Comments on July North American Windpower

A friend sent us a copy of this month’s issue of the trade journal North American Windpower, and it contains a couple of items that demand comment.

On page 20, the journal’s editor, Mark del Franco, reports “Obama Addresses Climate Change”:

The plan calls on the U.S. Department of the Interior to permit enough renewables projects on public lands by 2020 to power more than 6 million homes. According to the American Wind energy Association (AWEA), such an undertaking would require the construction of more than 11,000 wind turbines assuming a 35% capacity factor and an average turbine size of 2 MW.

Del Franco does not provide a critique of that plan, so here it is.

First, 11,000 2-MW wind turbines would require 1,000,000 acres, more than 1,500 square miles, not to mention massive new power lines (the cover story of this issue is about the 8-billion-dollar, 3,600-mile transmission project that will carry wind output from west Texas to the state’s load centers in the east).

Second, 11,000 2-MW wind turbines would cost more than 40 billion dollars, two-thirds of which would be public funds to ensure the enrichment of private energy investors. And the turbines last only 10-20 years, so such a cost would be recurring.

Third, “6 million homes” in the U.S. represents about 4% of residential use, 1.5% of total electricity use, 0.6% of total energy use, and 0.2% of total CO₂ emissions. (As calculated using data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration.)

In short: Obama’s climate action plan calls for 40+ billion dollars to industrialize 1,000,000 acres of public land to (theoretically) reduce CO₂ by 0.2%. (And if consumption continues to grow? Then that figure becomes even more insignificant. And if wind, an intermittent and highly variable source, makes other plants run less efficiently, ie, emit more CO₂ per unit of electricity fed into the grid? — Whoops!)

Also in this article, del Franco calls the AWEA an environmental and conservation group. From their own web site: “AWEA is a national trade association representing wind power project developers, equipment suppliers, services providers, parts manufacturers, utilities, researchers, and others involved in the wind industry.” It should be obvious that industrial-scale energy development that requires large areas of rural and wild land stands firmly against the concerns of environmental and conservation groups.

Finally, another piece by del Franco requires a quick comment, “How Wind Can Aid In Climate Change”, page 6:

He [Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation] says scientists are also studying the link between May’s deadly Oklahoma tornadoes and climate change, but at this moment scientists do not have sufficient data to conclusively link tornado frequency and intensity to a warming planet. “The point is we are changing the climate with carbon pollution, and that is triggering unprecedented and dangerous weather conditions around the world,” he says.

Wasn’t the point, “scientists do not have sufficient data” to conclusively link weather conditions to a warming planet? Never mind. The point for such industry apologists must always be that we need to promote extensive industrial wind development in our last remaining rural and wild places to reduce human emissions of CO₂ — by, maybe, 0.2%.

OK, one more: “Campaign Combats Anti-Wind Myths”, page 8:

“The wind industry is being attacked by media-savvy and politically influential adversaries who often display a brazen disregard for factual information ...,” comments Morten Albaek, Vestas Group senior vice president.

That is, comments a media-savvy and politically influential industry flack who often displays a brazen disregard for factual information. Not to mention the absurdity of well funded full-time developers, lobbyists, and consultants painting themselves as victims as they expand their campaigns against for the most part spare-time volunteer citizens’ groups.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Wishful thinking of wind energy proponents

To the Editor, Vermont Standard [July 3, 2013]:

Kurt Staudter claims knowledge from a quarter-century of working in the electric industry, but one big fact seems to have passed him by (“Not in My Back Yard, but OK in Yours,” While We Were Sleeping, June 27). It’s been decades since the U.S. has burned any significant amount of oil for electricity. While 9/11 may have been about oil, particularly that in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. seems to have invaded and remained in Afghanistan to gain uncontested access to central Asian gas fields. Wind energy has nothing to do with oil, which is used for transport and heating, but it depends a great deal on natural gas.

As Staudter knows, the electric grid has to maintain a steady flow of power equal to demand second by second. Since wind is highly variable, it needs to be balanced by generators that can ramp quickly up or down as needed to maintain steady power. Such generators are fueled by natural gas. So wind energy, rather than moving us away from the causes of 9/11, contributes instead to the “reasons” for continuing U.S. aggression in central Asia that makes another 9/11 more, not less, likely.

