Build more: Use more

How do we persuade people to drive less—an environmental necessity—while also encouraging them to revive our staggering economy by buying new cars? The popular answer—switch to hybrids—leaves the fundamental problem unaddressed. Increasing the fuel efficiency of a car is mathematically indistinguishable from lowering the price of its fuel; it’s just fiddling with the other side of the equation. If doubling the cost of gas gives drivers an environmentally valuable incentive to drive less—the recent oil-price spike pushed down consumption and vehicle miles travelled, stimulated investment in renewable energy, increased public transit ridership, and killed the Hummer—then doubling the efficiency of cars makes that incentive disappear. Getting more miles to the gallon is of no benefit to the environment if it leads to an increase in driving—and the response of drivers to decreases in the cost of driving is to drive more. Increases in fuel efficiency could be bad for the environment unless they’re accompanied by powerful disincentives that force drivers to find alternatives to hundred-mile commutes. And a national carbon policy, if it’s to have a real impact, will almost certainly need to bring American fuel prices back to at least where they were at their peak in the summer of 2008. Electric cars are not the panacea they are sometimes claimed to be, not only because the electricity they run on has to be generated somewhere but also because making driving less expensive does nothing to discourage people from sprawling across the face of the planet, promoting forms of development that are inherently and catastrophically wasteful.

--David Owen, "Economy vs. environment", The New Yorker, Mar 30, 2009

So the more electricity that is produced without burning those fossil fuels, the less fossil fuel will be burned, putting less greenhouse-creating goop in the air and therefore easing (or at least not exacerbating) global warming. Right?

No. Wrong.

Or at least doubtful.

Unless the expansion of wind, solar, and other renewable power sources is accompanied by some mechanism to reduce the demand for - and therefore the production of - electricity from coal and oil.

The reason, according to many experts (and not refuted by any) is that the human demand - or at least the American human demand - for electricity is effectively infinite. The more that is produced, the more that will be consumed, as our technological and innovative (and somewhat hedonistic) society creates more electronic gadgets. ...

There is, of course, another way to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by power generation: use less power. That does not require slower economic growth, as demonstrated in one state - this one.

--Jon Margolis, "The wind and the warmth", Vermont New Guy, Apr 2, 2009

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

More confessions: Wind is not an energy source

In a report prepared for NC WARN and released today, economist John Blackburn and attorney John Runkle state ("North Carolina’s Energy Future", footnotes to Tables 1-6):

Renewables are treated as a demand reduction rather than as capacity addition.

The authors' intention is to show that with modest efficiency improvements and expansion of renewables (primarily wind), Duke Energy and Progress Energy do not need to build any new coal or nuclear plants and can even retire existing ones.

Their calculations appear to ignore, however, that average wind generation values hide its highly variable and intermittent character. Utilities have to plan for the worst-case scenario, and with wind, that's about one-third of the time, when generation from wind is virtually nil.

It would actually be better for these authors' goals to leave the wind out. Because if wind is added, the utility has to add capacity to provide for the times when the wind is not producing (i.e., not reducing demand).

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Pickens: "I don't want to replace natural gas with wind"

From "Confessions of energy legends: wind power technically, economically inefficient -- can't really replace natural gas in electricity sector" by Tom Stacy, reporting on a "town meeting" in Ohio:

When asked what electricity generation fuel they envisioned for load balancing once the NG has been diverted to the transportation sector (a pillar of the Pickens Plan), Boone responded: "I don't want to replace natural gas with wind ... I would say that you use natural gas for power generation and a transportation fuel ... natural gas will last for 20 to 65 years. Then you're going to have to get on the battery." Not a positive word for wind.

The follow-up comment from AEP's [American Electric Power] Michael Morris was even more damning for the fading fame of the towering turbine: "Today wind is electrically inefficient and economically inefficient but it won't always be. We'll crack that equation -- Thank you."

Important confessions by two of the biggest promoters of wind energy: The Pickens Plan will not free up any natural gas for transportation; and wind is not ready to play a part in our energy supply.

Wind is a stalking horse -- for what? For Pickens, it's obvious: expanded consumption of natural gas. For AEP, it's probably to expand and upgrade transmission. (And with all that new very expensive transmission in place, most of the time being embarrassingly underutilized by wind, they'll just have to build a new nuclear or coal plant on it to make it pay.)

A final note -- even with efficient and economically and environmentally feasible storage, wind remains a diffuse resource. The fact remains that it requires huge machines over huge areas to collect a significant amount of it. Even if it were to work some day far in the future, it would remain an economic and environmental fiasco.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Vermont wind companies inflate emissions displacement by hundreds

First Wind/UPC:
"The Sheffield wind farm [40 MW] is projected to produce 115,000,000 kilowatt hours of electric energy annually [33% c.f.]. ... Based on data recently published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database (E-GRID), traditional Upstate New York generation sources producing an equivalent annual amount of electric energy would emit Greenhouse Gases (GHG) consisting of nearly 52,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and 50 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx)."

Kingdom Community Wind Farm (Ira):
"A wind farm the size being evaluated [42 MW] holds the potential to meet the annual electrical needs of approximately 15,000 average Vermont households ... On average, the American Wind Energy Association has estimated that each megawatt of wind capacity displaces 1,800 tons of CO2 per year given the current mix of generation fuels, indicating that on average a 42 megawatt KCW facility would displace over 75,000 tons of CO2 per year."

It is notable that neither of these companies uses emissions figures from Vermont in describing the effect on emissions of their proposed Vermont wind energy facilities. Leaving aside for now the optimistic projection of production (the existing Searsburg facility has an output of only 21% of its capacity, not 33%), how much emissions are released by the generation of 115,000 MWh of electricity in Vermont?

