The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy and environmental policies. Our premise is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science (please consult WiseEnergy.org for more information).

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every three weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and the environment. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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Some of the more interesting articles in this issue are:

Wind Turbines Proven to be Threat to People’s Health

The Secret is Out: Wind is Wimpy

An Environmentalist’s Take: Blowing It On the Wind

End Wind Welfare

Wind Turbines Are Killing Bats And Hurting Farmers

Stanford Report: Solar Plants Could ‘Obliterate’ Unique Ecosystems

The “uncertainty loop” haunting our climate models

How a liberal environmentalist switched from climate proponent to skeptic

US Senator Ted Cruz Reams Head of Sierra Club

EPA’s Disastrous “Clean Power” Plan

PhD: Europe’s Climate Policy Does Nothing for Climate

Top Physicist Bolts from Global Warming

Environmental activists turn up the rhetorical heat

The Only Global Warming Chart You’ll Need From Now On

Why Greenhouse Gas Theory is Wrong — An Examination of the Theoretical Basis

The IPCC’s Legion of Hacks and Dunces

The Futility and Farce of Climate Negotiations

Greed Energy Economics:

An Environmentalist’s Take: Blowing It On the Wind

AEA important new webpage: End Wind Welfare

Ten Reasons to End the Wind PTC

Wind Project Officials Differ On Need for Subsidies

Followup: Wind Energy’s True Costs

3 days plus 3 EPA regulations equals $6 billion in new costs

European Renewables Investment Heads Towards Zero

UK Wind Energy Constraint Payments

The Social Costs of Renewable Energy

The Social Benefits of Carbon

Wind Projects excluded from some NY PILOT Agreements

Renewable Energy Pushes European Electricity Costs Higher

Turbine Health Matters:

Wind turbines proven to be threat to people’s health

Wind developer moves turbine at ill citizen’s formal request

Citizens file a (non-wind) lawsuit against noise and property devaluation

Renewable Energy and Environmental Matters:

Wind Turbines Are Killing Bats And Hurting Farmers

Stanford Report: Solar Plants Could ‘Obliterate’ Unique Ecosystems

Solar batteries—are they really green?…

“On-grid solar is a perfect storm for taxpayers: concentrated benefits for the industry, diffuse cost for ratepayers and taxpayers, and a strong positive public sentiment for solar created by energy Malthusians.”

I have been a passionate solar energy enthusiast since I was 13 years old. My 8th grade science project was a solar powered car. I read everything I could about fuels cells, solar cells, microwave beaming solar-powered satellites, battery chemistry, ocean thermal energy, wind power, and compressed gas storage.

In college, I studied engineering focusing on solar energy. I now run a solar company in Tucson, AZ which I started 16 years ago. SunDanzer Refrigeration designs, manufactures, and sells solar-powered refrigerators for off-grid use and vaccine storage. My solar refrigerator design was recently selected as NASA’s Commercial Invention of the Year for 2011.…

This post reproduces a front-page story in the New York Times business section that excitedly reported a breakthrough with solar energy as represented by a heady energy company named Enron. Formed in the mid-1980s, Enron had just entered into the solar business and was destined to revitalize–if not save–the U.S. wind industry just a few years later.

Good press, for a half century now, has created an Enron-like illusion of the coming competitiveness and profitability of solar and wind energies for on-grid electricity. Basic energy physics explains why the sun’s (dilute) flow cannot compete against the sun’s stored (dense) energy embedded in natural gas, coal, and oil.

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“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.”

“The range of energy possibilities grouped under the heading ‘solar’ could meet one-fifth of U.S. energy needs within two decades.”

– Robert Stobaugh and Daniel Yergin, “The End of Easy Oil,” in Stobaugh and Yergin, eds., Energy Future, Report of the Energy Project of the Harvard Business School (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 12.

”I think … the consensus … is after the year 2000, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of our energy could come from solar technologies, quite easily.”

 – Scott Sklar, Solar Energy Industries Association (1987).

“Before maybe the end of this decade, I see wind and solar being cost-competitive without subsidy with new fossil fuel.”

– DOE Secretary Stephan Chu, Address to Pew Charitable Trusts, March 23, 2011.

Yesterday’s Part I on the long history of solar power ended with two quotations from energy historian Wilson Clark in his 1974 book, Energy for Survival: The Alternative to Extinction:

“In 1908, [Frank] Shuman formed the Sun Power Company and convinced English financiers to back his efforts to build larger plants using the flat-plate collectors.