Editor note: Mr. Hawkins’ study is presented to increase the interest in this highly important, politically sensitive issue of incremental pollution from firming up industrial wind power. This post has been joined by Parts II-V, with Part V providing updates to the calculator and links to the other posts.
Integrating random, highly variable wind energy into an electricity system presents substantial problems that subvert wind technology’s ability to offset the use of fossil fuels–and avoid air emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO2). Measuring this accurately is important because many believe that wind projects significantly reduce such emissions.
This analysis finds that natural gas used as wind back-up in place of baseload or intermediate gas (in the absence of wind) results in approximately the same gas burn and an increase in related emissions, including CO2.…