President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”

In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories: land, raw materials, money, energy, health, environment, jobs, electricity cost and reliability.

Read the whole sad story by Paul Driessen at:

http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2011/09/01/our_least_sustainable_energy_option/page/full/

The Global Warming scare is dead. Both the science and the weather have killed it. All that is left is the hidden agenda to use the “pollution” lie to engineer new taxes and grasp total government control of all aspects of energy production and use. The Carbon Cops are set to ration, rule and tax our brave new world.

The ALP/Greens government is also doomed. No matter what they do, the next election will sweep this government away. The ALP will suffer greatly from their dalliance with the Greens, and the Greens will become inflated as they feed on the decaying ALP carcass. But in their dying frenzy, this government will rush through its main agenda. Their major goal will be to introduce their carbon tax and try to ensure that no future administration can remove it.

Therefore it is likely that in the next few weeks, the government will ram its carbon tax down our throats. That is when stage 2 of the Carbon Wars start in Australia.

More:

• “The Science is Settled” but the party rolls on.
• The Secret to the Global Warming Scam – Posh Anti-capitalism
• Wind Power runs out of Puff

in the full PDF version: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/carbon-war-continues.pdf [PDF, 61 KB]

Pretend you were determined to embark on a crash program to increase the price of electricity in order to deter consumers and businesses from using it. Here is a five point plan for achieving that sort of destruction:

First, pay millions in compensation to force closure of reliable coal fired power stations producing cheap electricity.

Second, spend millions more in subsidies to bribe promoters to erect forests of imported wind turbines that produce no electricity for 75% of the time. Then pay again to have them switched off when the wind is too strong or if they produce more power than the network needs at that time.

Third, spend more millions to build a spider web of roads and transmission lines to connect every single turbine to the national grid. These costly facilities are only used for 25% of the time.

Fourth, spend yet more millions to build new gas fired backup generators to keep the lights on when the wind stops. Then pay again to switch off the gas any time the wind happens to blow at the right speed for the turbines.

Finally, force any remaining coal or gas power stations to buy carbon ration permits from merchant banks.

Climate will still change no matter how many wind temples we build to the Global Warming god.

When we have pauperised ourselves by wasting our savings to inflict unreliable high cost electricity on our industries and our people, we will have no resources left to cope with the inevitable natural disasters that will still occur.

This five point plan is what passes for rational energy policy from the Green/Labor Coalition now in control of the Australian Parliament.

More:

• Plain Talk on the Carbon Tax
• Taking the Wind out of Wind Energy
• The Global Warming Tipping Point?
• The Conveys of No Confidence
• “Stick with the Science – it is all Peer Reviewed.”
• Lord Monckton wins Press Club debate

See here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/five-point-plan.pdf [PDF, 49 KB]

Peter Lang
21 May 2011

This paper presents a simple analysis to estimate the amount of CO2 emissions avoided by wind generation and the cost per tonne avoided as wind penetration increases from 0% to 20%. The carbon price implications are discussed.

For wind power to be viable in Australia the price for electricity would need to be about $120/MWh. The current average wholesale price of electricity is about $30/MWhi. So wind energy must be subsidised by about $90/MWh. If we have a carbon price of $25/MWh then the Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) need to reach $65/MWh to make wind viable. (That means the consumer must subsidise wind by $90/MWh, or three times the current wholesale price of electricity.)

The paper concludes that as wind energy penetration increases from 1% to 20% the CO2 avoidance cost increases from $100 to $2,500 per tonne of CO2 production avoided.

Wind energy is a high cost way to avoid CO2 emissions.

For a print-friendly copy of the full article see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/lang-wind-and-emissions.pdf [PDF, 49 KB]

“Welcome to the neo-medieval world of Britain’s energy policy. It is a world in which Highland glens are buzzing with bulldozers damming streams for miniature hydro plants, in which the Dogger Bank is to be dotted with windmills at Brobdingnagian expense, in which Heathrow is to burn wood trucked in from Surrey, and Yorkshire wheat is being turned into motor fuel. We are going back to using the landscape to generate our energy. Bad news for the landscape.

“The industrial revolution, when Britain turned to coal for its energy, not only catapulted us into prosperity (because coal proved cheaper and more reliable than wood, wind, water and horse as a means of turning machines), but saved our landscape too. Forests grew back and rivers returned to their natural beds when their energy was no longer needed. Land that had once grown hay for millions of horses could grow food for human beings instead — or become parks and gardens.”

By Matt Ridley

See the full article at: http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/6954843/a-green-dark-age.thtml

“Having said that – one thing is pretty certain, wherever you live, don’t vote ‘Green’ because the Green Party does not any longer deserve its name, which implies a love of the natural environment. Let us hope that they do not pick up too many protest votes in council elections, mainly from people who do not realise this.”

Posted by Artists Against Wind Farms:
http://artistsagainstwindfarms.blogspot.com/2011/05/pressure-on-politicians.html

“Please consider the environment before building a wind farm.”

Mike Hulme
Den Brook Judicial Review Group, United Kingdom.

Wind power is very dilute, and thus a large area of land is required to gather significant energy. Wind energy needs a wide network of roads, transmission lines and turbines which degrades any area containing wind farms. It has a huge land footprint.

The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.

Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.

Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.

The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.

Wind farms are promoted as a way to decarbonise energy generation. This is supposed to reduce global warming. There is no evidence that there is any need or benefit in chasing this rainbow.

There is no justification for continuing the complex network of subsidies, mandates and tax breaks that currently underpin construction of wind farms in Australia. If wind power is sustainable it will be developed without these financial crutches.

Full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/why-wind-wont-work.pdf [PDF, 1.5 MB]

About 20 turbines catch fire and burn each year. The global total number of turbines appears to be around 68,000. These figures from the web provide a rough guide to quantifying the bushfire risk. Applying the global data to the 2,000 or so turbines installed in Australia we would expect a 60% probability of one turbine fire each year.

If there is a known risk of wind generator fire then the generators must be disabled well before conditions reach critical being a Grassland fire danger Index above 50 or a Forest Fire danger Index above 6.

Full report here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/fire-in-the-sky.pdf [PDF, 37 KB]

David Packham
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Monash University

Wind Power – it’s all about trying to extract energy from Free Air.

Wind turbines try to catch the kinetic energy in the moving cylinder of air that is sliced by the turbine blade. Because air is so light, and wind has a generally low speed (compared to a jet engine thrust, say) there is a limited amount of energy to be collected.

And turbines can only catch a limited amount of this energy – to collect it all would require the turbine to catch all of that air and bring it to a dead stop. Naturally this never occurs and wind leaves the turbine will significant speed and energy. For an ideal turbine in an ideal wind speed the power co-efficient may only be in the 30-40% range.

Conversion of the energy collected by the blade to electrical energy is achieved in an electric generator, where more energy is lost. The generator is designed for the optimal blade speed. If the wind blows harder than expected, the excess energy cannot be caught by the generator and electricity generation levels out, until at about 25 m/s wind speed, the turbine cuts out to prevent damage in high winds. A standard power factor is about 35%.

Unfortunately generators are designed to run at high speed but turbines turn at low speeds. Therefore they need huge gearboxes which develop massive forces for which no effective lubricant is available. At high winds, gearboxes may overheat and catch fire.

For specific information of these and many other factors affecting the efficiency and costs of wind power see this document: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/wind-power-hayden.pdf [PDF, 2 MB]