Staudter must also know that operating a generating plant with frequent rapid ons and offs wastes fuel and wears down the machinery faster. Several analyses have found that combined-cycle gas turbines alone — which are more efficient and possible without the balancing needs of wind — would have no more, or would have even less, emissions than open-cycle gas turbines required to work with wind.

Finally, Staudter says wind is cheap. If that’s his “trump card,” then we should all welcome fracking, tar sands, and mountaintop-removal coal. But in fact, turning wind into electricity is not cheap. It is a diffuse source of energy, so it requires a massive sprawling infrastructure to collect any meaningful amount — in addition to the balancing generators to make it useful to the grid. The simple fact is that wind energy requires subsidies covering two-thirds of the cost (thank you, ratepayers and taxpayers) to make any profit.

At best, wind turbines represent wishful thinking. But the industrialization of wild and rural places at such great public and ecological cost makes them much worse: a symbol of waste, folly, and profiteering. In other words, business as usual.

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

Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia

A Statement for Healthcare Professionals from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, by the American Heart Association Stroke Council, Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, Council on Cardiovascular Nursing, Council on Cardiovascular Radiology and Intervention, and Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia

Stroke. Published on line July 21, 2011. doi:10.1161/STR.0b013e3182299496

Abstract

Background and Purpose — This scientific statement provides an overview of the evidence on vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia. Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia of later life are common. Definitions of vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), neuropathology, basic science and pathophysiological aspects, role of neuroimaging and vascular and other associated risk factors, and potential opportunities for prevention and treatment are reviewed. This statement serves as an overall guide for practitioners to gain a better understanding of VCI and dementia, prevention, and treatment.

Methods — Writing group members were nominated by the writing group co-chairs on the basis of their previous work in relevant topic areas and were approved by the American Heart Association Stroke Council Scientific Statement Oversight Committee, the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and the Manuscript Oversight Committee. The writing group used systematic literature reviews (primarily covering publications from 1990 to May 1, 2010), previously published guidelines, personal files, and expert opinion to summarize existing evidence, indicate gaps in current knowledge, and, when appropriate, formulate recommendations using standard American Heart Association criteria. All members of the writing group had the opportunity to comment on the recommendations and approved the final version of this document. After peer review by the American Heart Association, as well as review by the Stroke Council leadership, Council on Epidemiology and Prevention Council, and Scientific Statements Oversight Committee, the statement was approved by the American Heart Association Science Advisory and Coordinating Committee.

Results — The construct of VCI has been introduced to capture the entire spectrum of cognitive disorders associated with all forms of cerebral vascular brain injury—not solely stroke—ranging from mild cognitive impairment through fully developed dementia. Dysfunction of the neurovascular unit and mechanisms regulating cerebral blood flow are likely to be important components of the pathophysiological processes underlying VCI. Cerebral amyloid angiopathy is emerging as an important marker of risk for Alzheimer disease, microinfarction, microhemorrhage and macrohemorrhage of the brain, and VCI. The neuropathology of cognitive impairment in later life is often a mixture of Alzheimer disease and microvascular brain damage, which may overlap and synergize to heighten the risk of cognitive impairment. In this regard, magnetic resonance imaging and other neuroimaging techniques play an important role in the definition and detection of VCI and provide evidence that subcortical forms of VCI with white matter hyperintensities and small deep infarcts are common. In many cases, risk markers for VCI are the same as traditional risk factors for stroke. These risks may include but are not limited to atrial fibrillation, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and hypercholesterolemia. Furthermore, these same vascular risk factors may be risk markers for Alzheimer disease. Carotid intimal-medial thickness and arterial stiffness are emerging as markers of arterial aging and may serve as risk markers for VCI. Currently, no specific treatments for VCI have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. However, detection and control of the traditional risk factors for stroke and cardiovascular disease may be effective in the prevention of VCI, even in older people.

