Is Wind Energy Controversial? Not Really.
An old friend (“George”–possibly an ex-friend after this) shared this article on Facebook this morning, sparking the following conversation:
George: Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy.
Craig: I’m guessing you didn’t spend too much time fact-checking this; anyone who has even a basic understanding of wind energy knows this is complete bulls**t. Do yourself a favor, George: Google “Wind Energy EROI” (Energy Return On Investment) and read a couple of the tens of thousands of articles you’ll find. Here’s an example. If you do this, you’ll learn that the EROI associated with wind is somewhere between 18 and 20, meaning that we get at least 18 KWhs of energy out for ever one we invest.
Another thing to consider for the future is what could be called the “sniff test.” Think for a second about a company like GE, whose wind business is enormous, and growing each year. They employ about 40K engineers and other scientists, including a few hundred in top management positions in the executive structure and the board of directors. How credible is it to you that these people are being duped by a group of leftist global warming alarmists?
Lori (a friend of George’s): It’s not as simple as this. IMHO. I can only tell you that EVERY time I drive past the giant wind farms in the Central Valley of California they are stagnant. Useless obnoxious monstrosities with engine parts laying on the ground. I’m for a wide variety use of energy resources and am ashamed we stupidly turned our backs on nuclear and have funded electric cars with toxic batteries instead of hydrogen, solar instead of geo thermal. It’s not science, it’s politics. And it’s disappointing at best.
Craig: You’re aware, I’m sure, that as we speak, 5% of the U.S. national grid mix (and 35% of Iowa’s) is wind power. I’m not sure I would call something like that “useless,” especially when it’s offsetting the use of coal, with its huge emission profile of CO2, methane, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, cadmium, selenium, mercury, arsenic, and dozens of radioactive isotopes.
I’m guessing you’re not from one of the 13,000 U.S. families who lost a loved one in the last 12 months to a disease caused by breathing the aromatics from coal-fired power plants. You’re also probably not one of the 24,000 families in Texas alone whose breadwinner works in the wind industry.
Is there politics involved here? To be sure. Unfortunately, there are no aspects of our lives in which politics is entirely absent. But in this case, the politics behind wind has brought us an enormous amount of health, prosperity, and long-term environmental benefit.
Craig,
Your enthusiasm for wind power generation is obviously not universally shared.
The issue is divisive and Wind Power skeptics, like all skeptics, tend to reserve their opinions for like minded people. Wind power enthusiasts tend to be arrogantly voluble, and sneeringly dismissive, which makes productive discourse problematic.
That’s unfortunate,since wind power is an important, yet debatable, renewable technology.
In general, as the largest single investor in Wind Power, Warren Buffett pointed out, “no one invests in Wind Power, the profits are in the government incentives”.
Since those incentives are paid for by all taxpayers, people should be entitled to express their opinions (humbly or otherwise), without being afraid of ridicule and abuse from arrogant Eco-fanatics.
Craig,
Feel free to direct any questions from your friends to me.
I’ll set them straight.
😉
As far as the lulled wind farms, it happens. Wind is intermittent. It has to have either storage, balance power, or load following demand. But even in reasonably low capacity factor wind farms (~30%), wind is far cheaper than any other renewable energy source, which is why it has soared into the national and global lead among renewable options.
As for “ugly”. That is a matter of opinion and taste. For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve seen windmills on postcards and paintings… expressions of beauty. The sleek towers today look far different from the old corn mills of yesteryear, but I still find them beautiful.
Craig,
I agree the presence of windmills,is a matter of taste and aesthetics although I suspect birds, bats and other wildlife may not agree.
The economic value of intermittent power is very debatable. Without adequate storage and distribution, the economics are very different.
Because of the widely different factors and methods of calculating the value of wind energy, comparisons remain are difficult.
Situations wary widely, what works in one set of circumstances may not work in others. Wind is not a complete answer or panacea.
Marcopolo,
There is one item in your list that we agree on, and it’s worth pointing out the rare moments of agreements:
Wind by itself is not a panacea. This challenge is not some mythical beast that needs but one silver bullet that has been consecrated in a special church or something.
The best analogy to climate change is that of a flood. The water is rising, and you grab every tool at your disposal. Some things – like efficient light bulbs and solar panels – are the equivalent of sandbags. You need A LOT of them, but they help…
Other things, like wind power, hydropower, and next gen geothermal, could be seen as something like backhoes and dump trucks filled with sand… While larger scale power like nuclear could be seen as larger quarry and rock-moving machines.
As the water continues to rise… it would be foolish to say to the person bagging sand “don’t do that, a single sandbag won’t help”…
It would be even more foolish to say to the backhoe operator or dump truck driver “don’t do that, a few dozen truckloads of dirt won’t help”. When the flood is coming, EVERYONE starts moving everything they can to try to divert the flow and save the town.
Glenn,
I agree with your analogy, there is no single panacea.
However, economies can only spend so much on renewable energy before it becomes uneconomic and unsustainable.
Alarmism and over enthusiasm can be counter productive. Environmental evolution to clean tech must be tempered by responsible economic management and objective planning.
Alarmist predictions of imminent ‘floods’ can’t simply be taken at face value and justify suspension of economic responsibility.
Wind turbines have more against them than just aesthetic appearance or harm to avian life forms. In Europe the promised economics of Wind v Modern nuclear have proved inaccurate requiring old coal fired power generation plants to be recommissioned.
From prohibition to mandated ethanol, the history of the US is littered with examples of creating disasters, justified by frenzied moral virtue. Likewise the US and world abounds with examples of how easily less efficient technologies once adopted, become very difficult to replace, and block the development and adoption of superior replacements.
Marcopolo,
First, you are silo budgeting again.
Every MWh of coal-sourced energy that is abated saves society hundreds of dollars in health care costs, O&M costs, and of course climate change mitigation (by far the lowest of those three). Every MWh of natural gas energy that is abated saves society nearly a hundred dollars in health care costs and climate change mitigation.
For wind power, and in some instances solar power, society gets more back out of the install than it costs just by abating the pollution externalities that are dumped onto the commons by fossil fuels even before climate change is considered.
Pretending that renewable energy is somehow a strangle on the economy due to install costs is a farce. Granted, there are fraudulent technologies out there, but by and large anything we spend on efficiency, solar, wind, nuclear, and in most cases geothermal is more than cost justified just by the abatement of costs that we are already burdened with.
Second, there’s nothing alarmist about worrying over a 50-100 year timeframe. That’s “responsibility”, not “alarmism”. There is also no doubt that within the next century an extraordinary amount of change will have to be accommodated, and that will result in widespread suffering and incredible costs.
Third, birdstrikes are not very common, and are not a big deal. Batstrikes are far more common, but bats are rodents. There is not ever going to be a sufficient number of batstrikes to impact the bat population, that is set by local food resources or major pesticide disbursement – as is always the case with rodents.