According to the Energy Information Administration, U.S. Dept. of Energy, in its State Electricity Profiles 2006, Vermont releases 3 pounds of CO2 per MWh generated, 0.2 pound NOx, and no SO2.

So 115,000 MWh of electricity generated in Vermont releases 172.5 tons of CO2, 11.5 tons of NOx, and no SO2.

That's a lot less potential displacement than 52,000 or 75,000 tons of CO2. These companies are exaggerating the theoretic effect by 300 to 400 times!

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Greenpeace needs nuclear

As quoted in a March 17 Guardian (U.K.) story, Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace's energy solutions unit: "We've always said that nuclear power will undermine renewable energy and will damage the UK's efforts to tackle climate change."

This shows how Greenpeace themselves have undermined their anti-nuclear stand by also taking up climate change as issue number 1.

Do they want green energy or carbon-free energy? Right now, you can't have both, because we use far too much energy to rely on diffuse, intermittent, highly variable, and nondispatchable renewables such as wind (whose green credentials, furthermore, are highly questionable).

While we work to develop good new sources and to clean up the way we use existing sources, the best we can do is simply cut down on our use.

But perhaps Greenpeace knows exactly what it is doing in calling for more energy construction. They live by membership donations, driven by facing down a few select environmental crimes. A push for new nuclear power plants is exactly what they need to keep the member dollars pouring in.

And that's what they'll get by forcing the government to choose between renewables and nuclear.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Social taboo to question leaders

Allegra Stratton writes in today's Guardian (U.K.):

Opposition to wind farms should become as socially unacceptable as failing to wear a seatbelt, Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, has said. Speaking at a screening in London of the climate change documentary The Age of Stupid, Miliband said the government needed to be stronger in facing down local opposition to wind farms. He said: “The government needs to be saying, ‘It is socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area — like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing’.”

We have always been at war against climate change.

The government's faith in the wind industry's sales brochures is bad enough. If they listened to people who have actually examined wind energy's record, they would not be in the hole they have dug for themselves. But like any sociopath, they blame the very people who are trying to save them, who, perhaps foolishly, have thought that an injection of reality into the debate is in the interest of all but in time have learned that the issue of wind power has and wants nothing to do with reality but only wishful thinking.

It is government's habit to let itself be bought and to persuade itself that it is serving the public good. And when the public doesn't buy it, it claims to be serving a "higher" good, such as spreading democracy (by squelching it at home!), otherwise saving the planet, or simply preventing something "even worse". Thus the government places itself amongst the angels and those who question it in the slimepits of hell. And democracy is dead. By the government's own definition, it is above dispute and no longer open to discussion with those who would tear down all that the government deems good and worthy, that is, the furthering of the interests of those who bought it.

Or, more simply, here's another idiot unable to defend his position with rational argument so instead using his political power to force it on people instead of letting democracy work. Who is harmed? The people (and the landscape and wildlife). Who benefits? One specific industry.

And the argument that it is necessary to save the planet from climate change? Please. Wind turbines require a huge industrial base, destroy huge swaths of countryside and mountaintops, and require continuous thermal-powered backup. They add to the problem!

Well, that's politics. A politics that has lost not just its bearing but its legitimacy.

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

Zero emissions?!

On March 11, Elliot Burg, Vermont Assistant Attorney General, announced a call for accurate emissions advertising. This was made in reponse to a request by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group to examine "zero emissions" claims by Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which is up for relicensing.

The attorney general's office concluded that "while greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear generation of electricity are negligible, such emissions do occur when uranium is mined, processed and transported".

Entergy agreed to revise the wording of its ads.

We agree with the attorney general that "All participants in the public debate on climate change policy should ensure that factual statements about carbon emissions clearly and truthfully specify what the emissions claims refer to".

Therefore, we submit two examples of misleading claims similar to Entergy's.

From the "Environmental Benefits" section of the Sheffield Wind (First Wind/UPC) web site:

The Sheffield wind farm is projected to produce 115,000,000 kilowatt hours of electric energy annually ... without air or water pollution and with no greenhouse gases, a leading cause of global warming. Wind power doesn’t pollute: Wind farms create zero air or water pollution.

From "Environmental Benefits" section of the Vermont Community Wind Farm (Per White-Hansen and Joan Warshaw) web site:

Creating power without greenhouse emissions: Power produced from Wind is clean and does not tax the environment with fossil fuel emissions from other energy sources such as coal and oil. Wind Power = Zero Emissions. [This formula is repeated farther down the page.]

Not only their manufacture and construction (each turbine includes roughly 200 tons of steel and petroleum-derived composites, shipped from around the world; it must be anchored in several hundred yards of concrete and rebar; clearing the site and constructing heavy-duty roads and new transmission lines also contribute carbon emissions), continuing maintenance (including regular changes of the 200 gallons of oil in each turbine) and repair (blade and gearbox failures are frequent) and eventual decommissioning cause the release of greenhouse gases.

In addition, wind can not operate without support from more reliable and dispatchable sources on the grid, that is, the turbines do not operate without carbon-emitting back-up, which may therefore be used more often or at lower efficiency. A program for expanding industrial wind is also a program for expanding quick-response natural gas plants (as T. Boone Pickens well understands).

Related to this, industrial-scale wind energy is often claimed to be "clean" and "green", despite not only the above facts but also the acres of clear land required around each turbine, the degradation and fragmentation of habitat (by roads and power lines as well as the turbine sites themselves), the noise, lights, and vibrations from its operation, and the direct threat to birds and bats from the massive spinning blades and new transmission lines.

If Entergy's "zero emissions" claim needs to be clarified as referring only to the actual generation of electricity, then so too do similar claims for wind (ignoring its actual effects on the grid, as described above).

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont