I suggest that it is better to stick with the science alone – which includes alarmingly low power and energy density metrics for wind compared to anything else (See Bryce, Power Hungry) – but leave beauty, noise, property value and the rest of the personal complaint lineage out of it. Once the public and elected officials see the science clearly, then the rest become obvious – and shameful.

Falling back on a paraphrase of an old bridge lesson my parents taught me, I still say: “Don’t lead with the selfishness card (a finesse) if a sure winner you hold is all that is required to make your contract (win the hand.) Play the sure winner first, make the contract, then shoot for “over-tricks” once your victory is already sealed.

The first link: http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm
confirmed that for energy sources, fossil fuels received $72 billion while renewable received $29 over period. 2002-2008.

BUT there is an enormous BUT.
Go here and look at the energy produced by these sources.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.html
Fossil Fuels produced 86.2 quadrillion btu’s while Renewables produced 6.8 qbtu’s.
Let’s figure $ per btu roughly.
Fossil = $72 billion/86.2 btu = .84 units
Renewable = $29 billion/6.8 btu = 4.3 units
The ratio here is 5 to 1.
But this doesn’t tell the entire story, because renewable are not used for heating, industry energy nor transportation. To really understand these number we would have to find how much energy is produced to create electricity, since the non-electricity energy is far greater. That is how we end up with the 25:1 ratios, of subsidy per MW for renewables compared to subsidy per MW for Fossil/Nuclear.
As always, the renewable lobby or “believers” only tell OR understand part of the story!!!

My strategy against the development of proposed wind-farms in my region is to ask why we would want to ruin our skylines just so we can burn more fossil-fuel to shadow the windfarms, and turn people like Al Gore from fairly wealthy to fabulously wealthy. (Apologies for picking on one of your countrymen, but to me he is all that epitomises the worst in ‘energy carpet-bagging’).

It seems to have had some resonance, and I am starting to see others around our state asking similar questions and using it as a basis for legal challenge.

Next stop solar panels.

Thank you for your reply.. I agree that the best argument against wind energy colonization is a compound one, blending net fossil fuel mitigation benefits of wind energy’s reliable fraction with net land use implications. Unfortunately, making this argument in a few sentences is difficult. One of the best at doing so is US Senator Lamar Alexander (R)(TN). Alexander is arguably (and rightly, in my opinion) a defender of nuclear energy, as Tennessee is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (a source of nuclear development “subsidy” by Ryan’s definition). Alexander is quick to say that we wouldn’t replace our nuclear navy with sailboats and so should not pretend we can replace our most reliable and densely sited generation technologies with windmills.

While free market thinkers might wish we could, clearly it is not possible to “unspend” the tax dollars which have supported nuclear technology over the past 70 years. It is also impossible to determine how nuclear power development might have unfolded in the absence of government funding and associated regulation. But since we cannot change our past, it would seem sensible to learn from our mistakes – while building on our successes – in order to make the best decisions possible going forward. I would argue that, whether nuclear power technologies would have been more advanced – or less – without the overwhelming government involvement, both the current and new nuclear technologies are vastly superior to wind energy in many ways. If you are interested, I can send you my modest white paper which compares wind and nuclear on land use and “cost” metrics. It is far from perfect, but might offer a starting point or process on which you can expound and refine. Thanks for your input, and to the creators of this forum.

Thank you for your post. I am hopeful it will draw replies from several energy policy experts who can lay out the subsidy sources and rates more succinctly. In that case, please remember to attribute the subsidy rate not to the energy generation of wind, but to its contribution to reliable capacity. Only reliable capacity can stand in for reliable capacity and still claim to avert fossil fuel consumption. This is because when you remove the reliable “moments” of generation from wind in most regions of North America, the residual product has slope, frequency and amplitude characteristics which dictate severe “city driving” conditions for the balancing resource pool. Of course Peter Lang, Kent Hawkins la Pair and de Groot of the Netherlands, and even Bentek in the US have attempted to capture and quantify this rude effect (a simple Google search will yield the sources you seek).

