Wind Turbines Overrated: More Danger than Help

Big wind turbines do not produce nearly the power that is claimed, do not last nearly as long as projected, and generate far higher lifetime costs than is acknowledged by their big money promoters and politically-connected investors.

The implementation of at least 20% wind energy will have major impacts on the US electric power system and will require trillions of dollars.

However, it appears the capacity factors of wind energy projects are much less than estimated by project developers. As a result, the capital costs and environmental impacts of implementation would be much greater, because a greater capacity of wind turbines and transmission systems would be required to generate the same quantity of energy.

Recent studies of IWT useful service lives in Denmark and the UK indicate these lives are about 15 - 20 years, say 17 years, instead of the 25 years typically used by IWT project developers to obtain bank financing, federal and state subsidies and "Certificate of Public Good" approvals. Instead of 2 replacements in 2 x 25 = 50 years, there will be 3 replacements in 3 x 17 = 51 years, i.e. a 50% greater replacement rate.

As the above US IWT build-out proceeds, almost all of the existing 52,000 MW of IWTs will need to be replaced during 2012 - 2029, plus the new IWTs built during 2012 - 2029 will need to be replaced during 2029 - 2046, etc.

The increased capital cost of IWT build-outs and replacements and the impact of the lesser CFs will greatly add to the US levelized cost of energy.

Unless other developed nations handicap themselves in the same manner (which appears increasingly less likely, based on COP-18 in Dohu, Qatar, in 2012), the US will be at an even greater economic disadvantage than at present. _Willem Post

Germany plans to increase its dependence on the intermittent unreliables to 40% by 2020 -- a mind-bending leap into the great energy and economic unknown. But greens in California are poised to make exactly the same bad bet on the unreliables as Germany. Go figure.

10% dependency on big wind and/or big solar is pushing it. Anything more than 10% is a recipe for disaster.

Germany Undergoing Contortions to Make Energiewende Work

Big wind and big solar are hopelessly intermittent and unreliable forms of energy production. But Germany has rashly committed itself to supplying 40% of its power from the intermittent unreliables by 2020. As a result of this giant leap of faith, German energy planners are scrambling for ways to convert big wind and big solar energy to more reliable forms of energy that can be stored, and used whenever needed.

P2G Electricity to Methane Scheme

As seen in the diagram above, a new €3.3 million project aims to produce methane from wind and solar generated electricity, using alkaline electrolyser stacks.

Once the hydrogen has been produced it passes through a methanisation process. The resulting methane can be injected directly into the natural gas grid, thus allowing for renewable energy storage on a timescale of months or more. The gas contributes to decarbonising the grid, and can be used for electricity generation or to fuel natural gas vehicles. _FuelCellToday

Here is more information about an earlier, preliminary research project to prove the concept:

The Centre for Solar Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) has inaugurated a research facility to convert solar power to methane. The methane is then added to the natural gas grid.

The project uses solar power to electrolyse water in a pressurised alkaline electrolyser, producing hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas then undergoes methanation, and with the facility able to produce up to 300 cubic meters of renewable methane per day, it is the largest of its type in the world. _FuelCellToday

More information from ZSW (in German)

Needless to say, the concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere is vanishingly small (0.04%) -- making atmospheric CO2 far too rare and expensive as a CO2 source, for an industrial-scale project. This being the case, it is clear that the project will have to use concentrated CO2 effluent from a hydrocarbon-burning power plant, cement plant, or other industrial scale plant.

And as it happens, Germany is burning much more coal lately, as a result of its impulsive decision to shut down its nuclear power plants. All of which brings up a very good question: "If Germans want to produce methane from CO2 and H2 from the electrolysis of water, why not use nuclear power as your source of electricity?" Nuclear power is cheaper, more reliable, and more potentially abundant than the intermittent unreliables -- big wind and big solar.

Perhaps the answer to the question is that the Germans are not actually serious about all of this, but are merely posturing for the energy and environmental media -- and for green oriented voters and power blocs.

That would be a shame. Germany is in dire need of competent people who are willing to take a serious approach to present and future electrical power needs.

Approaching California's Green Energy Wasteland Catastrophe

The California government's firm commitment to intermittent unreliable forms of energy is taking the state into an economic, energy, and employment wasteland, from which it may take several decades to recover.

RCE

California residents already pay nearly three times the rate as many other states and that figure is headed straight up as well. All this will weigh heavily on the California economy. Businesses are already responding by moving out at a very rapid rate...

...electricity prices are headed straight up. This is because wind and solar are still far more expensive than fossil fuels and nuclear. These costs are often disguised in that wind and solar can be produced at zero marginal costs when the wind blows or the sun shines. But these sources must be constantly backed up by gas, coal and nuclear, which become more expensive to run when they can only sell their power intermittently.

All this is driving business out of the state. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, several states have now opened full-time recruiting offices in California hoping to lure away businesses. Chief Executive Magazine ranks California last in the country for its business climate. Taxes and regulations are often mentioned but the “high cost of doing business” – which includes electricity prices – always a major factor as well. _RCE

California's badly structured energy policy is reminiscent of its disastrous immigration policy combined with its catastrophic policy of public employee compensation packages -- all of which are combining to create the perfect storm of catastrophic collapse for California government.

Particular counties and municipal areas may be in a good position to weather the coming storm. But most of the state will be devastated.

Big Wind Farms Dying Early and Often -- The Wind Power Scam Benefits Wealthy and Politically Connected Developers

A new study by University of Edinburgh researchers finds that wind turbines break down and wear out much more quickly than wind developers and wind proponents claim. As a result, large wind farms quickly turn into huge blights on the landscape -- wind farm graveyards.

Instead of a lifespan of up to 30 years, as wind proponents claim, wind turbines were found to have a useful lifespan of less than 15 years!

The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years.

...The study estimates that routine wear and tear will more than double the cost of electricity being produced by wind farms in the next decade. Older turbines will need to be replaced more quickly than the industry estimates... _Big New Study of Wind Farm's Failures

In the US, wind farm graveyards are accumulating, and no one seems to know what to do about the unsightly disgraces.

Faux environmental greens like to rave about the grand future of big wind energy, but the reality paints a much darker picture.

Without extremely generous government supports, no one would dream of building a wind farm -- they are simply not profitable in terms of power production. And without harsh government mandates which force utilities to buy and use wind power -- whether it is in the economic interest of utilities to do so or not -- wind projects would die rapidly, before being born.

Wind is not really about helping the environment -- because big wind energy famrs cause much more damage to the environment than it could ever relieve.

Big wind is actually all about graft and corrupt payoffs, back and forth between politicians and wealthy wind developers, and the hypocrisy of big money green faux environmental gangs.

Poland and Czech Republic Begin to Defend Against Bitzkrieg of Deutsche EnergieWende

Germany's celebrated Energiewende was meant as a public display of enlightenment on the part of Germany's government. But instead, it is creating headache upon nightmare upon the promise of a future economic devastation, for Europe's largest economic power.

Germany has been using the power grids of neighboring countries as "dumping grounds" for unwanted over-production from big wind and big solar energy developments. But Poland and the Czech republic are tired of having their crucial power grids destabilised by an arrogant and militant German irresponsibility. They are installing switching systems to block the dangerous green energy at the border.

[If] Germany’s neighbours act in self-defense, no one can blame them. The blocking of energy at their borders, however, are fragmenting the single European market for electricity. They also turning Germany into an electrical island within the European energy network, with unknown consequences for the security of supply.

And they cause even more forced shutdowns of wind farms in Germany, which means additional costs of at least one hundred millions Euros.

Germany’s federal government took the nuclear phase-out decision without any consultation with their European partnerns and irrespective of any implications for neighbouring countries. The green decision was rushed through without regard of transport capacity. For their short-sighted, self-centered and actionistic energy policy the German government is now paying the price. _Die Welt_via_GWPF

Greens are like children who never took the trouble to learn the dangerous consequences of their impulsive and impassioned actions. When greens gain control of public policy, the consequences are apt to be particularly dire, if there are no mature adults in the vicinity.

If the actions of Germany, Obama's US, Gillard's Australia, etc. are any basis to judge, things are apt to get a bit out of hand, long before any adults show up on the world scene.

For North America, Wind is a Waste of Money

A new report from the American Tradition Institute clearly spells out why big wind is a tragic waste of resources for North America. Even using very generous estimates and assumptions, the report nevertheless reveals that big wind costs at least 2 - 3 X more per unit of energy than more reliable forms of power such as coal, gas, and nuclear.

A fascinating new report by George Taylor and Tom Tanton at the American Tradition Institute called “The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity” asserts that the cost of wind power is significantly understated by the EIA’s numbers. In fact, says Taylor, generating electricity from wind costs triple what it does from natural gas. That’s because the numbers from the EIA and wind boosters fail to take into account a host of infrastructure and transmission costs. First off — the windiest places are more often far away from where electricity is needed most, so the costs of building transmission lines is high. So far many wind projects have been able to patch into existing grid interconnections. But, says Taylor, those opportunities are shrinking, and material expansion of wind would require big power line investments. Second, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, so power utilities have found that in order to balance out the variable load from wind they have to invest in keeping fossil-fuel-burning plants on standby. When those plants are not running at full capacity they are not as efficient. Most calculations of the cost of wind power do not take into account the costs per kWh of keeping fossil plants on standby or running at reduced loads. But they should, because it is a real cost of adding clean, green, wind power to the grid.

Taylor has crunched the numbers and determined that these elements mean the true cost of wind power is more like double the advertised numbers.

ATI Hidden Costs of Wind (PDF)

He explains that he started with 8.2 cents per kWh, reflecting total installation costs of $2,000 per kw of capacity. Then backed out an assumed 30-year lifespan for the turbines (optimistic), which increases the cost to 9.3 cents per kwh. Then after backing out the effect of subsidies allowing accelerted depreciation for wind investments you get 10.1 cents. Next, add the costs of keeping gas-fired plants available, but running at reduced capacity, to balance the variable performance of wind — 1.7 cents. Extra fuel for those plants adds another 0.6 cents. Finally, tack on 2.7 cents for new transmission line investments needed to get new wind power to market. The whole shebang adds up to 15 cents per kwh. _Forbes

The report is far too generous to big wind in the real world. The actual lifetime of a big wind turbine is closer to 20 years than 30 years. During that short lifespan, significant funds must be spent for upkeep and replacement of expensive parts that are prone to breakdown.

There exist many other costs of wind power which remain largely hidden and otherwise unaccounted for, due to the underlying irrationality of forcing utilities and ratepayers to accomodate an inherently unreliable form of energy. As we discover how exorbitantly expensive big wind is turning out to be, and how unnecessary the faux environmental turn to the intermittent unreliables -- more and more taxpayers and ratepayers are likely to grow restless and more difficult to contain and control.

Germany, Spain, and California may well serve as test cases -- examples of government instigated high dives by entire societies into the shallow pool of intermittent unreliable energy. As the dependency on unreliable energy grows, the hidden costs to societies become more difficult to hide. Watch and learn.

“Because wind is an intermittent source of electricity, it needs appropriate amounts of fossil-fueled capacity ready at all times to balance its large and rapid variations,” said Tom Tanton, Director of Science & Technology Assessment at ATI and a co-author of the report. “Those primary fossil plants then operate less efficiently than if they were running full-time without wind, meaning that any savings of gas and coal or any reductions in emissions are much less than simple calculations would indicate.” _ATI

California Morons Risking it all On Intermittent Unreliables

California is obligated by legal mandate to provide 1/3 of its electrical power by "green energy," including intermittent unreliable forms such as big wind and big solar, by the year 2020. Governor Brown of California wants to increase that requirement to 40% of California's electrical power via intermittent unreliables. But what will happen to California's already shaky economy as power consumers are forced to pay higher and higher rates, and as power brownouts and blackouts become more common -- as in a third world country?

