NOTE TO POLICY MAKERS : 41 Reasons Why Wind ‘Power’ Can Not Replace Fossil Fuels

INDUTSRIAL WIND TURBINES - THE FLAWS

INDUSTRIAL Wind Turbines Are Neither “Clean, Green or Renewable” | CLIMATISM


“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming alarmism and former NASA climate chief)

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WESTERN climate-theory-obsessed politicians continue their ruinous and costly obsession with wind and solar ‘energy’. ‘UNreliables‘ that repeatedly fail the environment, communities and economies wherever installed.

ENERGY poverty, blackouts, skyrocketing power bills, grid instability and the destruction of pristine landscapes, (flora and fauna) among the many deleterious effects of low energy-density, weather and fossil-fuel dependent windmills and solar panels.

ALICE Friedemann of ‘Energy Skeptic‘ meticulously lays out 41 reasons that expose the colossal flaws of the mad rush into wind ‘power’ as a genuine replacement for fossil fuels and/or nuclear power. Economy and job-destroying, anti-energy policy initiatives undertaken by all-too-many in our current ruling class that defy all logic, reason and common sense based on easily verifiable data and on-the-ground evidence.

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41 Reasons why wind power can not replace fossil fuels

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Source: Leonard, T. 2012. Broken down and rusting, is this the future of Britain’s ‘wind rush’? | Daily Mail

Preface. Electricity simply doesn’t substitute for all the uses of fossil fuels, so windmills will never be able to reproduce themselves from the energy they generate — they are simply not sustainable.  Consider the life cycle of a wind turbine – giant diesel powered mining trucks and machines dig deep into the earth for iron ore, fossil-fueled ships take the ore to a facility that will crush it and permeate it with toxic chemicals to extract the metal from the ore, the metal will be taken in a diesel truck or locomotive to a smelter which runs exclusively on fossil fuels 24 x 7 x 365 for up to 22 years (any stoppage causes the lining to shatter so intermittent electricity won’t do). There are over 8,000 parts to a wind turbine which are delivered over global supply chains via petroleum-fueled ships, rail, air, and trucks to the assembly factory. Finally diesel cement trucks arrive at the wind turbine site to pour many tons of concrete and other diesel trucks carry segments of the wind turbine to the site and workers who drove gas or diesel vehicles to the site assemble it.

Here are the topics covered below in this long post:

  1. Windmills require petroleum every single step of their life cycle. If they can’t replicate themselves using wind turbine generated electricity, they are not sustainable
  2. SCALE. Too many windmills needed to replace fossil fuels
  3. SCALE. Wind turbines can’t be scaled up fast enough to replace fossils
  4. Not enough rare earth metals and enormous amounts of cement, steel, and other materials required
  5. Not enough dispatchable power to balance wind intermittency and unreliability
  6. Wind blows seasonally, so for much of there year there wouldn’t be enough wind
  7. When too much wind is blowing for the grid to handle, it has to be curtailed and/or drives electricity prices to zero, driving natural gas, coal, and nuclear power plants out of business
  8. The best wind areas will never be developed
  9. The Grid Can’t Handle Wind Power without natural gas, which is finite
  10. The role of the grid is to keep the supply of power steady and predictable. Wind does the opposite, at some point of penetration it may become impossible to keep the grid from crashing.
  11. The grid blacks out when the supply of power varies too much. Eventually too much wind penetration will crash the grid.
  12. Windmills wouldn’t be built without huge subsidies and tax breaks
  13. Tremendous environmental damage from mining material for windmills
  14. Not enough time to scale wind up
  15. The best wind is too high or remote to capture
  16. Too many turbines could affect Earth’s climate negatively
  17. Wide-scale US wind power could cause significant global warming. A Harvard study raises questions about just how much wind should be part of a climate solution
    Less wind can be captured than thought (see Max Planck Society)
  18. Wind is only strong enough to justify windmills in a few regions
  19. The electric grid needs to be much larger than it is now
  20. Wind blows the strongest when customer demand is the weakest
  21. No utility scale energy storage in sight
  22. Wind Power surges harm industrial customers
  23. Energy returned on Energy Invested is negative
  24. Windmills take up too much space
  25. Wind Turbines break down too often
  26. Large-scale wind energy slows down winds and reduces turbine efficiencies
  27. Offshore Wind Farms likely to be destroyed by Hurricanes
  28. The costs of lightning damage are too high
  29. Wind doesn’t reduce CO2
  30. Turbines increase the cost of farming
  31. Offshore Windmills battered by waves, wind, ice, corrosion, a hazard to ships and ecosystems
  32. Wind turbines are far more expensive than they appear to be
  33. Wind turbines are already going out of business and fewer built in Europe
  34. TRANSPORTATION LIMITATIONS: Windmills are so huge they’ve reached the limits of land transportation by truck or rail
  35. Windmills may only last 12 to 15 years, or at best 20 years
  36. Not In My Back Yard – NIMBYism
  37. Lack of a skilled and technical workforce
  38. Wind only produces electricity, what we face is a liquid fuels crisis
  39. Wind has a low capacity Factor
  40. Dead bugs and salt reduce wind power generation by 20 to 30%
  41. Small windmills too expensive, too noisy, unreliable, and height restricted

Alice Friedemann :  www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report ]

41 Reasons why wind power can not replace fossil fuels | Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge

CLICK here for detailed expansion of each of the 41 points…

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