John Shanahan, President of Environmentalists for Nuclear - USA: This is a summary of articles about wind and solar technologies without discussion of subsidies posted on this website. It includes comparisons with fossil fuels and nuclear.
Ted Rockwell, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, was a passionate pioneer for nuclear energy. He has the following to say about modern wind turbines and wind farms.
Craig Rucker, CFACT: Wind turbine installations impact vast amounts of habitat and crop land. Offshore wind turbines impact vast stretches of lake or ocean and like ships will not the worst ocean storms. Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant generates 3,750 megawatts of electricity from a 4,000-acre site. The 600-MW John Turk ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in Arkansas covers 2,900 acres; gas-fired units like Calpine’s 560-MW Fox Energy Center require several hundred acres. All generate reliable power 90-95% of the year.
Howard Cork Hayden, Emeritus Professor of Physics, author of The Energy Advocate: Most Americans, 80%, live in urban areas. Most urban areas are not windy. Only Chicago has the name, windy city. Most windy areas are far from cities along wilderness ridge lines, barren plains, out in the ocean. Most of the best wind sites have extreme weather that can regularly damage wind farms. The power from a wind turbine is highly non-linear with wind speed. Wind direction varies. A wind rose graph shows the variability of direction and speed. Compared to fossil fuels and nuclear power, wind energy is not at all practical.
Anthony Watts, publisher of wattsupwiththat.com Watts Up With That? The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change: The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. In the picture recently taken in Sweden, freezing cold weather has caused the rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop. To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.
National Economics Editorial Staff: Renewable energy advocates have claimed for decades that solar and wind power are the future. Some boldly state that the world could be powered by renewable energy sources as early as 2030, given the exponential growth of solar and wind electrical capacity. And of course, the mainstream media plays up the importance of solar and wind energy in defeating the scarecrow that is climate change. While 13.6% of world energy comes from renewable sources, the vast majority—72.8%—is just people in developing countries burning wood, charcoal, and dung for energy. That’s right: feces is a more important energy source than wind power.
John Shanahan, Civil Engineer, Editor of allaboutenergy.net: A lot of the public in North America and Europe have been led to believe that wind and solar energy are better than fossil fuels and nuclear. Other countries are determined to stay strong with fossil fuels and nuclear. It is so sad to see the downfall of Western Civilization coming from extreme environmentalists claiming catastrophic man-made global warming and sea-level rise. The nations with stronger energy programs will control the world.
Paul Driessen, senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow: The IPCC says it’s still possible to limit planetary warming to an additional 0.5 degrees C (0.9 F) “above pre-industrial levels” – but only if global CO2 emissions are halved by 2030 and zeroed out by 2050. So climate alarmists intend to carbon-tax, legislate and regulate our energy, factories, livelihoods, living standards, liberties and lives to the max. We went to war with King George over far less serious abuses and usurpations.
David Wojick, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, CFACT, Washington, D.C., Ph.D. Philosophy of Science and Mathematical Logic, B.Sc. Civil Engineering: The No-Truth advertising of wind energy never stops until one day when disaster will strike and destroy whole wind farms. Cost to construct is only one aspect of the whole story that must be valid for hundreds of years through everything that Mother Nature throws at us and so easily destroys a lot of what we build. Wind farms will be one of the first things to go.
Dax Contreras, digital Director, Editor and contributor for The New Mexico Politico. Safe, reliable, and affordable power is a crucial part of a strong and growing economy. The dependability and general affordability of electricity here in U.S. is a significant component of our historically robust economy. But recently, a vocal and active few here in New Mexico are part of a coordinated, nationwide effort to severely restrict our ability to produce economical and reliable power.
The company, Energy Vault, has commercialized the ultimate energy storage technology that will build the foundation of a clean energy future – brick by brick.
The Energy Vault stores excess electrical energy by efficiently transforming it into gravitational potential energy using 35-ton bricks that can be raised and lowered at will, and that can sit still storing the energy for any amount of time, before transforming the energy back to electrical energy when needed.
This idea has applications for storing excess energy from the grid from any energy source if it proves economically competitive. The idea is beautiful in its simplicity and generalization of pumped water storage in the mountains.