Conclusions — Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia are important. Understanding of VCI has evolved substantially in recent years, based on preclinical, neuropathologic, neuroimaging, physiological, and epidemiological studies. Transdisciplinary, translational, and transactional approaches are recommended to further our understanding of this entity and to better characterize its neuropsychological profile. There is a need for prospective, quantitative, clinical-pathological-neuroimaging studies to improve knowledge of the pathological basis of neuroimaging change and the complex interplay between vascular and Alzheimer disease pathologies in the evolution of clinical VCI and Alzheimer disease. Long-term vascular risk marker interventional studies beginning as early as midlife may be required to prevent or postpone the onset of VCI and Alzheimer disease. Studies of intensive reduction of vascular risk factors in high-risk groups are another important avenue of research.

Click here for full text.

[The Alzheimer's Association: Some autopsy studies show that as many as 80% of individuals with Alzheimer disease also have cardiovascular disease. Autopsies of dementia patients diagnosed with Alzheimer disease showed that 54% had coexisting pathology. The most common coexisting abnormality was previously undetected blood clots or other evidence of vascular disease.]

White House misinformation and inaction regarding greenhouse gases

Thanking Obama for his "climate action", as Paul Burns of VPIRG has asked me to do, would be like thanking him for universal health care — not only are Obama's "actions" utterly phony, they are a meaningless sideshow to distract attention of the willfully gullible from the creation of such a paranoid militarized corporatist murderous state that Obama makes Dick Cheney look like Elmer Fudd and Dick Nixon like one of the Three Stooges.

On the White House web site, the President's climate action plan includes this graphic, with the EPA cited as reference:

What's glaringly missing is any indication that the non-CO₂ greenhouse gases (GHGs) have a much greater warming effect per unit of mass emitted. For example, the EPA, despite ignoring it on one page in the same way as the White House, notes on another page the different "global warming potential" (GWP) values of a few GHGs relative to CO₂. They note that over 100 years, methane (CH₄) has a GWP of 20 and nitrous oxide (N₂O) a GWP of 300. That would appear to mean that the 9% of GHG emissions represented by methane actually has more than twice (9 × 20), and the 5% represented by nitrous oxide more than 17 times, the effect of the 84% represented by CO₂.

Moreover, the EPA notes that CO₂ persists for thousands of years in the atmosphere, whereas CH₄ persists only about 10 years and N₂O over 100 years. [Update:  “Continued global warming after CO₂ emissions stoppage”, Thomas Lukas Frölicher, Michael Winton & Jorge Louis Sarmiento, Nature Climate Change, published online 24 November 2013, doi:10.1038/nclimate2060.]

In other words, even if we were successful in drastically reducing CO₂ emissions, there would be no effect for thousands of years. If we want to more quickly reduce the effects of GHG emissions, the obvious primary target is CH₄, with at least 20 times the warming effect of CO₂ and one that lasts only 10-12 years. According to other sources, CH₄ has a 100-year GWP of 25 and a 20-year GWP of 72.

The White House graphic describes methane as coming from the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil, as well as from landfills. It neglects to mention that the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") process of releasing natural gas, which Obama strongly supports, releases a particularly large amount of methane into the air. [Update: "Study: Methane Leakage From Gas Fields Guts Climate Benefit".] And it completely ignores the methane emissions from animal agriculture, which the United Nations has calculated contributes more to global warming than all transportation. [Update:  “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States” [are probably at least twice as high as previously assumed], Scot M. Miller, Steven C. Wofsy, Anna M. Michalak, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Published online November 25, 2013, doi:10.1073/pnas.1314392110.]

Simply changing our diet away from meat and dairy would have much more effect on climate change than all of Obama's "actions".

And there are many other benefits in reducing animal agriculture:

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9% of CO₂ deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the GWP of CO₂. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for 37% of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO₂), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64% of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30% of the earth's entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33% of the global arable land used to produce feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70% of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing. [Between 25% and 30% of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere each year -- 1.6 billion tonnes -- is caused by deforestation.]

At the same time, herds cause wide-scale land degradation, with about 20% of pastures considered to be degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, eutrophication, and the degeneration of coral reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers, and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above- and below-ground water resources. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20% of all terrestrial animal biomass. Livestock's presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed to be in decline with livestock identified as a culprit.

Another obvious target is to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have come into use as refrigerants and propellants to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, such as freon). CFCs were phased out because of their destruction of the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere. They are also potent GHGs, as are HFCs. For example, HFC-134a (CF₃CFH₂) has a 100-year GWP of 1,430 and 20-year GWP of 3,830 and persists in the atmosphere only 14 years, making it, with methane, another obvious candidate for meaningful action. In fact, in 2011 the E.U. banned HFC-134a in new cars in favor of HFC-1234yf (100-year GWP of 4), with a total ban on all uses being phased in through 2017. Meanwhile the U.S. has only talked and delayed about doing the same.

Update (note):  Like his continuing delay (renewed in this latest "action") to finally approve the Keystone XL pipeline to appease Bill McKibben and his 350.org "activists", while it continues to be built nonetheless, Obama's "climate action" seems to be little more than another cynical bone thrown to them, who are just as phony, just as adept at misinformation and inaction, because 350.org also ignores all but CO₂ in the atmosphere, ensuring no reversal of anthropogenic warming – let alone environmental depredation – at all.

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism

The Myth of Sustainable Meat

By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS, New York Times, April 12, 2012

The industrial production of animal products is nasty business. From mad cow, E. coli and salmonella to soil erosion, manure runoff and pink slime, factory farming is the epitome of a broken food system.

... most people upset by factory farming have turned instead to meat, dairy and eggs from nonindustrial sources. ... They appeal to consumers not only because they reject the industrial model, but because they appear to be more in tune with natural processes.

For all the strengths of these alternatives, however, they’re ultimately a poor substitute for industrial production. Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise.

Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows. Pastured organic chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming. It requires 2 to 20 acres to raise a cow on grass. If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs). A tract of land just larger than France has been carved out of the Brazilian rain forest and turned over to grazing cattle. Nothing about this is sustainable.

Advocates of small-scale, nonindustrial alternatives say their choice is at least more natural. Again, this is a dubious claim. Many farmers who raise chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing well: fatten quickly in confinement. As a result, they can suffer painful leg injuries after several weeks of living a “natural” life pecking around a large pasture. Free-range pigs are routinely affixed with nose rings to prevent them from rooting, which is one of their most basic instincts. In essence, what we see as natural doesn’t necessarily conform to what is natural from the animals’ perspectives.

The economics of alternative animal systems are similarly problematic. Subsidies notwithstanding, the unfortunate reality of commodifying animals is that confinement pays. If the production of meat and dairy was somehow decentralized into small free-range operations, common economic sense suggests that it wouldn’t last. These businesses — no matter how virtuous in intention — would gradually seek a larger market share, cutting corners, increasing stocking density and aiming to fatten animals faster than competitors could. Barring the strictest regulations, it wouldn’t take long for production systems to scale back up to where they started.

All this said, committed advocates of alternative systems make one undeniably important point about the practice called “rotational grazing” or “holistic farming”: the soil absorbs the nutrients from the animals’ manure, allowing grass and other crops to grow without the addition of synthetic fertilizer. As Michael Pollan writes, “It is doubtful you can build a genuinely sustainable agriculture without animals to cycle nutrients.” In other words, raising animals is not only sustainable, but required.

But rotational grazing works better in theory than in practice. Consider Joel Salatin, the guru of nutrient cycling, who employs chickens to enrich his cows’ grazing lands with nutrients. His plan appears to be impressively eco-correct, until we learn that he feeds his chickens with tens of thousands of pounds a year of imported corn and soy feed. ... if a farmer isn’t growing his own feed, the nutrients going into the soil have been purloined from another, most likely industrial, farm, thereby undermining the benefits of nutrient cycling.

Finally, there is no avoiding the fact that the nutrient cycle is interrupted every time a farmer steps in and slaughters a perfectly healthy manure-generating animal, something that is done before animals live a quarter of their natural lives. When consumers break the nutrient cycle to eat animals, nutrients leave the system of rotationally grazed plots of land (though of course this happens with plant-based systems as well). They land in sewer systems and septic tanks (in the form of human waste) and in landfills and rendering plants (in the form of animal carcasses).

Farmers could avoid this waste by exploiting animals only for their manure, allowing them to live out the entirety of their lives on the farm, all the while doing their own breeding and growing of feed. But they’d better have a trust fund.

Opponents of industrialized agriculture have been declaring for over a decade that how humans produce animal products is one of the most important environmental questions we face. We need a bolder declaration. After all, it’s not how we produce animal products that ultimately matters. It’s whether we produce them at all.

Also see:  Why Allan Savory’s TED talk about how cattle can reverse global warming is dead wrong, Slate, April 22, 2013:

“There’s no such thing as a beef-eating environmentalist.”
environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism

A chapter on auxiliary verbs

Now the use of the Auxiliaries is, at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.

You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick.

For my own part, quoth my uncle Toby, I have given it up. — The Danes, an’ please your honour, quoth the corporal, who were on the left at the siege of Limerick, were all auxiliaries. — And very good ones, said my uncle Toby. — But the auxiliaries, Trim, my brother is talking about, — I conceive to be different things. —

— You do? said my father, rising up.

Chapter XLIII
My father took a single turn across the room, then sat down, and finished the chapter.

The verbs auxiliary we are concerned in here, continued my father, are, am; was; have; had; do; did; make; made; suffer; shall; should; will; would; can; could; owe; ought; used; or is wont. — And these varied with tenses, present, past, future, and conjugated with the verb see, — or with these questions added to them; — Is it? Was it? Will it be? Would it be? May it be? Might it be? And these again put negatively, Is it not? Was it not? Ought it not? — Or affirmatively, — It is; It was; It ought to be. Or chronologically, — Has it been always? Lately? How long ago? — Or hypothetically, — If it was? If it was not? What would follow? — If the French should beat the English? If the Sun go out of the Zodiac?

Now, by the right use and application of these, continued my father, in which a child’s memory should be exercised, there is no one idea can enter his brain, how barren soever, but a magazine of conceptions and conclusions may be drawn forth from it. — Didst thou ever see a white bear? cried my father, turning his head round to Trim, who stood at the back of his chair: — No, an’ please your honour, replied the corporal. — But thou couldst discourse about one, Trim, said my father, in case of need? — How is it possible, brother, quoth my uncle Toby, if the corporal never saw one? — ’Tis the fact I want, replied my father, — and the possibility of it is as follows.

A White Bear! Very well. Have I ever seen one? Might I ever have seen one? Am I ever to see one? Ought I ever to have seen one? Or can I ever see one?

Would I had seen a white bear! (for how can I imagine it?)

If I should see a white bear, what should I say? If I should never see a white bear, what then?

If I never have, can, must, or shall see a white bear alive; have I ever seen the skin of one? Did I ever see one painted? — described? Have I never dreamed of one?

Did my father, mother, uncle, aunt, brothers or sisters, ever see a white bear? What would they give? How would they behave? How would the white bear have behaved? Is he wild? Tame? Terrible? Rough? Smooth?

— Is the white bear worth seeing? —

— Is there no sin in it? —

Is it better than a Black One?

— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, Book III

How wind energy gets paid for

On his blog Energy in New Hampshire, Mike Mooiman of Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., has written an informative piece about wind energy revenues, which is excerpted below.

Wind farms get revenue from a number of sources. The first is from the sales of electricity, which could be via a power purchase agreement (PPA), such as the one the Groton operation has with NSTAR, that sets a fixed price for the price of generated electricity, or if could be by direct sales into the ISO-NE electricity pool where prices are set by supply of and demand for electricity. Prices for electricity sold into the ISO-NE pool can be highly variable over time as I noted in It Don’t Come Easy and there are considerable price swings, even over a day, as shown by the chart below which provides 5 minute electricity prices for last Thursday, June 2, 2013.

