Renewable Energy Requires Vast Amounts of Natural Resources

by Robert Bryce

IN April, Gov. Jerry Brown made headlines by signing into law an ambitious mandate that requires California to obtain one-third of its electricity from renewable energy sources like sunlight and wind by 2020. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now have renewable electricity mandates. President Obama and several members of Congress have supported one at the federal level. Polls routinely show strong support among voters for renewable energy projects — as long as they don’t cost too much.

But there’s the rub: while energy sources like sunlight and wind are free and naturally replenished, converting them into large quantities of electricity requires vast amounts of natural resources — most notably, land. Even a cursory look at these costs exposes the deep contradictions in the renewable energy movement.

Consider California’s new mandate. The state’s peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require (if you oversimplify a bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. Let’s assume that California will get half of that capacity from solar and half from wind. Most of its large-scale solar electricity production will presumably come from projects like the $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant, which is now under construction in the Mojave Desert in southern California. When completed, Ivanpah, which aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity, will cover 3,600 acres — about five and a half square miles.

The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan. While there’s plenty of land in the Mojave, projects as big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns. In April, the federal Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction on part of the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Wind energy projects require even more land. The Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles. Again, the math is straightforward: to have 8,500 megawatts of wind generation capacity, California would likely need to set aside an area equivalent to more than 70 Manhattans. Apart from the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is inaudible to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the turbines.

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Environmental civil war: Wind farmers vs. bird lovers

by Caroline May

Irony of ironies, wind energy — a preferred form of renewable energy among environmentalists — has animal rights advocates concerned about the hundreds of thousands of birds killed by wind turbines.

On Tuesday an international bird watchdog group based in Spain, Save the Eagles International (STEI), warned that the expected construction of 3.5 million wind turbines worldwide will result in the extinction of a variety of bird species.

STEI is calling for a moratorium on all wind farm construction and an investigation into whether the threat to wildlife is worth the amount of energy produced — when, they say, there are so many other, more efficient sources of energy.

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Wind Farms Fail Just When Needed the Most

by Louise Gray

Wind farms in Britain generated practically no electricity during the recent cold spell, raising fresh concerns about whether they could be relied upon to meet the country’s energy needs.

Despite high demand for electricity as people shivered at home over Christmas, most of the 3,000 wind turbines around Britain stood still due to a lack of wind.

Even yesterday , when conditions were slightly breezier, wind farms generated just 1.8 per cent of the nation’s electricity — less than a third of usual levels.

The failure of wind farms to function at full tilt during December forced energy suppliers to rely on coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on — meaning more greenhouse gases were produced.

Prof Michael Laughton, emeritus professor of engineering at Queen Mary University London, said wind turbines became still just when they were needed most, meaning that the country was reliant on imported oil or coal.

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The cost of sustainable energy is unsustainable

Britain discovers that the cost of

sustainable energy is, in a word, unsustainable

by Tom Mcghie

The failure of Britain’s wind farms to produce electricity in the extreme cold will cost billions of pounds, create an economic crisis and lead to blackouts, leading industrialists have warned.

To cover up the ineffectiveness of wind farms the Government will be forced to build emergency back-up power plants, the cost of which will be paid by industry and consumers.

Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, which represents major companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers in the steel, glass, pottery, paper and chemical industries, said the failure of wind power had profound implications.

He was speaking after new figures showed that during the latest cold snap wind turbines produced less than two per cent of the nation’s electricity.

Now Mr Nicholson predicts that the Government will encourage power companies to build billions of pounds worth of standby power stations in case of further prolonged wind failures.

And the cost of the standby generation will be paid for by industry and households through higher bills – which could double by 2020.

The Midwest Wind Surtax

The latest scheme to socialize

the costs of renewable energy.

by The Wall Street Journal

You'd think poor Michigan has enough economic troubles without the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission placing a $300 million to $500 million annual surtax on the state's electric utility bills. But on December 16 FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff announced new rules that would essentially socialize the cost of transmission lines across 13 states in the Midwest.

That region-wide pricing scheme, according to a study commissioned by utility companies, will force Michigan to pay about 20% of as much as $20 billion in new high-voltage transmission lines—though Michigan businesses and homeowners will get little benefit. Thanks to FERC's new tariff, nearly everything in Michigan—from cars and trucks to Frosted Flakes—will be more expensive to make. Indiana will also absorb new costs, as will industrial users and utility rate payers in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

This is another discriminatory subsidy for wind energy that will raise electricity prices on everyone, notably on those who don't rely on wind for electric power. FERC's grand vision is to build hundreds of miles of transmission lines across the Midwest, linked to windmills in Iowa and the Dakotas. Mr. Wellinghoff says this new ruling "is the next step in the evolution of its transmission and cost allocation process."

In fact, this is the first step in a FERC scheme to socialize transmission costs nationwide. In June FERC drafted a rule to create a new national transmission pricing policy that would link wind and solar energy projects to the national electricity grid. (See our November 7 editorial, "The Great Transmission Heist.") Those rules are expected to be finalized in mid-2012.

Traditionally and by law, FERC has set prices on the economically efficient and environmentally sound standard that users pay for the cost of the electricity they consume. For at least 65 years, the courts have ruled that payment by the beneficiaries is the "touchstone in any legal analysis of FERC-approved rate schemes" (as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has put it). The new pricing rule departs from that principle, because FERC would establish a new category of transmission lines called "Multi-Value-Projects." This would take into account broad "public policy goals," most notably increased use of so-called clean energy to comply with renewable energy standards.

Let's be very clear on what's happening here: Mr. Wellinghoff and FERC are trying to establish by regulatory fiat a national energy policy that Congress has refused to endorse. Last summer Congress rejected the Obama Administration's renewable energy standard law because it would have inflated power costs. So the fiefdom at FERC is unilaterally moving ahead to require that industries and homeowners pay a surtax on their utility bills for a nonexistent renewable energy policy. This is similar to the EPA's initiatives to regulate carbon even after Congress rejected cap and trade.

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Dems Helping Chinese Get $450 Million in Stimulus Money

Three weeks before Election Day, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., center, arrives for the dedication of a wind farm in Henderson, Nev., on Oct. 12, 2010. With him are, second from left, Kai Huang, deputy mayor of Shenyang, China; Jinxiang Lu, second from right, chairman and CEO of A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Chinese company, and Tom Conway, right, international vice president of the United Steelworkers union. Reid's support, and the plan to create jobs in Nevada, helped blunt congressional criticism that stimulus money was going to the Chinese company, which also plans a large wind farm in West Texas. The company is hoping to receive money through the U.S. Energy Department.

by Russ Choma

Top Democratic fundraisers and lobbyists with links to the White House are behind a proposed wind farm in Texas that stands to get $450 million in stimulus money, even though a Chinese company would operate the farm and its turbines would be built in China.

The farm’s backers also have close ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who, at the height of his hard-fought re-election bid this fall, helped blunt congressional criticism over stimulus dollars possibly going to create jobs in China by endorsing a proposal by the Chinese company to build a factory in his home state. Although his campaign received thousands of dollars in donations from the wind farm’s backers and Reid stood on stage with them at a campaign event they hosted, his office declined to answer any questions about the wind farm’s organizers or their plans for Nevada.

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Wind Power Won't Cool Down the Planet

Often enough it leads to higher carbon emissions.

By Robert Bryce

The wind industry has achieved remarkable growth largely due to the claim that it will provide major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There's just one problem: It's not true. A slew of recent studies show that wind-generated electricity likely won't result in any reduction in carbon emissions―or that they'll be so small as to be almost meaningless.

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