One of the hidden costs of solar and wind power — and a problem the state is not yet prepared to meet — is that wind and solar energy must be backed up by other sources, typically gas-fired generators. As more solar and wind energy generators come online, fulfilling a legal mandate to produce one-third of California's electricity by 2020, the demand will rise for more backup power from fossil fuel plants.

"The public hears solar is free, wind is free," said Mitchell Weinberg, director of strategic development for Calpine Corp., which owns Delta Energy Center. "But it is a lot more complicated than that."

Wind and solar energy are called intermittent sources, because the power they produce can suddenly disappear when a cloud bank moves across the Mojave Desert or wind stops blowing through the Tehachapi Mountains. In just half an hour, a thousand megawatts of electricity — the output of a nuclear reactor — can disappear and threaten stability of the grid.

To avoid that calamity, fossil fuel plants have to be ready to generate electricity in mere seconds. That requires turbines to be hot and spinning, but not producing much electricity until complex data networks detect a sudden drop in the output of renewables. Then, computerized switches are thrown and the turbines roar to life, delivering power just in time to avoid potential blackouts.

The state's electricity system can handle the fluctuations from existing renewable output, but by 2020 vast wind and solar complexes will sprawl across the state, and the problem will become more severe. _LATimes

Big wind and big solar -- the "intermittent unreliable" forms of energy generation -- are "feel-good" public pacifiers for coastal dwellers steeped in carbon hysteria. But are these well indoctrinated, pseudo-intellectual academically lobotomised and politically correct devotees of faux environmentalism willing to pay the ultimate costs of their lefty-Luddite neo-Malthusian ideologies? Probably not.

... by 2017 the state will be short by about 3,100 megawatts of flexible power that it can dedicate to meeting reserve needs — about what three nuclear reactors produce. The company is pushing the state Public Utility Commission to require that capacity. The commission has been noncommittal so far. _LAT

Here are the top 10 reasons why businesses are leaving California, as of May, 2012:

#1 – Excessively Adversarial: For eight years in a row, Chief Executive magazine found California to be the worst state for business. Editors said the state appears to have slipped deeper into the “ninth circle of business hell,” a reference to Dante’s Inferno. “The economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially underperforms.” They’ve called California the “Venezuela of North America.”

#2 – Severe Existing Tax Treatment: The Tax Foundation in its 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index lists California at No. 48. CFO Magazine ranked California the worst state for tax treatment, as do many other rankings.

#3 – Future Tax Increases: Businesses will face higher income and sales taxes. The state has the largest budget deficit of any state. Employer costs will rise in 2013 as payroll taxes increase to bail out the Unemployment Insurance Fund (insolvent by $10 billion) and to cover excessive borrowing from the Disability Insurance Fund. Future bond borrowing costs will grow because California is S&P's lowest-rated U.S. state. (Bloomberg News, May 18, 2012: "Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking a 38,000 percent spending increase for a proposed high-speed rail system” despite a $15.7 billion deficit.)

#4 – Worst Regulatory Burden: California approved global warming cap-and-trade initiatives with 262 pages of new regulations and fees going into effect in early 2013 even though the state contributes less than 1 percent of the worlds’ green house gases. The draconian measures ignore Bain & Co.’s “regulatory hassle index” that found “California is far worse than any other state by a very significant margin.”

#5 – Unprecedented Energy Costs: California’s commercial electrical rates already average 50 percent  higher than in the rest of the country. The new 2013-2018 “green energy” mandates will boost rates by a minimum of another 19 percent in many California localities, which will harm companies in every industry.

#6 – Dreadful Legal Treatment: The Civil Justice Association of California said the state ranks 44th in legal fairness to business. In 2010, the Institute for Legal Reform found Los Angeles’ courts were the second worst in the nation for legal fairness, after Chicago’s, while San Francisco’s courts were the sixth worst.

#7 – Most Expensive Locations: The Milken Institute found that California businesses pay 23% more than the national average in operating costs. McAfee avoids hiring in California and saves about 30 percent to 40 percent every time it hires outside of the state. 

#8 – Oppressive Permitting Procedures: Obtaining permits from public agencies is extraordinarily expensive and time consuming because of confusing, extraneous and harsh requirements. Example: It can take 2 years to obtain permits just to build a restaurant in California while in other states it can be as little as 1-1/2 months.

#9 – Unfriendly Even to Small Businesses: In 2012, Thumbtack.com and the Kauffman Foundation gave California an “F” grade from small businesses for overall business unfriendliness, difficult regulations, tax code, licensing and health and safety. The finding echoes the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council in Virginia 2011 conclusion that California ranked 49th overall in terms of business friendliness.

#10 – ‘Composite’ Findings Put California Last: Development Counselors International in a 2011 survey of executives found that ranked California as having the worst business climate of any state based on operating costs, taxes and deficits. That reinforced the “Pollina Corporate Top 10 Pro-Business States for 2010” study that placed the state at the bottom based on labor costs, taxes, litigation abuse, crime rates, demographics, school dropout rates and other factors.

_NCTimes

As faux environmental political activists push California's utilities and more reliable power producers closer and closer to the brink, expect "power blackouts and brownouts" to move to the top of the list for reasons why businesses leave the golden state.

California is under the total control of morons, who elect imbeciles such as Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Brown, and Maxine Waters as their representatives. The clock is ticking down on their idiocy. Try not to be hurt too badly by the fallout that will accompany the state's downfall.

Losing Hope in the Green Intermittent Unreliables

Green sources of energy -- such as the intermittent unreliables big wind and big solar -- are ruinously expensive in many ways. The cost of installation is just the beginning. Then there is the huge cost of installing new power transmission infrastructure. And there is the gigantic cost of building and maintaining instant-backup power generation -- which is costly to maintain, and wears out more quickly due to the capricious nature of wind and solar. Finally there is the giant taxpayer subsidy that never seems to go away. It is like a constantly screaming child that never grows up, or a bicycle that can't be ridden without the training wheels.

