Posted on 07/14/2010 1:10:36 PM PDT by NetRight Nation
A lawsuit hopes to stop the construction of an off-shore wind farm in Massachusetts. A couple of plaintiffs on the suit are environmental organizations.
Ironic? Not really.
One of the plaintiffs, CAlifornians for Renewable Energy (CARE), is against industrial wind farms altogether. Michael Boyd, president of the Board of Directors for CARE, says the amount of wilderness damage done by wind farms far outweighs the benefits.
But that has not slowed investors or the federal government down. As investors reap the benefits of government subsidies for the construction of wind farms, large turbines continue to rise all over the nation. This begs the question, as a renewable energy source, are wind farms really as beneficial as the government says they are?
“Whenever the government picks winner and losers by its choosing to fund various programs, in this case wind farms, taxpayers’ money ends up wasted and more harm is done than good,” says Bill Wilson, president for Americans for Limited Government (ALG).
Environmental organizations look at the impact wind farms have on wildlife and endangered or protected species. For example, the Altamont Pass wind farm in California was ruled a complete disaster by environmentalists because protected bird species, like eagles and hawks, were getting killed by the propellers of the turbines.
Some turbines can reach 400 feet tall and turn at speeds of 200 mph in peak times. Walter Kittelberger, chairman of the Board of Trustees for Lower Laguna Madre Foundation (LLMF), a Texas-based conservation and preservation organization that is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the wind farm in Massachusetts, is concerned that with so many new wind farms being constructed, bird’s migratory flight patterns are going to get caught in the crosshairs of these turbines.
Though some instances of birds or bats getting caught in the propellers may not be preventable, before each wind farm is built, a developer has to get a series of permits and leases before construction can begin. Investors have to follow the federal regulations before starting a wind farm project. Some projects draw more attention than others and an outside organization will want to conduct its own research as well.
Mass Audubon works to protect the lands in Massachusetts and conducted its own study of the off-shore wind farm in Massachusetts, which Boyd and Kittelberger both oppose. Mass Audubon found that the planned wind farm off the coast “doesn’t propose any harm” to any protected species, says Jack Clarke, director of public policy and government relations for Mass Audubon.
Boyd and Kittelberger don’t believe it. “Many locations of these land and off-shore wind farms are on well documented migratory pathways for birds,” Kittelberger says.
Then why are wind farms still being constructed? Boyd thinks that when a developer creates a wind farm, they are after something else beside renewable energy.
“They want to build wind farms not because they want to produce green energy, but because they want green money,” he says. “Wind power has the lowest capacity factor during peak demand because its highest production occurs in the early morning, late evening and the middle of the night. Industrial wind technology is a meretricious commodity, attractive in a superficial way but without real value.”
Kittelberger recognizes that by the government offering incentives to build wind farms, it is creating a misconception about energy needs.
“Lighting up a home uses less than 1 percent of imported oil,” he says. “Most homes use natural gas, nuclear or hydro, with a small amount using solar or wind. There is no shortage of electricity in America; we just lack an efficient way to distribute it.”
Kittelberger thinks the government’s talk of ridding America’s use of foreign oil has blurred a line, linking transportation energy and electric energy by its offering of subsidies for electric energy.
Since they don’t believe there is a need to produce more electricity, both Boyd and Kittelberger don’t believe the cost to the environment is worth the small amount of electricity produced by wind farms.
Wind energy also takes a toll on the environment because of the vast amount of space needed to construct a wind farm.
Kittelberger uses this example to explain how much space is needed for a wind farm. For a 1,900 megawatt facility you would need about 500 acres if the facility were a coal or nuclear energy plant. For a wind farm to produce that same amount of energy, he says you would need between 50,000 and 60,000 acres because the turbines need enough space so they aren’t stealing wind from each other.
Needing so much space, many wind farms are built far away from city life where the electricity is needed. Not only does this create additional costs if more transmission wires are needed to transport the electricity, but it also reduces the amount of electricity received by its end source. Kittelberger says that only about one-third of the electricity conducted makes it to the end user. Wilson, Boyd and Kittelberger do not think wind energy is sustainable, nor do they believe it will last past the government’s handout of subsidies.
“Wind is intermittent. It is not what we need,” Kittelberger says. ALG’s Wilson agrees, and adds, “Using energy independence as an excuse to fund unsustainable green energy programs hurts America and taxpayers can no longer afford it.”
Rebekah Rast is a contributor at NetRightDaily.com.
Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2010/07/an-environmentalist-perspective-on-wind-energy/#ixzz0tgmIYV7D
We need to drill for natural gas under the great lakes and we can do it from shore if need be. It sure beats a bunch of ugly windmills.
More important, private industry would do the work without massive taxpayer subsidies.
...Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).
The only people who benefit from wind energy are the turbine manufacturers, the construction companies and union members who build the windmills, and the investors who collect the federal energy subsidies. Taxpayers and energy consumers just get higher taxes, higher energy bills, and sanctimonious lectures on why their very existence is a burden to the earth and all of mankind.
Have you ever had a large helicopter fly low over your house and felt accoustic vibration from the rotors, a kind of thumping that you feel more than hear? Well imagine 100 or more of these turbines, that are exponentially larger and are located less than a mile from residential areas. That’s what some of these Green investors are trying to do in Whatcom County, WA.
One thing he doesn’t say is that electric utilities are forced by the government to buy windmill power at the market’s highest spot price.
Here in Michigan, the legislature is mandating production declines from coal and gas fired plants at the same time they’re denying permits for clean coal plants citing a “lack of demand”.
Meanwhile, they’re approving wind farms despite the supposed lack of demand that prevents clean coal fired plants from being built.
All this is pretty much crap and has been addressed over and over by the AWEA and wind industry. Utility-scale wind power generation makes sense and should be a part of the energy mix. Limbaugh and others demagogue this issue to death without having their facts straight. Do your own research and you will understand the issues firsthand rather than what the left OR right toss around. I’m not talking about “small wind” i.e. residential systems or those old lower-powered turbines that were put up 20 years ago that should be torn down and replaced. Trotting out these old tired arguments is tantamount to comparing an iPhone with one of the old bag phones of the 80s.
“Some turbines can reach 400 feet tall and turn at speeds of 200 mph in peak times.”
Sorry but the turbines I see almost on a daily basis (Altamont Pass, CA) reach nowhere near those speeds. I am having a hard time believing a 400’ blade can reach 200 mph under wind power. Even if it could, I suspect the turbine would self-destruct under those forces. But then I’m no physicist.
Not true. 30 of the 50 states have Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) which require the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. No two states RPS standards are the same, and the price paid for power thus procured is negotiated by the power producer and the distribution utility. Again, and I don’t mean to offend, but education is a good thing.
The best way to deploy renewable energy would be to get the gummint clear out of the picture and let the free market decide. In the end it will be technology that makes renewable energy cost-effective, not subsidies.
You’re forgetting their biggest asset - -
shredded poultry produced from bird strikes to feed the starving victims of the Baraqqi depression.
“I am having a hard time believing a 400’ blade can reach 200 mph under wind power”
It’s possible, but out of context it’s just a number. The relationship between the speed of the wind and that of the blade tips (tip-speed ratio) is determined by turbine and blade design. In areas where noise abatement is desired, wing tip-speed ratio is kept to about 200 ft/sec or 136 miles/hr. Modern turbine blades are typically made of fiberglass laminates, but research into new composites and manufacturing methods promises to bring improved efficiency, and by the way, American jobs, as it’s far more economical to make blades than to ship them from overseas.
I don’t believe that will be the case until power can no longer be produced by conventional means. By that I mean conventional fuels are either illegal or have become unavailable for some reason.
From the article.
For a 1,900 megawatt facility you would need about 500 acres if the facility were a coal or nuclear energy plant. For a wind farm to produce that same amount of energy, he says you would need between 50,000 and 60,000 acres because the turbines need enough space so they aren’t stealing wind from each other.
Renewables like wind, solar and biomass require huge swaths of land to produce power. Are located far from the end users and require long transmission lines which create resistance losses. There is also the problem of irregular and undependable production that limits wind and solar. I might also mention that solar collectors require frequent cleaning to keep them at top production.
All of things create expenses that conventional means of electric production do not have.
At one time I thought that waste (garbage) burners might have a chance of competing but the sorting problems seem to be insurmountable.
Thanks Obama.
Thank you for the information. Of course, most of the hundreds of wind turbines near me are idle at any one time. A lot are obviously undergoing maintenance. Sometimes they are idled by the wind, or the migration seasons for particular birds. It is rare to see even a majority of the turbines spinning at any one time. And they seem rather slow to me.
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