As we both know, in complex grid networks with many variables, quantifying heat rate impacts is also a moving target and a “murky business.” This is why I have often suggested to PJM and MISO that they demand a stable, dispatchable product ahead of the interconnection comparable to the existing fleet of generators. This would require a “hybrid” facility with a gas peaker and wind turbines. In this case, a true fossil fuel mitigation study can be conducted. Perhaps some villages in Alaska who are paying $0.50 per kWh for diesel generated electricity and adding wind as a supplement (profitable without subsidy of any kind, I might add), could lend some insight into the fuel consumption mitigation of wind.

Making the comparison of subsidy between wind and traditional sources of power generation fair, transparent and intuitive is what I seek, not to “hide the truth” as you judge. Perhaps we could work together on this?

Since we have traded correspondence of late, you may be aware that when I communicate my arguments against the rush to subsidize wind power generation I have attempted to structure my arguments around the objective economics, avoiding the NIMBY and other subjective arguments. In fact, I even try to keep my economic arguments as simplistic as possible, concentrating on investment vs. return, with only brief mention of the more complex concepts of the costs of balancing the supply load and the costs of operating back-up sources in inefficient modes. I find that the return on investment analyses for the wind turbine projects, even when performed with great generosity of assumptions to the wind turbines, make it blatantly obvious that the wind turbine projects will waste investment and drive up the cost of electricity.

I believe that the strategy for arguing against continued subsidies for wind power generation needs to revolve around the simple economic concept that the wind generation projects generally waste resources and detract from our ability to make meaningful improvements to our overall energy strategy. The following words come from one of my recent comments:

“Other than the waste itself, the real problem with expending resources subsidizing non-viable wind turbine projects is that this diverts resources from other efforts to improve our energy production strategy. Because of recent events, we are seeing quite a few emotional comments lately regarding the need to reduce US dependence on oil; and the recent tragic spill in the Gulf of Mexico is being used to justify investment in wind energy projects. However, it is reasonable to point out that, per to the DOE EIA, oil is used to generate less than 1% of the total electricity used in the USA so one can effectively say that oil has nothing to do with the generation of electricity. Unfortunately, BY INCREASING THE COST OF ELECTRICITY, IT IS LIKELY THAT WE WILL MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT TO TRANSITION AWAY FROM OIL for the main reasons we do use oil, home heating and gasoline powered automobiles. Also, in the rush to promote wind generation, development and improvement of other more viable means of energy generation are being ignored. Instead of diverting resources to prop up wind projects we could be improving natural gas, nuclear, and coal generation. We could also be improving the distribution system (grid) to reduce losses and improve reliability. Further, by subsidizing and offsetting the current deficiencies of wind generation, we take away the incentive to make the necessary improvements that might make it viable in some cases in the future.”

I look forward to further input from you regarding my communication with the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force relative to LEEDCO and the Great Lakes Wind Energy Pilot Project.

All of these conventional generating systems provide high levels of responsive capacity value; wind provides zero capacity value, and rates of power appropriate to 1810. Consequently, there is no real comparison. It’s like comparing the cost of war clubs with that of surface to air missiles.

Public subsidies for wind are so expansive that wind LLCS could actually send their hiccuping energy to the grid without charge–a process known as negative pricing–if this were legal. It is not legal in the PJM. So wind LLCs can profitably adjust the price of their energy to give the appearance that it is competitive with coal or gas or hydro, say $0.05 per kWh. And you’ll often see this in a number of wind claims.

But exchanging an energy source that provides no capacity or modern power for any conventional generation is like trading a third string high school first baseman who made the team because of his father’s contributions to the alumni fund for Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Sandy Koufax. Paying anything for a source of energy that destabilizes the grid and makes it work harder, more expensively to “integrate” it is just darn silly….

Public subsidies for wind are so expansive that wind LLCS could actually send their hiccuping energy to the grid without charge–a process known as negative pricing–if this were legal. It is not legal in the PJM. So wind LLCs can profitably adjust the price of their energy to give the appearance that it is competitive with coal or gas or hydro, say $0.05 per kWh. And you’ll often see this in a number of wind claims.

But exchanging an energy source that provides no capacity or modern power for any conventional generation is like trading a third string high school first baseman who made the team because of his father’s contributions to the alumni fund for Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Sandy Koufax. Paying anything for a source of energy that destabilizes the grid and makes it work harder, more expensively to “integrate” it is just darn silly….