Is the Wind Energy Industry a Scam?
A friend sent me a long and scathing attack on the wind energy industry and writes: “From friends in Connecticut—This has a lot of right wing “anti-green” rhetoric, but how much is factual?”
Thanks very much. Good to hear from you again. Here are a few excerpts, along with my responses:
There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers … the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year.
Yes, wind turbines kill birds – and bats. But a bird is 800 times more likely to be hit by a car, 1200 times more likely to fly into a plate-glass window, and many thousands of times more likely to be eaten by a house cat. Note also that the wind industry is working hard to improve in this arena.
Wind energy is just a tax scam. Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the Heritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks: “If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.”
The price of wind and the other main forms of renewable energy continue to fall each year, and it’s very clear to everyone who is honestly trying to make sense of the issue that subsidies will not be required much longer. As it is, the subsidies for wind are continually coming and going — unlike the subsidies bestowed to the oil companies, which have been in place for 90 years, and persist in making the wealthiest industry on Earth even wealthier – all at tax-payers’ expense. And not to get into character assassination, but the Heritage Foundation is hardly a bastion of integrity. If you check out the link above, you’ll see why I think you should feel much more comfortable taking moral direction from the neoNazis or the KKK.
Like solar panels, windmills produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them. That’s the part liberals forget: making windmills and solar panels takes energy, energy from coal, oil, and diesel, energy that extracts and refines raw materials, energy that transports those materials to where they will be re-shaped into finished goods, energy to manufacture those goods. More energy than those finished windmills and solar panels will ever produce.
One could argue that there is a grain of truth in the first two, but not in this one; it’s completely false. Here’s a short piece on the “return on energy” wind produces.
I leave you with a link to Energy Fact Check, a really good — and honest — source for the truth on the subject. Thanks again for writing.
Good responses Craig.
The actual energy return is a little more complex than what you offered in your earlier post… Because a modern wind turbine is more likely to last between 40-50 years than it is 20 years, but will face greater curtailment as penetration expands… However, if you are considering just Connecticut (which this useless document comes from), there may be more validity to it than you’d like. CT has only class 2 with a few spots of class 3 wind zones… They don’t even have good offshore wind resources. So putting up a wind turbine in CT might very well require more energy than you get back… It’s tough to tell.
That said, there’s no industrial wind being built in CT, because it is a pretty dumb place to put a wind turbine. Today’s modern 100+ ft wind turbines are being built in class 5 and better wind zones, and seeing capacity factors as high as 40%… so some of today’s turbines may see an energy return of >300:1; but anyone dumb enough to build a small in Connecticut may see a negative return on energy.
The same obviously goes for solar. In the sunny southwest, Solar may achieve ~10:1 energy balance (or better in some cases), but building the same system in New Jersey would drop the energy return to ~4:1, and building such a system in Seattle might reduce it to ~2:1. If the solar panels themselves were made in China (using predominately coal), and they are placed in a region like Seattle – the net CO2 reduction might be pretty small.
As for subsidies, there IS a problem with subsidies, though the idiotic rhetoric put forth by the right-wing anti-science crowd doesn’t reflect the actual problem.
The problem, as I see it, is this: a person putting up a 1 MW solar system in Seattle would get ~$1,200,000. He/she would generate ~17.8 GWh over the project lifetime, offsetting a similar quantity of mostly NG-sourced energy, resulting in an offset of ~9000 tons of CO2.
A person setting up a 1 MW wind turbine in Wyoming would get a subsidy of ~$300,000, and would generate ~125 GWh over the project lifetime. Due to the fact that this energy would offset coal, it would force Wyoming to use more expensive NG for balance power, and it would likely require another ~190 GWh of NG power to be added to the grid, offsetting a total of ~315,000 tons of CO2 emission from coal while only requiring an additional ~95,000 tons of CO2 emission from NG – a net reduction of 220,000 tons-CO2.
So the guy that is making an investment which would result in mitigating as much as 220,000 tons-CO2 is getting $300,000 in subsidies (~$1.37/t-CO2 abated), while the guy that is making an investment which would result in 9000 tons-CO2 mitigation is getting $1,200,000 in subsides (~133/t-CO2 abated).
If the defense of the subsidies is “the subsidies are available because renewable energy eliminates the externalities associated with fossil fuels”, then we are failing… because the current structure of the subsidies in no way reflects any correlation to emissions controls – which account for most of the externalities.
Yes, the heritage foundation is No different from all the lobbyists on K street. As a matter of fact, just follow the $ and where it flows from and you will clearly see who or whom the heritage foundation is defending. It is not the 98%. Big oil and the utility companies make up their minds, so we should not be surprised by the comments about renewables.
