Introductory remarks at a League of Women Voters - Oct 17, 2007 Jon Boone

As an artist and environmentalist who values aesthetics and the methods of science—and wants an effective energy policy, I’ve looked for evidence substantiating claims made for wind technology by those who would profit from it, financially and ideologically. By evidence, I mean real world encounters with actual performance to see if its key premises are true. Of all people, environmentalists should embrace the skepticism of science, rather than be seduced by deceits of fashion. They should not confuse the trappings of science—the engineering grandeur of a huge wind turbine, for example—with the real work of science, which would insist upon verifying the machine’s performance. My values are green; I believe we should conserve, minimizing our footprint on the earth, not intruding on it with bombast and self-serving incivility. Although I understand why well-intentioned people support the wind industry, I’m mindful the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Environmental history is the chronicle of how adverse consequences flowed from the uninformed decisions of the well intentioned.

Weren’t we enthralled by images of the Grand Coolee and Hoover Dams a few generations ago? Because it generated bulk levels of reliable, responsive power, hydroelectricity became the symbol for clean, sustainable energy during much of the twentieth century; it still provides New York with 20% of its electricity generation. But it’s now clear that renewable hydro is so environmentally treacherous, responsible for degrading millions of acres of invaluable watersheds, that no one outside China and some third world countries is building new hydro plants; many are being dismantled across the continent, at taxpayer expense.

The renewable du jour is wind. Because it’s perceived as non-polluting, it has become popular with the public and politicians. However, claims it will help end our reliance on fossil fuels, be competitive with coal, and make air cleaner and the country safer are sound bites Enron honed years ago to sell wind technology as an environment-coated tax avoidance scheme for corporations in search of increased bottom lines. Wind energy is a sideshow technology with great potential for mainline environmental harm.

Wind plants 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. Mathematically, it would take more than 2,000 2.0MW turbines spread over 400 miles to equal the average annual output of one 1600 MW coal farm, although, operationally, it would take many more than this. Because they’re not reliable, they have virtually no capacity value, which is critical, since the whole point of the modern grid is that one can count on power precisely when it’s needed. A recent analysis of over 7000 German wind turbines showed that, more than half the time, they produced less than 11% of their designed potential. Therefore, they can’t replace existing dependable coal plants or obviate the need for more as demand increases —or even augment power during critical times of peak demand. Ironically, as more wind installations are added, almost equal conventional generation must also come on line for grid security. Crucially important: Because of the inherently random variations of the wind and the nature of grid operations, wind technology will not reduce meaningful levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is its reason for being.

The grid deploys a combination of nuclear, hydro, coal and natural gas generators to produce capacity—controllable, steady, reliable power—precisely matching fluctuating demand second-by-second. Wind energy is unpredictably intermittent and highly variable. The challenge is how to integrate the square peg of firm reliability with the round hole of wind’s fluttering caprice. As it skitters unbidden on and off the grid, like sandpipers at the beach, wind is indistinguishable from demand fluctuations: when it appears, it’s equivalent to people turning off their appliances; when it departs, it’s like people turning the lights back on. But the fluctuations of wind are much greater than those from demand --and much less predictable. At small levels of wind penetration, grid operators must maintain flexible rapid start generators—the spinning reserves used to balance demand flux—to also follow and balance the additional flux of wind energy, for desultory wind can’t be loosed on the grid by itself. The larger the wind penetration into the grid, the greater need for the spinning reserves as the wind energy bounces around both slowly and quickly. Wind integration is Rube Goldbergesque, costly in dollars and increased greenhouse gases.

Given its rapid fluctuations, wind energy will not displace slowly responsive large coal and nuclear plants, as many believe, but rather rapidly responsive plants like hydro and natural gas, and be balanced by them as well. If wind displaces hydro, there will be no carbon savings—and very little carbon savings if it displaces natural gas, which burns 60% cleaner than coal. And if wind flux were balanced by natural gas, any carbon emissions saving would be negligible. Just the torrent of CO2 alone given off in the making of gigantic concrete footpads for each turbine would take years to offset.

No independent, transparent measurement has demonstrated system-wide CO2 emissions abatement due to wind technology anywhere in the world.. Currently, the United States has over 17,500 wind turbines in 26 states, more than two-thirds built in the first five years of this decade. Altogether, these machines produce less that one-fourth of 1% of the nation’s electricity supply. California’s arsenal of over 13,000 turbines contributes about 1% of that state’s actual generation; last year, California’s carbon emissions increased 2% over those in 2005. Europe’s wind poster child, Denmark, has built nearly 6,000 turbines that, on paper, provide 20% of that tiny country’s installed capacity. But, for grid security reasons, 84% of Denmark’s actual wind production is shunted to other countries, replacing hydro—with no carbon savings. According to a prominent Danish energy official, “Increased development of wind turbines does not reduce Danish carbon dioxide emissions.” Germany, now the world’s wind leader with nearly 20,000 turbines producing about 5% of its annual generation, must add additional conventional generating capacity to integrate the fidgety wind energy. But it achieves no real CO2savings; last year Germany increased them by .6%. There are reasons public subsidies for wind technology are not indexed to reductions in carbon emissions.

Wind is not David to coal’s Goliath. It’s a foster sibling to coal, related because the same corporations that own most of the nation’s wind plants also own and control the majority of the nation’s coal operations. Contrary to public perception, wind technology has been around since the Bronze Age, and over the last 25 years has received more than $1 billion of public financing, making it, on a per kilowatt hour basis, the country’s most heavily subsidized form of industrial electricity. Enron owned the country’s largest stock of wind facilities before selling them to General Electric. Today, G.E., along with the nation’s third largest utility, Florida Power and Light, BP, and AES, control most of the nation’s wind projects—as well as most of the country’s dirtiest burning coal facilities. They use wind’s unearned environmental cachet as public relations while cashing in on wind’s lucrative subsidies. What’s particularly galling is their practice of using wind’s cap-and-trade and renewable energy credits—provided by the most cynical or gullible of politicians—to avoid the cost of cleaning up their coal plants. These politicians give the appearance of challenging Big Coal when in reality they're reinforcing it, especially since more wind facilities very likely will result in more coal plants. Although conventional power is also heavily subsidized, these subsidies result in reliable service. The subsidies for industrial wind, which can provide virtually no capacity to the system while delivering energy in fits and starts, will be used to make ineffective and uneconomical technology falsely appear to be effective and economical.

My opposition to this technology is a considered response to the fact it doesn’t work very well, even as an occasional fuel substitute, certainly not commensurate with the damage it causes and the monies it drains from rate and taxpayers. Like many celebrities born of spin, it’s famous for being famous, not for its actual performance. Chautauqua County could absorb 500 wind turbines, each more than 400 feet tall and spread over 100 miles, with blades spinning 175 mph at their tips. Annually, these might provide about 250MW of highly sporadic energy to the state’s 37,000MW installed grid total, unable, however, to replace any conventional power, including coal, since they will have virtually no capacity value, and with no hard evidence they would save any carbon emissions. Their massive footprint will transform the landscape, changing its appearance from natural views into those dominated by gargantuan industrial machinery. How green is this? In the process, nearby property values will plummet while a number of residents will experience relentless noise, at times exceeding the legal limit. The county will likely receive only a fraction of promised revenues and taxes, and it’s extremely unlikely the wind facilities will employ more than a handful of county residents or union workers. And like all tall structures that are lit at night, they will kill thousands of migrating birds and especially bats. All of these problems have been well documented—many of them admitted in “confidential” property leases that exculpate wind companies for creating them. This is dystopia, a nightmare, and not effective energy policy.

Chautauqua County represents low hanging fruit for distant wind capital seeking to exploit the people and resources of rural America, made even more shameless by the Orwellian charge that those who oppose its intrusions are NIMBYs when the corporate shills themselves live hundreds of miles away. If industrial wind succeeds here, it will be because the gullible are led by the pretentious, a process made easier because of a lack of accountability, no penalty for lying, and the pervasive vacuity of our political culture.