Virginia Beach, VA.
Despite its promise, the American wind industry is caught in the crosswinds of American politics — and that uncertain situation set up a surreal contrast when wind enterprises gathered here to tout their technologies.
Derrick Z. Jackson
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The economics of offshore wind are horrible and we don't need more things to subsidize with borrowed taxpayer money.
Wow, what a B>>S<< article this is. Wind turbines have been around for 20 years. They are extremely inefficient. They need backup coal when there is no wind. They use up tons of land. They kill lots of birds (by the way, where has EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson been on this)? And if Mr. Jackson loves them why doesn't he build one in his OWN BACKYARD? (OOPS, too noisy, neighbors wlll complain).
We don't locate large power plants of any kind in our backyards, certainly not those burning coal.
If we're to bring birds and coal into the story, people need to remember 1) forest habitat destruction due to mountain-top coal removal, 2) emissions of mercury from burning coal, this toxin settles into New England lakes and soil from Midwest coal plants and concentrates in food webs, accumulating in the tissues of loons and of songbirds, and 3) rapid climate change that threatens scores of bird species, especially specialized species on "sky islands", the high mountains of Central and South America, where warmer climate bands are ascending slopes, steadily pinching off the high elevation cool/moist habitats. If you are really concerned about birds, push for new regulations on office building construction that would require less reflective glass, require housecats be kept inside, and support tropical forest conservation. The toll that window impacts and cats take on birds is much more severe than any threat from turbines. That said, radar can show when and where nighttime songbird migration is at its peak. The wind industry should turn off their machines a few specific nights each fall, during these peak flights.
Derrick, why don't you do some real research on this topic before you reprint the AWEA marketing materials as an article? Bottom line, wind makes NO sense, offshore wind is an insult to anyone's intelligence, and the wind industry is looking for tax dollar handouts to subsidize an industry that can't find a real business model that works.
Just to give one example, on a raw, per-unit-of-energy-produced basis, subsidies to the wind sector are more than 200 times as great as those given to the oil-and-gas sector. Or, stated a different way, the SUBSIDY for 1 million BTUs of wind energy is nearly two times the market price of the natural gas required to produce the same amount of energy. Add in the usage mandates the wind industry enjoys courtesy of our misguided pols, the pass they get on wildlife destruction, and you will be hard pressed to find another industry that has enjoyed more political favors while producing less tangible benefit to taxpayers, rate payers, the economy and the environment.2 studies just came out -UK and another European country - that showedd how quickly these machines deteriorate and production drops dramatically over just 10 years
The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.
http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime