Ryan Radecki, from The Green Room at Ohio University, writes:

I agree with some of your proposed ideas on the problems with environmentally friendly forms of energy, and I used your comments about having no free lunch for energy in my essay. I also feel that renewable energy forms by themselves are not helping, but the combination of many types of renewable sources is our future. Would you mind reading my blog at http://ryansfuturefuels.blogspot.com I would like to have your perspective.

Ryan:

I agree with the basic idea, i.e., the pros and cons / no free lunch concept. But I think your perspective here is too harsh and a little unfair.  For example, to say that the various forms of renewable energy are not helping is not true.

To take a more specific  example, let’s look at what you write about wind. First of all, some of your facts are wrong, like the amount of land required. By my calcs, you’re off on the pessimistic side by a factor of about 5.  But more importantly, let’s be fair and note:

• Only about 1-2% of this area is actually occupied by turbines, access roads and other equipment. The rest remains free for other compatible uses such as farming or ranching.

• Turbines will eventually be put offshore.

• The problem we’re trying to solve has externalities that are immeasurably huge by comparison. As the gentleman I interviewed for my chapter on wind in my first book (Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies), Dr. Amir Mikhail, CTO of Clipper Windpower told me, “There are people who would rather chop the top off of a mountain (and burn the coal, contributing to lung disease and long-term environmental damage) than put a wind turbine on top of it. Good luck trying to explain that to me.”

Thanks for writing, and keep up the good work.

It seems to me that the first commenter nailed it: “the article also seems to forget warmist theory discounts the concept of local climate having any affect on the globe, only the average global temperature matters.”  Moreover, let’s do a bit of math here.  Could the waste heat produced by a wind-driven generator offset the benefit derived from not burning that amount of coal?  Forget about the negative effects of mining and transporting the coal, and think of the thermodynamics in the coal plant itself, where you have waste heat from both the burning of the coal and the generation of electricity.

Also keep in mind that climate change is only one of half a dozen reasons to migrate away from fossil fuels.

Overall, this sounds silly.  But apparently, Scientific American isn’t held in the esteem I thought it was; those comments really shredded them.

I am concerned about the big push for industrial wind turbines in this country. I frequently visit a friend in Falmouth, Massachusetts who has had three of these turbines installed within in a mile (one is less than 1/2 mile) away from his home. He and his neighbors are having health issues as a result of the operation of these turbines so close to their homes……Please be sure that your research and understanding is all-encompassing before you continue to advocate wind energy.

Thanks for this, Patricia. Though I’m certainly not an expert on the subject, I am aware of Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS), controversial as it is.

To summarize where I see this going:

 • There probably are some deleterious effects of living too close to wind turbines, and thus we will ultimately not want huge (megawatt+) versions in residential areas.

 • I don’t wish to appear unsympathetic to anyone’s suffering, but I need to point out that we live in a world of trade-offs, and that those concerned about WTS, when and if it can be substantiated, will have a heck of a hard time arguing that wind is more damaging to human health than fossil fuels. You’ll note that Harvard professor Dr. Paul Epstein’s recent report found that coal costs the U.S. $500 billion per year, due in large part to health care costs from heavy metal toxins and carcinogens emitted during the processing of coal. More than 13,000 in the U.S. alone drop dead every year from breathing the aromatics of coal, and hundreds of thousands of others become seriously ill.

 • In any case, you’re absolutely right that wind has an ecologic impact. I know that the wind industry is working hard to minimize these many issues including birds/bats, wildlife habitat, health issues, noise, and aesthetics. Did you read what Brian Rutledge from the Audubon Society told me when I interviewed him for my first book? It was rather alarming.  You can get a free e-copy of Renewable Energy — Facts and Fantasies here, and check it out.

Thanks for writing.

I wrote a piece a few months ago on nay-sayers to wind, in which I pointed out that the UK’s Duke of Edinburgh just may be the king.  In it, I noted:

Here in the U.S., we have climate change deniers, and all manner of other opponents to renewable energy. In essence, they’re the oil and coal companies, the members of Congress they influence, and those who believe the torrents of propaganda they generate on “clean coal,” “safe nuclear,” and the other oxymorons that are creeping into our vocabularies.

In the U.K. however, they come in the form of certain members of the nobility. According to The Guardian, the Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, claiming that “they don’t work,” and describing them as “a disgrace” and “absolutely useless.” Pictured here, however, I would say that he looks rather jolly. Who would know that such scathing (and silly) statements lie behind such a winsome smile and what I’m sure is truly excellent breeding?

In response, Nick Cook, a wonderful chap from Cheltenham (Western England), with whom I Skype writes:

(Your piece notes that) “The law of statistics means that the wind is likely to be blowing somewhere.” Unfortunately the law of statistics also means that the wind is not guaranteed to be always blowing somewhere, as happened in December 2010 in the UK when it hardly blew anywhere for a fortnight. This is when you need some serious storage capacity, several TWh worth if you are to get most of your electricity from solar and wind. (For reference the average UK electricity usage is about 1 TW.)

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-wind, but we do need to be pragmatic — not a nay-sayer but also not over optimistic. To balance out these we will need very substantial energy storage and the only technology that can sensibly and economically store these quantities of energy are chemical fuels, ideally synthetic hydrocarbons.

Nick:

Yes, we DO need storage, but only when we have huge penetration of wind and solar. We’re a long way from that now — at least in the U.S., where it’s about 2%; we could quadruple that and not have any issue with storage at all.

And yes, synthetic fuels is a very good approach.  As you know, I’m a big believer in Doty Windfuels; I think they’ve cracked the code here.

Re: your comment on chemical storage, I would point out that we’re fairly close to batteries at $100/KWh. That starts to make grid-scale energy storage affordable.

And try to keep the Duke under control there, mate.  

Here’s a short video I made explaining the basics of wind energy for young people, or newcomers to the subject.  I explain why the wind blows, offer a brief history of man’s attempts to harness wind energy, and discuss our current efforts to use wind to generate large amounts of electricity with relatively little environmental impact.  

When we think of wind energy, we generally think of those multi-megawatt farms in western Texas, the plains states, and California.  Conversely, when we think of solar PV, we normally conjure images of “distributed generation” — “DG” for short — rooftop mounts on thousands of geographically dispersed homes and commercial buildings.

Increasingly, however, wind is sporting a DG face, with smaller turbines appropriate for “campus” settings: schools, cities, counties, farms, factories, communities, and other large power users who want to stabilize their energy costs.

My colleague Jim Boyden acts as an advisor to a company called Continental Wind Power, which offers a range of campus wind solutions.  Considering that an incremental 8 gigawatts of new capacity will be installed in the U.S. alone this year, this may not be a bad place to be.

Think we advocates of renewables in the U.S. have trouble? Our friends in the U.K. are running into a buzzsaw of misinformation, like the report “Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage”, published today by the Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance. The report includes:

“Wind does little to reduce carbon emissions.”

and

“Nuclear and gas are the most viable energy sources for the near future.”

What a remarkable thing to say, when the U.K. has already installed enough wind turbines to provide clean electricity to more than 3.2 million homes, according to RenewableUK, the trade association representing the wind, wave, and tidal energy industries.  RenewableUK also makes the point that I always do about nuclear: even if you consider it safe, it takes a minimum of eight years to permit and build a reactor, and the cost overruns are legendary.  Referring to it as “viable” seems ridiculous.

The press is reacting to the recent price drops in solar equipment as though they are the result of temporary oversupply or of a trade war. This masks what is really going on: a long-term, consistent drop in clean energy technology costs, resulting from decades of hard work by tens of thousands of researchers, engineers, technicians and people in operations and procurement. And it is not going to stop: In the next few years the mainstream world is going to wake up to wind cheaper than gas, and rooftop solar power cheaper than daytime electricity. Add in the same sort of deep long-term price drops for power storage, demand management, LED lighting and so on – and we are clearly talking about a whole new game.

In the U.K. however, they come in the form of certain members of the nobility. According to The Guardian, the Duke of Edinburgh has made a fierce attack on wind farms, claiming that “they don’t work,” and describing them as “a disgrace” and “absolutely useless.” Pictured here, however, he looks rather jolly. Who would know that such scathing (and foolish) statements lie behind such a winsome smile and excellent breeding?

Fortunately, some Brits who were born without such privilege, i.e., mainstream scientists, don’t see it that way.  For example, Professor Jim Skea, research director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), responds to the Duke:

On the “they don’t work” issue, it’s quite clear that they do generate electricity. If you look at the machinery they are getting nearly 30% compared to their peak capacity [the load factor]. There is a limited degree of predictability about the wind so they do need to be backed up. But not as much as people think because the law of statistics means that the wind is likely to be blowing somewhere.

The UK has one of the best wind resources in Europe. Far better than Germany. Going off-shore the wind resource is even better – with load factors up to 40%. If you are going to capture energy from wind it’s as good as you’re going to get. It’s just a question of whether you think it’s worth it. We as researchers say this is the best guess of the costs; it is a political choice whether you want to pay for it.

Wind-farms are being subsidised. For onshore wind, subsidies are going down compared with the cost of gas which is going up. If you include the carbon costs, in the future you can see a point where there is parity between non-renewable and wind energy. Perhaps 2020.