We used to see trains transporting giant bird chopper blades passing through Fort Collins almost every day, but now all we see are coal/oil trains.
The federal government has spent some $100 billion in taxpayer subsidies on green energy since 2006. Now we are seeing the flimsy and declining returns on that investment. The wind industry saw its growth tumble by 92% last year, according to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and that’s off of a very low base to begin with.
Wind Industry Produces Little Energy, Lots Of Hot Air – Investors.com
h/t to Dave G
“The fatal conceit of government planners is to believe they can see the future better than private entrepreneurs and investors.”
Not so much here. Their intent is to CREATE the future.
http://youtu.be/fh-_KzLNELk
The real stupidity is all the sheeple hoodwinked into thinking that ‘free’ renewable power was anything but a small intermittent power generating affair.
Plenty of money was made by that scam!
In Scotland we had a power on one of the windiest days which led to 200,000 people being without electricity. That’s 200,000 more people who if they didn’t already know the costs of wind, are now waking up to the reality that an electricity grid made unstable by wind has direct effects on them personally.
But if Lewandowsky is reading this … it’s obviously a conspiracy by the English government to undermine the Scottish government ahead of the Scottish Referendum … a plan hatched by Elvis with the help of Aliens who NASA found on the moon (when they didn’t go there).
Let’s not be silly. It should be “whom NASA found”, err, I think. It’s part of an extended prepositional phrase, so now I’m not so sure. Better ask the Lew-paper fellow directly, I guess.
It is total misinformation that we can come close to subsituting wind and solar for fossil fuels anytime in the remotely near future.
Sounds like the investors are bailing.
Yes – and when they bail out it’s goodnight Irene.
In order to tear something down, to reshape society in a direction that impoverishes the masses, an alternative must be presented. This alternative will allow masking of the actual agenda and work to gain useful idiot type support. It is best if that alternative is unworkable and/or very centrally controllable. Better yet if that alternative can itself then be torn down leaving nothing.
Energy, transportation, you name it, any where there is a key way to put us back into a serf like existence, this method is useful.
If you like your Condor Cuisinart, you can keep your Condor Cuisinart…period.
Except for offshore New England, which, due to the possibility of blocking the pristine view of rich, progressive snobs, remains largely a Condor Cuisinart-free zone.
Peebles Squire has a good comment at the an article link:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/042214-697939-wind-industry-in-trouble-despite-massive-subsidies.htm#disqus_thread
The wind industry saw its growth tumble by 92% last year,
A great pity the UK isn’t enjoying the same benefits.
Davey’s New Green Projects to Cost Taxpayer £1.4 Billion a Year
http://order-order.com/2014/04/23/daveys-new-green-projects-to-cost-taxpayer-1-4-billion-a-year/
Maybe, it is finally dawning on people that the Energy Returned On Energy Invested for Wind Power is less than 1.00, and thus is unsustainable.
It is time for this massive wastes of resources to end.
Charles, where did you get the idea that wind has an EROEI of less than 1? Show us your reference. This ref shows EROEI of almost 20:
“The average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n = 60; std. dev = 13.7). This places wind in a favorable position relative to fossil fuels, nuclear, and solar power generation technologies in terms of EROI.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014810900055X
Charles S. Opalek, WROTE THE BOOK
WIND POWER FRAUD: WHY WIND WON’T WORK
The link gives an outline of his findings.
PE stands for professional engineer so he is actually LEGALLY LIABLE for incorrect statement unlike Climate Scientists who can lie without any worry of losing their license to practice.
Study is paywalled, hence useless in support of your argument.
Tell us whether the study saddles wind with the fixed cost for the conventional power sources required for wind. Electricity from wind is always supplemental; it always requires conventional backup. Conventional backup always has fixed cost.
re: bobmaginnis says April 23, 2014 at 10:55 pm
Charles, where did you get the idea that wind has an EROEI of less than 1? Show us your reference. This ref shows EROEI of almost 20:
“The average EROI for …
How many “nines” of reliability (or more appropriately, availability)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_nines -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability
99.999 (Five nines or Five 9s) explained
From: “Reliability and availability basics”
http://www.eventhelix.com/realtimemantra/faulthandling/reliability_availability_basics.htm#.U1kdF1VdXTo
The following tabular data:
Availability . . . . . . . . Downtime
90% (1-nine) . . . 36.5 days/year (IOW 10% downtime)
99% (2-nines) . . . . 3.65 days/year (1% downtime)
99.9% (3-nines) . . . 8.76 hours/year
99.99% (4-nines) . . 52 minutes/year
99.999% (5-nines) . 5 minutes/year
99.9999% (6-nines) .31 seconds/year !
– – – –
I don’t think wind is capable of even ONE ‘nine’ of availability! Makes the discussion of EROEI kinda moot …
.
Jim, I vote that since DC wants renewables we let them have renewables…. but NO coal, NO natural gas, NO nuclear, NO Hydro (Think the recent WIld River law) and NO biofuel.
Once they can run the Capital on Bat Choppers and Bird Fryers THEN we can talk about the rest of the country.
+1
But think how many millionths of a degree in global warming this $100 billion staved off!
Gail,
Nobody is going to sue Charles, even if he incorrectly says that wind turbines use 3 times the energy they make, but he should back it up with references, and not make us buy his book to find them.
Gamecock,
You can Google more refs for EROEI, but you will find that coal has an EROEI of less than 0.4, and natural gas will be less than 0.6 Until windpower is more than 10% of the capacity of the grid, we won’t be building extra power plants to back wind up, and if we did, it would likely only reduce the windpower EROEI from 20 to 10.
Wind power is typically backed up with gas turbine power, and in many cases, it looks to me, that the turbines burn more gas in intermittent operation (because of the lower efficiency) than if the gas turbines operated continuously, and the wind power wasn’t there at ll.
“You can Google.”
That’s not how it works. You make a claim, and provide link to support your claim. I’m not doing research for your claim.
He has. Over at WUWT several years ago. That is why I knew about his book.