Parts I and II dealt with most of the issues in a recent paper by Chuck Kleekamp and showed the weaknesses of his analysis. This post addresses in detail the question of the costs of electricity generation for nuclear and wind.

Kleekamp says, “If you think wind power is expensive, wait till you have to pay for electricity from a new nuclear plant.” This suggests that nuclear plant electricity is more expensive than that of wind. This is remarkably incorrect. The costs of each according to the EIA along with my adjustments, are shown in Tables 2 and 3 below, which clearly demonstrates the high costs of wind compared to nuclear. As will be seen, the EIA costs are just starting points.

These costs are shown on separate tables for wind and nuclear because they are not really comparable.…

This post is the first in a three part series that critiques the recently published article “Wind Power Always Replaces Fossil Fuels” by Chuck Kleekamp, which provides material for another in the series of my critiques of wind proponents’ claims. Previously analyzed were papers by Milligan, Komanoff and Gross. My understanding is that this author has previously made notable contributions to environmental matters. Let’s see how he does with respect to wind.

To begin, I cannot help commenting on the inclusion of “Always” in the title. The apparent certainty in this term immediately alerts me to a questionable analysis. Perhaps the author meant to be provocative, and was not serious in the use of this word. If so, this does not give due consideration to the importance of the matter.…

[Part III of an interview of Robert L. Bradley Jr. by Stephen Hicks (website here). Part I (Libertarianism and Energy) and Part II (Expanding Energy Horizons) have been published.] 

“Ken Lay lives in Jim Rogers! The master of the regulation game for natural gas transmission brought Lay’s get-out-in-front political strategy from Enron to a company called Public Service Company of Indiana, which became Cinergy, which was bought by Duke Energy. Rogers positioned his coal-laden company as very concerned about climate change and wanting cap-and-trade regulation.”

Kaizen: Enron operated in a highly mixed political and economic environment. In the decades that Enron was operating—the 1980s through the early 2000s—to what extent was the U.S. energy market a free market, and to what extent was it regulated economy?

Bradley: The energy industries—oil, natural gas, and electricity—have all been politicized.…

Windspeak: Language used by those who profit financially, politically, or ideologically from wind technology that disguises, distorts, or reverses the meanings of words in order to promote the technology. Oxymorons, which combine incongruous or contradictory terms, abound in windspeak—viz, windpower, wind capacity, responsible windpower (double oxymoron), windfarms, windparks, wind jobs, wind reliability workshops, and wind as alternate energy. Generally any claim made for the technology in windspeak produces the virtually opposite effect in reality.

With the right story and no accountability, Madison Avenue can sell fantasy wholesale. Rock Hudson’s ad executive did just this 50 years ago in the charming send-up to our commercial culture, Lover Come Back, when he successfully marketed a non-existent product, VIP.

Nothing illustrates this idea better than the au courant fantasia about wind technology, where public relations legerdemain has deployed the power of windspeak to give wind a complete makeover, transforming a klutzy pretender into a seemingly benevolent superhero unbound by the laws of physics and even its own history.…