Pickens Plan I and Plan II: Retreat as Prelude to Failure? (worth re-reading Sunday) — MasterResource

No, the disadvantages of wind are numerous. The economics are bad, and reliability is worse. Redundant fossil-fuel capacity is needed to back up the intermittent output of the wind turbines. Windpower does not back out oil, it backs out natural gas for the most part. There is very little environmental bang for the ratepayer-and-taxpayer big bucks.

When will the shady origins of windpower mandates (such as the Enron provision of Texas’s 1999 renewables mandate) get some traction in the press? I explained this to Mr. Vogel for his piece, but it did not fit in the wind-is-good, Enron-is-bad view of the world.

And finally, there is opportunity cost. What if T. Boone Pickens had spend his $50–60 million on free-market energy ideas rather than statist energy nostrums? Or just left his money in the bank as savings to fuel the capitalist economy?

Consumers beware the costly spin of wind turbines - Times Online

In other European Union countries the payback can be even more astonishing. Germany subsidises renewable power generation through the so-called “feed-in tariff” (Fit). Anyone generating solar, wind-powered or hydro electricity gets a guaranteed payment of four times the market rate – about 35p a unit – for 20 years.
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The problem is this: wind does not blow all the time, so if Britain is to keep the lights on when the breeze slackens, wind power needs support from other forms of power. This means that for every wind farm we build, there must be a coal or gas-fired power station waiting in the wings to take over.
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Many wonder if such mounting charges are politically sustainable. A couple of years ago Ofgem, the energy regulator, warned the government that the renewables obligation system was handing wind farm operators windfall profits that could provoke a consumer backlash – perhaps one as angry as the fuel tax protests of 2000. What price then for Miliband’s bleats about the “social unacceptability” of opposing wind power?

Western Mail Letters - Saturday, 28 March 2009

SIR – The views of Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, that opposing wind farms should be socially taboo, are the tactics of a bully, using the power of social ostracising to promote his cause.

When can we have a serious debate on wind power?
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Wind farms are easy, the technology exists, they look good, generate a feeling that we’re doing something. Developers would not bother without subsidy.

I challenge someone to come up with a transparent life-cycle carbon audit for a wind farm.