CHURCHVILLE, VA—As I write, a strong wind is blowing across the Alleghany Mountains onto my house. It’s bringing an “Arctic Clipper” that will drop my temperatures this weekend to a frigid and unusual 6 degrees F. Why can’t I get some good from this chill wind—with a wind turbine to harvest the “free” energy?

 

Out in Oregon, General Electric has just announced a big wind project: 338 turbines, rated at 845 MW. GE claims it will power for 235,000 homes, and is applying for the appropriate federal subsidies.

 

Will the wind turbines power 235,000 homes?  Don’t bet on it. My friend Donald Hertzmark—an energy economist—warns the power deliveries from this wind project are likely to average only 25 percent of its rated capacity. That would serve only 58,000 homes, not 235,000.

 

But Hertzmark says even this is too high because the wind is highly variable. The Texas power grid’s experience is to rely on no more than 9 percent of the wind farm’s rated capacity. That would reduce GE’s real subsidy claim to about 21,000 households.

 

It gets worse.

 

Most of Oregon’s power comes from dams, and the lean period for hydropower is winter. That’s when heating demand peaks—but also when the dams have to restrict their water flow to protect fish, control flooding, and save up irrigation water for the next summer.

 

How likely is it that wind turbines can add to Oregon’s generating capacity in the midst of the winter electricity demand surge, and offset the hydroelectric generating restrictions?  Not very, says Hertzmark.

 

This January, Britain’s wind turbines (6 percent of total generating capacity after many billions of dollars invested) supplied virtually no power on most days. The wind tends not to blow when and where it’s already very cold.

 

The stars of the British winter power demand were natural gas turbines, which are 34 percent of capacity and supplied 40 percent of the power during the winter wind lull. But Britain’s North Sea natural gas is running out; the only likely new source would be natural gas piped from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Ouch.

 

“Wind cannot be relied upon to provide firm generation at full capacity coincident with peak demand.” warns Hertzmark. “Wind might be capable of contributing to the peak demand requirements at some times. However, this will rarely happen—and when it does, it will be for brief periods. For significant periods of time, no households will be served by the wind farms.”

 

Nor have either of the worlds “wind leaders”—Denmark and Germany—decommissioned any fossil fuel plants. The fossil generators are kept in “spinning reserve”—burning fossil fuels—to keep the lights on in the schools, factories, and hospitals when the wind dies.

 

Why build wind turbines at all?  Well, wind and solar were the only energy sources the Greens would endorse, probably because they’re so expensive and erratic that there’s no danger of anybody getting hooked on cheap power again. Denmark was also selling wind turbines to other countries, so they had to be demonstrated at home. Now China is making cheaper turbines. Who will buy?

 

The cost of the “free wind”? Projections are about 17 cents per kwh—far higher than other energy sources.  One of my neighbors has just invested $100,000 in a wind turbine. I think he’s wasted his money—and some of yours.

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Biofuels are a terrible answer to the fuel problem.

 

• They force consumers to bid against themselves on food and fuel, artificially driving up the prices of both.

 

• Biofuels take huge amounts of land to produce each gallon—and land is the planet’s scarcest resource. Farmers know they must double food and feed production over the next 40 years to adequately feed the expected 8 billion people and we already use most of America’s good farm land.

 

• If you believe atmospheric carbon is a problem, be aware that when grassland is converted to cropland  to grow biofuels, we incur a “carbon debt” as the stored carbon in the soil gasses into the air. This aggravates greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere—for decades into the future.

 

The most urgent problem, however, is the staggering cost of biofuels. Government subsidies for oil and natural gas totaled just 10 cents per megawatt hour in 2007, according to the Energy Information Agency. Converted to electricity, corn ethanol and other biofuels got 19 times as much subsidy per unit of delivered energy—$19.52 per megawatt-hour.

 

Coal got 44 cents per megawatt-hour in subsidies during 2007, while wind turbines got $23.37 and solar panels got $24.34 per MW-h!

 

Nuclear power produces carbon-free electricity, and is subsidized at only $1.59 per MW-h. However, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu just announced that he won’t open the Yucca Mountain storage facility, so bye-bye to more nuclear power.

 

For all those subsidy dollars, the EIA says wind and solar provided only 1.1 percent of our electricity in 2008—after doubling during the Bush years. They’re now only 0.2 percent of our total energy package. Ethanol displaced just 1.9 percent of our oil use. (My thanks go to Patrick Bedard of Car & Driver for teasing those numbers out of the voluminous EIA data.)

 

Cheerleaders for corn ethanol say the diverted corn doesn’t much impact food costs.
But, even with ethanol plants going bankrupt, corn is still far more expensive than four years ago. As the ethanol mandates expand sharply in the years ahead, expect food prices to rise accordingly. Corn growers may applaud higher prices, but shouldn’t they admit the food-price reality?

 

Actually, the U.S. is gaining energy independence in one area—the huge amounts of modestly priced natural gas, from shale, that are now hitting the market. Oil prices are up 12 percent since the beginning of 2009, but natural gas prices are down 41 percent. We’re producing the shale gas with computer-guided horizontal drilling, then “frakking” the shale layers with high-pressure liquids and sand to release more gas. Hugely productive new fields are being developed: Texas (the Barnett shale); Louisiana (the Haynesfield shale); and across Appalachia, from western New York clear down through West Virginia (the Marcellus shale). An industry-backed study sees 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas, enough to last nearly 100 years at current use rates.

 

Natural gas, of course, emits about 60 percent as much CO₂ per unit as burning coal.  “The availability of natural–gas generation enables us to be much more courageous in charting a transition to a low-carbon economy,” says Jason Grumet, an Obama advisor with the National Commission on Energy Policy.

 

Expect the sharp increase in natural gas production to flow into more gas-fired power plants, along with a more gradual increase in propane-powered car and truck fleets.

 

We can use the same drilling technology for the 400 billion barrels of light, sweet crude oil in the Bakken shale formation that underlies the Dakotas, Montana, and Saskatchewan.

 

Can someone remind me why we’re subsidizing corn ethanol?

 

DENNIS T. AVERY is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.  He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net