Showing posts with label Cape Wind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cape Wind. Show all posts

April 29, 2010

More comments on Cape Wind

The reader comments attached to the New York Times story (click title) about Washington "approving" the 24-square-mile Cape Wind facility reveal quite a bit about the supporters of wind.

Their smug gloating, name calling, fearful jingoism, and sheer misinformation are in contrast to the reasoned voices that raise clear points of issue in the arguments supporting wind.

When they aren't being attacked for being shills of Exxon (even though only 1% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from burning oil), opponents of erecting this massive complex in the middle of a treasured natural resource are accused of being radical environmentalists.

What has been so interesting to me through the 7 years that I have been involved in the debates about industrial wind is that it brings together people from the right and the left. For those that would see it, the clarity of the issue — an industry assault on heretofore protected rural and wild lands, fueled by an unholy cabal of desperate politicians, greedy landowners, corporatized pseudenvironmentalists, and financiers seeking tax avoidance — breaks through the current expectations of right and left. It is the people against a bought-off government, against developers fomenting community division for personal gain, against heedless destruction of our natural heritage and quality of life.

Meanwhile, the comments at the N.Y. Times show that the same process is mirrored in the proponents of wind. But whereas opposition has tended to bring out the best in our citizenry, support tends to bring out the worst. From both right and left, supporters cling to myths and irrelevancies in an attempt to shore up their shaky foundations and diminish those who question the big wind juggernaut. Click on the title of this post to read what they say. Not one of the comments supportive of the Cape Wind approval can be backed up by fact. And almost all of them betray an ignorance, a nastiness, hatred that is quite disturbing. The Cape Wind company has indeed done its job.

Comments on Cape Wind

First, the claim that Cape Wind's 130 giant turbines will produce 468 MW of electricity: That will be the facility’s maximum output. It will actually produce at an average rate far below that, likely one-third, or only 156 MW.

Considering that there is already over 35,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the U.S. (for an average rate of production of 10-12,000 MW), this project hardly represents a game-changing contribution.

And considering that the average electrical load in the U.S. is about 500,000 MW, it will take a hell of lot of such industrial installations to make any meaningful contribution.

And considering that the wind is a fickle resource, those installations will always be in addition to more reliable generators.

Conservation could easily obviate the paltry contribution from wind — and save so many otherwise off-limit areas (coastlines, ridgelines) from development.

March 2, 2008

Sorry, it's only 26 new coal plants in Germany

[Sources for claims made in response to Wendy Williams' defense of Cape Wind in Parade magazine, Mar. 2]

According to Der Spiegel, Mar. 21, 2007, Germany is planning 26 new coal-fired electricity plants. And according to the New York Times, June 20, 2006, 8 are on a fast track for completion by 2010 or so. I apologize for any confusion caused by my misremembering the figures as, respectively, 28 and 6. [The original post has been corrected on this blog.]

Several analysts have shown that most -- up to 84% in the west -- of Denmark's wind-generated electricity is exported: e.g., Hugh Sharman in the May 2005 Civil Engineering, and David White in the July 2004 Utilities Journal.

The data showing fossil fuel use for electricity going up instead of down as wind energy on the grid increased are in the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics 2007 from BERR.

It is according to the Danish Wind Industry Association that the last increase in wind energy capacity was between 2002 and 2003.

The near-unanimous (24 of 28 communities surveyed) rejection of more (and much larger) turbines in Denmark was reported by Politiken on Feb. 17 (click here for rough translation by National Wind Watch).

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

March 1, 2008

Lessons from Europe

Denmark produces 20% of its electric power from wind, but is able to use less than 20% of it, exporting most of it to larger neighbors that can absorb it. Plans to double that figure over the next few decades are already running into fierce opposition from potential host communities. Denmark hasn't added new wind capacity since 2004. Off-shore projects have proven to be prohibitively expensive and technically problematic.

In Germany, more than 22,000 MW of wind turbines cover the country, generating 5% of its electricity. Yet 26 new coal plants are still planned, and 8 are on a fast track. Emissions continue to grow, because the grid has to continue operating as if the wind turbines aren't there -- because more often than not, they aren't generating electricity when there is an actual need.

In Britain, the Dept. of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform reports that fossil fuel use for electricity increased -- not decreased -- 1.5 times more than the production from wind turbines from 2002 to 2006. (That's after accounting for reductions in nuclear, hydro, and imports during that period and for increased consumption.)

The modern wind industry was created by Enron in the 1990s, and it remains a harmful tax avoidance scheme, industrializing our few remaining open spaces and mountain forests and siphoning public funds away from real solutions.

[This was written in reply to Cape Wind propagandist Wendy Williams' article in the March 2 Parade magazine. See later post for references (click here).]

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism

February 7, 2008

Let's Make Cape Wind History!

Click here (or the title of this post) to use an automatic form to write the Minerals Management Services. Change the content provided in that form to the text below (or something of your own).

I am writing to comment on the Cape Wind Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement (Project ID number: PLN-GOM-0003). Offshore wind promises but is unlikely to deliver an immediate, clean, safe and effective answer to either global warming or energy security. America’s first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind, will generate electricity equivalent to 75% of Cape Cod’s energy needs but without measurably affecting the fuel use of conventional generation plants -- because it is intermittent, highly variable, and to a significant degree unpredictable.

The environmental impacts caused by installing these turbines are undeniable, and they are particularly unjustified when considering the lack of real benefit. From local jobs to clean energy, this project is a harmful boondoggle.

I urge Minerals Management Services to avoid further delay and deny the Cape Wind project in a timely manner.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

August 22, 2007

Cape Wind would not reduce use of Canal Generating Plant

Wendy Williams, in yet another self-promotional piece, this one at Renewable Energy Access (Aug. 20), writes unconvincingly: "I'm not very polished when it comes to publicity." Another howler is this:

"Cape Wind would reduce the use of the oil-fired power plant on the Cape Cod Canal."

Cape Wind's massive turbines may reduce the electricity generated from that plant, but not necessarily the oil it burns.

The Canal Generating Plant in Sandwich is a traditional thermal plant. It can't be simply switched on and off as needed, because starting up first requires heating up water to make the steam that powers the generators, and that can take hours. As a back-up to wind, therefore, it would be switched to standby mode when the wind rises, in which mode it continues to burn fuel to create steam but the steam is released and not used to generate electricity. Thus, the plant would be ready to switch back to generation mode as soon as the wind drops again.

That's the sad fact. The 24-square-mile Cape Wind facility would not clean the air or reduce oil barge traffic.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism