Category — False claims, windpower

Ending industrial wind subsidies is a quadruple win: it fosters real jobs, promotes economic growth, protects endangered species, and elevates environmental values over image-making.

The public is coming to this view, not only energy realists. In the face of repeated efforts to extend (seemingly perpetual) wind energy subsidies by industry lobbyists, taxpayers and grass root environmentalists have said: ENOUGH.

Informed and inspired by a loose but growing national coalition of groups opposed to more giveaways with no scientifically proven net benefits, thousands of citizens called their senators and representatives – and rounded up enough Nay votes to run four different bills aground. For once, democracy worked.

A shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors – and introducing more proposals like HR 3307 to extend the Production Tax Credit (PTC).

Parallel efforts were launched in state legislatures, to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits, and other “temporary” ratepayer and taxpayer obligations. [Read more →]

This month, two subcommittees of the House of Representatives Science, Space, and Technology Committee [1] held a joint hearing,  “Impact of Tax Policies on the Commercial Application of Renewable Energy Technology.”

I was one of nine witnesses testifying. In addition to myself, the let-the-market-decide witnesses were Dr. Benjamin Zycher, Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Tax and Other Subsidies for Renewable Energy Should Be Abandoned; and Margo Thorning, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, American Council for Capital Formation (testimony here).

The subcommittee Republicans were prepared, well informed, and interested in drawing out the facts. The Democrats, on the defensive, complained that the hearing was happening, argued the subcommittees lacked the jurisdiction to hold the hearing, and claimed that renewables were being short-changed compared to oil and gas.

A summary of my testimony (full version here) follows:

Background and Purpose

Energy policy in the United States calls for the aggressive deployment of renewable generation which has led to an explosion of expensive renewable resources that are variable, operating largely off-peak, off-season and are located in rural areas with limited transmission. [Read more →]

Two years ago, I launched Wind Farm Realities, subtitled “Going Where the Evidence Takes Me.” Here’s how I describe my website.

“The more we want it to be true, the more careful we have to be.”  Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

This web site is in the unenviable position of being a messenger of bad news about wind energy. And wind energy was, at least intuitively, so promising!  Most of us know we can’t keep doing what we’re doing – burning through all the fossil fuels we can find – and wind seems to promise a carbon-free, inexhaustible, and benign source that doesn’t send money overseas.

As much as all of us, including myself, would want this rosy picture to be true, the actual evidence so far paints a far different picture.  I understand that many people will resist hearing this bad news, preferring to label me a NIMBY, a Luddite, unscientific, oil-industry-loving, climate-change-denying, jealous – anything to dismiss me.

I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m simply someone who thinks evidence is a better guide to reality than wishful thinking.  And the existing evidence says to me that wind energy has no redeeming value, while its downsides are substantial.

The first indication that I had of the failings of wind energy was when I had the temerity to actually read the references that the wind industry used to “prove” how beneficial and benign wind was.  As an example, if you read AWEA’s “Fact Sheet” on 20% by 2030, it claims a savings of 825 million tons of CO2.  [Read more →]

“When a major turbine manufacturer calls a catastrophic failure like a blade falling off ‘component liberation,’ we know we are in for an adventurous ride in a theme park divorced from reality.”

Trying to pin down the arguments of wind promoters is a bit like trying to grab a greased balloon. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, it morphs into a different shape and escapes your grasp. Let’s take a quick highlight review of how things have evolved with wind merchandising.

1 – Wind energy was abandoned well over a hundred years ago, as even in the late 1800s it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs for power. When we throw the switch, we expect that the lights will go on – 100% of the time. It’s not possible for wind energy, by itself, to ever do this, which is one of the main reasons it was relegated to the dust bin of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate sources as horse and oxen power).

2 – Fast forward to several years ago. With politicians being convinced that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was an imminent catastrophic threat, lobbyists launched campaigns to favor all things that would purportedly reduce carbon dioxide. Wind energy was thus resurrected, as its marketers pushed the fact that wind turbines did not produce CO2 while generating electricity.

3 – Of course, just that by itself is not significant, so the original wind development lobbyists then made the case for a quantum leap: that by adding wind turbines to the grid we could significantly reduce CO2 from fossil fuel electrical sources (especially coal). This argument became the basis for many states implementing a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) or Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)– which mandated that their utilities use (or purchase) a prescribed amount of wind energy.

