“A single 1.7 MW wind turbine, like the 315 Fowler Ridge units, involves some 365 tons of materials for the turbine assembly and tower, plus nearly 1,100 tons of concrete and rebar for the foundation. Grand total for the entire Fowler wind installation: some 515,000 tons; for Roscoe, 752,000 tons; for Shepherds Flat, 575,000 tons. Offshore installations of the kind proposed for Lake Erie would likely require twice the materials needed for their onshore counterparts.”
The alter ego of climate change in these renewable energy debates is sustainability: the argument that wind and other “renewable” energies are sustainable, whereas oil, gas and coal are not.
This assertion may have had some merit a few years ago, when it could plausibly be claimed that the world was running out of fossil fuels.…
Continue ReadingThe Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).
A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.
Some of the more important articles in this issue are:
Peer-reviewed Study: Four Decades of Wind Turbine Noise and Human Health
An examination of Future Energy Scenarios – Cost of Supply
Vermont Wind Project Needs Votes, So Company Offers to Pay Voters
Iowa Wind Project Generates More Tax Credits than Electricity
$25k (EU) = Renewable Energy Cost for Each German Family of Four
US Offshore Wind Facility costs $17,600 per Home Powered
PV Solar, Increasing Everybody’s Electricity Costs
Green Energy Reforms Will Hurt the Poor
Dr.…
Continue Reading“A carbon tax is hardly a genuine market solution analogous to other introductions of property rights.”
“Libertarians and conservatives in particular should not simply trust the assurances from the advocates of a carbon tax but should instead read the relevant literature themselves. In both theory and practice, a U.S. carbon tax remains a very dubious policy proposal.” (p. 21)
A new study by the Cato Institute usefully brings together arguments from physical science and social science to demonstrate that giving government a new area of taxation is fraught with difficulty. In one sense it is a cure worse than the disease; in another sense it is an open sesame for growing government–and a punitive weapon against a ‘politically incorrect’ industry, coal first, oil second, natural gas third.
Robert P. Murphy is a research assistant professor at Texas Tech University and senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research.…
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