“In the green state of Vermont, a 28-turbine mega-wind project is being vehemently opposed by some board members and citizens in the towns of Windham and Grafton, concerned that the power station would affect property values and the environment.”

“When I stopped in Somerset [Vermont] a few days ago, the turbine blades did not seem to move at all. An educational display was still posted outside the turnpike service plaza, with all the potential savings for the Earth from harnessing wind power. No mention of the huge costs associated with such a pie-in-the-sky watermelon dream.”

I saw the once-verdant wheat fields of Eastern Europe covered with ugly wind turbines, slowly spinning their huge blades into the wind. A few funnel dust swirls were blowing the topsoil into the air. They did not appear to be connected to any storage station that would distribute the electrical power generated.…

“Now that Deepwater Wind is close to starting operation, ratepayers can compare its 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour versus their latest power bill showing an energy cost of 8.7 cents per kilowatt hour – a 15.7 cent difference…. So why is Rhode Island building this project?“

The wind turbines offshore Block Island, Rhode Island, the Deepwater Wind project, are rising faster than expected due to favorable weather and wind conditions. In fact, the last blade was installed on the fifth wind turbine two weeks ago.

The U.S. renewable energy business will soon enter a new era when these turbines generate electricity. Many people may wonder why it has taken the U.S. so long to start an offshore wind industry, given the perceived success of projects in Western European countries. But cost matters, and the cost of offshore wind defines a new high for US ratepayers.…

“No electric car since 1902, regardless of battery or drive train, had been able to compete effectively against its contemporary internal combustion counterpart.”

– David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 203.

Energy history takes the wind out of the sails of the advocates of forced energy transformation. Proponents of government- enabled renewable energies must contend with the fact that for most of mankind’s (impoverished) history, the market share of biomass, wind, solar, and falling water was 100 percent. (The carbon-based energy era is only a couple of hundred years old.)

And proponents of government-enabled electric vehicles (not golf carts) must know that their technology was beat fair and square than a century ago.

Here are some quotations on the rise and fall of EVs (or EEVs–emission elsewhere vehicles).…

“Michael Goggin says that attacking the validity of the CEMS data is a sure sign of desperation. But it can be argued that any possible desperation is on the other side.”

In my 2014 post Where Wind Studies Go Wrong: Cullen in AEJ (Part II) , Michael Goggin of the Amercian Wind Energy Association (AWEA) made a comment that recently came to my attention, which deserves a rebuttal despite the lapse of time. My 2014 post critiqued a paper by Joseph Cullen, Measuring the Environmental Benefits of Wind-Generated Electricity.

In summary, Goggin’s points were as follows:

• I said EPA’s Continuous Emissions Measurement System (CEMS) measurement was on an hourly basis and thus understated the real cycling-related emissions from wind power as a result. (Goggin says CEMS takes emissions measurements every 15 minutes and reports hourly based on averaging these results.)