“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.…

“Perhaps the most distressing characteristic displayed by the pushers of soft energy was the intellectual poverty of their grand designs, their impatient dismissal of all criticism, their arrogant insistence on the infallible orthodoxy of their normative visions.”

“There is little doubt about the origins and the real message of soft energy dogma: the roots are in the muddled revolts of young Americans in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the goal is a social transformation rather than simply a provision of energy. The latter fact explains the widespread appeal of soft energy sources among zealous would-be reformers of Western ways.” 

Vaclav Smil is one of the leading energy scholars of our day. He has, time and again, tried to inject energy reality into energy fantasy. Some of his previous posts at MasterResource (see here) include ‘The Limits of Energy Innovation’: Timeless Insight from Vaclav Smil and the five-part Power Density Primer.…

“The best approach to understanding wind’s impact appears to be that properly structured ‘bench’ tests should be performed, and results made publically available, on actual fossil fuel plants under the full range of conditions experienced in balancing the effect of the presence of wind’s generation behavior.”

Part I on Tuesday and Part II yesterday focussed on the greater range of variations and the increased ramping levels caused by wind in short time intervals of a few minutes or less, and introduced some of the complexities involved in analysis of the impact of wind in an electricity system.

This post looks at the analysis of published fossil fuel consumption and emissions information and addresses two major issues:

(1) the questionable nature of the published information, and

(2) the questionable attempts by external analysts (those outside the information publisher organizations) using this information to determine the cause and effect relationship between wind production and fossil fuel consumption and emissions leading to the determination of savings with wind.…

“The federal coal leasing program continues to be a success for America, contributing nearly $12 billion over the past ten years from royalties, rents, bonuses, and other payments according to BLM.”

“Premature shutdown of coal-consuming plants is a trend already occurring due to the influence of an increasing number of environmental regulations promulgated for such plants. The robust marketplace competition that exists between coal and natural gas.”

In January 2016, the Department of Interior (DOI) announced a three-year moratorium on new federal coal leases while it completes a review of the federal coal leasing program. DOI’s Bureau of Land Management commenced the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement review process in March.

As it assesses the issue of fair return to taxpayers, however, BLM is considering reform approaches that would significantly increase the costs of federal coal production.…