ENERGY POVERTY UPDATE : Wind & Solar Obsession Causing Skyrocketing Power Prices & Frozen Grannies
Posted: July 8, 2019 Filed under: BIG Government, Climate Change, Energy Poverty, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Renewables, RET, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Climate Change, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Renewable energy, RET, solar, Solar panels, Solar PV, Sussan Ley, unreliables, Wind Energy, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome Leave a comment“ELDERLY people are dying in their cold homes or being rushed to hospital because they can’t afford to put the heater on.
MORE than 130 people were admitted to NSW emergency departments last winter with cold-related problems including hypothermia, a 34 per cent increase from 10 years ago.
Over the same period power prices have increased by 117 per cent.”ENOUGH said.
WAKE-UP politicians, addicted to UNreliables to feather their ‘green’ credentials. Enough is enough. @sussanley
STOP THESE THINGS
Australia’s wind and solar obsession has driven power prices through the roof and the poor and elderly to early graves. Staying warm in the depth of winter is no longer just a matter of turning up the dial on the AC, for the poorest and most vulnerable it’s a daily battle for survival.
In the space of a decade, power prices have doubled and so too the number of households disconnected from the grid; because they can no longer afford to pay their bills.
A generation ago, Australians enjoyed the world’s cheapest power prices; thanks to its suicidal renewable energy policies, they now suffer among the highest.
That all of this was perfectly predictable, and perfectly avoidable, makes it all the more outrageous. Here’s Peta Credlin expressing just that.
‘What a joke’ that Australians are ‘too frightened to turn on appliances’
Sky news
Peta Credlin, Luke Grant and Jeremy Cordeaux
View original post 1,282 more words
KILLING THE EARTH TO ‘SAVE’ IT : Rainforest Trees Cut Down To Make Way For Industrial Wind Turbines
Posted: June 15, 2019 Filed under: Australia, Climate Change, Climatism, Environmentalism, Environmentalists, Fact Check, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Hypocrisy, Renewables, Sustainability, Unreliables, Wind Farms, Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) | Tags: Australia, Climate Change, Climatism, Credlin, Eco Hell, Environmentalism, Environmentalists, Global Warming, green hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Industrial Wind, John Clarkson, Old-growth Forests, Outsiders, Rainforest, Sustainability, Tarkine, Tasmania, TasNetworks, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome, Windfarms 7 Comments“IF this had have been a transmission line connecting a coal power station,
these far left brainwashed climate change believing nutters,
would have been there in their thousands.”
– John Clarkson
***
H/t @JohnClarksonGSM @MRobertsQLD
IN the good old days of ‘Greenism’, genuine environmentalists rallied against the wanton destruction of pristine flora and fauna.
IN the twisted age of Global Warming Climate Change hysteria, real environmentalists are failing us in the face of a global religion that has allowed the development of supposed ‘planet-saving’ ‘renewables‘ that wilfully destroy forests, animals and pristine environments.
IN the latest example of ‘Green’ eco-hypocrisy, 200 year-old rainforest trees have been cleared to make way for wind ‘farm’ transmission lines in Tasmania’s Tarkine.
THE obvious question is a simple one: Where are the @Greens or @Greenpeace or @GretaThunberg when pristine landscapes and old-growth rainforests are being destroyed to satisfy the whims and superstitions of Global Warming Climate Change catastrophists and EU elites?
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Old-growth trees cut down for windfarm transmission corridor
Rainforest trees 200 years old have been cleared to make way for a wind farm transmission line in Tasmania’s Tarkine, prompting claims of green “hypocrisy”.
Myrtle and sassafras trees were among those felled along a 10.5km corridor widened for transmission lines associated with the $280 million, 112 megawatt wind farm at Granville Harbour, in Tasmania’s remote northwest.
Special species timber advocate Andrew Denman, who discovered the felled trees, said it raised concerns about environmental impacts, wastage of high-value timber and wind power’s “green” credentials.
He estimated that some of the felled trees, highly valued in specialty timber production, were 200 years old, given they typically grow at 0.3cm a year and were 60cm in diameter.
With more wind farms planned for Tasmania, including another in the northwest requiring a 170km transmission line, he believed any further clearing, if it must occur, should be co-ordinated to ensure timber was not wasted. “With much of the special timbers in short supply … there could have been a more co-ordinated effort in utilising it to make sure that timber was going to a sawmiller in a timely manner so it could be processed and not wasted,” said Mr Denman, a boatbuilder.
While not critical of the wind farm proponent, whom he did not doubt had complied with regulatory requirements, he understood clearing for electricity infrastructure was exempt from the Forest Practices Code, which seeks to mitigate impacts on keys species.
He believed it was hypocritical of the Greens to oppose “sustainable” harvesting of rainforest timbers while backing the Granville Harbour wind farm and, by implication, associated logging of such trees. “An old-growth tree is an old-growth tree,” Mr Denman said. “Why is it acceptable to cut it down for a transmission line but not acceptable to cut it down sustainably and regenerate that area and put it to good use?”
A Greens spokeswoman said while the party was a “strong supporter of renewable energy”, it “consistently opposed logging or clearing within reserves”.
The wind farm’s website says the transmission line, providing power to the grid at the Reece Dam, was being handled by state-owned TasNetworks.
A spokeswoman for project developer Granville Harbour Operations said it required all works to comply with approvals. “These impose clear procedures and requirements on us and our contractors to mitigate and manage environmental impacts, including impacts to native vegetation,” she said.
TasNetworks said its widening of an existing transmission corridor was “considered optimal”. “It reduced the extent of clearing required to connect the wind farm to the electricity distribution network,” a spokesman said.
•••
SEE also :
- ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism
- UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism
- DRACONIAN UN CLIMATE AGENDA EXPOSED : ‘Global Warming Fears Are A Tool For Political and Economic Change…It Has Nothing To Do With The Actual Climate’ | Climatism
- INCONVENIENT : ‘The World Is Literally A Greener Place Than It Was Twenty Years Ago’ – NASA | Climatism
- DR TIM BALL MUST READ : Environmentalism – Evidence Suggests It Was Always And Only About Achieving World Government | Climatism
- ELECTORAL POISON : All Around The Globe, The Silent Majority Are Rejecting Climate Change Hysteria And The Ruinous UNreliables Agenda | Climatism
RELATED :
- UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism
- GREEN Energy Is The Perfect Scam | Climatism
- THE Mind-blowing Costs Of Global Warming Hysteria | Climatism
- GREEN ENERGY POVERTY: Volunteer Knitters In High Demand As Soaring Power Prices Leave People Cold | Climatism
- STANFORD Universities Paul Ehrlich Wanted To Poison Black Africans To Fight Climate Change | Climatism
- FATHER Of The 2°C Climate Target Admits Number Is Fabricated : ‘Two degrees is not a magical limit; it’s clearly a political goal’ | Climatism
- THE Greatest Threat To The Environment Is Not Affluence, It’s Poverty | Climatism
- JAPAN ACKNOWLEDGES THE GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAUSE’ : Sanctions 35 New Coal Power Plants Added To The 100 Currently Operational | Climatism
ENEGRY POVERTY Related :
- ‘GREEN’ Energy Poverty : Thousands Dying Because They Can’t Afford Heating Bills | Climatism
- GREEN ENERGY POVERTY: Volunteer Knitters In High Demand As Soaring Power Prices Leave People Cold | Climatism
- DO NOT PASS GO! Seven Years Jail Time For Using Cheap Electricity In Australia | Climatism
- MEMO To Dr Joe : Cold Kills 20 Times More People Than Heat | Climatism
- POLITICIANS Mad With Global Warming Theory Are Destroying The Economy And Hurting The Poor | Climatism
- “Runaway Global Warming” Update: 48,000 Brits Dead After Worst Winter In 42 Years | Climatism
- GLOBAL WARMING Might Not Hurt, But Warming Policies Do : Former Australian PM Spells Out The Inconvenient Truth | Climatism
STATE Of The Climate Report :
IPCC Extreme Weather Report 2018 SR15 :
EXTREME WEATHER Related :
TEMPERATURE Related :
- JAPAN ACKNOWLEDGES THE GLOBAL WARMING ‘PAUSE’ : Sanctions 35 New Coal Power Plants Added To The 100 Currently Operational | Climatism
- THE Great Global Warming “Pause” | Climatism
- GLOBAL Temperature Drops By 0.4°C In Three Years | Climatism
- PEER-REVIEWED SCIENCE : The Medieval Warm Period Was Indeed Global And Warmer Than Today | Climatism
- THE SUN : Climate Control Knob, Enemy Of The Climate Cult | Climatism
- THE SUN : Climate Changer, Climate Driver, Climate Disruptor | Climatism
ORIGINS Of The Global Warming Scam :
- DRACONIAN UN CLIMATE AGENDA EXPOSED : ‘Global Warming Fears Are A Tool For Political and Economic Change…It Has Nothing To Do With The Actual Climate’ | Climatism
- THE Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Scam | Climatism
- CLIMATE CHANGE : The Unsettled Science Of “Settled” Science | Climatism
- FATHER Of The 2°C Climate Target Admits Number Is Fabricated : ‘Two degrees is not a magical limit; it’s clearly a political goal’ | Climatism
- TIM FLANNERY – Professor of Dud Predictions and Climate Falsehoods | Climatism
- THE Mind-blowing Costs Of Global Warming Hysteria | Climatism
- THE Orwellian Era Of @NASA Climate Pseudoscience | Climatism
- WESTERN Nations, Driven By A Global Agenda Of Climate Alarmism, Are Destroying Their Industries With Carbon Taxes And Promotion Of Expensive, Intermittent Green Energy | Climatism
- TOMORROW’S Grim, Global, Green Dictatorship | Climatism
- CLIMATE CHANGE – The Most Massive Scientific Fraud In Human History | Climatism
- “In Searching For A New Enemy To Unite Us, We Came Up With The Threat Of Global Warming” | Climatism
- The Creator, Fabricator And Proponent Of Global Warming – Maurice Strong | Climatism
- Global Warming Is The Greatest And Most Successful Pseudoscientific Fraud In History | Climatism
- Sustainability is Malthusianism for the 21st Century | Climatism
- THE Climate Change Farce Explained By Two Expert “Scientists” | Climatism
- UN IPCC : Climate “Has Almost Nothing To Do With Environmental Policy.” | Climatism
- UN IPCC : “Long-Term Prediction of Future Climate States Is Not Possible.” | Climatism
- UN IPCC Rewrote Temperature History To Suit Their Political Agenda | Climatism
- 100% Of Climate Models Prove That 97% Of Climate Scientists Were Wrong! | Climatism
- YES! The Climate Changes | Climatism
- OUR Planet Has Enjoyed 10 Warm Periods During The Past 10,000 Years | Climatism
- THE ARCTIC : Ground Zero For Anthropogenic Hubris And Climate Change Hysteria | Climatism
•••
THE Climatism Tip Jar – Pls Help Keep The Good Fight Alive!
(Climate sceptics/rationalists still waitin’ for that “big oil” cheque to arrive in the mail!)
Help us to hit back against the bombardment of climate lies costing our communities, economies and livelihoods far, far too much.
Thanks to all those who have donated. Your support and faith in Climatism is highly motivating and greatly appreciated!
Citizen journalists can’t rely on mastheads, rather private donations and honest content. Every pledge helps!
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Thank You! Jamie.
•••
GREEN JOBS : Helicopter De-Icing For Wind Turbines
Posted: January 12, 2019 Filed under: Carbon Dioxide, Climatism, CO2, Energy Poverty, Failed Green Schemes, Fossil Fuels, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Green Agenda, Green Army, green jobs, Renewables, Snow Pack, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: carbon dioxide emissions, Climate Change, Climatism, CO2, Energy Poverty, Fossil Fuels, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Grand Solar Minimum, Green Energy Failure, green jobs, Helicopter De-icing, Ice, snow, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome 3 CommentsWATCH…
“The collusion between wind energy and government disgusts me. If the Federal Production Tax Credit for wind energy didn’t exist, you would not see another industrial wind energy turbine built.” – Warren Buffet
***
THE entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming climate change by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
THE energy required for a helicopter to de-ice all the blades on a wind farm must outweigh any supposed saving in CO2 by a factor of 100 or more. Notwithstanding that no wind farm has saved a gram of CO2 due to construction and the necessary spinning reserve.
THE attached picture, taken from a wind farm in Sweden, is a metaphor for the complete insanity of the mad rush into useless UNreliables – wind and solar. Symbolic ‘energy’ gestures to the folly of ‘green’ madness that fail both physically and financially wherever installed.
THIS one photo alone sums up the collective era of eco-stupidity that we live in today, where rational thought, logic, reason and commonsense has been gleefully abandoned for enormous amounts of public money with valuable resources needlessly sacrificed.
AND, who pays? You pay!
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MORE ‘GREEN’ WINTER JOBS
UNRELIABLES related :
- NOTE TO POLICY MAKERS : 41 Reasons Why Wind ‘Power’ Can Not Replace Fossil Fuels | Climatism
- WHAT I See When I See a Wind Turbine | Climatism
- ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism
- UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism
- TRULY GREEN? How Germany’s #Energiewende Is Destroying Nature | Climatism
- GREEN Energy Is The Perfect Scam | Climatism
- DO NOT PASS GO! Seven Years Jail Time For Using Cheap Electricity In Australia | Climatism
- DRACONIAN UN CLIMATE AGENDA EXPOSED : ‘Global Warming Fears Are A Tool For Political and Economic Change…It Has Nothing To Do With The Actual Climate’ | Climatism
- WESTERN Nations, Driven By A Global Agenda Of Climate Alarmism, Are Destroying Their Industries With Carbon Taxes And Promotion Of Expensive, Intermittent Green Energy | Climatism
NOTE TO POLICY MAKERS : 41 Reasons Why Wind ‘Power’ Can Not Replace Fossil Fuels
Posted: December 25, 2018 Filed under: Climatism, Empirical Evidence, Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Fact Check, Failed Green Schemes, Fossil Fuels, Government Grants/Funding, Green Agenda, Green Energy, infrasound, Renewables, RET, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms, Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) | Tags: Alice Friedemann, Angus Taylor MP, Climate Change, Climatism, Energiewende, Energy Density, Energy Poverty, Energy Security, Energy Skeptic, Fossil Fuels, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Green Energy Failure, Mark Butler MP, Melissa Price MP, Nuclear, Renewable energy, RET, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome 1 Comment“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)
***
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
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:
- 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
- SCALE. Too many windmills needed to replace fossil fuels
- SCALE. Wind turbines can’t be scaled up fast enough to replace fossils
- Not enough rare earth metals and enormous amounts of cement, steel, and other materials required
- Not enough dispatchable power to balance wind intermittency and unreliability
- Wind blows seasonally, so for much of there year there wouldn’t be enough wind
- 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
- The best wind areas will never be developed
- The Grid Can’t Handle Wind Power without natural gas, which is finite
- 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.
- The grid blacks out when the supply of power varies too much. Eventually too much wind penetration will crash the grid.
- Windmills wouldn’t be built without huge subsidies and tax breaks
- Tremendous environmental damage from mining material for windmills
- Not enough time to scale wind up
- The best wind is too high or remote to capture
- Too many turbines could affect Earth’s climate negatively
- 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) - Wind is only strong enough to justify windmills in a few regions
- The electric grid needs to be much larger than it is now
- Wind blows the strongest when customer demand is the weakest
- No utility scale energy storage in sight
- Wind Power surges harm industrial customers
- Energy returned on Energy Invested is negative
- Windmills take up too much space
- Wind Turbines break down too often
- Large-scale wind energy slows down winds and reduces turbine efficiencies
- Offshore Wind Farms likely to be destroyed by Hurricanes
- The costs of lightning damage are too high
- Wind doesn’t reduce CO2
- Turbines increase the cost of farming
- Offshore Windmills battered by waves, wind, ice, corrosion, a hazard to ships and ecosystems
- Wind turbines are far more expensive than they appear to be
- Wind turbines are already going out of business and fewer built in Europe
- TRANSPORTATION LIMITATIONS: Windmills are so huge they’ve reached the limits of land transportation by truck or rail
- Windmills may only last 12 to 15 years, or at best 20 years
- Not In My Back Yard – NIMBYism
- Lack of a skilled and technical workforce
- Wind only produces electricity, what we face is a liquid fuels crisis
- Wind has a low capacity Factor
- Dead bugs and salt reduce wind power generation by 20 to 30%
- 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…
***
SEE also :
- WHAT I See When I See a Wind Turbine | Climatism
- ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism
- UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism
- TRULY GREEN? How Germany’s #Energiewende Is Destroying Nature | Climatism
- GREEN Energy Is The Perfect Scam | Climatism
- DO NOT PASS GO! Seven Years Jail Time For Using Cheap Electricity In Australia | Climatism
- DRACONIAN UN CLIMATE AGENDA EXPOSED : ‘Global Warming Fears Are A Tool For Political and Economic Change…It Has Nothing To Do With The Actual Climate’ | Climatism
Industrialised Murder: Indian Study Shows Wind Turbines Slaughter 75% of Local Raptors
Posted: December 20, 2018 Filed under: Green Energy, Renewables, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Bird and bat slaughter, Bird slaughter, Climate Change, Golden Eagle, Industrial Wind, Mainstream media, nature, Omission Bias, predatory bird slaughter, Science and Environment, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, wind revolt, Wind Turbine Syndrome 1 CommentWIND lobbyists say bird deaths are small compared with millions that collide with windows etc. This is a fallacy. The argument ignores affected species. If 50 pigeons fly into windows, it has no effect on population. But, when a breeding Raptor is chopped, it represents a significant loss for the species.
