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.

Some of the more important articles in this issue are:

How Intermittent Renewables Are Harming the Grid

A Technical Expert’s Superior Wind Energy Critique

World Health Organization Investigating Industrial Wind Energy

Superior: ABC letter re Turbines, Birds and Bats

Excellent collection of short videos about energy and climate change

Study: US Cost To Cut Emissions = $5± Trillion

In New Book Scholar Peels Back Layers of Deception in Climate Change

Climate Alarmism: Probably the Greatest Hoax in History

How the World was Deceived about Global Warming and Climate Change

Worthwhile Climate Change Debate

Ocean Acidification: This Scam Exposed

25 New Papers Confirm A Remarkably Stable Modern Climate

The Polarization of Climate Debate — the Solution They All Miss

The Psychopolitics of Climate Change and Population Control

Greed Energy Economics:

How Intermittent Renewables Are Harming the Grid

A Technical Expert’s Superior Wind Energy Critique

UK Wind Constraint Payments

Study: US Cost To Cut Emissions = $5± Trillion

The More the Wind Blows, the Higher the Cost to Consumers

Wind Turbines Suck Money and Electricity in South Australia

Ontario’s Present & Future: Lashed by Electricity Bills

The outrageous cost of replacing some coal facilities in Ontario

Save Ontario $500 Million by Cancelling Wind Contract

Renewable Consultant: How Liberals Have Bungled Green Energy

Audit finds “suspicious behavior” in dozens of energy projects getting credits

Solar Project Consultant Charged With Forgery

Turbine Health Matters:

World Health Organization Investigating Industrial Wind Energy

Renewable Energy Destroying Ecosystems:

Superior: ABC letter re Turbines, Birds and Bats

Study: Wind Turbines Cause Chronic Stress to Badgers

Bat-ageddon: Turbines Slaughter Millions of Bats – all to ‘Save’ the Planet

Archive: Wind Turbine Fires are 10X what the industry admits

German Wind Turbine Burns

Canadian Wind Turbine Collapses

Miscellaneous Energy News:

Despoiling the Environment to Save the Climate

Confused by Renewable Energy Studies?…

“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.…