Rob Jeffrey, Independent Economic Risk Consultant: It is claimed that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electricity and these sources should dominate the future electricity supply. This paper focuses on known additional costs and subsidies which are not taken into account by their advocates. Advocates of wind and solar claim a cost of 62cents/kWh. This is, however, the price at the gate of the supplier. It does not include all the costs of supply necessary to convert this electricity from non-dispatchable electricity supply to dispatchable electricity supply at the point of supply to the customer. These are in effect direct subsidies to solar and wind suppliers, whereas they should be added as a cost to the renewable energy suppliers
Charles Battig, MD, electrical engineer, member: CO2 Coalition, The Heartland Institute, TRCS: This presentation shows that carbon dioxide is an essential molecule for life on Earth and not a pollutant like environmental extremists and their politicians claim. People in the free world must come to their senses regarding the importance of fossil fuels for freedom, strong economies, peace, prosperity, healthy environment, preservation of wildlife habitat and biodiversity. An easy to understand document like this is essential for the public. The nuclear power industry should stop making claims that nuclear power can save the world and polar bears from catastrophic man-made global warming. Nuclear power is not able to control Earth's climate. This presentation and many like it clearly explain what controls climate change. Nuclear power is essential to providing strong economies around the world for thousands of years and helping poorer, less prosperous people. It should rely on that strength to get new nuclear power plants going worldwide.
Eric Jelinski, past president of Environmentalists for Nuclear - Canada, farmer, environmentalist, university lecturer with degrees in mechanical and chemical nuclear engineering: There is no such thing as renewable energy. Could you build a renewable energy system without any support from coal, oil or natural gas? I’d like to see the renewable energy advocates mine, manufacture and transport everything that is needed for wind and solar farms and electrical distribution networks using wind and solar alone. Jim Conca, geologist, science and energy writer for Forbes predicts the 2100 mix will be natural gas and wind. John Shanahan, civil engineer says that natural gas and nuclear is better.
Neil Alexander, Ph.D. radiation damage in steels, business strategist, consultant and advocate for nuclear energy: In this world, when we finally admit the renewables experiment was a failure, we will look around and find we have few other options available to us. New nuclear if we need it will take decades to research, develop, test, license and deploy.
Paul Driessen, senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow: On the global stage, despite Herculean efforts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and activist groups to redefine ‘climate change’ and conjure up scary hobgoblins, the obsession over global warming, ‘green’ energy and the Paris climate treaty has hit the rocky shoals of reality. Despite well over $150 million spent by billionaires Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and multiple environmentalist groups, hard-green voter propositions were resoundingly defeated in the 2018 US elections.
Don Bogard, radio-geochemistry, nuclear geochemistry, planetary science: This article is another scientist's opinion on use of fossil fuels and what will be required for a transition when fossil fuels eventually run out or if governments decide to force abandonment of these energy resources that have created the modern world. He makes a very important conclusion: "Any significant change to the US power infrastructure MUST be a measured and long-term endeavor." There are several reasons for the long transition time: a) We don't have the technical ability to build nuclear plants that fast. b) We must establish used nuclear fuel reprocessing, mainly to save the unused 99% of nuclear energy from the ore. Don't put it back in the ground "forever." c) We must establish standard ways of storing the remaining radioactive waste. d) Nuclear power should only be used in countries with stable governments, strong economies, good education systems, well developed industries to perform some of the maintenance operations. e) We must develop additional nuclear power technologies besides the very large Light Water Reactors of the past. Don Bogard understands these needs. Too many outside the nuclear power profession wrongfully claim that the whole world can be owning and operating nuclear plants in fifty or one hundred years. In reality, it will be several centuries, maybe longer. We must have wise energy planning for the whole world NOW. That must include fossil fuels for generating electricity, not abandoning them for wind and solar.
“The Day of the Triffids” is coming for coastal communities as these towers of whirling knives accelerate their invasion of shallow coastal waters. They pose lethal danger to sea birds - beheading or de-winging pelicans and petrels, seagulls and sea eagles, gannets and grebes, kites and gliders. They also endanger coastal shipping, barges, helicopters, fishermen and tourists.
Michael Fox, Emeritus Professor in Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences - Nuclear power may just be the most important solution to our search for clean, sustainable energy sources. Although wind and solar can contribute to our energy mix, we need a reliable source to meet large-scale energy demands. However, most people are wary, if not downright afraid, of nuclear power. It's time to clear up misconceptions and examine the science behind nuclear power, in order to determine what role it could and should play in our future. NOTE: There are supporters of nuclear energy on both sides of the Anthropogenic Global Warming, AGW, topic. The position of this website is that nuclear power is important to deal with climate change from all causes. See articles about AGW under the tab, ENVIRONMENT.