National Wind Watch cautions wind energy does not meet Bush's 2006 Agenda objectives

[press release]

Rowe, MA (February 3, 2006). National Wind Watch, Inc., an organization dedicated to providing the facts about wind energy, welcomed President Bush's call this week to become less reliant on foreign oil for America's energy needs. The organization agrees advances in technology are essential, but warns further appropriations for wind energy would be a distraction from Bush's defined energy objectives.

National Wind Watch president, David Roberson, stated, "Wind is not a reliable form of energy and, as such, cannot replace traditional modes of electricity generation. And industrial wind development will not meet the criteria outlined in Bush's 2006 Agenda," referring to the objectives of reducing fuel prices and US dependence on foreign oil. "The simple fact is wind can do little to eliminate our need for foreign oil, because less than 3% of our oil consumption is used in electricity generation," Mr. Roberson noted. He added that rural America is facing an onslaught of wind energy proposals that could result in thousands of industrial towers, many standing over 400-feet high, and thousands of miles of associated transmission lines. At best wind will deliver only small amounts of electricity at a high cost. "In the face of rising energy prices, our federal, state, and local governments are grasping at wind energy as the solution to energy independence, but wind only increases both our economic and environmental costs," Roberson said. "The mission of National Wind Watch is to help educate communities and decision makers on the realities of wind."

tags:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

"The conmen and the green professor"

No surprise here.

Today's Times (U.K.) has two articles about a company of excons setting up shop to take advantage of the free flow of wind-energy subsidies and the gullibility of people who are sure they have the answers. From "'Green' adviser takes cash for access to ministers":

An investigation by The Sunday Times has found that Professor Ian Fells, one of Britain’s foremost academic experts on energy and an adviser to the cabinet, is trading on his connections to help clients lobby government. Last week Fells negotiated a fee of £600 to broker a meeting between a reporter, posing as a businessman, and a senior civil servant. Fells said the official was writing the forthcoming energy white paper.

And from "The conmen and the green professor":

Like thousands of other modern entrepreneurs, they hoped to turn a quick profit from trading in wind power and other forms of green energy.

Labour’s push to generate 10% of Britain's energy from green sources by the end of the decade has created a boom time likened by one expert last week to the South Sea Bubble.

Nathan and Rees hoped that their new company, Pure Energy & Power, would take advantage of generous government subsidies, European grants and an eagerness by the City and banks to invest without doing proper due diligence.

For they had a dirty secret. Nathan was not the respectable lawyer with a PhD in economics that he made himself out to be. Fellow inmates at Wandsworth prison had known him as Ronnie, a serial fraudster who could not resist a con. It was in prison that he met Rees, a disgraced private detective, who was serving a seven-year sentence for attempting to plant drugs on a client’s wife.

Given their dubious backgrounds, they needed someone who could give them credibility and open the door to the corridors of power. Enter Professor Ian Fells.

The emeritus professor at Newcastle University is one of Britain’s foremost experts on green energy. ... His expertise is much sought after. He was the science adviser to the World Energy Council for 11 years until 1998 and is also an energy adviser to the European Union.

He is particularly close to senior British government officials after acting as an adviser for cabinet and select committees. This week he will be in London to advise officials engaged in rewriting the energy white paper.

Despite his many commitments, he is still available for hire.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, anarchism

Model large wind energy ordinance

A model ordinance for small wind, from Malone, New York, has been previously presented. The Malone definition of small wind energy systems is more realistic than the one reproduced here. Malone limits small wind systems to 10 kW and to tower heights of 65 feet on parcels of 1-5 acres and 100 feet on parcels over 5 acres. The Malone ordinance also requires 1500-ft setbacks for large wind energy systems if they are forced through despite the ordinance's outright ban. (Manitowoc also produced an ordinance for small wind, but it is highly restrictive because of efforts by wind company representatives on the drafting committee to sabotage the whole law-making effort.)

The Manitowoc County ordinance, which became effect May 1, is notable for its strict limitation of noise to 5 dB(A) above the ambient level at any point on neighboring property. Here are excerpts.

Large Wind Energy System Ordinance
"Large wind system" means a wind tower and turbine that has a nameplate capacity of more than 100 kilowatts or a total height of more than 170 feet, or both.

24.06. Standards

(1) Location. (a) A large wind system may only be located in areas that are zoned A3-Agriculture or PA-Prime Agricultural. (b) A wind tower may not be located within one-quarter mile of any area that is zoned C1-Conservancy or NA-Natural Area or within one-quarter mile of any state or county forest, hunting area, lake access, natural area, or park.

(2) Set Backs. The wind tower in a large wind system and each wind tower in a wind farm system must be set back:

(a) at least 1.1 times the total height of the large wind system from the property line of a participating property.

(b) at least 1,000 feet from the property line of a nonparticipating property unless the owner of the nonparticipating property grants an easement for a lesser setback. The easement must be recorded with the Register of Deeds and may not provide for a setback that is less than 1.1 times the total height of the large wind system.

(c) at least 1.1 times the total height of the large wind system or 500 feet, whichever is greater, from any public road or power line right-of-way.

(10) Lighting. A wind tower and turbine may not be artificially lighted unless such lighting is required by the Federal Aviation Administration. If lighting is required, the lighting must comply with FAA minimum requirements and, whenever possible, be at the lowest intensity allowed, avoid the use of strobe or other intermittent white lights, and use steady red lights. If more than one lighting alternative is available, the alternative that causes the least visual disturbance must be used.

(12) Appearance, Color, and Finish. The exterior surface of any visible components of a wind energy system must be a nonreflective, neutral color. Wind towers and turbines in a wind farm system that are located within one mile of each other must be of uniform design, including tower type, color, number of blades, and direction of blade rotation.

(13) Signs. No wind turbine, tower, building, or other structure associated with a wind energy system may be used to advertise or promote any product or service. No word or graphic representation, other than appropriate warning signs and owner or landowner identification, may be placed on a wind turbine, tower, building, or other structure associated with a wind energy system so as to be visible from any public road.

(14) Noise. The noise generated by the operation of a large wind energy system may not exceed the ambient noise level by more than 5 dB(A) as measured at any point on property adjacent to the parcel on which the large wind energy system is located. The noise level generated by the operation of a large wind energy system will be determined during the investigation of a noise complaint by comparing the sound level measured when the wind generator blades are rotating to the sound level measured when the wind generator blades are stopped.

(15) Flicker or Shadow Flicker. The owner of a large wind system must take such reasonable steps as are necessary to prevent, mitigate, and eliminate shadow flicker on any occupied structure on a nonparticipating property.

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

Rare earths and wind turbines: Yes, it’s a problem

Despite wind industry lobbyists and apologists asserting otherwise, rare earth metals, particularly neodymium, are indeed extensively used in wind turbine magnets. (And then there’s lithium for the batteries in electric vehicles and grid storage facilities.*)

‘Permanent magnet machines feature higher efficiencies than machines with excitation windings (absence of field winding losses), less weight and the advantage of having no slip-rings and brushes. Machines above kilowatt range (and most below) employ high-specific energy density PM material, preferably of neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B).’ —Wind Energy Systems for Electric Power Generation, by Manfred Stiebler, Springer, 2008

‘The data suggest that, with the possible exception of rare-earth elements, there should not be a shortage of the principal materials required for electricity generation from wind energy. ... Sintered ceramic magnets and rare-earth magnets are the two types of permanent magnets used in wind turbines. Sintered ceramic magnets, comprising iron oxide (ferrite) and barium or strontium carbonate, have a lower cost but generate a lower energy product than do rare-earth permanent magnets comprising neodymium, iron, and boron (Nd-Fe-B). The energy-conversion efficiency of sintered Nd-Fe-B is roughly 10 times that of sintered ferrite ... As global requirements for rare-earth elements continue to grow, any sustained increase in demand for neodymium oxide from the wind resource sector would have to be met by increased supply through expansion of existing production or the development of new mines. ... An assessment of available data suggests that wind turbines that use rare earth permanent magnets comprising neodymium, iron, and boron require about 216 kg [476 lb] of neodymium per megawatt of capacity, or about 251 kg [553 lb] of neodymium oxide (Nd₂O₃) per megawatt of capacity.’ —Wind Energy in the United States and Materials Required for the Land-Based Wind Turbine Industry From 2010 Through 2030, by U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, Scientific Investigations Report 2011–5036

‘Five rare earth elements (REEs)—dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium—were found to be critical in the short term (present–2015). These five REEs are used in magnets for wind turbines and electric vehicles or phosphors in energy-efficient lighting. ... Permanent magnets (PMs) containing neodymium and dysprosium are used in wind turbine generators and electric vehicle (EV) motors. These REEs have highly valued magnetic and thermal properties. Manufacturers of both technologies are currently making decisions on future system design, trading off the performance benefits of neodymium and dysprosium against vulnerability to potential supply shortages. For example, wind turbine manufacturers are deciding among gear-driven, hybrid and direct-drive systems, with varying levels of rare earth content. ... Neodymium-iron-boron rare earth PMs are used in wind turbines and traction (i.e., propulsion) motors for EVs. ... the use of rare earth PMs in these applications is growing due to the significant performance benefits PMs provide ... Larger turbines are more likely to use rare earth PMs, which can dramatically reduce the size and weight of the generator compared to non-PM designs such as induction or synchronous generators. ... Despite their advantages, slow-speed turbines require larger PMs for a given power rating, translating into greater rare earth content. Arnold Magnetics estimates that direct-drive turbines require 600 kg [1,323 lb] of PM material per megawatt, which translates to several hundred kilograms of rare earth content per megawatt.’ — Critical Materials Strategy, by U.S. Department of Energy, December 2011

‘In the broader literature ..., concerns have been raised about future shortage of supply of neodymium, a metal belonging to the group of rare-earth elements that is increasingly employed in permanent magnets in wind turbine generators.’ —Assessing the life cycle environmental impacts of wind power: a review of present knowledge and research needs, by Anders Arvesen and Edgar G. Hertwich, 2012, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 16(8): 5994-6006.

‘A single 3MW [direct-drive] wind turbine needs ... 2 tons of rare earth elements.’ —Northwest Mining Association

Also see:

• Rare earths, minerals used in windpower technology, could fall into short supply, Windpower Engineering & Development, June 4, 2013
• Wind turbine & generator magnets, First4Magnets (‘In every wind turbine and generator you will find one or more incredibly strong magnets. Simplified, the rotating shaft of a wind turbine is connected to one or more strong magnets, usually neodymium magnets, these magnets turn relative to an assembly of coiled wire, generating voltage in the coil.’)
• Neodymium magnets in wind turbines & generators, Stanford Magnets

And:

• Clean energy's dirty little secret, The Atlantic, May 2009
• Are rare earth minerals too costly for environment?, PBS News Hour, December 14, 2009
• In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale, Daily Mail, January 26, 2011
• Rare-earth mining in China comes at a heavy cost for local villages, The Guardian, August 7, 2012
• Rare earth mining in China: the bleak social and environmental costs, The Guardian, March 20, 2014
• Rare earths: Elemental needs of the clean-energy economy, Scientific American, October 13, 2010 (‘A massive wind turbine—capable of turning the breeze into two million watts of power—has 40-meter-long blades made from fiberglass, towers 90 meters above the ground, weighs hundreds of metric tons, and fundamentally relies on roughly 300 kilograms of a soft, silvery metal known as neodymium—a so-called rare earth. This element forms the basis for the magnets used in the turbines. "Large permanent magnets make the generators feasible," explains materials scientist Alex King, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory in Iowa, which started making rare earth magnets in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. The stronger the magnets are, the more powerful the generator—and rare earth elements such as neodymium form the basis for the most powerful permanent magnets around.’)
• The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust, BBC, April 2, 2015
• The dark side of renewable energy, Earth Journalism Network, August 25, 2016
• Poison wind, Today Tonight Adelaide, March 1, 2017 (‘Clarification: This story contains details of toxic pollution associated with the use of rare earths in the production of wind turbines, cars and household electronic items. We wish to clarify that the wind industry estimates one in five turbines in South Australia use rare earths. South Australia has approximately 40 wind farms operating or seeking approval, with almost 700 individual turbines. Using the industry’s figures, South Australia has in excess of 100 turbines which use rare earths, which is a very significant number.’)
• The big eco dilemma: How rare earth metals have become a thorn in the side of the green agenda, RT, July 31, 2021
• New evidence shows massive and rapid expansion of illicit rare earths industry in Myanmar, fuelling human rights abuses, environmental destruction and funding military-linked militias, Global Witness, August 9, 2022

*Lithium: “Industry experts expect demand for lithium from U.S. car manufacturers to increase tenfold by 2030. By then, they predict the U.S. will need 300,000 metric tons of lithium per year to make green vehicles and a wealth of electronic appliances. … But environmentalists note that it would create hundreds of millions of cubic yards of rock waste, and that next to the pit would be an “acid plant” using sulfuric acid — 5,800 tons daily — to process lithium. According to an environmental impact statement from the federal Bureau of Land Management, the mine would be an open pit 2.3 miles long, a mile wide and almost 400 feet deep … the mine would use about 3,000 gallons of water per minute.” —The cost of green energy: The nation’s biggest lithium mine may be going up on a site sacred to Native Americans, NBC News, August 11, 2022

Wind farm follies

A couple of recent news items show the folly of industrial wind.

First, a press release from the Major Electricity Users' Group (MEUG) of New Zealand describes how the unreliability of wind energy is costing utilities more on the spot market and requiring more diesel backup.

"[T]he underlying driver of current high spot prices is that water is relatively short because of low seasonal inflows and wind generation has been unreliable. These are the types of renewables the government puts much faith in to achieve its 90% renewables by 2025 target, assisted by a ban on new thermal power stations.

"Yesterday the Te Apiti wind farm had peak generation of approximately 30 MW. Installed wind turbine capacity at Te Apiti is 90 MW. Average wind generation for the whole day from Te Apiti was approximately 12 MW. Just when we need as much supply as possible to cover known outages and hence put pressure on spot prices, wind has been missing.

"Once again the expensive to run government owned Whirinaki power station burning diesel entered the market yesterday. Whirinaki has been used partly for 13 days over the last 5 weeks. If government dictates more wind generation should be built by banning new cheaper gas fired base load power stations, we will need a lot more Whirinaki type plants around New Zealand. The operating costs of Whirinaki are estimated to be in excess of 30 c/kWh so using diesel plants in the future to cover dry years or windless periods will penalise all consumers of electricity.

"The evidence that relying on more renewables rather than a mix of generation types will lead to extreme spot prices and the need for inefficient peaking thermal plant is happening almost everyday with the current prolonged summer weather. Government needs to heed the signs and urgently rethink the proposed ban on thermal generation," concluded Ralph Matthes, Executive Director of the MEUG.

Second, a Mar. 27 news story from the Colorodoan describes the Platte River Power Authority (PRPA)'s maintenance problems with their 10-year-old Vestas turbines. It also shows the sham of renewable energy credits, or "green tags", as a substitute for actual energy, since they cost the PRPA one-fifth what operating their own turbines costs.

Some components on Vestas Wind Systems-manufactured wind turbines at Platte River Power Authority's Medicine Bow Wind Project are failing more than 15 years earlier than expected, according to PRPA.

Since the Medicine Bow, which is in southern Wyoming, went online in 1998, 30 major outages have occurred on the wind farm's nine turbines due to component failure, said John Bleem, PRPA division manager.

Although outages vary, Bleem said repairs have led to turbines being down for as long as three months and costing as much as $100,000 -- paid for by Vestas under its manufacturer warranty set to expire in 2011. ...

"When that warranty expires, then it's treated just like a warranty on a car where we will be responsible for the cost of repairs," Bleem said. "We are negotiating service contracts; and those costs have gone up for repairs and maintenance on the machines, and it will continue to go up with labor rates and parts costs." ...

Historically, PRPA has bolstered its renewable portfolio through the purchase of renewable energy credits, or RECs, that allow it to invest in wind farms owned by others who pay for maintenance and repairs. ...

Although PRPA receives a majority of its renewable energy through RECs, its homegrown Medicine Bow project has been far more costly despite producing less energy.

"We spend two-thirds of our renewable budget on energy and one-third on purchasing RECs," Bleem said. "About 80 percent of our portfolio supply comes from RECs, and 20 percent is coming from energy. So what that tells you is that renewable energy is much more expensive than purchasing RECs."

Nearly five to six times more expensive.

"We pay about 1 cent (per kilowatt-hour) for RECs, and we pay about 5 to 6 cents (per kilowatt-hour) for the wind energy we produce ourselves," Bleem said. ...

PRPA has been negotiating with Vestas to extend its Medicine Bow warranty beyond 2011 with some success, but the final result will likely leave the power authority paying a higher premium and more for repairs to its nine turbines. ...

"There is regular scheduled maintenance," Bleem said. "Lubrication is the major thing as well as some minor components that need replacement like filters, but the biggest concern is unscheduled outages. The unscheduled repairs are what have us concerned the most."

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms

Low Benefit — Huge Negative Impact

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 at only about 25% of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.

It will produce at or above that average rate only two-fifths (40%) of the time. It will generate nothing at all (yet draw power from the grid) a 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.

Why do utilities support them?

Given a choice, most utilities choose to avoid such an unreliable nondispatchable source. In many states, they are required to get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. In other states, they anticipate being required to do so in the near future. These requirements do not require utilities to show any benefit (e.g., in terms of emissions) from using renewables—they just need to have them on line.

In Japan, many utilities limit the amount of wind power that they will accept. In Germany, the grid managers frequently shut down the wind turbines to keep the system stable. In Denmark, most of the energy from wind turbines has to be shunted to pumped hydro facilities in Norway and Sweden.

