“Big Money” Discovers the Huge Tax Breaks and Subsidies for “Wind Energy” While Taxpayers and Electric Customers Pick up the Tab by Glenn R. Schleede Recent events confirm that “Big Money” interests in the US and Europe have discovered the enormously generous tax breaks and subsidies that are now available in the US for producing electricity with wind turbines. These organizations are moving aggressively to build “wind farms” and to seek more subsidies. Meanwhile, as more wind turbines are proposed in the US and other countries, ordinary citizens have learned that “wind farms” are not environmentally benign. Instead, wind energy has high economic, environmental, ecological, scenic and property value costs. Wind turbines produce only small amounts of electricity and that electricity is unreliable and low in value. Click on the title to continue.

Read Jon Boone's paper, "Less For More: The Rube Goldberg Nature of Industrial Wind Development" on why the wind industry can't ever deliver on its promise of significant carbon reductions. Reuben Goldberg (1883-1970) was an American cartoonist famous for conceiving very complicated and impractical machines that accomplish little or nothing. The term “Rube Goldberg” has passed into the lexicon as shorthand for describing such machinery and their products and services. Contemporary industrial wind turbines epitomize this concept. Physically, they are taller than many skyscrapers, with 300-foot rotors that move nearly 200 miles per hour at their tips. They are usually placed in a phalanx numbering five to eight per mile, which, if erected on forested ridge tops, also require the clearcutting of at least four acres per turbine, with another 35-65 acres needed for infrastructure support. Functionally, they produce little energy relative to demand and what little they do produce is incompatible with the standards of reliability and cost characteristic of our electricity system. Moreover, wind plants are unable either to mitigate the need for additional conventional power generation in the face of increased demand or to reliably augment power during times of peak demand. Ironically, as more wind installations are added, almost equal conventional power generation must also be brought on line. Crucially important, wind technology, because of the inherently random variations of the wind, will not reduce meaningful levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide produced from fossil-fueled generation, which is its raison d’etre. Click on the title to continue.

An analysis of Whole Foods’ January 9, 2006, “wind energy” Purchase Whole Foods by Glenn R. Schleede The natural foods grocery chain, Whole Foods, failed to do its homework when it agreed to buy “wind energy” and, thereby, launch the nation’s largest demonstration to date of “ green energy” pseudo-environmentalism! Three of the interesting conclusions from the analysis: • 109 huge (32+ story, 350+ foot), low electricity producing wind turbines will be needed to produce the 458,000,000 kWh of “wind generated” electricity that Whole Foods has (in theory) purchased. • $1 million spent for energy efficient light bulbs would avoid the use of 171,550,000 kWh of electricity over 5 years — which is more than 3 times the 56,064,000 kWh of electricity that a $1,000,000 wind turbine might be able to produce over 20 years! • Like the leaders in other organizations that have undertaken similar pseudo-environmental actions, it appears that Whole Foods executives thought only about the favorable PR benefits they would enjoy, while failing to consider the adverse impacts of their action. Click on the title to continue.

Blowing in the Wind: Offshore Wind and the Cape Cod Economy by Jonathan Haughton, Douglas Giuffre & John Barrett Cape Wind Associates has proposed to build 130 large wind turbines on a 24 square mile area of Horseshoe Shoal, in Nantucket Sound. The project is controversial. Cape Wind argues that the project will lower electricity costs to consumers, reduce emissions from power plants in the New England region, create more jobs on Cape Cod, and contribute to greater energy diversity and independence. Critics of the project are concerned about the high cost of wind-generated electricity, about environmental impacts and about the esthetic effects of 130 windmills on the horizon, which they fear will deter tourists and depress land values. Click on the title to continue.

A Problem with Wind Power by Eric Rosenbloom Wind power promises a clean and free source of electricity. It will reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels and reduce the output of greenhouse gases and other pollution. Many governments are therefore promoting the construction of vast wind “farms,” encouraging private companies with generous subsidies and regulatory support, requiring utilities to buy from them, and setting up markets for the trade of “green credits” in addition to actual energy. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) aims to see 5% of our electricity produced by wind turbine in 2010. Energy companies are eagerly investing in wind power, finding the arrangement quite profitable. Click on the title to continue.

There are many reasons to oppose industrial wind turbines — threats to wildlife, threats to property values, their inherent inefficiency, and their dependence on taxpayer -supported subsidies. On a cost per kilowatt-hour produced, they are the most highly sudsidized of all energy sources including nuclear power, which is a distant second.

The supporters of Big Wind claim that all those negatives are worth it because the promise of industrial wind turbines is that they will play a major part in reducing carbon in the atmosphere. They are wrong. They have been propagandized by wind developers and companies hoping to cash in on taxpayer-funded support to a feel-good but doomed industry.