Abstract: Governor Andrew Cuomo, who supports an energy quota forcing New York to buy half of its energy from qualifying renewables by 2030, does not see the problems that would be caused by coating Upstate, Central and Western New York with sprawling, low-output, intrusive, bird-unfriendly wind turbines. All would be paying for the high upfront costs of the unneeded investment, including additional power lines that will be necessary to run the intermittent, unreliable wind energy from rural New York to New York City. Fortunately, the people are fighting back with proposed ordinances against wind turbines. This is not only good for residents and the environment, it is good for ratepayers across the state and taxpayers across the nation. (Part II tomorrow will overview Ohio’s wind turbine siting debate.)
The New York towns of Yates and Somerset are faced with the prospect of up to 70 massive turbines, 600–630 feet tall, which would tower over everything else.…
Continue Reading“Successful demonstration of the [Ovonic NiMH] battery’s capabilities have resulted in numerous commercial developments: … General Motors has entered into a joint venture with Ovonic…. Honda and Toyota have announced that their new electric vehicles will be introduced with NiMH batteries….”
– Business Council for Sustainable Energy (1996)
The new US/global reality of supply-over-demand oil economics spells big trouble for electric vehicles, which were not economic at formerly high gasoline and diesel prices at the pump. The latest setback will, once again, reveal government subsides and related crony business as an economic fail.
Batteries are a big problem, just as they were in a few years ago when competing petro prices were higher — and back in Thomas Edison’s day despite the best efforts of Henry Ford.
I recently ran across this study from November 1996 from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, “Changing Tide: Tomorrow’s Clean Energy–Today.”…
Continue Reading“PV rooftop solar is a bad investment, and a bad use of taxpayer money. Google’s Project Sunroof is now helping to confirm this. Money wasted on a bad investment isn’t available for a good investment.”
Google has recently unveiled a project to help homeowners determine whether they should invest in PV rooftop solar to save money. Inadvertently, Project Sunroof is demonstrating that PV rooftop solar is uneconomic.
Project Sunroof is being rolled out across the United States, but is currently only available in a few cities.
The Project Sunroof website uses a few specific examples to demonstrate the viability of PV rooftop solar at those locations.
The book Nothing to Fear provides similar information by state, using a program supplied by an installer. Google’s evaluation’s are probably more accurate because the satellite images of rooftops used by Google can discern shading by trees or other obstacles.…
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