But several countries -- and now US states -- are beginning to see a diminishing return from their rapid and enthusiastic buildup of big wind and big solar. Germany, Spain, Denmark, and other countries are cutting back on government subsidies. People are losing hope in green.

In the US, Hawaii's rapid buildup of solar is running into a stone wall of reality. The same problem is likely to hit California and other states who have jumped over the green energy cliff blindfolded.

Obama's green energy bankruptcies continue to mount. A123 is one of the most recent green failures to be put under the microscope.

The total cost of attempting to accomodate the power grid -- one of the most important foundations of modern industrial society -- to the green intermittent unreliables, is essentially infinite past a certain point.

In other words, Obama and other green crusaders are gambling with the futures of their societies. All of their well-intended mandates, taxes, subsidies, grants, and other gestures to the gods of green energy are all wasted resources, lost chances to invest in more reliable sources of power.

And despite the many and continuing failures of the green revolution of intermittent unreliables, the idiots have not even admitted that there is a problem, much less have they begun to learn the lessons of their failures, or begun to turn to better policies. Some fools never learn.

How to Lie With Price Comparison Charts

The chart below comes from RealClearEnergy, a broad spectrum energy news and commentary website. It is a comparison of "levelised costs" between various types of energy sources -- including wind "power" with and without the US federal PTC price support.

Real Clear Energy
The article containing the graph claims that "wind underprices the competition, but . . ." And that is a very big "but" indeed. Here is more on how the editors of Real Clear Energy compiled their chart:

The graph shows the levelized costs of electricity in 2010 dollars per megawatt hour for the main forms of generating electricity. Levelized costs are defined as follows: investment and installation costs, operations and maintenance costs, fuel costs, life of the generating unit, and energy generated by the unit. The horizontal axis breaks out the major forms of generation: wind , natural gas, coal and nuclear. Wind (represented in green) is represented both with and without the production tax credit, which awards a tax reduction per megawatt. _RCE

The article admits that wind is only "competitive" when it operates a maximum capacity, and that wind "cannot always operate at maximum capacity." The authors of the editorial deserve a "comic of the year award" for stating the above with a straight face. Wind is unpredictable, and rarely operates at maximum capacity, and when it does it is usually at a time when the grid does not need the "power," forcing the grid to buy unneeded energy and dump it (waste it) at significant expense.

That is a key point. The unpredictable intermittency of the wind destroys any price advantage it may present on a constructed chart -- with or without a PTC. Modern industrial infrastructure is designed around affordable, reliable, high quality electrical power. Big wind energy is the enemy of affordability, reliability, and quality of power.

More from William Tucker:

At best, windmills generate electricity only one-third of the time. That means to get the real costs you have to combine the $90.25 or $68.25 figure with something else. The choice today is peaking natural gas generators, since only they can be ramped up and down to match wind’s variations. But when you combine the weighted costs of natural gas peakers and wind without the production tax credit you get $148.22, far more expensive than coal or nuclear. Even with the production tax credit, the cost remains at $104.50, slightly higher than nuclear. Now General Electric is now marketing a combined-cycle plant that it says can be ramped up and down to partner for wind. But if combined cycle is already $15 cheaper than wind without the production tax credit, then what’s the sense of adding windmills? Even with the PTC, the differential is only $6, which is hardly worth the effort.

So the fuel of choice these days is definitely natural gas – which explains why everybody is building natural gas plants and nobody is building coal or nuclear. But can we count on these low prices lasting forever or even ten years? _William Tucker

The wind industry in the US and elsewhere in the modern world, cannot survive without massive government subsidies -- which invariably go to wealthy investors and developers. Most of these investors and developers are closely connected to ruling interests inside of government, for some odd reason.

EIA via WaPo

The above chart gives one an idea of how dependent big wind is upon big government tax loopholes to wealthy and well-connected lobbyists, developers, and financial interests.

The Case Against Wind (PDF) by J. Lesser October 2012

It is time to stop lying and obscuring the brutal truth about intermittent unreliable forms of energy. Wind power is an ancient source of energy, but it has not adapted well to modern industrial power needs, and it never will. The attempt to square the circle in this situation is the result of a blind adherence to a faux environmental, pseudoscientific quasi-religion known as catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. We at the Al Fin Institutes refer to this superstitious belief as "carbon hysteria."

Until the irrational fear of carbon is eradicated from media, government, academia, and faux environmental factions, these groups will continue to promote irrational, counter-productive, unreliable, and non-economic forms of energy to replace a current system which is in need of far more rational upgrades, for the money that will be spent.

China's Great Green Bubble of Overbuilt Unreliables

One-quarter of China’s wind farms are not connected to a power grid—a reflection of poor planning, insufficient transmission lines, and technical concerns by regional utilities that the intermittency of wind power can be disruptive to normal operations. Wind-related power failures have caused blackouts in three provinces, while exploding equipment has been blamed in the deaths of several workers, according to local press accounts. _BW

Responding to a perceived market for green energy in Europe and North America, China engaged in a massive production build-up of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels. China was successful in building a vast production capacity of green energy generation. And now, China must face the consequences of its great success.

China’s $30 billion solar power industry is overbuilt and heavily in debt. Analysts say even billions of dollars in new government loans may not be able to pull it out of the hole.... Suntech Power Holdings (STP), the world’s largest solar panel maker, announced in September it would cut or reassign 1,500 workers at its photovoltaic cell factory in Wuxi. Suntech is counting on a $32 million loan from local authorities to avoid more job losses. To stay solvent, LDK Solar (LDK), China’s second-largest maker of solar wafers, was forced to sell a 20 percent stake to a renewable energy investor part-owned by the city of Xinyu, where LDK is headquartered. The support comes as the companies prepare to report combined 2012 losses of $987 million... Regional governments are loath to let their local solar panel makers fail.

... Help from local governments may be the biggest hurdle to making China’s solar industry competitive, says Shyam Mehta, solar analyst at the Boston consulting company GTM Research: “Until they stop supporting the uncompetitive manufacturers, this won’t go away.”

...LDK and Suntech both have balance sheets “so egregious” they would be “imminent bankruptcy candidates if they were American or European,” says Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates. The companies didn’t respond to requests for comment. Molchanov believes infusions of government money won’t stop the losses until China grapples with its massive overcapacity—the same glut of panels that cut global prices by half in the last two years and drove U.S. solar panel makers such as Solyndra out of business. “Every province, every city, every bank is going to try to protect their vested interest as best they can,” he says. “That’s why kicking the can down the road has been the dynamic so far.” Aaron Chew, an analyst at Maxim Group in New York, concurs: “The government’s subsidy plan is better than nothing, but I don’t think it will save the industry as it’s still not profitable.”

The nation’s investments in wind power are faring no better. One-quarter of China’s wind farms are not connected to a power grid—a reflection of poor planning, insufficient transmission lines, and technical concerns by regional utilities that the intermittency of wind power can be disruptive to normal operations. Wind-related power failures have caused blackouts in three provinces, while exploding equipment has been blamed in the deaths of several workers, according to local press accounts. China Datang Corporation Renewable Power, a state-owned wind energy developer, saw first-half 2012 profits plunge 76 percent, in part because regional utilities simply don’t have the capacity to accept all the energy it produces.

China’s wind turbine manufacturers, responsible for 40 percent of the world’s output, are suffering a double squeeze, as demand has stalled both at home and abroad. Sinovel Wind Group, the world’s largest wind turbine maker by market value, posted a $45 million third-quarter loss this year on an 82 percent drop in sales—its largest loss since its initial public offering in January 2011. _Businessweek

China's green energy woes should have been expected, given the experience of other nations that followed a similar slippery downhill path.

Epic Failure of Spain's Grand Green Energy Gesture

Obama's Legacy of Corrupt Green Failures

Germany pays the price for its green foolishness

Modern industrial power grids cannot tolerate the huge moment-to-moment energy fluctuations of intermittent unreliable energy sources such as big wind and big solar. Whenever attempting a large scale conversion to "green power," initial economic costs are exorbitant. The cost of the power plants themselves, the cost of new power grid infrastructure, and the huge cost of maintaining spinning backup power sources. And then there is the cost to society as lower and middle income customers strain to pay skyrocketing power bills.

But the real costs of such an ideologically driven, top-down attempt to transform a national power grid and power supply, begin to emerge as the unreliables approach 20% or more of total power capacity to the grid. The violent and unpredictable intermittency of big wind power in particular, leads to power failures -- blackouts, brownouts, selective shutdowns of power customers, etc.

Industries begin to bail out of an economy that is unable to provide reliable electrical power. A trickle becomes a flood, and before you know it a former continental powerhouse such as Germany begins to resemble a national ruin such as Greece. A world powerhouse such as the US -- if not for its shale fracking, coal, and remaining old-style nuclear power generation -- becomes an international ruin like Zimbabwe.

Russia and Saudi Arabia would love nothing better than to see the US and Germany bet their futures on intermittent unreliable green energy. Dictators love the fools that guarantee their job security into the indefinite future.

In Germany, Idiot Greens are the Problem

Below are excerpts from a Der Spiegel Online interview with Stephan Kohler, head of the German Energy Agency. Herr Kohler is incredibly kind and courteous to two very poorly prepared journalists, who clearly have no idea of how their electrical power grid works. (Go here for full interview)

In Germany, 75 percent of electricity goes to industry, for which a secure supply -- that is, at every second, and with constant voltage -- is indispensable. Neither solar nor wind power are suitable for that purpose today. Both fluctuate and provide either no secure supply or only a small fraction of a secure supply. _Spiegel

Kohler is patiently explaining to the uninformed journalists how sensitive German industry is to large intermittent fluctuations in their power supply. In fact, Germany is losing industries at an increasing rate due to its inability to guarantee reliable, high quality power at reasonable rates -- thanks to dysfunctional green government mandates and the imbecilic shutting down of nuclear power plants.

Kohler continues discussing some of the problems with intermittency:

... a surplus and fluctuations lead to very unpleasant systemic effects. We have voltage fluctuations within the grid that create problems for industry. Or we overload the grids in neighboring countries. Poland is in the process of installing technical equipment to protect its grids by keeping out surplus German electricity.

...Today anyone can build a solar power system wherever he wants. And anyone who owns one of these systems also has the right to be connected to the grid operator. Just take a drive through Bavaria, and you'll see entire fields full of solar power plants, even though there is zero consumption there and there is no grid. Solar systems should be expanded only in places where the electricity is needed and there are grids that can absorb it...

... Nowadays wind energy is mostly generated where it isn't needed, that is, in the north. But the power lines that are supposed to carry this electricity to the south only exist on paper at the moment. I would propose that we permit the construction of more wind farms only once the power lines have actually been built...

...So far the expansion of power lines has often been blocked by objections from the environmental movement, that is, the people who staunchly promote the development of renewal energy. When things go wrong, they give themselves an environmental halo and blame the grid operators....

... Every new solar or wind energy system that we cannot integrate in a way that makes sense has a negative impact on the system, both economically and technically.

... _Spiegel

Unfortunately, there is no clean way of integrating large scale wind and solar energy into a modern industrial power grid. The longer German greens persist in their idiotic Energiewende, the more ruinously expensive it will be for Germany to dig its way out of the deep green hole.

And since Germany is at the centre of the European power grid (and the European economy), when Germany suffers, all of Europe will suffer.

Global Coal Industry Booms: India and China Alone Adding 200 New Coal Plants

In the US, natural gas is replacing coal in new electricity generating power plants. As a result, CO2 emissions in the US have declined. In Europe, on the other hand, six times more coal units than natural gas units will be installed by 2015. You can imagine what that will do to Europe's carbon emissions.

But the true champions of coal are China and India, where 200 large new coal power plants will be built over the next few years. All of this while green faux environmentalists in western governments are working to institute ruinous carbon regulations on Europe, North America, and Oceania -- in the name of reducing global carbon emissions!

But another problem stood out. India relies on coal for 55 percent of its electric power and struggles to keep enough on hand.

Coal remains a critical component of the world’s energy supply despite its bad image. In China, demand for coal in 2010 resulted in a traffic jam 75 miles long caused by more than 10,000 trucks carrying supplies from Inner Mongolia. India is increasing coal imports.

So is Europe, as it takes advantage of lower coal prices in the United States. Higher-priced natural gas on the Continent is creating demand for more coal imports from the United States, where coal is taking a drubbing from less expensive natural gas.

...Coal is not subject to the vagaries of windless or sunless days, and can easily meet base-load demands of electricity consumers without interruption. So can nuclear power, but the nuclear industry is still reeling from the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. Countries like Germany have turned away from nuclear reactors.

Global demand for coal is expected to grow to 8.9 billion tons by 2016 from 7.9 billion tons this year, with the bulk of new demand — about 700 million tons — coming from China, according to a Peabody Energy study. China is expected to add 240 gigawatts, the equivalent of adding about 160 new coal-fired plants to the 620 operating now, within four years. During that period, India will add an additional 70 gigawatts through more than 46 plants.

“If you poke your head outside of the U.S., coal-fired plants are being built left and right,” said William L. Burns, an energy analyst with Johnson Rice in New Orleans. “Coal is still the cheapest fuel source.” _NYT_via_GWPF

While the leadership of Europe, North America, and Oceania are suffering from carbon insanity, the leaders of China and India are not so deluded. They understand the critical importance of electrical power that does not turn off when the sun goes down or when the wind stops blowing. Modern industrial nations cannot run on the intermittent unreliable energy sources which Obama, Merkel, Gillard, and the others of similar mental turpitude tend to favour.

And please take note of the hypocrisy of the European governments that are willing to mortgage their economic and industrial futures on the backs of big wind and big solar for the sake of carbon reductions -- while at the same time building huge new coal power plants.

Modern societies cannot afford such stupid leaders as these, if they are to survive to reach the next level of abundance. But it seems that we may have reached a point of diminishing returns as far as democracy is concerned. When democracy becomes a rule of the mob which simply votes itself favours and sinecures, it is time for the more productive and competent to consider how to trim the fat and the dead weight.

As governments commit energy and industrial suicide via intermittent unreliables, and fall victim to carbon hysteria, their productive base tends to diminish. This increases instability in the overall system, and leads to chaotic shifts in foci of power and control.

Keep a close watch as things develop.

Looming Electricity Shortages in Europe

Industry observers last month expressed concern over a potential electricity supply crisis this winter because of a tighter nuclear supply scenario in Belgium, Germany and France.

After Germany closed some of its oldest nuclear reactors following the 2011 Fukushima disaster, another big blow to supply were cracks at Belgian nuclear reactors Tihange 2 and Doel 3, which have grounded 2,000 MW when Belgium would typically be a net exporter to France. _Reuters

The risk of freezing to death during a cold winter is many orders of magnitude higher than the risk of being harmed by a nuclear reactor. And yet Europe's leaders march steadfast toward the brink of the energy cliff, undeterred by the dangers and hardships that confront their citizens as a result of their actions.

Green dreams of intermittent unreiable wind and solar: they'll be the death of Europe yet.

Germany's Green Suicide

In the US northeast, long lines for food, water, cash, and fuels -- but no one lined up for wind turbines after Hurricane Sandy. Wind turbines are exorbitant luxuries -- the essence of inessentiality. In a disaster -- and in hard times -- the last thing you need to do is to waste money on intermittent unreliables.

And in the UK, the Energy Minister announced that no new onshore wind farms would be built:

So unreliable are wind turbines — thanks to the wind’s constant vagaries — that they are one of the most inefficient means of producing electricity ever devised. _Telegraph

Aside from the UK, can you explain Europe's headlong rush toward a green energy suicide? Can it all be explained by the pseudoscientific religion of carbon hysteria, or is something more sinister afoot?

We know that wealthy and politically-connected wind farm developers can reap a healthy return on investment, even if the wind farm never generates any electricity -- thanks to government subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, mandates, etc etc. We know that political leaders can win votes and financial support / payoffs, by promising "clean energy."

Face it: there's a sucker born every minute.

Just try not to be one of them.

Nicole M Foss' Dose of Reality on Renewable Energy

Nicole M. Foss, peak oiler, climate catastrophist, energy and economy writer, and co-editor of the automatic earth.com . . . . makes her case against renewable energy in a 30+ page essay complete with a cornucopia of links and references.

Typically, people who believe in peak oil, climate catastrophe, overpopulation, resource scarcity, etc. etc. will also believe strongly in large scale adoption of renewable energy.

But in her "Renewable Energy the Vision and a Dose of Reality," Foss looks very broadly at the issue of replacing modern electric power generating infrastructure with large scale renewables, and suggests that the goals of Al Gore, Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, and the rest of the usual suspects cannot be met on any reasonable time scale.

The piece is worth reading for its links and source quotations alone.

Reading Foss, I was reminded of Gail Tverberg's article: "Forget Renewables, We Need Cheap Oil."

Both Tverberg and Foss have been connected to The Oil Drum international organisation in one way or another. Both are well educated, largely in thrall to the peak oil / EROEI hype, participants in carbon hysteria -- and yet both have come out publicly against big renewable energy.

It is at these junctures of intersecting conclusions, that people who hold vastly different assumptions can for a short time meld their mental functions and stretch their congealed attitudes -- if they want to.

Many contemporary sceptics of peak oil and climate catastrophe were once adherents to those ideas. But careful attention to details and demonstrable dynamic trends allowed them to break through the contrictive assumptions that hold so many otherwise intelligent people thrall to those quasi-religious beliefs. One would assume that Tverberg and Foss were once enthusiastic about the potential for large scale renewables, before they were hit over the head by the harsh realities.

Most humans never live long enough to shed their most erroneous beliefs and assumptions. That being the case, most humans are unable to arrive at realistic conclusions, no matter how valid their intermediate chains of logic.

If enough intelligent and articulate humans wake up -- even in a very limited way -- in time to prevent a boondoggle of catastrophic proportions, that may be all we can ask for. If the same humans go on to support other disastrous boondoggles, well, they are only human.

Energy Wars: Haughty Huns Threaten Pols and Czechs

Erratic Nature of Wind

Germany is conducting an energy war, using the erratic and unpredictable wind as a covert weapon against its neighbors.

Germany is dumping electricity on its unwilling neighbors and by wintertime the feud should come to a head...

...Central and Eastern European countries are moving to disconnect their power lines from Germany’s during the windiest days. That’s when they get flooded with energy, echoing struggles seen from China to Texas over accommodating the world’s 200,000 windmills.

...Renewable energy around the world is causing problems... At times, the glut can be so great that utilities pay consumers to take the power and get rid of it.

...The problem may intensify with the approaching winter. With an insufficient north-south connection, Germany’s power network came close to a collapse last February when high winds in the Baltic sea flooded it with power and the Czech Republic and Poland threatened to disconnect their grids.

...“The Germans are using our infrastructure in an excessive manner,” CEPS board member Zbynek Boldis said in an interview in Prague. “At this point they’re getting a free lunch.”

...“Electricity follows a path of least resistance in the grid, according to the laws of physics,” Boldis said. “The result is that our transmission system is overloaded, we have security threats.” _Bloomberg

Big wind energy generates large and erratic power irregularities in the grid, on an almost instantaneous basis. These large power shifts cause expensive damage to critical power backup infrastructure, and significantly shorten the useful lifetimes of backup systems worth tens of billions of Euros or more.

Wind advocates claim that the problems of big wind can be solved using geographical averaging, supergrids, and energy storage. But a close analysis demonstrates that such is not the case.

The wind does not generally blow at times when the power grid needs the most power. And it tends to blow the most when the power grid is already well supplied -- forcing the grid to dump excess power at significant cost.

This de facto energy war is actually a religious war -- a crusade. Underlying green philosophies which drive the compulsion to overbuild wind and solar infrastructure, are equivalent to religious dogma, unsupported by science or empirical observations.

Over the past hundred years, Germany has had a tendency to start wars that devastated large areas of the world, leaving most of Europe in tatters for decades. Let us hope that this German-instigated war does not achieve the same dismal result. Preliminary analysis, however, does not provide much hope.

The Impending Collapse of Ephemeral Wind

What Happens to Wind Without Massive Government Subsidy

The wind energy lives and dies by its tax credit. That's because there is no money to be made in generating electricity from windmills. They are tremendously materials intensive, consuming steel and concrete in prodigious amounts. Each 40-story windmill produces 2 megawatts at best, so you need hundred of them to equal a conventional power plant. Even then, they generate unpredictably and only 30 percent of the time. The only thing that makes them worth building is the production tax credit. _RealClearEnergy

But the PTC makes them VERY worthwhile to businesses looking for tax write-offs. Before it went bankrupt in 2003, Enron was the country's largest owner of windmills. Later it was supplanted by the Marriott Hotel chain. A major corporation looking for tax advantages can make money from windmills without ever generating a kilowatt of electricity.

So when Congress fails to renew the tax credit, the industry collapses. This is indicated on the bar chart. Before 2005, the renewal was on a one-year cycle. When Congress failed to renew in 2000, 2002, and 2004, production fell by at least 73 percent each time. In 2005 the PTC was extended to a two-year cycle and was last renewed in the Stimulus Act of 2009. With Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives, however, the PTC will probably not be renewed unless Democrats achieve a remarkable victory in November. As a result, windmill construction is about to end almost completely. Layoffs have already begun. _RCE

It is time to put the faux environmentalist chimera of big wind energy out of the US' misery.

It may be too late for Europe to save itself from the monstrous economic debacle of big wind. But the UK can still save itself.

Beware of politicians bearing gifts of big wind, big sun, and carbon credits. Do what you must to preserve the future for yourselves and your progeny.

Sad Energy Tales of Denmark, Spain, Germany, & California

Renewables are barely halfway to the goal of getting 40 percent of [Germany's] electricity from renewable energy by 2020. (The current 25 percent figure is highly dubious since not much of the old stuff has been shut down and new coal plants are actually being added to keep the lights on.) Germany already pays the second highest electrical rates in Europe, almost twice what France pays with its 70 percent nuclear. (Just who’s #1 we’ll get to in a moment.) German industries are already complaining they won’t be able to compete anymore in the world market.

Spain paved the way to its current financial meltdown by deciding to become the “solar capital of the world” in the middle of the last decade. The government subsidized a huge homegrown industry, with whole new towns springing up around new manufacturing plants. The whole enterprise lasted about five years until high electrical rates started driving industries to France and the government ran out of money. The subsidies disappeared and the entire industry collapsed, leaving ghost towns in its wake. By the time it was over, Spain was on the critical list of Europe’s ailing economies.

Denmark has littered the landscape with windmills so that it is hard to go anywhere in the countryside without being in sight of a 40-story whirling tower. The country claims that wind to provide 20 percent of its electricity but this is deceptive. Wind generates a 20 percent equivalent of Denmark’s electrical needs, but only about half of this is actually consumed in Denmark. The rest is dumped into Sweden and Germany at giveaway prices, leaving wind’s actual grid contribution at only 5 to 10 percent. All this is made possible only because neighboring Sweden has lots of hydroelectric power available for immediate backup when the wind dies. Norway also has lots of pumped storage to handle Denmark’s surpluses. The result of all this is that Denmark is the only county with electrical rates higher than Germany.

Our own domestic version of Germany and Spain is California. The Golden State created the California Electrical Crisis of 2000 by refusing to build anything medium-sized small industrial co-generation plants and pitifully small renewable projects from 1980 to 2000. Since then it has stampeded into natural gas, so that 45 percent of its in-state generation now comes from this one source, double the national average. Californians pay twice as much for electricity as surrounding states and Governor Jerry Brown is now wrestling with an annual budget deficit of $30 billion and a total state debt of $1/2 trillion. Spain, with a 25 percent more population, has an annual deficit of $46 billion and a total debt of $1 trillion. _William Tucker in Nuclear Town Hall

Green idiocy is the bane of Europe and California, not to mention Obama's Washington DC. Green government policies have a way of destroying everything they touch, eventually becoming the victims of their own hidebound ideological thickness.

It would be nice if national electorates were intelligent enough to vote for a better class of political leaders, but that may be asking for two much, given the abominable state of modern journalism, academia, popular culture, and bloated government bureaucracies.

And in the EU, of course, the people have little say about the decisions made in Brussels regardless. Corrupt from the shell to the core.

When governments become so intent on carrying out an ideological agenda that they sacrifice the well being of the people, they are digging their own graves -- one way or another.

Political Left Crucifies Itself on a Great Green Cross

The left-leaning newspaper, the Washington Post, recently published an atypically honest editorial look at the green energy dysfunction -- a malady that afflicts a large proportion of modern leftist politicians -- including Barack Obama, Al Gore, Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, Francois Hollande, and more . . .

Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.

Consider California’s “net metering” subsidy for solar-panel users. As the New York Times reported in June, the program hugely benefits well-off consumers who can afford to install photovoltaic panels. They get sun power for their homes — plus an excess supply that utilities must buy. Thus utilities must also pay to keep them on the grid. Those costs get passed along to everyone else — including low-income customers.

For a sense of where this may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

Democrats try to square this circle by talking up “green jobs,” but expensive electricity is bad for industry, as Germany is discovering. Fact is, subsidies for green energy do not so much create jobs as shift them around.

...Government, with its inevitable susceptibility to lobbying and favoritism, should not be picking winners and losers, whether through green subsidies or tax breaks for oil and gas.

It’s one thing to lose your job because a competing firm built a superior mouse trap; it’s quite another, justice-wise, to lose it because a competitor talked the government into taking its side. _Washington Post

The editorialist Charles Lane was explicitly singling out Al Gore as a corrupt recipient of green government favours -- to the tune of about $100 million.

But the great green dysfunction is infested by corrupt hypocrites such as Gore. Barack Obama himself is unlikely to be satisfied with any less of a big money payday than Al Gore received, after leaving office.

And yet, there is a limit to the degree to which a moribund economy can be scammed, after a certain point. Obama may find himself to be one of the victims of his own great green dysfunctional policies. He may have to settle for only $50 million, for starters.

Green Disaster Builds: Germans, Global Investors Hit

Germany faces power blackouts this winder

Under Germany's green Energiewende dysfunction, almost a million Germans can not afford to pay their energy bills.

And that is just the beginning, as Germans are faced with further electricity price explosions that will not quit.

The grand green energy crusade is beginning to run out of investors, as project after project crashes and burns. The green dysfunction has bankrupted investors from Spain to Denmark to China to the US.

Power grids are already vulnerable to hacking and cyber-attacks, due to poorly considered and vulnerable connectiveness with the global internet. But if green functionaries and activists are successful in turning power grids into vulnerability-infested "smart grids," problems with hackers and cyber-attacks are likely to grow exponentially.

Why are the world's advanced nations submitting vital energy infrastructures to these forms of masochistic dysfunction and creeping catastrophe? One big reason is the near-hysterical fear of greenhouse gas climate doom. But if recent temperatures are any guide, the Earth stopped warming over a decade ago. Of course the bureaucrats whose income and lifestyle depend upon maintaining a climate of alarmism will deny any attempts to hype or deceive.

But we know better.

The agenda of energy starvation embarked upon by Obama, Merkel, Gillard, the EU, etc. can only hurt consumers of energy, and overall economies -- with no tangible benefit. It is time for the people of those countries and unions to throw out the destructors in government, and overhaul the infrastructure of government as necessary to prevent such a disaster from re-occurring.

Oil Prices: Stable or Falling? Plus Obama's Crony Energy Game

What will happen to oil prices over the next several years?

Kevin McElroy thinks oil prices may drop by 50% over the next few years.

The IEA expects oil prices to fall over the next 5 years as demand slumps and supplies grow

Andrew McKillop sees Brent prices dropping by 25% and WTI dropping by around 15%

Citi sees oil prices between $80 and $90 through 2020

No one actually knows where oil prices will be in 5 or 10 years. But as long as prices stay near or above $80, upstream producers will be making money.

Despite ongoing sanctions on Iran and continuing speculations of war in the Persian Gulf, oil prices have resisted the urge to spike. This price stability reflects increased supply from other sources, and must be a tremendous source of disappointment to oil traders and peak oilers alike.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama continues his policy agenda of energy starvation, continuing to support intermittent unreliable forms of energy, rather than more reliable and dependable forms. But he has a good reason for his approach -- Chicago style political quid pro quo!

Some 80% of companies receiving Department of Energy backing, according to the Hoover Institution's Peter Schweizer, are "run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers." One, Mr. Al Gore, is worth an estimated $100 million, thanks to $2.5 billion in federal loans, grants and tax breaks, according to Friday's Washington Post.

What about the "green" jobs that were supposed to sprout? By Mr. Obama's own arithmetic, the $21 billion spent so far should have delivered 700,000 jobs. Actual count: 28,854, according to Friday's Bloomberg Businessweek. _WSJ

Obama is doubling down on stupid by pushing a trade war with China over solar panels!

As has been stated here before, when it comes to producing and installing green intermittent unreliables, whoever wins is the one who loses.

Advanced next-gens nuclear energy will be the future of large scale energy for at least a few thousand years, once the leadership of advanced nations wakes up to the obvious. That should take about 10 to 20 years.

In the meantime, we are going to need both conventional and unconvention oil & gas, as well as coal, kerogens, bitumens, gas hydrates, and advanced biomass and microbial fuels.

What we absolutely do not need to do is to waste resources on destructive green intermittent unreliables.