Yet wind energy is profitable. Taxpayers cover two-thirds to three-fourths of the cost of erecting giant wind turbines. Governments require utilities to buy the energy, even though it does not effectively displace other sources.

In addition, wind companies can sell “renewable energy credits,” or “green tags,” an invention of Enron. They are thus able to sell the same energy twice.

The companies generally cut the local utilities in on some of the easy profits.

Why do communities support them?

Developers typically target poor commu­nities and make deals with individual landowners and the town boards (which are very often the same people) long before anything is made public.

With the prospect of adding substantially to the tax rolls and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs each year, it is understandable that a lot of people are reluctant to consider the negative impacts. They are willing to ignore the effects of such large machines on themselves and their neighbors. Excited by the financial promises of the wind companies, they forget that their giant machines will destroy precisely what makes their community livable.

As people find out more, support for this harmful boondoggle evaporates.

—from “SAY NO! to destroying the environment and our communities”, brochure by National Wind Watch

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

Wind: corporate "environmentalism" at its worst

To Don Fitz, editor of Synthesis/Regeneration: A Magazine of Green Social Thought and writer of "Consume Like There's No Tomorrow":

The corporate enviro embrace of industrial-scale wind energy is not an exception but fits perfectly in your critique.

As the first section of the essay "A Problem With Wind" concludes, 'wind farms constitute an increase in energy supply, not a replacement. They do not reduce the costs -- environmental, economic, and political -- of other means of energy production. If wind towers do not reduce conventional power use, then their manufacture, transport, and construction only increases the use of dirty energy. The presence of "free and green" wind power may even give people license to use more energy.'

Wind is an intermittent, highly variable, and unpredictable source, so it either requires the building of new quick-response conventionally powered plants for back-up (such as the natural gas plant that would be built to support Delaware's planned off-shore wind facility and the diesel plant that Cape Wind's parent company would build to support that facility) or elaborate and manufacturing-intense storage systems, whose added inefficiencies would seriously cut into wind's already low output.

Since Enron set up the modern wind industry in the 1990s, its only success has been a massive transfer of public funds into private bank accounts.

Wind energy also requires huge amounts of space (60 acres per megawatt, according to the American Wind Energy Association) or clearing and road building on forested mountaintops.

With very rare exceptions, it also represents NIMBY predatory capitalism at its worst. In the U.S. and similar countries, the usual targets for sprawling industrial wind facilities are poor rural communities. Wind has become part of the current strife in Oaxaca, as the governor and president assist the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola in taking the lands of ejidatarios without consent and with very poor compensation. Their interest in erecting hundreds of giant wind turbines in the western hemisphere's most important migratory bird flyway is not to provide energy (which will be all but lost by the time it gets to where it might be needed) but to generate carbon "credits" for Spain.

Not only should big wind not be a focus at the expense of conservation, it should be rejected as a destructive boondoggle.

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

Fools or Liars: the sham of "100% wind"

They are either fooling themselves or lying to their customers. Hardly a week goes by without another prominent company announcing that it is suddenly "100% wind powered." Some of the companies that make the transparently ridiculous claim are Frontier Co-op and its divisions Simply Organic and Aura Cacia ("we're 100% green powered"), Tom's of Maine ("100% of our electricity consumption is powered by wind energy"), Aveda ("manufacturing with 100% certified windpower"), and Co-op America.

Like every otherwise socially conscious event, politician, and rock band that is also playing this game, all of these companies are getting the same electricity -- and paying for it -- as before. They are not buying wind energy. They are buying "renewable energy credits" (RECs), or "green tags," in addition to their regular electricity.

RECs are only the environmental packaging of the desired power. They were invented by Enron so they could sell the same energy twice. Just as they helped enrich that famously corrupt company, RECs still provide substantial gravy on a scheme for moving public funds into private bank accounts that rivals Halliburton's purchase of the U.S. presidency to start its own wars.

The fact is that RECs are free money for the likes of General Electric (the purchaser of Enron Wind), Florida Power & Light, Babcock & Brown, J.P. Morgan Chase, British Petroleum, Shell Oil, and other energy and investment giants. Not only is three-quarters of the capital costs of a wind energy facility paid for by taxpayers, not only do governments force utilities to by it, but otherwise socially and environmentally conscious people willingly give the companies even more to offset their guilt for using electricity.

They still use all that electricity, of course, but somehow they convince themselves and their customers that buying certificates for their walls is the same as not using all that electricity, or as using someone else's electricity (which that someone else pays for and uses, too).

Like the whole idea of "offsets" that allow consumers to continue consuming the same as ever -- like medieval indulgences to allow sin and enrich the church -- RECs are an obvious fraud. But when they support wind energy, they are also irresponsible.

Not only is wind energy of doubtful value in reducing the use of other fuels, it represents a massive industrialization of rural and wild places -- a heedless destruction of landscapes, the environment, and animals' (including peoples') lives. All for very little, if any, measurable benefit.

Not only are they wrong to claim they are "wind powered," industrial wind energy is incompatible with the social and environmental values that these companies claim and otherwise commendably put into practice. Let them know:

Frontier Co-op (Simply Organic, Aura Cacia)

customercare@frontiercoop.com, 1-800-669-3275

Tom's of Maine

Susan Dewhirst, Media & Public Relations Leader
sdewhirst@tomsofmaine.com, 1-800-367-8667

Aveda

1-800-644-4831, www.aveda.com/contactus/contactus.tmpl

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

Give Conservation Another Chance

By John H. Herbert, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 1, 2007:

Since 1997, utility demand-side investments such as efficient lighting programs, heat recovery systems and advanced electric motor drives have yielded returns for consumers that far exceed the cost. Since 1997, every 3 cents worth of conservation investment by utilities has reduced demand by 1 kilowatt-hour. Electricity costs about 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, for every 3 cents worth of conservation investments, consumers avoid paying 9 cents and thus obtain a 6-cent gain. ...

Why is there no federal support? Because Washington understands the impact of programs that involve tax credits, subsidies and government expenditures that increase energy supplies rather than reducing demand. Support for these programs provides paybacks for specific industries. ...

In the 1970s, prices were high and energy security was a pressing issue as Middle East oil supplies were at times curtailed. The national government responded by promoting energy conservation on several fronts such as tax credits for domestic conservation investments, energy-use labeling of appliances and automobiles, and frank talk about the value of saving energy for economic and security reasons. ...

By 1985, U.S. imports from OPEC fell to 1.8 million barrels per day from a peak level of 6.2 million in 1977, a decline of 70 percent. ...

According to the Department of Energy's Annual Energy Review, from 1978 to 1982, energy consumption per household declined by 26 percent, and in the major consuming region in the nation, the Midwest, it declined by 32 percent.

From 1973 to 1982, industrial consumption of natural gas declined by 32 percent. The industrial sector is the major user of this most environmentally benign hydrocarbon. During the same period, fuel consumption per vehicle declined by 19 percent. ...

[W]ill we stay entrenched in the known comforts of energy dependency and legislation written by lobbyists supportive of particular groups? The smart money may be on the latter, but there will be more money and security for everybody if we give conservation another whirl.

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

Worldwatch makes erroneous carbon savings claims for wind

A July 25 press release from the Worldwatch Institute claims that "2006 Wind installations offset more than 40 million tons of CO₂":

Calculations are based on U.S. data: average capacity factor for new wind power capacity (34%, from American Wind Energy Association); average capacity factor for coal-fired power plants (72%, from North American Electric Reliability Council - NAERC); average CO₂ emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants (0.95 kg/kWh, from U.S. Energy Information Administration); and average coal-fired power plant capacity (318 megawatts, from NAERC).

There are two big flaws in Worldwatch's calculation.

First, a more objective source than the industry itself for the average capacity factor for wind energy facilities in the U.S. is the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, the capacity factor for wind was 21% in 2005. The AWEA's figures of 34% is promotional spiel and not based on actual data.

Second, there are other sources of electricity on the grid besides coal, including relatively cleaner-burning natural gas and carbon-free nuclear and hydro. At the least, the relative contributions of these sources must be considered. The renewable energy certifier Green-E, has recently proposed to value renewable energy output in terms of actual greenhouse gas emissions from the equivalent output by the rest of the grid.

By Green-E's calculations, the total greenhouse gas (not just CO₂) emissions for different grid regions range from about 1,000 lbs/MWh generated to almost 2,200 lbs/MWh, or 0.47 kg/kWh for new (since 2000) facilities in the Southwest to 0.99 kg/kWh for all non-baseload facilities in the Midwest. The average among all regions in the U.S. for wind's theoretical equivalence according to Green-E is 0.66 kg/kWh.

Then there is the complication of how a highly variable and significantly unpredictable source such as wind actually affects the grid. Obviously, it can't replace any building of new capacity, because the grid still needs to be able to supply power when the wind isn't blowing. Its ability to reduce emissions from those other sources, particularly fossil fuel–fired sources, is also problematic for several reasons.

First, extra ramping and startups cause more fuel to be burned, with more emissions, cutting into whatever savings might have been achieved by using them less. Second, plants that can't ramp quickly may be switched to "spinning standby", in which they don't generate electricity but continue to burn fuel and create steam to be ready to switch back to generation when the wind dies. And third, all sources on the grid are not equally involved in the balancing of wind's variability. Hydro is the first choice to be ramped down, with no carbon savings, and natural gas plants are the second, with much less carbon savings than if coal were reduced.

In addition, the high cost per installed megawatt of wind reflects the energy required in its manufacture, transport, and construction. It may take several years before the theoretical carbon savings from a facility's output allows it to break even.

But now look again at what Worldwatch, with its very flawed formula, claims for wind: "Already, the 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced by the new wind plants installed last year equaled more than 5 percent of the year’s growth in global emissions. If the wind market quadruples over the next nine years -- a highly plausible scenario -- wind power could be reducing global emissions growth by 20 percent in 2015."

Global carbon emissions will continue to grow substantially, but not quite so much as they might without 300,000 MW (requiring 23,000 square miles) of new industrial wind energy facilities. That's pathetic even before considering the flaws in their calculation.

With the likes of Worldwatch watching out for it, the world indeed needs to watch out.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

How the scam works

Driven by a concern for reducing carbon emissions, many governments around the world have signed on to the Kyoto Accord or otherwise established similar goals (such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the northeastern United States).

Since the goal is overall reduction, one mechanism for achieving it is a "cap & trade" market, which has been successful is reducing other pollutants. Desired limits are established, and credits are earned by facilities that reduce their emissions proportionally to below that limit. Those credits may then be sold to entities that are unable (or don't want) to achieve the limit. Their extra emissions are allowed as they are equal to extra reductions by others.

Wind energy is promoted as a means of reducing emissions, but in fact wind energy facilities are being built to generate credits to allow continuing emissions, to avoid actual reductions.

The problem is that wind power generators are assigned credits even though no emissions are reduced. As an emissions-free energy source, their value would be in reducing emissions from other sources in the grid they are part of. Then those other facilities would earn credits for fewer emissions.

The wind turbines don't reduce emissions themselves, because they did not emit carbon dioxide or anything else in the first place. So if they are newly built, then it should be the entities that are able to reduce their emissions because of the use of wind energy that earn the credits.

If wind turbines were in fact responsible for such reductions, then they do deserve credit in some form, and that is an issue only for facilities not owned by the utilities hoping to benefit.

Wind energy advocates assert that since every kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity means one kilowatt-hour not generated by other sources (which include non-CO₂ hydro and nuclear), you might as well skip the middleman and give the wind companies the credits directly and provide a helpful incentive for investment.

Thus, if a grid's generation balance is 50% coal and 14% natural gas, for every kilowatt-hour generated the wind company would get credit equivalent to the carbon emissions of half a kilowatt-hour from coal and a seventh of a kilowatt-hour from natural gas.

It would earn those credits even if the burning of coal or natural gas is not in fact reduced. And it can sell its credits to the coal and natural gas plants so that they don't have to reduce their emissions.

The wind company will say, however, that by definition -- theirs -- the emissions from coal and natural gas plants are reduced by wind energy on the grid. Yet this has never been shown to in fact be the case.

That is not surprising. Since the grid must continuously maintain the balance between energy supply and demand, highly fluctuating and intermittent wind energy (its average production is one-fourth to one-third of its rated capacity, and it generates at or above that average rate only a third of the time) adds to the challenges of that task.

Because the wind does not always blow sufficiently -- let alone on demand -- no other sources can be removed. Even when the wind is blowing well it may drop at any time, so other sources have to be kept burning to be ready to kick into generation mode. The result is little, if any, reduction of fuel use by or emissions from other sources.

Wind energy promoters also ignore the fact that -- even if wind power worked as they believe it does -- only quick-responding peak suppliers, such as no-emission hydro and low-emission natural gas plants, would be affected. Base load supplied by coal would not be affected at all.

In short, if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, the method should be to reward results, not promises. If wind works, prove it. As it is, building wind "farms" is like printing money.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

The 0.05% solution

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, less than 2.4% of our electricity is generated by burning oil. Yet it is common for the wind-power salesmen to insist that their product will make us less dependent on foreign oil. The amount of our oil consumption that goes towards generating electricity is also less than 2.4%, or less than 1% of our total energy use.

Let's say they get their way and 5% of our electricity is generated by a few hundred thousand giant windmills. That would theoretically replace (if we ignore the typical 2% annual growth in consumption) 5% of our current sources of electricity, 2.4% of which is oil. So at best it would reduce oil's share to just under 2.3%. It would similarly reduce our total use of oil -- only some of which is imported from troublesome regions such as the Middle East -- by 0.1%. It would reduce oil's share of our energy consumption by 0.05%.

Now the salesmen would say that every little bit helps, thinking we will overlook that billions of dollars spent to install hundreds of thousands of giant windmills blighting our every landscape must ultimately be a rather embarrassing way to help a very "little bit." They would also forget their original plea about foreign oil and talk about domestic coal instead.

Coal-burning plants are continually developing to be more efficient and cleaner. But the prospect of significant amounts of wind power on the grid requires keeping on the older dirtier plants -- and even building new ones -- because only they are able to respond quickly enough to the unpredictable fluctuations of wind-generated power to keep the grid supply steady. That is, large-scale wind thwarts cleaner coal.

Coal mining is a dreadful business, and the more we can move away from it the better (it is the source of over 50% of our electricity), but wind power does not move us away from it and in fact perpetuates the worst use of it.

So they move on to the fluctuations of natural gas prices, as if a few percentage points of wind power in the grid (should it ever actually get that far) would have any effect on another market altogether (only a quarter of our natural gas use is for electricity.)

So they point to the dangers of nuclear power. Denmark, which has shunned nuclear power and claims that 20% of their electricity comes from wind (in fact, it's more like 3% -- the rest is exported because it's produced when demand is already being met), now has to buy nuclear-generated power from its neighbors because their faith in wind leaves them in need so often (when there is demand, the wind is rarely blowing in proportion). In other words, wind power won't replace any nuclear power here, either, and may well make us more dependent on it.

Sad to say, wind power won't replace or even reduce any more dependable source of electricity. The only way to reduce fossil and nuclear fuel use is to reduce consumption -- not just of electricity but also the energy for heating and transport. Efficiency and conservation will take us a long way towards solving our energy problems. The depredations of the wind industry won't even point us in the right direction.

Data source: Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy. Figures are for the year 2002, in quadrillion btu:

total energy: 97.644
total electricity: 38.177
total oil: 38.401
oil used for electricity: 0.908
     (2.38% of total electricity, 0.93% of total energy)
5% less oil used for electricity: 0.863
     (2.26% of total electricity, 0.88% of total energy)

Changing Everything

Steven Gorelick writes at Counterpunch:

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the remorseless Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by ‘green’ corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors’ ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Here in Vermont, for example, a renewable energy conference last year was titled, “Creating Prosperity and Opportunity Confronting Climate Change”. The event attracted venture capitalists, asset management companies, lawyers that represent renewable energy developers, and even a “brandthropologist” offering advice on “how to evolve Brand Vermont” in light of the climate crisis. The keynote speaker was Jigar Shah, author of Creating Climate Wealth, who pumped up the assembled crowd by telling them that switching to renewables “represents the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation.” He added that government has a role in making that opportunity real: “policies that incentivize resource efficiency can mean scalable profits for businesses.” If Shah is correct, the profit motive – in less polite company it might be called ‘greed’ – will still be around in a renewable energy future.

But at least the renewable energy corporations will be far more socially responsible than their fossil fuel predecessors. Not if you ask the Zapotec communities in Mexico’s Oaxaca state, who will tell you that a renewable energy corporation can be just as ruthless as a fossil fuel one. Oaxaca is already home to 21 wind projects and 1,600 massive turbines, with more planned. While the indigenous population must live with the wind turbines on their communal lands, the electricity goes to distant urban areas and industries. Local people say they have been intimidated and deceived by the wind corporations: according to one indigenous leader, “They threaten us, they insult us, they spy on us, they block our roads. We don’t want any more wind turbines.” People have filed grievances with the government (which has actively promoted the wind projects) and have physically blocked access to development sites.

It seems that a transition to renewable energy might not be as transformative as some people hope. Or to put it more bluntly, renewable energy changes nothing about corporate capitalism.

Which brings me to the new film, This Changes Everything, based on Naomi Klein’s best-selling book and directed by her husband, Avi Lewis. I saw the film recently at a screening hosted by local climate activists and renewable energy developers, and was at first hopeful that the film would go even further than the book in, as Klein puts it, “connecting the dots between the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there.”