Good morning Craig is really a damn shame usual’s to pick up the phone and talk to me… I appreciate your comments and you do get a lot of things correct. What you are quite misinformed on his solar… Did you know that 70% of all solar panels are fixed mounted to rooftops…. And waste because they do not follow the sun 50% of their rated output….. 30% are on large solar arrays on pole mounts within each panel following the sun each day and an exact 90° angle north-south East-West… Did you know that I have the only patent ever issued invented and old detained that allows rooftop solar to be installed on any residential roof in the world… And if it were used 70% of all solar panels in the world would double their electric output and cut the cost of solar on all rooftops worldwide by 50% if you ever want to really become informed on solar pick up the damn phone and call me 847-466-2221
We’ve spoken in the past, and I’ve provided my viewpoints on your ideas. If you Google “solar sun tracker” and read some of the 1.86 million pages on the subject, you’ll see that there is nothing unique about your idea.
Herb, these claims are absurd. Following the sun throughout the day will not increase power yield by 50% anywhere on the planet. At best in areas with high DNI (unbroken sunshine) and 2 axis tracking you will get around 40% more kWh per kW peak. With single axis tracking you will get up to around 25% increase in good areas.
Single axis tracking generally captures most of the tracking advantage at a fraction of the cost and complexity of 2 axis tracking with the latter generally only offering an advantage for high concentrating PV where it is essential.
There are very good reasons why many arrays are not sun tracking
1. Most rooftops are sloping rather than flat. making tracking more complex and less effective.
2. Generally rooftops have as many panels as can be fitted on suitable sections – installing sun tracking on roofs will reduce the number of panels which can be installed as the panels must not be shaded by each other.
3. Sun tracking on a rooftop will add substantial wind loads to the roof especially in storm conditions so may not meet structural building regulations.
4. Sun tracking on a rooftop will often add to the visual impact of a solar array in ways likely to result in planning permission being denied.
5. Sun tracking is only a significant advantage under clear skies – in areas with frequent cloud the extra costs of tracking are generally not justified.
6. What is gained in capacity factor by tracking may well be lost in capacity. There are several fixed costs such as scaffold and labour and the value of real estate / roof space. Tracking hardware significantly increases installation complexity and total hardware costs, which together with higher O & M costs will generally not lower the levelised cost of electricity in places where land is expensive or conditions are often cloudy.
7. With low panel prices, it is often more cost effective to add more panels than to add tracking to fewer panels.
Regarding the assertion that a different installation process will double yield, there is no way to achieve such a gain in this way, and even if you could it probably would not halve the cost of solar electricity – especially in the US where soft balance of system costs are very high.
Here’s a great deal more on the subject submitted by a reader named “Jerry.” http://2greenenergy.com/2013/07/16/whats-not-wrong-with-wind/
I am always amused (for a lack of a better term) by the birds argument. How many birds die from power lines. Yet we didn’t stop delivering power to rural America. Worse how many children suffer from respiratory ailments further complicated by smog or even car exhaust.
Good points. Another favorite of mine: “wind turbines are ugly” — as if coal plants, brownish-gray air and lung tumors are attractive.
Every state in the U.S. has a DO NOT EAT warning page regarding mercury contamination of fish and the lakes where fish are no longer healthy food for humans. Our, relatively pristine, state of Colorado has 23% of it’s lakes on the list, some states are over 50%. 2/3 of the mercury that we put into the environment comes from burning coal to produce electricity.
I read up (years ago) about the EROEI for PV. They accounted for “normal operating conditions” and figured about 3 years for break even (and less for soon to come advanced automation). However, I do not know if they accounted for all the extra thermal energy (like 70%) wasted in the conversion from coal to the electricity needed to melt the silicon (and glass, aluminium, etc). So I will search again and hopefully, they will mention if that is the case.
We already have to make solar and wind cheaper, in order to mass produce the required 4x build up (to make up for low CF). Once max grid integration, we will have to also mass produce cheap storage, and LOTS of it (to the tune of 3/4ths RE field required to replace FF’s). So, what is better, 40% efficiency with electrode and molten salt storage (with turbine) and 2x RE field, pumped hydro (at about 70% and 1.5x the RE field) or 95% efficient batteries and only 1x RE field? Obviously, we will want to use less land and spend less money on the RE field, thus, we should focus on the possibility of making a long cycle battery for the cheap with rather abundant materials.
Otherwise, we will have to employ one or more of the following molten fuels fission reactors… MSR, HGR, IFR, PRISM or, of course, LFTR (or better).
David Stout asked me to post this for him: “The part most people miss is that oil, coal, nuclear are fossil fuels and get MORE EXPENSIVE to bring to market all the time when the SUN energy is FREE as long as mankind can live on this planet!!! And the public fails to understand that Capitalism (our economic system) requires a profit to make it all work. Thus when the profit gets less with fossil fuels the economy suffers. The SUN’s energy is really a better deal for our economic system and the environment.”
Regards the toxicity argument, there are toxic residues associated with rare earth mining, and many wind turbines use magnets containing rare earth magnets, however they are not essential to the process. There are other generator technologies available.
On the solar panel front, standard solar panels are made mostly of very pure silicon, glass, silver based conductive paste, copper in the cables, and various plastics used in the back sheet, junction box and as insulation on the cables.
Regards the birds and bats argument,great care is now taken when locating new wind farms to minimise the deaths of birds and bats with particular attention to rare species – after all, if a common variety or pidgin or mallard duck dies, the loss is not especially important from a sustainability point of view, but if an eagle or condor dies, it is a tragedy. Whilst I fully agree with Craig on the numbers aspect for me the environmental importance and rarity of the birds / bats affected is the critical factor.
Regards the subsidy factor, what about the huge amount of mortality and morbidity which is now understood to be associated with outdoor air pollution?
http://earthsky.org/science-wire/researchers-estimate-over-two-million-deaths-annually-from-air-pollution
Estimates are that around 470,000 deaths a year worldwide are associated with ozone production associated with human activities, and 2,100,000 as a result of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) i.e particles below 2.5 microns. Much (not all) of this pollution is associated with the burning of fossil fuels, and many more people suffer ill health than die from these causes – imposing a huge financial burden on health services.
A report on the hidden costs of the use of coal for power generation in Alberta puts the health and social costs at around $300 million a year, and the climate change impact in the range $1.1 to $4.5 billion. Even the lower end of the estimate indicates that the embodied costs of coal generation are >$0.14 per kWh when health, social and climate change aspects are fully accounted for. Other fossil fuel generated power similarly has various externalities which vary from place to place – such as contaminated water supplies where things go wrong with hydraulic fracking, depletion of scarce water supplies for power station cooling etc. The truth is that if applying fully the philosophy of the polluter pays, almost all the renewables are a bargain compared to fossil fuel and nuclear energy.
http://www.pembina.org/media-release/2425
Energy payback for wind power on the German coast is estimated at 3000 full load hours – or just over 1 year.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=how%20many%20full%20load%20hours%20give%20energy%20payback%20for%20solar%3F&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&ved=0CGoQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffestkoerper-kernphysik.de%2FWeissbach_EROI_preprint.pdf&ei=QsTlUZbEOKar0QXzyoFA&usg=AFQjCNFDgYBNdv08sT5lHpq6HCKyFkmn0A&bvm=bv.49405654,d.d2k
Regards energy payback for solar (whole system not just panels), the International Panel on Climate Change put energy payback times at between 3-4 years based on 2011 production whilst the NREL estimated 2 years. (see the link below) Since 2011, the industry has made huge efforts to reduce the embodied emissions and cost of production of solar panels & associated hardware so this figure is coming down rapidly.
Note the above link estimates the energy payback period to be longer than the IPCC and NREL figures, however, I suspect old statistics have been used as the efficiency estimates for the panels on which this was based are significantly below current panel efficiencies.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/01/24/myths-and-facts-about-solar-energy/192364
P.S. I missed the Aluminium frame used on most solar panels
Factors often missed is speed of construction a new Solar or Wind farm can be brought online in a couple of months. Your house can go solar in 2 days.
Compared to building a new Modern Gas plant or Coal Plant that takes several Years at a minimum.
It also takes the same fossil fuel energy only a great deal more to build them.
Which would also require them having to generate for years to slowly from increased efficiency recover the initial energy it took to build them too.
They of course would not be offsetting any carbon just reducing (Hopefully) the inefficient way they burn fossil fuels and produce it now.
New Lines or upgrades to the Transmission infrastructure apply to both fossil and renewables depending on Location.
60% of the OPEX of a gas or coal plant is fuel based.
They require huge amounts of water 1/2 a gallon per KWh to operate another resource that will increase in cost or cost more to recycle.
Recent increases in summer temperatures make them less efficient when demands are highest.
I will briefly mention the continuous production of pollution that is released into the environment affecting both wildlife and Us.
I shall read the above a bit later when I am less pressed for time. Meanwhile, I suggest reading this item about wind and nuclear energy in Canada and perhaps commenting on it:
http://canadianenergyissues.com/2013/07/16/ontario-electricity-who-pays-the-rent/
According to the following paper, dated 2012, the average life of a wind turbine is from 10 to 15 years:
http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime
I have no way to determine the accuracy of the paper.
To combat global warming, it will be necessary to replace a much higher percentage of fossil fuel usage with non-CO2 emitting energy sources than is generally realized. The global demand for power will probably increase by about FOUR TIMES despite improving efficiency of energy usage as large poor countries use more power to lift their people out of poverty. Generating electricity is only part of the problem. It will be necessary to phase out using petroleum in the transportation sector which will require either producing manufactured fuels using non-CO2 emitting methods and / or recharging electric vehicles using electricity generating from non-CO2 emitting sources.
In some poor counties, wood is used for cooking fuel. That may be CO2 neutral if the wood is not harvested faster than it can re-grow, but it creates serious local air pollution problems which damage health. In many cases, burning wood for cooling will have to be replaced by using electricity instead thereby further increasing the demand for electricity.
Considering all the above, reducing CO2 emissions to an acceptable level will be a much greater challenge than generally realized.
Here is an article about how attempting to depend more on renewables to phase out nuclear power is greatly increasing the use of coal in Germany:
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/germanys-green-energy-bust/?utm_source=July+30+Newsletter&utm_campaign=August+2+newsletter&utm_medium=email