Puffing up wind energy
From rolling midwestern plains to the Manhattan skyline, wind energy has been marketed as a renewable goldmine. Still, as wind picks up momentum, politics and economic tensions are clouding the horizon for the rapidly commercializing energy source.
On Long Island, LIPA's plan to establish an offshore wind farm ran into various political and regulatory snares and finally collapsed when authorities found that it would cost far more than originally anticipated.
Meanwhile, a $2 billion wind-power investment upstate is meeting some resistance from Albany regulators, as it is tied to a sticky deal for a major utility takeover by a foreign company.
In some upstate communities, skeptical residents say wind energy firms are using insidious tactics to stake out land and score local deals with officials.
Is the wind boom becoming a bubble?
T. Boone Pickens' grand plan to make the country run on wind and natural gas is attracting scrutiny over the Texas oil mogul's economic motives. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's new wind development scheme has generated doubts among experts, who say the city's landscape isn't gusty or roomy enough to house a viable turbine infrastructure. And as the embattled Cape Wind project revealed, windmills are ripe targets for community backlash based on potential environmental and aesthetic hazards, both real and perceived.
One industry insider, Mick Sagrillo of the American Wind Energy Association, warned in an interview in Renewable Energy World that the some companies may try to exploit the concerned public's inflated hopes:
“It's great that people are looking for alternatives, but it's amazing how little people know when they seek them out. That leaves people open to purchasing a product that is less-than-reliable. We are a very gullible culture, we're always looking for the magic bullet."
Confronting climate change is an imperative for all communities, but one early lesson to be learned is that while new industries are drifting into our backyards, the old principle of buyer beware still applies.
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Comments (7)
Inconvenient wind energy facts:
It would take a line of wind turbines 110 miles long and 1/2 mile wide to power a town slightly smaller than Huntington. This is assuming 5 MW per turbine when the average today is around 1.5 MW. I doubt the public would allocate billions of dollars to build a line of windmills from Montauk to Manhatten that won't even power Huntington. Wind power can help in some areas but it isn't a magic solution (either is solar). We need to develop all energy sources including: nuclear, clean coal, aggressive drilling for gas and oil etc. in order to have an effective energy policy.
These are the most common sense remarks I have seen in a Newsday affiliated piece related to alternate energy. Sure there is a desperate need to develop wind and solar power but it must be approached in a technically and economically sound manner. To do otherwise and oversell it, ultimately dooms these concepts in the long run. Witness all those misguided and failed efforts of the 7o's, 80's and 90's in response to oil price spikes of the decade. If we rush ahead with politically inspired alternate energy projects prematurely, all we end up doing is giving worthwhile concepts like wind and solar a kick in the shins and delay their commercialization.
Note the response from AWEA. That people may be to hyped up about wind power! No kidding... are they beginning to back peddle from the claims that they can provide power for 1000's of homes? That they are being found out how they have not only mislead the people and politicians as they fleeced us out of billions of billions of $'s!
I live in windmill country near Palm Springs, CA where the 4,000+ turbines only generate an average of 100+/- MW PER YEAR, intermittently, of which only 6% [6 MW] are generated at peak need time! What everyone is not aware of is that wind needs back up from conventional sources to come on line in a moments notice. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you have been duped! Wind power is a DUPLICATION of power the utilities must have available to avert blackouts.
The only green transmission has been the $'s from the rate and tax payers pockets into BIG WINDS and the politicians.
I have 15 year of their production records. If anyone is interested in obtaining them, e-mail me at bobweit@msn.com
I don't know about the solution for everyone but I installed photovoltaic solar panels at my house in Southold and switched to spiral bulbs, power strip shutoffs and other save electric methods in 2003. Since then I have not paid an electric bill. We sensibly use our central air so we are not hippies living in a cave. We still need LIPA electric at nigh obviously, but it must be doing something about the total juice LIPA needs to make.
Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots
Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.
Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.
And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.
Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.
Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future. Myths about nuclear power include:
· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)
Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.
The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.
Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
Bravo! Wind energy=overstated benefits and understated risks.
Faith based green initiatives should be treated as such by business.
Particularly if “green” is defined as industrial wind.
GE will sell us what we think we “need”, regardless of its efficacy. We should insist that our generous wind subsidies be tied by index to reduction in harmful emmissions, so that it will wither away and die.
Thomas G. Donlon May 16, 2005, issue of Barrons:
“It is shameful that GE, a highly profitable company, has decided to take advantage of faulty federal and state wind energy policies by producing turbines for “wind farms”. In addition to environmental damage…, wind power has an economic flaw that any GE engineer ought to be able to imagine: Since no human power can turn the wind on and off when it’s wanted for electricity, every bit of wind power capacity must be backed up by another generating source…Immelt, an engineer, understands this but he provided the executive’s counter argument”: “The customers want it, so it’s GE’s job to produce it.”
The Paris windfarm protest draws 3,000:
"Saturday Oct 4th, in Paris, 2000 to 3000 people coming from France and various European countries demonstrated peacefully against windfarms. Antoine Waechter was among them. Green candidate in the 1988 French presidential election, Mr Waechter subsequently split from the Greens to found the Independent Ecological Movement. He is shown on the picture reading my placard. To the right of the picture, the mayor of a village in France whose inhabitants ALL decided to sell their houses when a windfarm project was announced in the vicinity. If you wish to know more about the Village for Sale, please advise.
We received over one hundred messages of support coming from all over the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, South Africa, Japan and Slovenia. See : http://collectif.4.octobre.free.fr/
The demonstration and conference was backed by 176 associations and federations : http://collectif.4.octobre.free.fr/
Enron stated in the wind industry. It's about tax sheltering, the primary incentive!
"The nation needs an ambitious plan to promote the deployment of wind and other renewable energy technologies -- and the urgent first step it must take is to rapidly extend the expiring renewable energy credits, which are the primary incentive that the nation provides for these technologies today."
-- Randall Swisher, Executive Director, AWEA
Bravo! Wind energy=overstated benefits and understated risks.
Faith based green initiatives should be treated as such by business.
Particularly if “green” is defined as industrial wind.
GE will sell us what we think we “need”, regardless of its efficacy. We should insist that our generous wind subsidies be tied by index to reduction in harmful emmissions, so that it will wither away and die.
Thomas G. Donlon May 16, 2005, issue of Barrons:
“It is shameful that GE, a highly profitable company, has decided to take advantage of faulty federal and state wind energy policies by producing turbines for “wind farms”. In addition to environmental damage…, wind power has an economic flaw that any GE engineer ought to be able to imagine: Since no human power can turn the wind on and off when it’s wanted for electricity, every bit of wind power capacity must be backed up by another generating source…Immelt, an engineer, understands this but he provided the executive’s counter argument”: “The customers want it, so it’s GE’s job to produce it.”
The Paris windfarm protest draws 3,000:
"Saturday Oct 4th, in Paris, 2000 to 3000 people coming from France and various European countries demonstrated peacefully against windfarms. Antoine Waechter was among them. Green candidate in the 1988 French presidential election, Mr Waechter subsequently split from the Greens to found the Independent Ecological Movement. He is shown on the picture reading my placard. To the right of the picture, the mayor of a village in France whose inhabitants ALL decided to sell their houses when a windfarm project was announced in the vicinity. If you wish to know more about the Village for Sale, please advise.
We received over one hundred messages of support coming from all over the world, including Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, South Africa, Japan and Slovenia. See : http://collectif.4.octobre.free.fr/
The demonstration and conference was backed by 176 associations and federations : http://collectif.4.octobre.free.fr/
Enron stated in the wind industry. It's about tax sheltering, the primary incentive!
"The nation needs an ambitious plan to promote the deployment of wind and other renewable energy technologies -- and the urgent first step it must take is to rapidly extend the expiring renewable energy credits, which are the primary incentive that the nation provides for these technologies today."
-- Randall Swisher, Executive Director, AWEA