The green electrical delusion of wind and solar.
Terigi Ciccone, Sept 26, 2023Wind and solar plants add no electricity to the grid, are not eco-friendly or cost-effective, don’t reduce CO2 production, and are not sustainable. This may sound like a bold statement, but bolder still is the fact that wind and solar power plants are more efficient when they are not running and are the most efficient and eco-friendly when they are never built. We will get into the details of these assertions in three critical dimensions: environmental impact, the comparative costs of wind versus a combined cycle plant, and who bears the incremental costs of wind and solar plants.
For the “green” electrical generating plants already bought and installed—the best option for an electrical utility and the community is to tear down the wind turbines, recycle the materials, and restore the environment. The Peakers can run in standard open cycle mode and provide 100% electricity. Where possible, reconfigure the plant to a combined cycle. That will give your wallet and the Earth a big green smile. These are the tips of the “inconvenient facts” iceberg, which are detailed below. We start with the adverse environmental impact of wind and solar plants.
Part I Adverse Impact on the Environment
Michael Moore, a lifelong champion of humanity and the environment, exposed the extent of the eco-damage in his July 2019 documentary PLANET FOR THE HUMANS. This is a five-star, must-see documentary movie where Michael plants many gut-wrenching images in our psyche. First is the extensive environmental damage to the Earth’s bio-system on their installation sites. This typically includes cutting down all trees and most vegetation. It will consist of relocating some wild animal life and all endangered species. It may involve leveling hills and removing other natural wind flow obstructions. Then, a wide swath of trees and vegetation must be cleared from the wind-generating site to the electrical consumer centers for the power distribution lines, typically hundreds of miles away. For offshore wind, it will also require many miles of submarine cables. See the image below from Vermont. Imagine the amounts of diesel fuels, gasoline burned, and the tons of CO2 produced to power these dozens of tractors, chainsaws, bulldozers, and trucks to cut, haul, and chip the trees for paper mills, and the refuse that ends up burned as polluting Biomass. Then, thousands of tons of cement and iron rebars will be needed to construct the turbine’s base structure and power line foundations, emitting thousands of tons of additional CO2.
Meanwhile, out-of-site materials are harvested from the earth at remote locations worldwide to make wind turbine components. It starts by clearing the land, stripping the vegetation, transporting, installing, and operating these solar and wind plants. See this image of transmission line preparation in Vermont, and read this article that shows increasing resentment of wind plants. Why this dairy farm may be the last stand for wind energy in Vermont | Energy News Network.
Michael then pulls the curtain further back and attacks our senses with the stark images of the ecological and biodiversity damage suffered in remote locations worldwide needed for the materials to build these wind machines. Open-pit mines gouged deep into the earth to extract the steel, aluminum, copper, rare
earth metals, and other minerals needed for these solar/wind plants. Untold tons of earth and rocks are blasted with thousands of kilos of dynamite to extract a few kilos of rare earth metals. Solar panels are not made from beach or desert sand, as they lead us to believe. Instead, they are made from the most precious and purest quartz mined from deep pits and tunnels. Then, they will need thousands of tons of coal to make the solar cells. In a two-minute segment, Michael puts before our eyes the millions of tons of coal, oil, and gas that are burned to cast/forge, process, transport, and transform the raw materials into solar and wind components. These steps emit billions of tons of CO2 and particulates, smoke and gas pollution. Will these solar/wind plants ever recover the fossil fuel energy it took to build them? Most probably not, says C. Le Pair in his article “Windmills increase fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions,” Windmills increase fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions | Wind Energy Impacts and Issues (wind-watch.org)
You will never see the destruction of animals and the bio-systems going on in these remote sites worldwide or on a guided media-political-schoolsponsored tour of your local wind or solar installation. Hundreds and thousands of birds, bats, and eagles are killed yearly by the turning blades; see Wind turbines and birds and bats | Sierra Club. They will pick up the carcasses before you arrive for the tour. More recently, offshore wind plants have been attacked for killing whales and other marine mammals along the USA's northeastern coast and other European countries. See the article New documentary 'proves' that offshore wind farms kill whales (nypost.com). But, equally egregious, on any of these tours, they will not show you, and they will not talk about the fossilfuel power plants, hidden from view, that are needed to back up these intermittent, unreliable, and expensive solar and wind plants 100% of the time and at 100% generation capacity. We’ll get into those details later on.
Environmental costs. In the book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” Alex Epstein explains in detail the enormous demands on the earth’s environment to mine and build windmills. As shown in the below Figure, look at the steel and iron required to build comparable electrical plants powered by wind, coal, and
natural gas. It’s astounding! A windmill needs more than 100 times more steel, iron, and other metals and materials for the same electrical generating capacity as a gas-fired fossil plant. Then, because they need to be placed in distant rural areas, thousands of more acres of land and thousands of more tons of steel and cement are required for the powerlines. The tonnage of materials for an offshore wind plant might be 200-250 times. Let’s take a quick look at the comparable impact on the environment of a windmill plant compared to a land-based gas-fired power plant. A windmill needs:
150-250 times more mining of ores and coal and the energy to extract/transport them from remote areas to processing plants.
150-250 times more power for smelting, forging, casting, machining, processing, and fossil energy to make this possible.
Hundreds of times more cement and the fossil energy to produce it. And BTW, cement production is already a significant source of human-made CO2.
150-250 times more transportation, installation labor, materials costs, and fossil fuels.
Hundreds of times more cement/steel/copper/aluminum for distributing cables/wires from remote generating sites to electrical consumption centers.
See data source: Do Windmills Consume More Energy to Build Than They Ever Produce? | Snopes.com
Now double the above costs and levels of destruction. Whereas a gas-fired plant has more than 40 years of useful life, a typical windmill lasts, at best, 20 years before demolition and replacement.
Trepidations are on the horizon-Costs and Safety. In recent months, we have witnessed a growing concern about the viability of these wind turbines, especially the more expensive and more powerful offshore installations. The eco damage doesn’t stop there. Most plants will never reach the advertised 20-year useful life. More likely, they will average only about 15 years; see Why Are Giant Wind Turbines Mysteriously Falling Over? (popularmechanics.com). In the last several years, wind turbines and their blades have
rapidly been upsizing, with the average rotor diameter in the US reaching 127.5 meters in 2021, while the largest in the world is a 13.6 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine with a rotor diameter of 252 meters [827 feet]. And failure rates have been significantly increasing. In addition, the failure rates and damage costs have been dramatically increasing. Read the details in this article: Wind turbine failure rates are rising – has the industry gone too big, too fast? – Prometheus Institute. Then, they will repeat the above costs for the replacement plant and demolition of the older plant, and who will pay for all these costs? Or, perhaps, they will be abandoned and left to uglify the scenery and endanger our seaways, fishing industries, and marine life for decades.
In recent months, there have been several highly publicized canceled offshore wind contracts on the Northeast Atlantic coast. See sample CNN article Why offshore wind projects are on the rocks | CNN. Similar cancellations also occurred in Western Europe, and several other significant cancellations are under consideration. But the concerns are not limited to the offshore turbines; read this article: Why Rural Communities Around the Globe Are Rioting Against Wind & Solar Invasion – STOP THESE THINGS. Over the next many months, we will see if it’s a NIMBY issue or a more profound and lasting social movement.
Part II: The Staggering and Well-Hidden Costs of Solar and Wind.
Solar and wind have two fundamental flows. First, they are intermittent. Secondly, they are unreliable. These flaws are rarely stated or discussed by the popular press/media; thus, the public has no idea what this is or its consequences. Instead, they are quickly glossed over and never explained in terms understandable by the general public. The popular press and media give us the delusion (feeds us the lie) that solar and wind are cost-competitive with fossil plants. This cost comparison table best symbolizes this concept with the cost data popularized by LASARD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source. Now look at the powerful endorsement at the bottom of the chart by Bloomberg Energy Finance. Are the executives and engineers at Bloomberg as dumb as their readers?
The consequences of this deception or incompetence are staggering in terms of the cost of the electricity produced/distributed and the grid stability needed to avoid the blackouts often seen in places like California. In this section, we discuss them in easily understandable terms. We start with this simple rule of thumb: “All Solar and Wind on an Electric Grid Must Be Backed Up With an Equal or Greater Amount of Fossil Fuel Power Running on Standby 100% of The Time.” Here's what it means: If a small city needs 100 megawatts (Mw) to power its needs, wind can provide it. But only if those wind turbines are backed up by a fast-responding, natural gas-fired gas turbine called a Peaker; it’s like a jet engine.
This Peaker must provide 100% of the power shortage that the wind turbines can’t deliver when the wind blows slowly or not at all. Secondly, because of the rapid response needed to provide the shortfall, these Peakers run 100% of the time at full-speed-no load. They do not have the luxury of a well-managed warmup like airline engines or tolerate turbo lags. So, they are burning more than 50% of the fuel while providing zero electricity. And the maintenance costs go through the roof.
Batteries could provide this electrical shortfall for 20 minutes or a few hours. But their costs are almost double that of the peakers, and their eco damage is even greater. But what happens when a wind draught lasts for weeks and months, as it did in Europe in 2021? Luckily, the Europeans had installed enough Peakers to supply the wind’s electrical production shortages. But they quickly ran out of natural gas fuel, even before the Ukrainian invasion. This resulted in the panic that led to the worldwide need for more gas and its drastic price
increases that we still feel today. Here, we examine why wind (and solar) must be backed up 100% of the time by a Peaker.
The figure above shows a regular one-day operation of the 100 Mw wind plant at the Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. We use this data because the costs and operations of this plant was thoroughly audited and analyzed by the Dutch Court of Auditors, which is the Dutch equivalent of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO.) In addition, it is the only known detailed study that made 100% of its findings available to the public. The summary findings and report of the Dutch Court of Auditors can be found here: Windmills increase fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions | Wind Energy Impacts and Issues (wind-watch.org)
The plant was charged to produce 90 MW of electricity for the hours shown on this day. But as we see by the blue bars, it may have made only about 25% of the electricity that day. The Peakers provided the other 75% of the electricity. It appears that for the first 8 hours, it produced about 5-6% of the needed electricity by the airport and the local community, hospitals, schools, home air conditioners, offices, factories, etc. Had there been no backup Peakers, the utility would have had to shut down all electricity to its customers. This is called a rolling blackout. But it averted this disaster because the Peakers provided 100% of the wind power shortage within seconds, as represented by the red double arrow. Now visualize a comparable red arrow on top of each of the blue bars, which would give us the
power output of these Peakers. This cycle is called “Load Chasing.” The peaker's thermal efficiency drops like a rock in this Load Chasing mode. For example, a police car cruising at 60 miles per hour might get 22 miles per gallon. But that same car doing a high-speed chase in city traffic might only get 7 or 8 miles to the gallon. The peakers burn about three times more fuel than normal. But this also means three times more CO2 production and more pollution.
The details here are important because the costs are highly consequential and are not included in the Lazard “Levelized Cost of Generation or LCOG.” The Lazard LCOG only gives the costs of the equipment to generate the electricity by the type of electricity. It does not include the equipment or the prices of other requirements necessary to provide this backup Peaker services for wind and solar. Let’s see what these costs and conditions are in this sample case. This hypothetical wind plant is required to generate 100 MW of electricity for 20 hours daily. According to Lazard, the cost is $40 per MWh, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source.
Let’s total up these costs not considered by the Lazard LCOG:
- The base cost of wind electricity is $40/MWh X 100 MW X 20 hrs./day X 300 days/year X 20 years of operation = $480 million. And, regrettably, that’s where the curiosity of the press/media and Bloomberg stops.
But now we need to add the additional equipment and their operating costs to make this onshore wind plant reliable and stable.
- Cost of land, depending on location, can be highly variable. The farther from city/demand centers, the lower the land cost, but the more significant the costs of other requirements. Here, we assume an additional cost of suburban New Jersey land at 5,000 acres at $14,000 per acre plus 20% contingency = plus $84 Million.
The cost of the windmill does not include the installation cost. We use a cost of $1.5 per MW (https://www.windturbinemagazine.com/how-much-does-it-costto-install-a-wind-turbine/#:~:text=It%20costs%20between%20%24150%20and %20%241%2C000%2C000%20or%20more,millions%20of%20dollars%20to %20install%20out%20at%20sea.)
- 100 MW X $1.5 Mil/MW = Plus $150 Mil.
We assume the installation of transmission lines from the site is 50 miles from the city center. The transmission lines and substations cost $2.5 million/mile. (https://www.bing.com/search?q=whats%20the%20cost%20per%20mie%20for
%20new%20electrical%20transmission%20lines&qs=n&form=QBRE&= %25eManage%20Your%20Search%20History%25E&sp=-1&ghc=1&pq=whats %20the%20cost%20per%20mie%20for%20new%20electrical%20transmission %20li&sc=3-
57&sk=&cvid=5E10BE7B1FB24D129F6218A2677D8FC4&ghsh=26&ghacc=0&gh pl= }
- $2.5 X 50 = Plus $125 Mil.
Does not include the cost of Peakers. Per Lazard, the cost of Peakers is $175 per MW hrs.
- $175 MWh X 100 MW X 20 Hrs/day X 300 days/year X 20 years = Plus $2,100 Million.
Does not include a 50-mile pipeline for the gas from the city center to the generating site.
https://www.gem.wiki/Oil_and_Gas_Pipeline_Construction_Costs)
- 50 miles X $7.62/2 per mile =Plus $190 million.
Does not include the cost of the HVAC transmission lines to the electrical demand centers. Cost of HV transmission lines, substations, and installation = 50 Miles X $1.5 Mil/mile = Plus $75 Million.
So, the Total cost of a “wind” plant with Peakers and infrastructure for 20 years of operation is
-
480 mil + 84 mil +$150 mil +$125 mil + $2,100 mil + 190 mil + 75 mil = $3,204 million.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
By contrast, a combined cycle gas-fired powerplant would cost
- $59/MWh X 100 MW X 20 hrs/day X 300 days/year X 20 years = $708 Million.
- Add the same costs of the pipeline, transmission lines, and land at $ 1 mil
- 708 + $1 land + $5 pipeline + $5 Transmission lines = $720 mil
…………………………………………………………………………………..
By contrast, the cost of a stand-alone open-cycle gas turbine plant located in the city is
- Peaker, see above, + $2,100 Million less 3% for the reduced fuel as discovered by the Dutch Court of Auditors, for a following cost of $2,037 Mil
Bottom line, a combined cycle plant has the lowest electrical production costs at $720 Mil.
For a wind plant, the cost of electricity is about costs $3,204 Mil
The electricity from a wind plant is $3,204/$720, or 4.45 times more expensive than the electricity produced by a combined cycle plant.
Part III Recommendations For Policy Makers.
First, let’s see the conclusions and recommendations that the Dutch Court of Auditors made to the Dutch Parliament.
Wind turbines did not reduce fuel consumption. Instead, the windmills INCREASED FUEL BURN BY 3-4%.
The wind turbines did not reduce atmospheric CO2 but increased CO2 production.
The wind turbines did not reduce any atmospheric pollution but increased it.
The use of wind turbines is an irresponsible national political choice.
The choice seems definitive. In the near term, stop operating the existing wind turbines, dismantle them, recycle what can be salvaged, and turn the Schiphol plant into a Peaker-only plant. Then, if possible, convert the plant into a combined cycle plant. The near-term benefits include reduced fuel consumption, reduced costs of operation and maintenance, reduced CO2 production, and reduced price of electricity. In the long term, invest heavily in modern nuclear power, as the Dutch do, in either the classical-large nuclear plants or the more modern small, salt-cooled thorium reactors for additional savings and improved safety.
Appendix A
Late breaking headlines on Offshore windfarms.
U.K. Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak on net zero: I have picked the pragmatic approach.
“The PM said "we have to change how we do politics" as he spoke about climate change and its impact on families.
Rishi Sunak said people wanted net zero approached in a fair, proportionate and pragmatic way.“ Essentially canceling the UK’s Net-Zero commitment . Watch YouTube video Sunak on net zero: I have picked the pragmatic approach - BBC News
US/UK 66,000 MW OF OFFSHORE WIND BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY - Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine (windtaskforce.org)
1. “UK and New York State bureaucrats are grossly uninformed regarding market conditions. They have zero business sense. New York State bureaucrats calculated their estimates of offshore wind contract prices, but when the owners saw those numbers, they said, we need up to 66% more for our spreadsheets to make business sense. These contract prices are after 50% US subsidies. Note these costs do not include costs for on-shore facilities, demolitions, or backup Peaker turbines.
Oersted, Denmark, Sunrise wind, original price $110.37/MWh, needs $139.99/MWh, a 27% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 1 wind, original price $118.38/MWh, needs $159.64/MWh, a 35% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 2 wind, original price $107.50/MWh, needs $177.84/MWh, a 66% increase
Equinor, Norway, Beacon Wind, original price $118.00/MWh, needs $190.82/MWh, a 62% increase https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/liars-lies-exposed-aswind-electricity-price-increases-by-66-wake.”
2. “Offshore Wind Industry Is Caught In a Financial Hurricane. The question of who pays for the relatively high cost of generating power out at sea has become more contentious in an era of high inflation and interest
rates.” Offshore Wind Industry Is Caught In a Financial HurricaneBloomberg
3. This [Biden wind turbine program] is part of the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which CBO estimated at $391 billion, but Goldman Sachs estimated at $1.2 trillion due to Biden’s handlers “liberally interpreting” the various open-ended measures. https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/bidens-green-energy-p...
Sweden: Could new nuclear kill one of the world's most promising offshore wind markets? Could new nuclear kill one of the world's most promising offshore wind markets? | Recharge (rechargenews.com)
Appendix B Other considerations for East Coast offshore wind.
Environmental and capital risks.
Read the article: Wind Turbines in Extreme Weather: Solutions for Hurricane Resiliency, by the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, 2018. Wind Turbines in Extreme Weather: Solutions for Hurricane Resiliency | Department of Energy
The opening paragraph is not reassuring. “Offshore wind turbines on the Atlantic coast (as well as the Gulf of Mexico) have several challenges to contend with—including hurricanes. The Energy Department is developing tools to help wind system designers lower the risk for offshore wind turbine systems in extreme weather areas.” The fundamental question has not been discussed or raised in public forums. With the Biden rush to
wind, how many of these wind plants will be completed or in various stages of construction before the first category 3 or 4 hurricane comes along and teaches us a lesson or two? How many hundreds of $billions in expenditures will we have at risk before we discover that our designs and construction methods/tools are not sufficiently robust? This approach is too capital risky and unwise.
Ecological and environmental risks. Read the article “Assessing environmental impacts of offshore wind farms: lessons learned and recommendations for the future.” Assessing environmental impacts of offshore wind farms: lessons learned and recommendations for the future | Aquatic Biosystems | Full Text (biomedcentral.com).
There have been vocal discussions about the potential whale killing in the news. But it seems that the Our Fish and Wildlife Service and the Sierra Club are ready to sweep this danger under the rug in the rush to build these offshore behemoths. “offshore wind power provides a valuable source of renewable energy that can help reduce carbon emissions. Technological advances are allowing higher capacity turbines to be installed in deeper water, but there is still much that is unknown about the effects on the environment. Here we describe the lessons learned based on the recent literature and our experience with assessing impacts of offshore wind developments on marine mammals and seabirds, and make recommendations for future monitoring and assessment as interest in offshore wind energy grows around the world. The four key lessons learned that we discuss are: 1) Identifying the area over which biological effects may occur to inform baseline data collection and determining the connectivity between key populations and proposed wind energy sites, 2) The need to put impacts into a population level context to determine whether they are biologically significant, 3) Measuring responses to wind farm construction and operation to determine disturbance effects and avoidance responses, and 4) Learn from other industries to inform risk assessments and the effectiveness of mitigation measures. As the number and size of offshore wind developments increase, there will be a growing need to consider the population level consequences and cumulative impacts of these activities on marine species.
But again, the Biden Political Machines are in a rush to risk, not only with the capital risk as discussed above, but also risk severe and irreparable damage to our environment and ecosystems. Read this article, which explains why CO2 does not cause any noticeable global warming.
https://www.academia.edu/76652255/Revised_Why_cant_CO2_and_greenhou
se_effect_cause_global_warming. There is no time urgency to build these windmills now. And there is no climate emergency. See the study by the CO2 Coalition, Challenging Net Zero with Science - CO2 Coalition, and the Clintel Foundation Press-release-Clintel-The-Frozen-Climate-Views-of-the-IPCC.pdf. The political deadlines of 2030 or 2040 or 2050 are artificial and meaningless time goals.