The Natural Resources Defense Council offers an interesting description of a Big Wind project in upstate New York in the latest issue of its OnEarth Magazine.
Some of the observations in the article: (1) Wind power development is highly dependent on federal subsidies, just like all power development, but less so than oil and gas:
In 2003, the United States doled out somewhere between $37 billion and $64 billion in write-offs, low-interest loans, income and sales tax breaks, construction bonds, and so on to the energy sector. Of that, Big Wind — companies engaged in industrial-scale wind power generation — received perhaps 1 percent.
(and that’s not even including the $436 billion cost of the Iraq War as a subsidy for our oil and natural gas industries). (2) The project has paid off for some small farmers in the region and helped bring some jobs to the community. (3) Some people don’t like the wind farm just because it is run by a large corporation; and (4) The turbines kill hundreds of birds, and more bats, every year.
The article doesn’t mention what regulatory siting procedure was followed for the farm. Have a read.
Birds and bats have been killed by the thousands, not hundreds, at the Maple Ridge wind farm. See http://www.mapleridg… for the conclusion of the study.
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The press release, circulated by the wind industry, on this study was inaccurate and deceptive. In fact, 125 carcasses of birds and 326 of bats were found under 50 turbines in only 5 months. After applying correction factors ( scavenger removal, searcher efficiency and searched area/total area ) the authors estimate mortality to have been 1151 birds and 2943 bats for 120 turbines ( not 195 ), during just 5 months.
But not necessarily “in the thousands” for birds and bats.
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Check out the bottom of page 2 and the bottom of page 3:
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Notice that for birds, the estimates range from 376-1151 per season (year), and for baqts between 1824-2943 per season (year).
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Is that a lot? Honestly, I have no idea. How many birds and bats of each species are there in the ecological system? If it’s a substantial number — and I’d guess that it is, but I have no data — than, to be short and crass, who cares? How many birds and bats die in upstate NY due to collisions with autos? With windows or walls of buildings like homes, factories, and barns? How many die due to pollution like mercury from coal-fired power plants? In short, of all the birds killed in the area due to man made activity, what percentage [of each species] is due to wind farms? How stable is the current population? Without answering these two questions, it’s impossible to know if the bird/bat kill is an ecological problem.
Every tall structure kills birds, including wind turbines. It’s a shame. However, unless there’s a particular ecologic scenario in that particular region [and there might be], the trade off is an easy one.
I thought I’d pass along a few URLs to some web pages that I just discovered that you might find of interest.
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The Mythical Ethanol Threat
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Key Questions On Energy Options
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Corn-Based Ethanol: Is This A Solution?
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Refining 101: Summer Gasoline
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I’m just posting the URLs for reference. I found the contents of the pages interesting (particularly the last), but I have no way of attesting to the veracity of their contents.
TheOilDrum is a good site — lots of experts floating around there.
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As for corn ethanol, a few thoughts:
1. No solution, including ethanol, will have a massive impact. Each solution will have between 1% and 20% ish impact. Corn ethanol: hard to say. I believe it is [slightly] energy positive, and it is certainly “petroleum positive” since some of the energy used to convert corn to ethanol is coal based, not oil based. In my mind, the other interesting thing is this: as corn demand goes up, the price of animal feed goes up, and thus the price of beef [and other meats] will rise. Since it takes 2.5 – 16 times more energy to produce 1 pound of meat and get it to market than it does 1 pound of vegetables, ethanol growth will help encourage Americans to eat less meat and more veg, thereby reducing petroleum usage in agriculture. Since Americans eat more meat than almost every other country in the world, many by a factor of 3-5, methinks this “secondary effect” could become more beneficial to tUSA than the primary effect of gasoline –> ethanol.
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2. The process of creating ethanol will go down in price. Feestock will go upward at first, but I think that price will come down eventually too as we figure out how to use feedstock other than corn. Bio waste, sugar, etc. Furthermore, the price of ethanol will come down dramatically when we stop taxing Brazil’s biofuels. As the market grows more mature, with more distilleries, more feed stocks, more varied demand, and some import/export markets, I think that it will have an improved impact on US fuel.
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3. The ethanol replacing MBTE is an excellent point. Much of the ethanol being used now is in E5 – E10 blends. I think MA allows as much as E10 at regular filling stations. So, the increased demand for ethanol isn’t going to Detroit’s flex-fuel scam, but instead a little bit to each of us. Incidentally, since it requires little investment in additional infrastructure, this is a much smarter way to go in the near-term than subsidizing E85 filling stations, E85 cars, etc.
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4. Ethanol vs. smog. I hadn’t read about the 1psi waiver until just now; that’s very interesting. I wonder how the technology is progressing to allow that “waiver” to decrease to 0.5psi, and eventually down to 0psi…
Love your posts on enery conservation/generation. Just read an older one I had missed about how wind and solar work within the power grid. Good stuff.
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Can you give me any leads on solar? I’m interested in what applications work and what don’t. And why?
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Also, in the other post I just read you said electricity can’t be stored. Is there no battery-type technology that can be developed that will make stored power cheaper than oil/coal/nuclear even if not as cheap as wind/solar? Maybe similar to the pumping water uphill method only using springs or some other way to create potential? Or just rechargable battery-type technology.
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One more question, if you can indulge me. A fried just sent me a page about harnessing movement of bouys in the oceans; oceanpowertechnology.com. Do you know anything about it? Seems another creative angle with possibilities.
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Sorry to pester you with questions. I can’t even vote for you. But I’ve found your posts on BMG not only enlightening, but easily understandable as well.
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Thanks for whatever time you have to reply. Like I said, feel free to direct me to easy to understand existing sources.
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Tried to email this through your website, but it resulted in an error.