But by film’s end one is left with the impression that a transition from fossil fuels to renewables is pretty much all that’s needed – not only to address climate change but to transform the economy and solve all the other problems we face. As the camera tracks skyward to reveal banks of solar panels in China or soars above 450-foot tall wind turbines in Germany, the message seems to be that fully committing to these technologies will change everything. This is surprising, since Klein’s book flatly contradicts this way of thinking:

“Over the past decade,” she wrote, “many boosters of green capitalism have tried to gloss over the clashes between market logic and ecological limits by touting the wonders of green tech…. They paint a picture of a world that can function pretty much as it does now, but in which our power will come from renewable energy and all of our various gadgets and vehicles will become so much more energy-efficient that we can consume away without worrying about the impact.” Instead, she says, we need “consume less, right away. [But] Policies based on encouraging people to consume less are far more difficult for our current political class to embrace than policies that are about encouraging people to consume green. Consuming green just means substituting one power source for another, or one model of consumer goods for a more efficient one. The reason we have placed all of our eggs in the green tech and green efficiency basket is precisely because these changes are safely within market logic.”

Overall, Klein’s book is far better at “connecting the dots” than the film. The book explains how free trade treaties have led to a huge spike in emissions, and Klein argues that these agreements need to be renegotiated in ways that will curb both emissions and corporate power. Among other things, she says, “long-haul transport will need to be rationed, reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally.” She explicitly calls for “sensible relocalization” of the economy, as well as reduced consumption and “managed degrowth” in the rich countries of the North – notions likely to curdle the blood of capitalists everywhere. She endorses government incentives for local and seasonal food, as well as land management policies that discourage sprawl and encourage low-energy, local forms of agriculture.

I don’t buy everything about Klein’s arguments: they rest heavily on unquestioned assumptions about the course of ‘development’ in the global South, and focus too much on scaling up government and not enough on scaling down business. The “everything” that will change sometimes seems limited to the ideological pendulum: after decades of pointing towards the neoliberal, free-market right, she believes it must swing back to the left because climate change demands a huge expansion of government planning and support.

Nonetheless, many of the specific steps outlined in the book do have the potential to shift our economic system in important ways. Those steps, however, are given no space at all in the film. The focus is almost entirely on transitioning to renewables, which turns the film into what is essentially an informercial for industrial wind and solar.

The film starts well, debunking the notion that climate change is a product of human nature – of our innate greed and short-sightedness. Instead, Klein says, the problem lies in a “story” we’ve told ourselves for the past 400 years: that Nature is ours to tame, conquer, and extract riches from. In that way, Klein says, “Mother Nature became the mother lode.”

After a gut-wrenching segment on the environmental disaster known as the Alberta tar sands, the film centers on examples of “Blockadia” – a term coined by activists to describe local direct action against extractive industries. There is the Cree community in Alberta fighting the expansion of tar sands development; villagers in India blocking construction of a coal-fired power plant that would eliminate traditional fishing livelihoods; a community on Greece’s Halkidiki Peninsula battling their government and the police to stop an open pit gold mine that would destroy a cherished mountain; and a small-scale goat farmer in Montana joining hands with the local Cheyenne community to oppose a bevy of fossil fuel projects, including a tar sands pipeline, a shale oil project, and a new coal mine.

Klein implies that climate change underlies and connects these geographically diverse protests. But that’s partly an artifact of the examples Klein chose, and partly a misreading of the protestors’ motives: what has really driven these communities to resist is not climate change, but a deeply-felt desire to maintain their traditional way of life and to protect land that is sacred to them. A woman in Halkidiki expresses it this way: “we are one with this mountain; we won’t survive without it.” At its heart, the threat that all of these communities face doesn’t stem from fossil fuels, but from a voracious economic system that will sacrifice them and the land they cherish for the sake of profit and growth.

The choice of Halkidiki as an example actually undermines Klein’s construct, since the proposed mine has nothing directly to do with fossil fuels. It does, however, have everything to do with a global economy that runs on growth, corporate profit, and – as Greece knows only too well – debt. So it is with all the other examples in the film.

Klein’s narrative would have been derailed if she profiled the indigenous Zapotec communities of Oaxaca as a Blockadia example: they fit the bill in every respect other than the fact that it’s renewable energy corporations, not fossil fuel corporations, they are trying to block. Similarly, Klein’s argument would have suffered if she visited villagers in India who are threatened not by a coal-fired power plant, but by one of India’s regulation-free corporate enclaves known as “special economic zones”. These, too, have sparked protests and police violence against villagers: in Nandigram in West Bengal, 14 villagers were killed trying to keep their way of life from being eliminated, their lands turned into another outpost of an expanding global economy.

And while the tar sands region is undeniably an ecological disaster, it bears many similarities to the huge toxic lake on what was once pastureland in Baotou, on the edge of China’s Gobi Desert. The area is the source of nearly two-thirds of the world’s rare earth metals – used in almost every high-tech gadget (as well as in the magnets needed for electric cars and industrial wind turbines). The mine tailings and effluent from the many factories processing these metals have created an environmental disaster of truly monumental proportions: the BBC describes it as “the worst place on earth”. A significant shrinking of global consumer demand would help reduce Baotou’s toxic lake, but it’s hard to see how a shift to renewable energy would.

Too often, climate change has been used as a Trojan horse to enable corporate interests to despoil local environments or override the concerns of local communities. Klein acknowledges this in her book: by viewing climate change only on a global scale, she writes, we end up ignoring “people with attachments to particular pieces of land with very different ideas about what constitutes a ‘solution’. This chronic forgetfulness is the thread that unites so many fateful policy errors of recent years … [including] when policymakers ram through industrial-scale wind farms and sprawling… solar arrays without local participation or consent.” But this warning is conspicuously absent from the film.

Klein’s premise is that climate change is the one issue that can unite people globally for economic change, but there’s a more strategic way to look at it. What we face is not only a climate crisis but literally hundreds of potentially devastating crises: there’s the widening gap between rich and poor, islands of plastic in the oceans, depleted topsoil and groundwater, a rise in fundamentalism and terror, growing piles of toxic and nuclear waste, the gutting of local communities and economies, the erosion of democracy, the epidemic of depression, and many more. Few of these can be easily linked to climate change, but all of them can be traced back to the global economy.

This point is made by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder of Local Futures, who explains how a scaling-down of the corporate-led global economy and a strengthening of diverse, localized economies would simultaneously address all of the most serious problems we face – including climate change. For this reason, what Norberg-Hodge calls ‘big picture activism’ has the potential to unite climate change activists, small farmers, peace advocates, environmentalists, social justice groups, labor unions, indigenous rights activists, main street business owners, and many more under a single banner. If all these groups connect the dots to see the corporate-led economy as a root cause of the problems they face, it could give rise to a global movement powerful enough to halt the corporate juggernaut.

And that really could change everything.

Also see: : Oaxaca on this blog, and “Exploitation and destruction: some things to know about industrial wind power”

Ridden by the Wind

The story of industrial-scale wind energy, that is, large wind turbines connected to supply the electric grid, is the same old tale of exploitative industry, of predatory capitalism, of consumerism run riot over the concerns of nature and humanity.

Wind energy does not represent change from a consumption-driven quest of continuing dividends for the investor class. It is a change of brand, nothing more. The same people behind digging up the tar sands of Alberta, drilling in the Arctic, blasting off mountaintops for coal, fracking the ground beneath our feet for methane, mowing down the rain forests, are industrializing rural and wild landscapes with the sprawling tax shelters called wind “farms”.

Like American politics, where choice is limited to which waiter you prefer to serve you from the same Wall Street kitchen (as Huey Long described it), energy policy around the world is “all-of-the-above” with politicians pretending to position themselves against one or another source to flatter different diners. Wind energy operates entirely within that game. As the realities of large-scale wind development — the decimation of habitat, birds, bats, health of human neighbors, and more — have made it harder to sell as “green”, the industry lobby group American Wind Energy Association has strategized: “We need to create a space for the wind energy industry without defining it as an alternative to fossil fuels and coal and that goes beyond being one of many ‘renewables’” (Leadership Council and Board of Directors Meeting, Carlsbad, Calif., Nov. 2, 2011). The reality is that a consumption-based economy dependent on continued “growth” doesn't need alternatives, only more choices: all of the above, whether it works or not. And that imperative excuses all.

As Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said on June 4, 2012, at the AWEA’s annual convention in Atlanta, “Anyone standing in the way of this industry, frankly, they’re un-American.”

Because there are “important” people making a lot of money in wind, and the opening up of previously undeveloped land will enrich them well beyond wind.

Enron invented the modern wind industry by buying the support of environmental groups for large-scale “alternative” energy and all that makes it profitable: tax avoidance schemes, public grants and loan guarantees, artificial markets for “green credits”, and laws requiring its purchase. Texas Governor George W. Bush was instrumental in getting the first of these implemented at the national level on behalf of his friend Ken Lay, Enron's CEO. Texas is the USA’s leader in wind energy development, not because of some environmentalist vision, but because of the opposite: Wind energy is just one more extractive industry, and with the collaboration of Enron's environmentalists it opens up land normally off limits to such development.

The twisted rationalizations of former environmentalists to excuse the obvious adverse impacts of industrial development in the form of wind “farms” are a study in madness, akin to the military “logic” of having to destroy a village to save it. The typical refrain from the likes of the Audubon Society or Sierra Club — when they acknowledge adverse impacts at all — is that wind energy, by its theoretical and never documented reduction of carbon emissions from other electricity sources, saves more birds etc than it kills. They cling to this even as only the latter is increasingly documented and the former is increasingly clearly not. They further flaunt their moral bankruptcy by dismissing the adverse effects as a drop in the bucket compared to all the other killers of birds etc. And they join the reactionary chorus of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in presenting their plea to shovel more public money to big energy investors as one for (“American”) jobs (at any [public] cost).

At the same time, neighbors of giant wind turbines who suffer adverse health effects are derided as hysterical or mendacious. The unsurprising acoustic effects of jumbo-jet-size turbine blades cutting through vertical air spaces of almost 2 acres are simply denied. Wind's apologists reverse cause and effect and blame the victims for publicizing noise problems even as ever larger blades are increasingly documented to generate intrusive throbbing and low-frequency noise, both of which not only disturb sleep and raise stress but are increasingly tied to direct adverse physiological and psychological effects. Yet the industry fights all efforts to set even inadequate minimum distances between turbines and homes or noise limits. The CEO of Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas, Ditlev Engel, wrote to the Danish Environment Minister on June 29, 2011, against such limits: “At this point you may have asked yourself why it is that Vestas does not just make changes to the wind turbines so that they produce less noise? The simple answer is that at the moment it is not technically possible to do so.” Especially because, as he goes on to note, they are planning even larger machines.

And if human neighbors are treated with such naked contempt in the mad logic of corporate profit growth, pity the wildlife whose last refuges are invaded, divided, and destroyed by big wind (and now big solar as well) — all with the blessing of many environmental groups.

Invaded, divided, and destroyed — nineteenth-century colonialism and twentieth-century globalism are now openly revived against our own communities. Just as the Spanish company Iberdrola steals farmland from the Zapotecas of Oaxaca, and the Indian company Suzlon steals forest from the Adivasis, wind developers in more “developed” countries — in Europe, North America, Australia — prey on their rural populations, pitting paid-off landowners against their neighbors, leaving bitterness and discord, a blighted landscape, shattered peace and quiet, an industrial waste land from which the limited liability companies extract what profit they can and then move on to the next marks.

Industrial wind development may not be the worst scourge on the planet, but that does not excuse it. Big wind is not separate from the rest of exploitative and extractive industry. It is not separate from the persistent efforts of the investor class to hoard for themselves more of the public wealth. It is, however, particularly evil because it presents itself as the opposite of what it is. It is not even an alternative evil: To add insult to injury, wind is not even a good way to generate electricity for the grid: Since it does not blow according to customer demand, it still has to be 100% backed up by other sources.

Break the spell! End the charade!

See the swindle for what it is. Big wind is an enemy of the planet, its animal and plant life, its people. It is a new brand in an old game whose rules were written to ensure one winner only, and it isn't you.

—Eric Rosenbloom

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

Paul Gaynor forgets to mention mafia connection

In today’s New York Times, First Wind CEO Paul Gaynor writes:

In 2004, another G.E. colleague asked me to join UPC Wind Management as president and chief executive, and I accepted. Because another wind company had a similar name, we changed our name to First Wind in 2008.

That “other” wind company was in fact its own parent. They changed the name because its deep corruption was coming to light in Italy. That “other GE colleague” was Brian Caffyn  ...

UPC Solar: Our Management —

Mr. Caffyn ... was the founder and inaugural Chairman of UPC Wind (now First Wind). ... Mr. Caffyn is also Managing Partner of UPC Capital Partners and UPC Energy Partners. He spent the first part of his career in project financing for wind, cogeneration, hydro, solar, geothermal, waste-to-energy and biomass energy projects with GE Capital, Heller Financial, Inc., and several private companies. Mr. Caffyn personally oversaw the establishment and construction of the largest wind energy company in Italy — Italian Vento Power Corporation.

Brian Caffyn: Executive Profile & Biography, Business Week —

Mr. Caffyn is a co-founder of UPC Energy Group and UPC Group. ... He founded First Wind Energy Company in 1996 ... He founded First Wind Holdings, Inc. and served as its Chairman. He founded and served as Chairman of First Wind Energy LLC (UPC Wind Partners, LLC). ... Mr. Caffyn served as Director or Partner of ... Italian Vento Power Corporation (IVPC), Srl, ...

Caffyn, founder and former CEO and [still?] chairman, has been expunged from mention on the First Wind web site.

Italian Vento Power Corporation: Background —

The Group [Italian Vento Power Corporation] came to light in 1993 from an idea of Oreste Vigorito who formed the company IVPC Srl on behalf of UPC, an American company which operates in the wind sector in California. ...

Between 1996 and 2000, UPC forms several project companies for the installation of new Wind Farms in the Campania Region, in Sardinia and in Sicily. During this period, the Group develops 241MW. In 2005, UPC sells its assets held in Italy to the Irish group Trinergy and furthermore, sells the 50% of the original IVPC Srl (with its trade mark) to Oreste Vigorito who remains in partnership with Eurus Energy (ex Tomen) which owns the other 50%.

Trinergy, in its turn, in 2007, sells the assets previously acquired from UPC to the English group International Power [IP]. Oreste Vigorito is Managing Director of the ex IVPC Group, previously called Trinergy and now IP Maestrale, until November 2008 when he hands in his resignation.

Anti-mafia police make largest asset seizure, by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, September 14, 2010 —

Italian anti-mafia police have made their largest seizure of assets as part of an investigation into windfarm contracts in Sicily. Officers confiscated property and accounts valued at €1.5bn belonging to a businessman suspected of having links with the mafia.

Roberto Maroni, interior minister, on Tuesday accused the businessman – identified by police as Vito Nicastri and known as the island’s “lord of the winds” – of being close to a fugitive mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro.

General Antonio Mirone, of the anti-mafia police, said the seized assets included 43 companies – some with foreign participation and mostly in the solar and windpower sector – as well as about 100 plots of land, villas and warehouses, luxury cars and a catamaran. More than 60 bank accounts were frozen. ...

The renewable energy sector is under scrutiny across much of southern Italy. Some windfarms, built with official subsidies, have never functioned. ...

Mr Nicastri sold most of his windfarm projects to IVPC, a company near Naples run by Oreste Vigorito, also president of Italy’s windpower association. Mr Vigorito was also arrested last November on suspicion of fraud and later released.

Green energy tangled in web of shady deals, by Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, May 5, 2009 —

Over coffee, Mr Nicastri confirms that he has developed the "majority" of Sicily's wind farms, arranging land, financing and official permits. He then sold the projects for construction to IVPC, a company run by Oreste Vigorito, who is also president of Italy's wind power association.

Mr Nicastri says he has worked on projects resulting in construction of wind farms for International Power (IP) of the UK; Falck Renewables, the London subsidiary of Falck Group based in Milan; IVPC; and Veronagest, another Italian company.

"I am not a prostitute for everyone. There are other prostitutes for the others," Mr Nicastri laughs, mentioning other multinationals with wind assets in Sicily. ...

IP became the single largest wind farmer in Italy with its 2007 purchase of the Maestrale portfolio of mostly Italian wind farms, including five in Sicily, for €1.8bn from Trinergy, an Irish company, which had purchased them from IVPC.

Wind Power, by Joan Killough-Miller, WPI [Worcester Polytechnic Institute] Transformations, Summer 2005 —

As president and CEO of UPC Wind Management, located in Newton, Mass., Gaynor was tapped to bring the success of the parent company, UPC Group, to North America. In Europe and North Africa, UPC affiliates — including Italian Vento Power Corporation — have raised over $900 million in financing and installed some 900 utility-scale wind turbine generators (WTGs), with a total capacity of more than 635 megawatts. UPC subsidiary companies, positioned across the United States and in Toronto, are currently pursing some 2,000 megawatts in projects from Maine to Maui.

Also of note from Gaynor's NY Times piece: “Some people will always be against development, whether it’s a shopping mall, a condo project or a wind farm.” Yes, “wind farms” are “development”, no different from shopping malls and condo projects, which is why they should similarly never be allowed on the ridges, open spaces, and coasts that wind developers target.

wind power, wind energy

Wind Turbines: Offensive industrialization of human space

By Brian L. Horejsi, behavioral scientist and citizen advocate for democratic process, Calgary, Alberta; Barrie K. Gilbert, wildlife Ecologist and conservation activist, Wolfe Island, Ontario; and George Wuerthner, ecologist and writer, Richmond, Vermont; 28 July 2008:

People are barking up the wrong tree by promoting, or succumbing to, wind turbine construction regardless of where it is proposed and how many there might be. Many North Americans are infected with tunnel vision and erroneously appear to believe that turbine generated energy is somehow linked to reversing the growth in and impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

There exists NO evidence anywhere that [wind] turbine energy is substituting for or displacing fossil fuel dependence, nor is there any evidence that it is in any material way slowing the rate of GHG emission growth. [Wind] turbine energy is a non-factor in the never ending growth agenda of the fossil fuel industry, and it is not a factor in the agenda of governments promoting growth in and dependence on oil and gas consumption. There can be no better example than North America of the failure of turbine energy to slow growth in anything.

People have been hoodwinked into promoting wind turbine energy as some sort of Nirvana all while human population growth and per capita energy consumption continue to spiral upward. Turbine energy generation is fueling growth in human population and energy consumption and growth in a false “economy”. It is NOT doing the opposite.

Matching the folly of the energy replacement misunderstanding is denial by governments and promoters of the ecological impacts and health effects of turbines; the ugly reality is that they are a serious addition to the industrialization of quiet rural landscapes that people have long valued for quality of life, retirement, and recreation.

The list of environmental costs imposed on wildlife and people are now being recognized; they are far from meaningless, but they have been trivialized by turbine promoters and politicians that have systematically tilted the deck sharply in the developers favor. Environmental costs have been systematically ignored by a political and regulatory system that has corrupted individual and societal freedom and environmental integrity by relegating these values to some distant offshoot of economic growth. These costs, and those who stand by them, are treated with contempt; how dare they influence the decision to grant some landowner a chance to make a buck by carving your backyard and your space into fragments with giant chopping machines?

Wind turbines are an assault on human well being and act to degrade the human “gestalt”. Promotion of wind turbine energy is a case of serious misjudgment by those who fraudulently use green wash to promote their commercial aspirations.

Buried deep within the human genome is an innate recognition and suspicion of monsters – large objects – looming on the horizon. Wind turbines are today's versions of a threatening monster, jammed down the throats of neighbors and localities. 30% of the human cortex occupies itself with processing visual information, far more than any other sense, and nothing delivers a more intrusive and intense visual picture than the tower and blades of wind turbines. Turbines erode freedom of the human mind hour after hour, night after day, virtually forever, like a cell phone ringing incessantly and yet no one is able to turn it off. To many people this intrusion into their physical and physiological space is an insidious form of torment. The mental effect is analogous to the physical effects of a heavy smoker sitting next to you essentially for life!

We do not subscribe to the managerial/market approach to democracy or conservation with its deeply entrenched bias against human values such as an unadulterated horizon. This largely corporate view denigrates the value of freedom of the human spirit – the very pedestal upon which human dignity, character and strength are built.

In an honest and fair regulatory and political environment, local citizens and communities would bury turbine projects long before they get to the serious implementation stage. Once again, however, citizens are being forced to try to employ the very tools that degrade our quality of life and humiliate us as mere pawns of some corporate created market economy. ...

The commercial private sector is forcing itself into your life, and that constitutes a taking of your rights, benefits and well being. We propose that each person impacted by a turbine receive, as a starting point for negotiations, $3000 annually, to be paid by the developer for the loss of private and citizen rights, a very large portion of which includes peace and satisfaction, a critical part of your state of mind. We all know that is a significant part of personal, social and democratic well being. The concept is simple; if the developer and some uncaring land owners want to destroy your rights and those of other citizens, inflicting on you suffering and mental distress, the good old “free” enterprise system developers and local governments love to hide behind, comes into play; they pay to destroy part of your life. There has to be pain and resistance in the system for those who knowingly exploit the public and individual vulnerability, a now institutionalized vulnerability which commercial and private sector interests worked hard to establish.

The recent proliferation of wind turbine farms is just one more case of the serious aggression and destruction that reflects the continuing expansion of an extremist private property and commercialism agenda. This socially, legally and politically defective agenda and process is being exploited by corporations, some local residents, and local governments. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not freedom and it is not democracy; it is vandalism and oppression in the name of commercialism. As citizens we have the right, and we say the obligation, and we must marshal the courage, to reject wind turbine invasions as a corruption of our well being that is cached “in our spirit rather than in our wallet”.

[Our thanks to National Wind Watch for bringing this essay to our attention]

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

The story so far

The news editor of Renewable Energy Access returned my query about the removal of comments (that has continued since that query) that referred readers to www.aweo.org. Here is the exchange so far.

-----------------------
From: Eric Rosenbloom
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 6:14 PM

It was brought to my attention yesterday that a comment on the article at renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=23068 was removed. Suspecting the reason to be a reference to www.aweo.org, that person put up a new similar comment and I added one as well. This morning both were gone.

I don't understand this, as other comments cite other web sites, both pro- and anti-wind. (And please remember that many opponents, including myself, to large-scale wind power are in fact very supportive of many other renewable energy sources.) Could you please explain what happened?

-----------------------
From: Jesse Broehl
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 15:54:47 -0500

Eric,

We welcome spirited, opposing, anti-RE comments in our news forum but we don't welcome comments that simply refer people off-site without actually contributing to a discussion or at least summarizing their arguments. That appeared to be the case with your comments regarding "aweo.org"

Just curious, if you're against commercial wind power, what are your suggestions to our increasing energy needs? More coal, oil, nuclear, etc? Now that would be a terrifc item to post in our comment forum!

Jesse Broehl, Editor,
RenewableEnergyAccess.com News

-----------------------
From: Eric Rosenbloom
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:57:19 -0500

Fair enough. Thanks for responding. My impression of the first instance, however, was that it was simply in response to the earlier referral to 4 pro-wind sites. I notice that references to aweo.org still stand in the comments at renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=22907, perhaps because the second one is just such a counter-referral as the instance I wrote to you about. Yet that second referral, recommending 2 pro-wind sites, contains no discussion or summary of their arguments.

To your curiosity, the thing that seems obvious to me about commercial wind power is that it can not contribute significantly to our existing energy needs, let alone any increase. That is, I reject the premise of your question. Your goading options ("coal, oil, nuclear, etc") also appear to equate rejection of big wind power with rejection of all alternative energy sources. My interest in alternative energy is precisely what led me to research wind and discover its many shortcomings, for which rural communities and wild habitats are being nonetheless sacrificed.

~~~
Eric

-----------------------
From: Jesse Broehl
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 17:51:27 -0500

Eric,

I always regret following up these conversations ........ but I don't follow your position that commercial wind power doesn't contribute significantly to existing energy needs. Every MW of wind power means that amount doesn't need to be generated somewhere else, through dirty means.

One quick anecdotal example: The 420 MW proposed Cape Wind farm would displace, at full capacity, more than the entire electrical output of the fuel oil plant near buzzard's bay. You may recall that over a year ago, roughly 40,000 gallons of oil were spilled in Buzzard's Bay on their way to that power plant. I'm sure you'll pick holes in this example (the wind is intermittent, they're an "eyesore", etc) but that's a real example of wind power contributing a large amount of commercial energy in a clean fashion.

As I said, we welcome any type of comment as long as it attempts to keep people on our site and contributes in some way as either a basic comment or part of a discussion.

Have a good weekend,

Jesse Broehl, Editor,
RenewableEnergyAccess.com News

-----------------------
From: Eric Rosenbloom
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 21:03:51 -0500

Well, you brought up the example of Cape Wind, and the salient phrase is "at full capacity." You know that its average output will be at best a third of that, and that it will generate at or above that average level only about a third of the time. You also know that oil-fired plants are precisely the quick-response generators necessary to balance the fluctuations of wind plant on the system. Oil will still have to be shipped to Buzzard's Bay.

And as the Cape Wind proposal is still being reviewed, it is certainly not a "real example of wind power contributing a large amount of commercial energy in a clean fashion." I often note that wind advocates always talk about the future rather than what has already been achieved in Denmark, Germany, or Spain -- which is not very much.

~~Eric

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

Are We Missing the Big Picture on Climate Change?

So Rebecca Solnit asks in today's New York Times Magazine, going on to show that she is indeed.

She begins by describing the remains of a bird scorched to death by the Ivanpah concentrated solar power facility, which has paved over a chunk of the desert "nearly five times the size of Central Park" (3,500 acres, to produce, according to Solnit, 392 megawatts of power at full capacity).

However, it can generate at that rate only when sun position and atmospheric conditions are ideal. The developers themselves project an average output of 30% capacity, or a total annual generation of just over 1,000,000 megawatt-hours. With an average household use of 10 megawatt-hours per year, that's equivalent to the electricity use of 100,000 households, not 140,000 as Solnit writes.

Therein lie her first manipulations of the story. Besides exaggerating the projected output of the Ivanpah facility and ignoring the fact that actual output has not been reported and is almost invariably much less than projected, as well as not considering the loss of at least 3,500 acres of desert habitat (new roads and transmission corridors were also built; desert tortoises were forcibly moved out), she uses the deceptive industry practice of expressing output in terms of "homes served". Domestic use of electricity represents only around 35% of the total. So in terms of total per-capita electricity use, the projected output of the Ivanpah facility would be equivalent to only the total amount used by the people from only 35,000 households.

And it would provide electricity for none at night. And electrical energy represents less than 40% of our total energy use. So the benefit in terms of reducing the use of other fuels becomes negligible. Considering the vast resources required to build the facility and the vast amount of land required to harness the energy, this hardly seems a wise path.

[Update:  In fact, the actual generation of electricity from the Ivanpah facility is reported to and by the Department of Energy. Those data can be daunting to sift through, but more than a month ago it was reported by Pete Danko at Breaking Energy that production was running well under 40% of what was projected (ie, less than 14,000 households, one tenth Solnit's claim), and that use of "auxiliary" natural gas had to be increased by 60%.]

Some waterfowl mistake that shining sea of mirrors for a real lake, so they try to land on it. But without water to launch themselves back into the air, they’re stranded, prey for coyotes or doomed to die of thirst or hunger. Other birds fly into Ivanpah, where, dazzled by glare, they collide with the mirrors or towers. Still others are scorched by the heat and fall to their deaths.

It’s this last form of avian death that became news. In August, The Atlantic described Ivanpah “incinerating” birds in flight; The Associated Press reported that wildlife investigators saw birds “ignite,” and that birds “burned and fell” every two minutes. Ivanpah’s corporate website noted that a death every two minutes would mean 100,000 dead birds a year, while only 321 dead and injured birds had been recovered. The actual number of deaths seems to be well above the power plant’s tally and far below the number reported by The Associated Press. But birds do die there, in many ways.

A second manipulation is in presenting the figure of "only 321" recovered bird corpses without context. Every such survey calculates an estimated "true" figure from such a sampling, considering imperfect recovery and loss to predators (such as the coyotes that Solnit mentions). In other words, Solnit's low figure, which she presents as final, is in fact only the starting point towards a much higher estimate.

But who cares, Solnit implies, because she's looking at the big picture. Let's not talk about what's actually happening at the Ivanpah facility, or whether the Ivanpah facility's benefits are enough to justify its harms, because climate change is a much bigger issue. And if you insist on worrying about the birds being killed there (or the displaced tortoises), you obviously don't care about climate change.

Supporters of fossil fuel and deniers of climate change love to trade in stories like the one about Ivanpah, individual tales that make renewable energy seem counterproductive, perverse. Stories cannot so readily capture the far larger avian death toll from coal, gas and nuclear power generation. Benjamin Sovacool, an energy-policy expert, looked into the deaths of birds at wind farms (where the blades can chop them down) and concluded that per gigawatt hour, nuclear power plants kill more than twice as many birds and fossil-fuel plants kill more than 30 times as many. He noted that over the course of a year fossil-fuel plants in the United States actually kill about 24 million birds, compared to 46,000 by wind farms. His calculations factor in climate change as part of their deadly impact.

That paragraph, typical of the logic of big energy apologists, is an absolute muddle. First, "individual tales" are precisely what make the climate change story compelling. So why write off these particular victims as something less? Yes, the toll from other sources of energy is much greater — that's because they represent a much greater proportion of our energy. Non-hydro renewable energy is still — and will likely always remain, because of its intermittency and variability — in the low single percentage points. And that's just electrical energy, which, recall, is less than 40% of total energy use.

So the question is not who kills more, but what can be done to kill less. Without meaningfully reducing our use of other fuels, giant wind and solar facilities are only adding to the toll, not reducing it.

Furthermore, the factoring of climate change in the calculation of bird deaths is the flip side of citing "only 321" bird corpses. It's meaningless. It's particularly questionable in the case of nuclear power, which does not emit carbon and so does not contribute to climate change (at least by that means).

Besides being manipulative, it is also simplistic, ignoring the fact that wind turbines, for example, are a particular danger to raptors (eagles, hawks, falcons, owls), whose populations (never mind the individuals!) are already challenged by habitat loss to humans. It ignores the toll on bats. And it ignores the huge increase of human land use (so much of it for supporting livestock, which represents massive deforestation, water depletion and pollution, and emissions of methane, which has 25 times the greenhouse effect of CO₂), ie, destruction of natural habitat, obviously the greatest barrier to plant and animal survival, resilience, and adaptation to climate change.

For a while our eyes were on the photographs of oil-soaked pelicans, victims of the 2010 BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. The devastation of the region is no longer news, but scientists, who track data for long unnewsworthy swathes of time, have found that the spill has killed more than 600,000 birds. It is still killing sea turtles and bottlenose dolphins and contaminating the seafood in areas where human beings fish. ... A recent Audubon Society report on climate change concludes: “Of the 588 North American bird species Audubon studied, more than half are likely to be in trouble. Our models indicate that 314 species will lose more than 50 percent of their current climatic range by 2080. Of the 314 species at risk from global warming, 126 of them are classified as climate endangered. These birds are projected to lose more than 50 percent of their current range by 2050.”

The latter part of the preceding excerpt points to the loss of habitat as being as much a problem as climate change. And the former part is relevant to oil use, but irrelevant to the toll at Ivanpah — because oil is used for transport and heating (and lubricating wind turbines and insulating their transformers), not for generating electricity. And again, these deaths are due to a catastrophic well blowout, not to climate change.

The technology for wind and solar farms can still be improved, but they are among the few remedies we have to the biggest problem humanity has ever faced. All over the world, renewable energy is proliferating — even on the plains of West Texas, there are now wind turbines among the fracking wells. Wind and solar are not only problems but solutions to the deadliness of the fossil fuel industry, whether it’s through routine devastation, as with tar sands, or catastrophic accidents, as with the BP spill, or the sabotage of the whole planetary system by climate change.

Having raising the unquestionable harms of an oil spill, now Solnit more directly contrasts it to wind and solar, even though, again, oil is not used for electricity. Even if wind and solar were everything their promoters claim (including the eternal canard that next year's technology and planning will solve all problems so don't worry about the continuing harm from last year's which if you think should be decommissioned you must really hate the planet), they would not change anything about oil at all. Insisting that wind and solar will save us almost seems a means of shrugging off the real problems of oil use, eg, that it is our use of it that drives all that drilling. Pave the desert with solar panels, string wind turbines across the mountain ridges: Just don't look, as Solnit's title suggests, at the big picture. Instead: Blame everything on climate change, and justify everything as fighting climate change.

She ends with a fire-and-brimstone vision of absolute calamity. She may not be wrong, but she would have us accept the deaths of birds and bats and the massive loss of habitat from building giant wind and solar projects as a distraction from the calamities due to climate change. That is exactly the self-rationalizing casuistry that guarantees — and justifies — only more calamity.

Update: 

• “Hunting, fishing and other forms of exploitation are a major factor in declines in animal populations .... Habitat degradation and loss are also dominant threats. Climate change is expected to become a bigger factor over time.” —Life ­– a status report, Nature 516, 158–161 (11 December 2014)

• “Before human populations swelled to the point at which we could denude whole forests and wipe out entire animal populations, extinction rates were at least ten times lower. And the future does not look any brighter. Climate change and the spread of invasive species (often facilitated by humans) will drive extinction rates only higher.” —Protect and serve, Nature 516, 144 (11 December 2014)

• ‘Many species are already critically endangered and close to extinction, including the Sumatran elephant, Amur leopard and mountain gorilla. But also in danger of vanishing from the wild, it now appears, are animals that are currently rated as merely being endangered: bonobos, bluefin tuna and loggerhead turtles, for example.
  
  ‘In each case, the finger of blame points directly at human activities. The continuing spread of agriculture is destroying millions of hectares of wild habitats every year, leaving animals without homes, while the introduction of invasive species, often helped by humans, is also devastating native populations. At the same time, pollution and overfishing are destroying marine ecosystems.
  
  ‘“Habitat destruction, pollution or overfishing either kills off wild creatures and plants or leaves them badly weakened,” said Derek Tittensor, a marine ecologist at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge. “The trouble is that in coming decades, the additional threat of worsening climate change will become more and more pronounced and could then kill off these survivors.”’ —Earth faces sixth ‘great extinction’ with 41% of amphibians set to go the way of the dodo, The Observer, 14 December 2014

Update: Ando Arike writes:  ‘The climate-change angle we usually ignore is the apocalyptic side of the human “success story” — our phenomenal growth in population to seven billion from one billion in little more than two centuries. But our cleverness in transforming fossil-fuel energy into labor-saving technology and high-yield agriculture has gone to our heads. It’s not just the climate denialists who are anti-science; it’s also those renewable-energy optimists who ignore basic laws of thermodynamics and entertain the fantasy that it will be possible for seven billion to live in the style of the American middle class. The new story we need to tell is “managed degrowth” — gradually but significantly paring down our demands for resources and learning to live within the ecological budget of the earth.’