Why The Wind Lobby Should Be Blown Off

The annual Windpower expo opens Monday in Chicago. The FT reports that attendees are “impatient” for their plateful of stimulus funds. 

Investment in renewables has been delayed or even withdrawn as the credit crisis has stemmed the flow of capital. The economic recession has cut into sales of clean technology, while plunging prices of oil and natural gas have rendered such projects less economically viable.

The Obama administration’s economic stimulus package includes $56bn in grants and tax breaks for US clean energy projects over the next 10 years and a budget of $15bn a year to fund renewable energy programmes.

Yet the US government has not worked out how to deliver those funds; none of that money has been seen by the wind-power industry.

Many in the sector do not have the certainty they would like that they will be recipients, said Rob Gramlich, policy director of the American Wind Energy Association ….

But money alone will not satisfy the wind industry.

Denise Bode, AWEA chief executive said: “These brand-new wind projects shine a ray of hope on our economy today. But the nation still lacks the long-term signal that is needed to build up renewable energy on a large scale.”

That would come with a Renewable Electricity Standard, which the industry wants Congress to pass, requiring utilities to generate 25 per cent of their power from renewables by 2025. That would support massive growth of wind energy in the US.

The trouble is that wind is so expensive that there is almost no politically feasible level of subsidy that will render it competitive. So the industry is demanding a flat quota instead. As they press, it might be useful to keep handy this brief briefing text by Michael Trebilcock, professor law and economics at the University of Toronto and a research fellow at Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute:

Some extracts:

Industrial Wind Turbines Have Minimal Impact on Carbon Emissions

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19 percent of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil fuel plant. It requires 50 percent more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36 percent in 2006 alone. The German experience is no different. Germany’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have not been reduced and additional coal and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery, especially at times of peak demand. Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character.

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Industrial Wind Turbines Are Uneconomic

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15 cents/kwh ….) The Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2008, on a dollar per MWh basis, the U.S. government subsidizes wind at $23.34 – compared to reliable energy sources: natural gas at 25 cents; coal at 44 cents; hydro at 67 cents; and nuclear at $1.59, asignificant industrial subsidy.

Wind generation is a good example of what can go wrong when governments pick winners. Each tonne of emissions avoided due to subsidies to renewable energy such as wind power would cost somewhere between $69 and $137, whereas under a cap-and-trade scheme the initial price would be less than $15.8 Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems create incentives for consumers and producers on a myriad of margins to reduce energy use and emissions and, as these numbers show, overwhelm subsidies to renewables in terms of cost effectiveness.

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Industrial Wind Turbines Cause Insufficiently Researched Health Effects

A growing body of scientific and medical evidence suggests that the health effects on those subjected to long and frequent periods of pulsating, low-frequency noise associated with wind turbines include sleep disturbances leading to depression, chronic stress, migraines, nausea and dizziness, exhaustion and anger, memory loss and cognitive difficulties, cardiac arrhythmias, increased heart rate and blood pressure. A prominent academic study lists no fewer than 13 studies that show noise from wind turbines at night can disturb residents more than 2 km away. Those living close to the source of noise can develop what has been termed “Vibroacoustic Disease (VAD). Noise from wind turbines exhibit the characteristics of noise experienced in various occupations (aircrews, aircraft maintenance workers, ship workers and an islander population exposed to environmental infra and low frequency noise) and has been shown to lead to VAD.