introduces the unique language techniques that Joyce used to create Finnegans Wake and describes some of the major themes and characters. The influence and presence of Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Egyptian mythology are described, and the importance of Dublin and Irish geography and history is emphasized with a concise overview of each.

Part II examines several short excerpts in depth and provides general descriptions and some insights to several others. The selection gives the reader a broad sampling of essential passages from throughout the book and different examples of how to read and interpret them.

Included as appendices are a whimsically short version of Finnegans Wake, thoughts about the narrator, structural insights from the order in which Joyce wrote the book, and an essay on the presence of Irish saint and goddess Brighid as elucidated by the late Clarence Sterling.

"Cut global warming by becoming vegetarian"

From a referral by Jorn Borger's Robot Wisdom (the original "weblog"), here is a summary of an article in this month's Physics World:

Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan Calvert, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas.

Writing in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.

Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. "Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he says.

This summary leaves a lot of questions, of course, but without a subscription they will have to go unanswered for now. For example, I think carbon is meant, not carbon dioxide, because the significant greenhouse gas that "livestock" emit is methane, CH₄, which in fact is much more effective in contributing to the greenhouse effect than CO₂ is.

The summary also mentions only the animals themselves. But there is also a tremendous amount of carbon emissions from the energy used to grow and harvest food for them. It requires 40 times more energy to produce a calorie of beef than a calorie of soy. Only 10% of the plant protein they eat is in the animals' flesh when it is eaten by humans, so it is a rather wasteful expenditure of energy.

Another issue is the destruction of rain forest (an area about the size of Connecticut every year) to create grazing land for beef. Trees, of course, are a crucial carbon sink. After deforesting much of the northern hemisphere, we should be restoring forests, not ravaging the southern hemisphere as well.

The environmental impact doesn't stop at carbon emissions. It takes 200 times more water to produce a pound of beef than a pound of wheat. Feedlots and slaughterhouses are responsible for more water pollution than all other industrial and household sources combined. Eighty percent of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the U.S. go to feeding animals that will be slaughtered for food. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to the animal-flesh industry.

categories:  environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Experience a lie

The western Massachusetts "Center for Ecological Technology" is organizing tours of the Searsburg wind facility (11 small 550-KW turbines, each about three-fifths the size of today's 1.5-MW turbines). The tour appears to be ultimately sponsored by the aggressively pro-industry Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

THe reason for comment is the advertisement to "Experience a wind farm that produces 14 million kilowatt-hours [14,000 MW-h] of renewable energy annually."

There was one 12-month period when Searsburg produced that much energy, but it was from July 1998 to June 1999 (14,256 MW-h). There has never been a January-December year that saw that much.

According to owner Green Mountain Power's annual reports the output was 13,605 in 1999, 12,246 in 2000, 12,135 in 2001, 11,458 in 2002, 10,828 in 2003, and 11,023 in 2004.

The average annual output of the last three years was 11,103 MW-h, representing less than 21% of capacity. The tour hype overstates the amount by more than a quarter.

In fact, 14,000 MW-h works out to what the industry always claims to be the output of a wind facility: one-third of capacity. It's pure shamelessness that they continue to sell Searsburg's theoretical output even after seven years of operation have shown it to be so much less. ANd Searsburg's low output is not unusual. Self-reports (meaning the true figures are undoubtedly lower) to the U.S. Energy Information Agency show an average output of less than 27% capacity.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Wind farm production is trade secret

Over at the Cape Cod Times, Clean Power Now's Charles Kleekamp says that one of the owners of Denmark's Nysted offshore wind power facility, Energi E2, told him that the plant had a 12-month capacity factor of 46.5%, though he doesn't say which 12 months (one assumes they're consecutive!). That is an astonishing figure (Denmark's average is below 20% of capacity), so reader Neil Good of Mashpee wrote Energi E2 to confirm the data. Erik Kjaer Soerensen, the Project Development General Manager for E2 Wind Energy, replied,

"I am afraid the requested information is of a commercial nature and therefore confidential."

Not exactly an inspiring response. Controlling information, of course, is another way of lying.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms