Whatever its merits, wind generation has been greatly oversold by the hucksters whose livelihood now depends on diverting huge government subsidies toward them so their precious wind projects can compete with conventional forms of energy. Despite the ongoing efforts of climate alarmists and their media poodles to convince us otherwise, dramatically increasing the amount of energy generated by wind turbines is not only uneconomic but also bad public policy. Ultimately, wind will be proven to be about as effective a response to global warming as corn ethanol.
With regard to energy, Canada has nothing to be ashamed about. The carbon footprint of Canada’s energy production is among the cleanest in the world. Unlike the United States and most of Europe, the bulk of our energy production comes from hydroelectric and nuclear. We do not need wind.
The shortcomings of wind generation are becoming increasingly clear. As Jon Boone points out, wind is a bad choice from both an energy and environmental perspective:
Because of wind’s unpredictable variability, it can never replace the capacity of conventional generation. Twenty-five hundred 450-foot wind turbines, spread over five hundred miles, can mathematically offset a large coal or nuclear plant; but they cannot do so functionally–for what must happen when 5,000 MW of volatile wind is only producing 100 MW at peak demand times, a common occurrence?
This business is absurd. The whole point of modern power systems has been to move beyond the flickering flutter of variable energy sources. Prostituting modern power performance to enable subprime energy schemes on behalf of half-baked technology is immoral. As is implementing highly regressive tax avoidance “incentives” to make it appear that pigs can fly. No coal plants will be shuttered and little, if any, carbon emissions will be reduced as a result of this project—or thousands of them.
[…]
Industrial wind projects will clearcut hundreds of acres, if placed on forested ridges. Even small 100 MW industrial wind parks would hover for miles over sensitive terrain, threatening vulnerable species while mocking endangered species protections–and scenic highways strictures. They will cause unlawful noise for miles downrange. They will devalue properties in the area as much as 50%, if they could sell at all. Dynamiting will threaten wells and aquifers.
We would be wise to listen.
October 28, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Many citizens are listening, however, the government decision-makers appear to be deaf to all appeals to reason. Five years from now, we will look back in amazement that such bad policy was allowed to proceed so far.
October 28, 2009 at 2:48 pm
With the credibility of the McGuinty Liberals in tatters, one can only hope that more people begin to ask questions about the Green Energy Act. So far, the warm and fuzzies of “renewable energy” still takes precedence in the minds of the majority, but that won’t last once the bills begin to come in.
October 30, 2009 at 2:35 pm
The McGuinty government is doing the best to hop on a current trend and ride it right into the ground. All the while using our money to subsidies wind companies and allow them to get rich on our governments green guilt.
It’s never pretty watching people’s rights getting trampled by a government caught up in the latest fad, but it’s happening across Ontario.
Just look what’s happening in Denmark now, the model for the wind industry.
http://enviralment.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/attention-ontario-new-danish-study-proves-wind-energy-is-a-waste-of/