Watt a sight!

Developers decided in August to proceed with the [Crescent Ridge, Illinois] project despite a pending federal lawsuit alleging environmental irresponsibility, violation of migratory bird and endangered species acts and violation of numerous other state and federal laws. The plaintiff lost a similar state action earlier in the year.

"It would take a pretty stupid bird to fly into one of these things," [Tim] Reder [site manager of the project for Eurus Energy America] said of the giant blades that look more like airplanes and are visible for miles on a clear day. "I'm not saying they don't have a legitimate concern, but if you weigh that bird against what we're doing to our environment ... our dependence on foreign oil."

The story also describes the dense fog in which the construction is taking place, one of the conditions the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) warns about as harmful to birds. Not only will the blades be concealed in fog, the tips will be slashing through the air at 144 mph. The blades of each tower sweeping 1.3 acres of air. And speaking of the "stupidity" of birds, why are lights required on these massive structures? Are airplane pilots also "stupid"?

In fact at least 20 birds per turbine are killed each year, according to studies in Spain and Belgium. The researchers consider that a "conservative" figure; the actual number is probably much larger. FWS has estimated the number to be 37. Not only birds but also bats are killed. At the Mountaineer aerogenerator complex in Tucker County, West Virginia (44 turbines), well over 2000 bats were killed over just 2 months last fall.

Although Mr. Reder betrays his contempt for nature by insisting that only "stupid" birds fly into the blades, and by going ahead with construction despite a federal lawsuit charging violation of environmental laws, he nonetheless trots out the pathetic defense that this industrial development will save even more birds. He knows that the public is eager to relieve their guilt about inordinate energy use and the consequent habitat loss, acid rain, asthma, etc. So he presents his 2,200-acre power plant as absolution for their sins.

Notably, he throws in "our dependence on foreign oil." That may well be a problem, but it is not one where wind power can hope to have an impact. Only 2.4% of our electricity is generated from oil (see earlier post). If wind power were actually able to make a significant contribution (which is by all evidence quite doubtful), it would displace three times more hydro- than oil-generated electricity.

Oil is used for transport and heating, folks, not electricity.

Saving the world, one journalist at a time

On July 31, Phillipines radio commentator Roger Mariano was murdered after promising to "expose a bombshell" during his next commentary. Mariano had been investigating the network of bribes and coercion behind a 25-MW wind-power facility in Iloco Norte, involving the governor, his friend and chairman of the wind company, the local utility, and the grants and loans that paid for it all from the Danish International Development Agency (the invisible hand of the free market at work!).

It hasn't gotten that bad in most places yet, but the British Wind Energy Association has displayed a list of prominent opponents under the threatening headline, "We know where you live," the home of Country Guardian's director has been broken into and ransacked in Wales, and a bomb threat was called in to disrupt a recent meeting in Australia.

Only overwhelming greed compels such actions. These people are not friends of the earth nor of the people and other animals who live on it.

The title of this post links to part 1 of this story. Click here for part 2.

Batman to the rescue!

At the recent Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Pittsburgh, chairman Don Hopey appeared in costume to introduce panelists for a discussion of "Celebrity, the Media and the Environment." The decal reads, "Save bats: Brake wind power development."

Clean and green and free ...

This is a prototype 5-MW wind turbine and tower from Repower in Germany. It's designed for both land and sea. The tower is 295-394 feet (90-120 meters) high. Each blade extends another 207 feet (63 meters). That's a sweep area of over 3 acres. And we are expected to believe that such monsters will have no negative impact on its neighbors or the environment!

Hundreds of thousands of wind towers, you say?

A recent post casually states that it would take hundreds of thousands of wind towers to provide 5% of the electricity used in the U.S. Here are the figures that confirm that statement.

According to data from the Department of Energy, we used 38.401 quadrillion btu of electricity in 2002. That's equivalent to 11,254 terawatt-hours (TW-h). Five percent of that is 563 TW-h, or 562,711,000 megawatt-hours (MW-h).

Dividing that figure by 365 days and 24 hours shows that 5% represents an average power feed of 64,236 MW. (See the post of Oct. 21 for an explanation of power and energy units.)

The output of a well sited (for the purpose of collecting wind) aerogenerator is about 25% of its rated capacity. So to provide an average 64,236 MW would require 256,944 MW of installed capacity. Using the usual utility-size turbine of 1.5 MW, that would require 171,296 of them.

The lesson from Denmark, however, is that only about one sixth of the wind-generated power is actually used, because it so rarely corresponds with demand (David J. White, "Danish Wind: Too Good To Be True?," The Utilities Journal, July 2004). So for the U.S. to get 5% of its electricity from wind would require more than 1,000,000 turbine towers.

Existing complexes use 30-60 acres per MW capacity (the more space they have the better they work). Getting 5% of our electricity from wind would therefore require installations covering at least 72,000 and possibly (ideally) more than 144,000 square miles. That's almost the size of the entire state of Montana.

Windfarms drive down property values

Its currently a sellers market and if windfarms make it a buyers market, all the better. I'm for home buyers, the young and the poor first. I'm not against home owners, but feel the pendulum desparately needs to swing the other way for a change. So you're right when you say as a home owner that you're a winner, but don't you feel its time you gave everyone else a chance too?

That's from Andy Parnell, spokesman for Greenpeace on their Yes2Wind web site. He's responding to the recent survey in the U.K. showing that industrial wind installations do indeed lower property values. The British Wind Energy Association says that opposition is to blame, that if everyone just stopped thinking for themselves and let the BWEA tell them what's good for them ("that drone pounding through your house is the sound of global warming being reversed!") prices would in fact go up as people rush to live near these sacred icons.

Mr. Parnell admirably doesn't shift the blame like that. He says it's all part of the service, just one more miraculous benefit of wind power -- making country housing more affordable!

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)