Article: Twenty-One Bad Things About Wind Energy- and Three Reasons Why

Have you ever wondered if there was a (relatively) short read refuting the various claims made by the wind energy industry? Well, your wishes have been answered in this article entitled “Twenty-One Bad Things About Wind Energy- and Three Reasons Why,” – by John Droz Jr.

I’ve re-posted some of the points that most caught my eye:

3 – …Wind development lobbyists then made the case for a quantum leap: that by adding wind turbines to the grid we could significantly reduce CO2 from those “dirty” fossil fuel electrical sources (especially coal). This argument became the basis for many states implementing a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) or Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Those undemocratic standards mandated that the state’s utilities use (or purchase) a prescribed amount of wind energy (“renewables”), by a set date.

Why was a mandate necessary? Simply because the real world reality of integrating wind energy made it a very expensive option. As such, no utility companies would normally do this on their own. They had to be forced to. For more on the cost, please keep reading.

Minnesota has adopted a renewable energy standard, but it is unclear how much these standards have reduced carbon dioxide emissions in the state, which is why point four is so telling:

4 – Interestingly, although the stated main goal of these RES/RPS programs was to reduce CO2, not a single state’s RES/RPS requires verification of CO2 reduction from any wind project, either beforehand or after the fact. The politicians simply took the sales peoples’ word that consequential CO2 savings would be realized!

Furthermore:

5 – It wasn’t too long before utility companies and independent energy experts calculated that the actual CO2 savings were miniscule (if any). This was due to the inherent nature of wind energy, and the realities of necessarily continuously balancing the grid, on a second-by-second basis, with fossil-fuel-generated electricity (typically gas).

Requiring utility companies to actually publish how much carbon dioxide is being offset by these renewable energy policies, and the cost per-ton of doing so, could be a practical way of helping the general public better understand that increasing the amount of wind energy on the grid is incredibly expensive, but environmentally trivial.

There are several more outstanding points made in this article, and I encourage the readers to click on the link above to get the full story.

If you are interested in reading more of Mr. Droz’s work, consider looking at his website, http://wiseenergy.org/.

To learn more about why wind energy isn’t working for Minnesota, click here.