Low Benefit -- Huge Negative Impact (part 1)

[From a National Wind Watch flyer of the same name;  click here for part 2]

Industrial wind promoters claim their machines produce on average 30-40% of their rated capacity. For example, a 400-ft-high 2-megawatt (2,000-kilowatt) turbine assembly would produce an average of 600-800 kilowatts over a year.

The actual experience of industrial wind power in the U.S., however, as reported to the federal Energy Information Agency, is that it produces only about 25% of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.

It will produce at or above that average rate only a third of the time. It will generate nothing at all (yet draw power from the grid) another third of the time.

Because the output is highly variable and rarely correlates with demand, other sources of energy cannot be taken off line. With the extra burden of balancing the wind energy, those sources may even use more fuel (just as cars use more gas in stop-and-go city driving than in more steady highway driving).

The industry is unable to show any evidence that wind power on the grid reduces the use of other fuels.

Denmark, despite claims that wind turbines produce 20% of its electricity, has not reduced its use of other fuels because of them.

Large-scale wind power does not reduce our dependence on other fuels, does not stabilize prices, does not reduce emissions or pollution, and does not mitigate global warming.

Instead, each turbine assembly requires dozens of acres of clearance and dominates the typically rural or wild landscape where it is sited. Its extreme height, turning rotor blades, unavoidable noise and vibration, and strobe lighting night and day ensure an intrusiveness far out of proportion to its elusive contribution.

Each facility requires new transmission infrastructure and new or upgraded (strengthened, widened, and straightened) roads, further degrading the environment and fragmenting habitats.

wind power, wind energy

Save the salmon, so we can kill them!

This comment is really about wind energy, but the admirable call from environmentalists (click the title of this post for the news story) to remove four dams from the Lower Snake River in Idaho on behalf of the salmon becomes quite a bit less noble when it is justified by the economic and recreational boons of killing their restored numbers.

Now about the groups' desire to replace that 3,000 MW of hydropower with wind. Just in nameplate capacity, that would require giant wind turbines covering at least 150,000 acres. Since they would generally go up in otherwise undeveloped areas, that "solution" is simply trading one major ecological impact with another.

Like large-scale hydropower, big wind is green in theory but far from it in practice. Unlike hydro, however, wind isn't able to provide reliable energy that can replace other sources. Hydropower varies seasonally, but the wind varies from minute to minute, with huge fluctuations through the day.

So you're trading one negative impact for another to get less in return. Brilliant.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Eighth richest Indian

According to Forbes, The eighth richest person in India is Tulsi Tanti, "worth" $5.9 billion. His business? Wind energy. He's the founder of turbine manufacturer Suzlon.

wind power, wind energy, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

Class war

But you can't call it class war, because they think they've won. They think it is a war of the "lower" classes -- on whose shoulders the "upper" classes stand -- against their privilege, which it is. But beyond that, it is a war against class. Remember the idea of equality? Justice?

From 1990 to 2004, the average income for 90% of American households increased just 2% (adjusted for inflation). For the top 1%, however, it went up 57%. It went up 85% among the top 0.1% and 112% among the top 0.01%.

In 2004, the average income for the "lower" 90% of households was $28,355. It was $940,441 for the top 1% and $4,506,291 for the top 0.1%.

This information was provided in today's New York Times under the headline "A New Class War: The Haves Vs. The Have Mores," about most of the top 1% feeling left behind by that 0.1%. A serious issue indeed. Just consider: if you take the top 0.1% out of the calculation, the average income of the rest of the top 1% will be well below that $940,000!

At least they -- and their newspapers -- don't have to worry about the 90% of households who are too busy struggling to keep bodies and soul together, the car running, the house heated to rise up from their knees. And just in case, if any of them did actually dare to stand up to such obvious economic injustice they would obviously be terrorists, a threat to national security. Get back to work, you!

anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Milton Friedman's economic fascism, i.e., the world we live in

On Counterpunch (click the title of this post), Greg Grandin has an excellent history of Milton Friedman's (and other patriotic Americans') efforts to help Augusto Pinochet shape his country. The essay ends:

Today, Pinochet is under house arrest for his brand of "shock therapy," and Friedman is dead. But the world they helped usher in survives, in increasingly grotesque form. What was considered extreme in Chile in 1975 has now become the norm in the US today: a society where the market defines the totality of human fulfillment, and a government that tortures in the name of freedom.

anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Reply to letter from UPC Vermont Wind

To the Editor:

Around Halloween, Leila LaRosa, the local face for UPC Vermont Wind, sent a letter to Sheffield and Sutton residents. UPC wants to erect 16 420-feet-high wind turbines, their blades each sweeping a vertical area of 1.9 acres, on ridges between Sutton and Sheffield and overlooking Crystal Lake in Barton. The letter was an attempt to refute worries about such industrialization of otherwise protected ridges and to assert that the project's value is worth the sacrifice.

"They ... ARE effective and they DO reduce our dependence on oil, gas and fossil fuels."

Effective? The only measure of success the industry presents is that they are built. They have never been able to show that wind energy on the grid actually reduces the use of other fuels. This is not surprising, because the variable, intermittent, and unpredictable wind energy only makes the rest of the grid work harder to balance it.

The letter insists that UPC will not limit access to the project area. They need to publicize the leases if anyone is to believe them. All the leases I've seen are indeed restrictive and make the landowner a caretaker to the wind company's control of the land.

The letter takes issue with the charge that miles of new roads will have to be built by saying that, yes, miles, of new roads will have to be built: 5.5 miles of them. These won't be logging tracks but heavy-duty roads that can bear 50- or 60-ton loads and accomodate 160-ft trailers. What will be the effect on the watershed? Flooding and erosion are likely. "Revegetation" is far from restoration, and in fact the roads would have to be kept usable for delivering new rotor blades and gearboxes, which fail quite frequently.

On taxpayer subsidies, The letter cites (very incorrectly) only one subsidy, the 1.9-cent per kWh production tax credit. There are also 5-year double declining accelerated depreciation and the ratepayer-supported market for renewable energy credits. In all, federal subsidies generally cover two-thirds of the developer's cost, and state subsidies may cover another 10%. Crucially, the subsidies do not require evidence of a reduction of other fuels, that is, an actual benefit to justify moving so much public money into private bank accounts.

As for the humble UPC company, who are its investors? What is their connection to the UPC Group of Italy?

On problems from low-frequency noise generated by giant wind turbines, the letter is exactly backwards. It is the denial of problems that is being challenged by the scientific community. The U.K. Noise Association and the French Academy of Medicine recommend that large wind turbines be no closer than one mile from any residence.

In addition, the audible noise will be at an unacceptable level for a rural environment. And the noise won't stop at night, when it will be carried farther.

At the same time that the letter tries to deny such negative impacts, it tries to divert attention to worse problems with other sources of energy, such as coal and nuclear. Nobody denies those serious problems. But it is a wind facility being proposed for Sheffield and Sutton. And wind energy does not reduce the use of other sources. It is not a choice between wind and something worse. Wind's negatives simply add to the negatives we already live with, and none are reduced.

UPC admonishes the people protecting their communities from a massive building project of doubtful value and obvious costs for "spreading misinformation." Again, they have it backwards. Misinformation is UPC's game.

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

Questions about wind energy

National Audubon Society President John Flicker supports carefully sited wind power facilities, because

When you look at a wind turbine, you can find the bird carcasses and count them. With a coal-fired power plant, you can't count the carcasses, but it's going to kill a lot more birds. (Wind Energy Weekly, Nov. 10, 2006)

The question is not which is less evil -- that is a straw man argument. The question is whether one obviates the other. That is, if your concern is the negative effect of coal burning on the lives of birds, does the erection of wind turbines reduce that negative effect enough to justify the negative effects of their own giant blades and roads and clearcutting?

And is the negative effect on birds from wind energy really less? Would 2,000 2-megawatt wind turbines covering 150 square miles kill fewer birds than one equivalent-output 1,000-megawatt coal plant, particularly if that plant has scrubbers to clean up its emissions? I don't defend the use of coal here, because mining and waste are also serious problems, but presumably it is primarily emissions, and their effect on climate and the environment, that concern the Audubon Society.

Even recognizing the problems of mining and waste, the question remains whether wind energy has a significant effect on the use of coal or any other fuel. In other words, does it reduce the problem? Or does it only add its own problems without reducing any other?

All claims that wind industry reduces emissions by reducing fossil fuel use are based on a false assumption that every time the wind is up, other plants can shut down. But most can't. They have to be ready for the wind's dying at any moment, so they simply turn down their electricity production but keep burning fuel.

The plants that can instantaneously switch on and off will more likely be used more not less. Normally, they are used only during a few peak periods in each day, while slower-starting plants vary with the broad curve of each day's use and large inflexible coal and nuclear plants maintain the base supply that is always needed. So when the wind rises and falls during non-peak times, only the quick-responding generators can balance it, so they must replace some of the intermediate supply. Not only must the peak generators be used all day and night instead of just an hour or two, the intermediate generators must operate more often at levels that are not efficient, with the result of increasing their emissions.

In short, large coal and nuclear plants are unaffected, and the rest of the grid has to work harder -- which means burning more fuel less efficiently -- to balance the fluctuations of wind energy production that have so little correspondence with customer demand.

That is why actual reduction of other fuels or emissions because of giant wind turbines on the grid has not been shown.

That is why industrial wind does not represent a "lesser" evil but only an additional evil. It's business as usual for big energy.

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