Wind farms are quite possibly the dumbest way possible to produce electricity.
“Wind-Power surge” was the headline of an article by Newhouse News Service reporter Gail Kinsey Hill. “Demand for turbines generates higher prices” was the sub-title and it noted that, “The supply shortage comes as New Jersey officials have begun planning a windmill farm off the South Jersey coast.”
Now it’s worth keeping in mind that New Jersey is one of the East Coast States that is on record as not wanting to permit any drilling for oil or natural gas on its part of the continental shelf, presumably because the sight of any rigs might dampen property values or pose a hazard to the “pristine” environment. So, let’s see, a few oilrigs are bad, but miles of wind turbines are good.
Each one of the 1.5-megawatt turbines, the most popular size, will cost $2.5 million, including all turbine components and installation. How will utilities pay for them? They will “recover the expense through rate increases, but they first must ask state regulators for permission.”
Every megawatt of wind capacity “powers roughly 250 homes annually,” said the article, but failed to mention that only occurs when the wind is blowing. When it is not blowing, the electricity will have to be supplied by conventional means of generating electricity. To put it another way: no wind, no power, no really compelling reason to bother building a wind farm.
If you’re expecting the mainstream media to tell you the truth about wind power, I will be happy to come by and read some fairy tales to you.
Wind farms are one of those trendy, environmental fairy tales about “alternative” energy sources that will save us all from burning coal to provide electricity because, according the Great Big Book of Environmentally Bad Things, it’s “a fossil fuel” and it “pollutes.”
Okay, let’s build nuclear facilities. After decades of opposing nuclear energy the Greens have apparently decided it’s okay, but first we have to do one million environmental studies before actually building a new one.
There are a few, teeny-weeny problems with wind farms. First of all, from a purely aesthetic standpoint they are unsightly. There is nothing pretty or inspiring about wind farms.
A proposed wind farm, Cape Wind, slated to cover 24 square miles of federally controlled waters in Nantucket Sound, has found some powerful opponents such as Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who lives on the Cape. Loath as I am to agree with anything Teddy says, he’s right when he says the wind farm will destroy some of the most beautiful ocean vistas on the East Coast, not to mention being a danger to sea and air vessels. Even presidential candidate and former Governor Mitt Romney opposes this project.
Bird lovers hate wind farms. Back in April when the issue of federal tax credits for wind energy was all the rage, the American Bird Conservancy quoted the National Wind Coordinating Committee, whose own estimates reveal that, “this growing alternative energy source is killing between 30,000 to 60,000 birds a year.”
Yikes! “At the current mortality rate and growth rate of the wind industry,” said the bird folks, “by 2030 a projected 900,000 to 1.8 million birds would be killed per year by wind turbines, unless protective measures are implemented.” Considering how Greens go nuts over ordinary hunting and fishing, their indifference to this bird Holocaust is fairly astonishing.
Then there’s the problem with the way wind farms play havoc with radar that is used for commercial flight control and by the military as well. It turns out that, if you plant a wind farm anywhere within the proximity of an airfield, it “clutters” the signals needed to guide your flight from Phoenix to a safe landing. This is why the siting of wind farms is subject to Federal Aviation Agency approval.
Wind farms are quite possibly the dumbest way possible to produce electricity. Coal, uranium, natural gas, and hydro currently produces 97% of all the electricity used in the United States. Of these energy sources, coal accounts for half of all the electricity generated. It’s abundant and it’s cheap. Apparently that’s a bad thing.
Suffice it to say that to replace one traditional 1,000-magawatt power plant you need a lot of wind turbines that, in turn, take up a lot of space whether on land or at sea.
Picture in your mind that you’re driving along the shoreline of New Jersey, glancing over at the Atlantic Ocean . . . and seeing hundreds of wind turbines. These towers can stand over 400 feet into the air, have gigantic blades that make them into bird Cuisinarts, and, in the winter, they throw off big chunks of ice. In addition, the blades have been known to come loose. Lightning has a particular affinity for wind towers. Keeping a respectful distance is a good idea.
With wind power advocates pushing for more “renewable energy” by the year 2020, the energy projected would require between 50,000 and 100,000 towers, occupying some 7,500 to more than 10,000 square miles. That’s an area comparable to the entire state of Vermont.
So the “wind-power surge” may not be such a wonderful thing in either the short or long run. It is, like so many other strange environmental ideas, a fantasy, a delusion that sounds rational right up to the moment you begin to look at it closely. When you do that, the vision of hundreds of wind towers producing miniscule amounts of electricity — and only when the wind is blowing — seems, well, nuts!
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
Alan,
I have to disagree with you that wind-farms are the dumbest way to generate electricity. That distinction still goes to geothermal because the few sites where it is even practical are too remote from where power is needed. What makes wind seem dumber is the number of people deluded by it combined with its unattractiveness, carnage and noise. Similarly, you wouldn’t like a geothermal plant in your neighborhood (ground water contamination, surface water contamination, toxic gas emissions, seismic disturbance, and unsightly wells). I also have to credit bio-fuels (ethanol, &c.) as the dumbest idea for displacing fossil-fuels with something still more destructive of the environment. It is water-intensive, soil-destructive, diverts and/or displaces too much arable land from food to fuel, and is uneconomic to boot. And, after forcing consumers to switch to the new fuel ostensibly to cut down on emissions, still produces a great deal of CO2. If you factor in CO2 from the processes of growing, reaping, and converting corn to fuel, you are essentially back where you started. I have also seen it argued it will lead to a great deal of contamination in our streams and soil. Bio-fuels are poised to get some of the largest tax breaks, subsidies, and kickbacks, and user surcharges of any renewable.
All renewables taken together (wind, tidal, solar, biomass, bio-fuels, syn-fuels, hydro-electric, and geothermal) do not amount to 9% of all energy produced; and EIA projects negligible growth in all except bio-fuels and wind (+1%). Hydro-electric has some capacity potential, but is blocked by environmentalist complaining of its impacts. In real terms, renewables can never overtake demand which will outpace the best that can be expected from these sources. Only nuclear power has the potential to takeover projected demand. Some of the renewables will continue to have uses in remote locations and special applications (e.g., solar panels operating highway and portable devices), but that’s about it.
Before dismissing wind-power out-of-hand by focusing on its negatives, we have to ask if fossil-fuels don’t also have negatives and whether these do or don’t cancel out. Every fuel and system based on it has drawbacks, yet that doesn’t prevent us using them. The point then is not that they have drawbacks, but whether the drawbacks of the one outweigh another. What then are the drawbacks of fossil fuels? Oil, gas and coal pollute the air (CO2 and NOx); oil-fields, fuel-storage-handling facilities, and refineries are unsightly; crude has to be transported great distances and can be spilled; makes us vulnerable to foreign influences; corrupts our government; and supplies of it are dwindling. Some of these I’d discount as overstated (particularly political arguments as they aren’t intrinsic to the fuel, they are imposed externally), but have left them in so our more liberal readers can’t claim I’m playing fast and loose.
Against wind-power we have the ones you listed (unsightly, land or shore intensive, hazard to navigation, high avian mortality, and unreliable), to which I add one you missed: they are disturbingly noisy (people in Altamont will tell you the sound drives them insane!) I have heard them and believe it. We can add, too, that alternative-fuels have their political drawbacks also; not least of which are those penalties artificially imposed by government to force change. The aesthetic negatives of oil are comparable to wind farms, but take far less real-estate and impact far fewer neighborhoods. Moreover, they bring a lot more jobs to those neighborhoods than do far larger wind-farms of equivalent output. Fossil-fuel infrastructure is fully mature, whereas alternative and synthesized-fuels have almost no infrastructure meaning there will be a huge cost associated with conversion to them even if their potential were sufficient to warrant it.
Therefore, aesthetic and political drawbacks are about equal and the environmental impacts are overstated and dubious, leaving economic viability the only real measure worthy of consideration. As long as we have sufficient fuel to maintain our system and economy, and alternative fuels continue to be uneconomic stripped of their props, then there is little point to making huge investments and political commitments into alternative-fuels other than some one or two with real promise of replacing fossil-fuels whenever the well finally does run dry. Even then, I would not invest more into them than it takes to provide a smooth transition or sooner than is necessary.
Comment by Robert W. Stapler | September 25, 2007