wind

No other type of industrial power generator has such a low capacity factor because of its inherent technical limitations and the nature of its power source. Nuclear plants, even with outages for maintenance, have capacity factors in excess of 90 percent; their national average approaches that level. (

The low capacity factor for wind energy has enormous implications. Without considering any other variables, simple arithmetic shows that over 2000- 2.0 MW wind turbines, each with a generous capacity factor of 30 percent and spread over hundreds of miles, would be necessary to equal the output of one 1600 MW coal plant situated on a few acres.

Environmentalists who demand dependable power generation at minimum environmental risk should take care about what they wish for, more aware that, with Rube Goldberg machines, the desired outcome is unlikely to 24 be achieved. Subsidies given to industrial wind technology divert resources that could otherwise support effective measures, while uninformed rhetoric on its behalf distracts from the discourseóand political action-- necessary for achieving more enlightened policy.

Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist and a Member of the British House of Lords: The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year.’ Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance. Even after 30 years of huge subsidies, wind power provides only slightly more than zero energy to the world.

Bernie Sanders, Democrat candidate for President of the USA 2020: He is determined to stop use of fossil fuels and nuclear and replace them with windmills and solar panels.

John Reilly, Co-Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change: If solar panels and wind turbines keep getting cheaper, why bother building anything else? Because as we add more solar panels and wind farms, their productivity declines. And while the cost of individual solar panels is low, when there are enough of them, they impose real costs on the rest of the system. This article contains good information about wind, solar and nuclear energy. However, it is based on the premise that use of fossil fuels cause Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming, which will soon be settled that they do not. The literature is full of articles that have good ideas about energy and bad science about the carbon dioxide cycle. Unfortunate. Worth reading for description of wind and solar energy.

Praveen Duddu: Eight of the 10 largest wind farms in the world are operated in the US, with five situated in Texas alone. Just one offshore wind farm has made to the list, while all others are onshore. Power-technology.com profiles the world's 10 largest wind farms based on installed capacity.

Jon Boone, environmentalist, naturalist, bird and nature artist, wind energy expert: The electrical grid needs precise, controllable energy input for modern society. Wind energy is unpredictable, highly variable, near useless for regional and national electrical grids. Near double the effort and available power is required to just accommodate the political mandates for wind power.

John Droz is the publisher of "Energy and Environmental Newsletter." A hundred-plus years ago, wind energy was recognized as an antiquated, unreliable and expensive source of energy – and now, after hundreds of billions of wasted tax and consumer dollars, we find that (surprise!) it still is an antiquated, unreliable and expensive source of energy. This is what happens when science is relegated to a back-of-the-bus status. When a major turbine manufacturer calls a catastrophic failure like a blade falling off "component liberation", we know we are in for an adventurous ride in a theme park divorced from reality.

John Droz, physicist. Publisher of "Energy and Environmental Newsletter." Editor of http://wiseenergy.org/:.Wind energy was abandoned for most commercial and industrial applications, well over a hundred years ago. Even in the late 1800s it was totally inconsistent with our burgeoning, more modern needs for power. When we throw the switch, we expect that the lights will go on – 100% of the time. It’s not possible for wind energy, by itself, to EVER do this, which is one of the main reasons it was relegated to the archival collection of antiquated technologies (along with such other inadequate energy sources as horse and oxen power).

Ken Haapala, SEPP, The Science and Environmental Policy Project: Many political leaders and political factions have little or no understanding of the importance of reliable, predictable electricity to modern civilization and economic wellbeing. Without thoroughly demonstrated examples of success, a number of local and national governments have passed laws phasing out electricity generated by fossil fuels based on the belief that wind and solar can replace fossil fuels. This “green dream” may become a nightmare. The fear of catastrophic global warming that is driving this political effort is based on unrealistic computer models that cannot describe what is happening in the current atmosphere, much less able to predict what will occur 30 or 80 years from now. Errors may be buried in tens of thousands of lines of computer code.

U.S. Department of Energy: The evolution of wholesale electricity markets, including the extent to which Federal policy interventions and the changing nature of the electricity fuel mix are challenging the original policy assumptions that shaped the creation of those markets. Markets recognize and compensate reliability, and must evolve to continue to compensatereliability, but more work is needed to address resilience. The biggest contributor to coal and nuclear plant retirements has been the advantaged economics of natural gas-fired generation.

Steven Lyazi is a member of the EFN-USA Board of Advisors in Kampala, Uganda. He describes the problems facing people and the environment in Uganda and across much of Africa. Many serious problems are rooted in African society and government. Other problems are imposed on Africa by environmental activists, western powers and UN agencies dictate what issues are important – and use them to keep us poor and deprived: manmade climate change, no GMO foods, no DDT to prevent malaria, using wind and solar power and never building coal, natural gas or nuclear power plants. This is a criminal trick that denies basic rights to affordable energy, jobs and modern living standards.

It is clear from the remarks of Prince Charles’s central banker Mark Carney, Sir Michael Bloomberg, and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the Glasgow “Suicide Summit” called COP26, that they have a) great financial momentum in organizing the worldwide 1% to cut off new fossil fuel investment, and b) a great problem—the “green finance” investments are failures.