4 – Why was a mandate necessary? Simply because the real world reality of integrating wind energy made it a very expensive option. As such, no utility companies would likely do this on their own. They had to be forced to. [Read more →]

“I cannot abide the suggestion that we must sacrifice our environment in order to save it. This is an absurd argument enabling this energy imposter’s invasion of delicate habitat with little return. … Environmentalists must consider the possibility that industrial wind, by its failure to perform to stated goals, does not then qualify for this sacred consideration.”

The heavily funded and admittedly effective U.S. industrial wind lobby portrays its product as descending from old-world windmills. Close your eyes and you’ll surely imagine these magnificent machines gently turning in the breeze … each kilowatt arriving at your reading lamp courtesy of a rosy–cheeked Hummel child.

Existing solely to save the planet by generating clean, affordable and environmentally friendly electricity, you can be sure that any addition to the plant owner’s bank account is purely accidental.

Hogwash!

In reality, the U.S. industrial wind business was rescued by Ken Lay and Enron with quick, low-risk profit as its core goal. As Gabriel Alonso, chief executive of Horizon Wind Energy LLC – one of America’s biggest wind developers, often reminds his employees … their goal isn’t to stage a renewable-energy revolution … “This is about making money!”

Once a Believer

I was not always this cynical. I wanted to believe that industrial wind would replace fossil fueled power plants and, until two years ago, defended its arrival here. Like many West Virginians, I wanted the destruction of our mountains by those who profit from the blue diamond stopped … NOW! [Read more →]

“It is clear that solar and wind are competitive in many situations right now.”

- Joe Romm, Climate Progress, April 21, 2011.

“If it wasn’t clear before it is crystal clear now that the people pushing a massive government spending program for clean energy are living on ‘Another Earth’.”

- Joe Romm, Climate Progress, July 28, 2011

In April, Joe Romm at Climate Progress reiterated his claim that politically correct renewable energies are well on their way to competitive viability–if not there already. Now, with business-as-usual federal subsidies for wind and solar at risk, there is fear and loathing at Climate Progress (Romm’s bully blog at the Center for American Progress).

Mad Joe Romm is extra mad at Obama and the WHOLE budget debate–as if record, unsustainable budget deficits were not reality. The idea of government running out of other people’s money is a foreign concept for him and others who see a sovereign nation as creating its own fiscal reality. After all, a political junta would not allow this to happen, right?

In America’s welfare state, it is now energy entitlements versus human-need entitlements. Energy is now in the same boat with all of the other chronically ill welfare programs.

‘Debt of a Salesman’: Romm vs. ‘Obama Democrats’

Here is what Romm is saying in his post: Debt of a Salesman: Obama, Democrats Poised to Embrace Deal that May Slash Energy, Enviro Spending for Many, Many Years:

In one of the biggest strategic blunders of his presidency, Obama has bought into the erroneous Republican frame that the biggest problem facing this country is our national debt.  Worse, he has chosen to be a salesman for a centrist agenda of austerity, not the progressive one of investment…. [Read more →]

Two years ago, Spain’s fixation on renewables and “green jobs” was praised by President Obama as a success story worthy of our emulation. With Obama making renewables a centerpiece of his administration with an eye toward the 2012 election, the obvious question is: How is Spain doing today?

The Initial Debate

My editorial “Spain Is Tilting at Windmills” (May 2009) presented the results of a study prepared by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, PhD, an economics professor at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. The report, “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources,” released in March 2009, was a comprehensive review of the long-term effects of Spain’s renewable energy policy on jobs and the economy. In sum, the study found that for every green job created, 2.2 private industry jobs were lost, and each “green job” cost the Spanish government 571,000 euros ($790,000 today).

After my editorial was published, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) published a poorly reasoned rebuttal to Professor Calzada’s study. NREL’s report made the usual mistakes when accounting for “green job” creation. A good example is the baseless assumption that there is a pool of qualified people not otherwise employed by private industry, immediately available, and willing to take newly created, government-subsidized, green jobs. Transferring skilled workers from jobs that produce value (profits) to “green jobs” created by government fiat is an inefficient way to deploy capital in a free market economy.

The report also ignores the impact of the costs (taxes and increased deficits) of the temporary green jobs. By redeploying capital that would otherwise be used for investment or developing new products, these costs impose an economic opportunity loss to the free market. Finally, the authors assume that government-paid green jobs, paid for with deficit spending, are not temporary but permanent. [Read more →]

The newly released Annual Market Report, 2010 from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) can be summed up in one word — Spin!

I’ve tracked the wind industry’s progress closely in the last six years, and mapping our observations to their declarations is always a challenge; AWEA’s reports are packed with assertions but rarely include the data and assumptions on which claims are based.

This year’s report was no different. To illustrate the point, it is useful to critically examine some of their claims. After all, we as taxpayers directly or indirectly enable the projects that make this trade association possible.

High Cost, Low Value

With natural gas selling at record lows, and supplies expected to be abundant through this decade, if not far longer, wind developers are under pressure from investors to secure power purchase agreements (PPAs) with utilities.

Most PPAs for onshore wind we’ve reviewed lock-in purchases for 15+ years at roughly twice the wholesale price of fossil and nuclear resources within their respective regions. In some cases, the prices are fixed regardless the time of day the energy is delivered or number of years into the contract; others apply adjustments for on- and off-peak energy and may include annual escalators.

In states where renewable portfolio standards have been adopted, utilities likely have no choice but to accept above-market rates which are passed through to customers in the rate base.

AWEA claims that average power purchase agreements for wind generation in 2010 were priced around 6 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), which it asserts approximates the same wholesale price for combined cycle natural gas plants–and is about 2 cents cheaper than coal-fired electricity. It might be true that wind PPAs are around 6 cents per kWh, but comparisons to natural gas and coal are not appropriate. [Read more →]

Parts I and II dealt with most of the issues in a recent paper by Chuck Kleekamp and showed the weaknesses of his analysis. This post addresses in detail the question of the costs of electricity generation for nuclear and wind.

Kleekamp says, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.” This suggests that nuclear plant electricity is more expensive than that of wind. This is remarkably incorrect. The costs of each according to the EIA along with my adjustments, are shown in Tables 2 and 3 below, which clearly demonstrates the high costs of wind compared to nuclear. As will be seen, the EIA costs are just starting points.

These costs are shown on separate tables for wind and nuclear because they are not really comparable. The reason for this is that nuclear plants produce power, which can be depended upon, a critical factor in the successful use of electricity, and wind plants do not.

The EIA shows capital costs and levelized costs. Levelized costs, expressed in $/MWh are important to understand, because this is the basis on which we use and pay for electricity. However, and as already stated, but repeated for emphasis, comparing the EIA reported levelized costs of wind with conventional electricity generation technologies is not an “apples to apples” comparison, because of the unreliability of wind. Stated another way to the previous paragraph, this is because wind has no capacity value, the details of capacity value are too extensive to deal with in this post. Interested readers can see more information on this important consideration here.

We will first look at actual experience with wind capacity factors in the United Kingdom (UK), an important issue in determining levelized costs, and then at an analysis of the levelized costs for nuclear and wind plants as published by the EIA. Even without consideration of the reliability factor, it will be seen that wind is substantially more expensive compared to nuclear than the EIA reports, and contrary to what Kleekamp appears to suggest. [Read more →]

Part I of this series critiquing an article by Chuck Kleekamp dealt with the more general issues of examples used, one of the major references and electricity markets. There is a lot found to question his analysis. This post focuses on capacity considerations and other miscellaneous issues raised by Kleekamp. Finally, Part III addresses his remarkably inappropriate warning, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.”

Availability of Other Generation Capacity

Kleekamp cites the extensive unused capacity in the total electricity system that he claims is available to balance wind. He is incorrect in this notion. This capacity provision is normal, and it is there for a purpose. One of the reasons is the need for reserves as described in Part I and represents about 20% of total capacity.

Another reason is the nature of electricity demand. A large number of plants are used only to meet daily demand rises and peaks, at which point they are all committed, albeit some to reserves. The “excess capacity” is therefore not available for other purposes, which would make it unavailable for its primary, important purpose. It would be “robbing Peter to save Paul”.

Contrary to Kleekamp’s view, the introduction of wind capacity results in additional capacity that would not otherwise be required. [Read more →]