In the first quarter of 2013, the three NH wind farms earned almost $9.2 million dollars on total electricity sales of 112,084 MWh to earn an average of $82/MWh (8.2¢/kWh):

• The Lempster operation output was remarkably high, particularly for the month of January, and they are showing capacity factors for the quarter of 0.42 which is surprisingly large. The average price they received for their electricity was $77.17 and, at times, it was as high as $102.99/MWh. Clearly they have an attractive power purchase agreement with PSNH.


• After a miserable year last year, the Granite Reliable operation did much better with a first quarter capacity factor at 0.29 which is up from last year’s value of 0.15. The bulk, 83%, of their sales went to the two Vermont utilities at rates averaging $96.57/MWh. However, there were times they were selling into the ISO-NE electricity pool at rates as low as $0.66/MWh.


• The Groton Wind operation is now up and running and all their sales went to NSTAR Electric at $51.65. Their overall capacity factor for the first quarter was 0.25.

([T]he reason for the low output and capacity factor for the Granite Reliable operation in 2012 was that ISO-NE had put in place curtailment orders for several New England wind farms. This meant that they were required to reduce the amount of electricity they were delivering into the grid even if they could produce more. The curtailment orders included the Granite Reliable operation, which had to ratchet down its output to about 50% of its rated capacity of 99 MW. The reasons behind the curtailment orders appear to be reduced demand for electricity as well as grid load imbalances in certain areas. Wind-based electricity is a challenge for the electrical grid operator, ISO-NE, as electricity production from these operations is highly variable and, with the growing number of wind operations, the variability of electricity supply has increased. At the same time, the grid operator has to manage the output from fossil fuel and nuclear power plants that supply a great deal of our base load power and that cannot rapidly be turned up or down in response to varying output from wind farms. Curtailment orders for these wind farms is one way to manage the variability but that does leave the owners of these operations with unused capacity and lost revenue opportunities.)

The other source of revenue for wind farms is from sales of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) – the so-called green tags which I discussed in It Don’t Come Easy – which allow generators of renewable energy to sell the renewable energy attributes separately from the underlying electricity. The pricing for Class 1 RECs, which is the class that wind generated electricity falls into, is also variable but prices are presently high due to elevated demand. In fact, the prices are bumping up against the alternative compliance payments for the Class 1 RECs of $65/MWh. Alternative compliance payments are the fines that state-regulated utilities have to pay if they do not meet their renewable energy quotas and they set a cap on the REC market. Class 1 NH wind REC prices have risen from their lows of $15 in 2010 to their present value of about $62/MWh. Here is a link to a great article on recent Class 1 REC pricing.

Another revenue source for wind operations, albeit an indirect one, is that associated with production tax credits (PTCs) for wind generation. The PTC is a federal incentive program for the wind industry that provides producers of wind-generated electricity a tax credit of [now, for new facilities] $23.00 for every MWh [2.3¢/kWh] of produced electricity for the first 10 years of the project. I know the PTC is a tax credit and not a revenue item, but for the purposes of my analysis this week, I am including the revenue category. But to do so, I must calculate its before-tax equivalent. A tax credit of $23/MWh is equivalent to a revenue item of $35.38/MWh [3.6¢/kWh] for a company with a 35% federal tax rate.

In some cases, wind operations that sell electricity into the ISO-NE pool might receive payments for holding capacity available should demand increase and ISO-NE needs to draw on more generators. These payments can be considerable and for the Granite Reliable operation they are of the order of $151,000 per month. These are fixed payments but for the basis of my comparison, I have, on the basis of the Granite Reliable capacity payments, calculated them to be equivalent to $8.30/MWh (assuming a capacity factor of 0.25).

These four revenue items total $187/MWh, which is equivalent to $0.187/kWh. Compare this to the ~$0.08/kWh we typically pay for energy portion of our electricity bills at our homes. ... Subsidies [which we pay for in our tax bills] generated by the RECs and PTCs provide 50% or more of the revenue equivalents for these operations. [And the relatively high prices of PPAs are driven by state renewables portfolio standards (RPS’s) which create an artificial demand for such sources.]

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms