Wind Farms. Are they really viable? What are the costs?
Being a supporter of ‘green’ environmentally friendly issues I feel I should support the increasing march of wind farms upon our landscape, there is, however, something niggling in the back of my mind.
Basically I do not like them, they are ugly, the almost silent noise they make is eerie.
To be suddenly confronted by a wind farm when driving in the countryside is reminiscent of stumbling upon a Martian invasion!
A lot has been written for and against these structures, most of which I am currently ploughing through. This is an ongoing topic which I am going to be adding to over the coming months.
I am particularly interested in the cost to the environment. How many birds, for instance, are killed through flying into wind turbines? How much more of our countryside must be given up to wind farm projects? Is there enough room for offshore wind farms to compete with ever increasing shipping? Only recently off the east coast of Britain there was an incident of a drifting tanker on a collision course with one of these monsters.
Do they work efficiently? Do they work in the strong gale force winds that we are experiencing more of in this country as a result of global warming?
After a brief study of wind farms I am not convinced of their beneficial uses to the UK and the rest of the world. If sea levels are rising as predicted perhaps a more sensible energy source would be to harness wave power.
Technorati Tags: wind+farm wind+turbine wind environmentally+friendly countryside offshore birds global+warming wave+power energy sea+level
February 9th, 2007 at 13:33
The Greens say its’ OK to displace wildlife and slice and dice birds because the machines will save the planet from burning up. Except they won’t. With all this global warming hype, I expect the Greens next to call for humans to be sacrificed to the weather gods on full moon Fridays. When a child dies every 5 seconds from a hunger related cause, the wasting $dollars on “green” scams amounts to sacrificing humans.
The Germans now get 6% of their energy from wind. They are building clean coal because its too costly to achieve higher penetration by wind. Why waste money on inefficient wind when the money can be better spent on conservation and high efficiency new coal. Britain’s gas and electricity regulator now wants the Renewables Obligation scheme scrapped because it has cost consumers $billions and “Worse still, the emissions savings delivered are small and almost unbelievably expensive.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article2192850.ece
February 9th, 2007 at 14:50
What are your thoughts on the recent news item from a town in the US where the vast percentage of their vehicles are running on a fuel derived from corn?
I cannot see this as a practical solution for the UK as we do not have sufficient land available to produce the necessary quantities of corn required to make such a project viable, however, those countries with lare land masses could easily take up this option.
February 9th, 2007 at 21:37
They use a blend of ethanol and petrol.
Plow the land, cultivate, seed, add energy intensive fertilizer, spray toxic chemicals, combine, truck, process and distribute and you have a product 3 times as expensive as petrol that takes as much energy to produce as it provides. Wind and corn ethanol go good together. There low efficiency, provide little environmental benefit, are costly but are forced on consumers by government regs and heavily subsidized. Agro-business loves the concept. Just like natural gas processors love wind mills.
March 1st, 2007 at 15:41
Hmmm,better start building some more Nuke plants PDQ then?
March 1st, 2007 at 16:48
It sounds like ethanol is to blame for the current petrol crisis experienced by hundreds of drivers in the UK at present, what’s the betting that the government has requested petrol companies to add more ethanol in order to look green!
It’s certainly backfired on them as hundreds of motorists will literally testify.
March 10th, 2007 at 0:44
The birds beheaded by wind turbines alarm is a lot of bunk.
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18167&ch=energy