THIS latest study of wind-related predatory bird slaughter will be conveniently buried by ‘environmental’ groups and sycophant mainstream media.
BIAS by omission – the mainstream media’s favourite form of propaganda. Disgraceful.
STOP THESE THINGS
How green is this? Golden eagle ‘transitions’ to wind power.
One issue that annoys RE zealots, like a burr under a frisky pony’s saddle blanket, is the wind industry’s rampant bird and bat slaughter. It’s an inconvenient truth to be sure. But, as with everything that the wind industry does, if you can’t keep a straight face while lying about it any more, then pull out all stops and cover it up.
The wholesale slaughter of millions of birds and bats – includes rare, endangered and majestic species, like America’s iconic bald and golden eagles. The default response from the wind industry is to lie like fury and – when the corpses can no longer be hidden and the lying fails – to issue court proceedings to literally bury those facts (see our post here).
The hackneyed retort from the wind cult is that cars, cats and tall buildings…
View original post 711 more words
WHAT I See When I See a Wind Turbine
Posted: December 9, 2018 Filed under: Climatism, Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Fact Check, Failed Green Schemes, Fossil Fuels, Government Grants/Funding, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: auspol, Climate Change, Climatism, COP24, Crude Oil, Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Green Energy, Green Energy Failure, Industrial Wind, Renewable energy, UNFCCC, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome 3 Comments“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)
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers
***
AN extremely inconvenient insight into the monumental amount of “dirty” fossil fuel derivatives required to manufacture, install and maintain so-called “green”, “clean” and “renewable” industrial wind turbines…
(Climatism images, links and bolds added)
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To Get Wind Power You Need Oil
Each wind turbine embodies a whole lot of petrochemicals and fossil-fuel energy
WIND turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels.
Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages [pdf] 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.
If wind-generated electricity were to supply 25 percent of global demand by 2030 (forecast [pdf] to reach about 30 petawatt-hours), then even with a high average capacity factor of 35 percent, the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450 million metric tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high-voltage transmission links that would be needed to connect it all to the grid.
A lot of energy goes into making steel. Sintered or pelletized iron ore is smelted in blast furnaces, charged with coke made from coal, and receives infusions of powdered coal and natural gas. Pig iron is decarbonized in basic oxygen furnaces. Then steel goes through continuous casting processes (which turn molten steel directly into the rough shape of the final product). Steel used in turbine construction embodies typically about 35 gigajoules per metric ton.
To make the steel required for wind turbines that might operate by 2030, you’d need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million metric tons of coal.
A 5-MW turbine has three roughly 60-meter-long airfoils, each weighing about 15 metric tons. They have light balsa or foam cores and outer laminations made mostly from glass-fiber-reinforced epoxy or polyester resins. The glass is made by melting silicon dioxide and other mineral oxides in furnaces fired by natural gas. The resins begin with ethylene derived from light hydrocarbons, most commonly the products of naphtha cracking, liquefied petroleum gas, or the ethane in natural gas.
The final fiber-reinforced composite embodies on the order of 170 GJ/t. Therefore, to get 2.5 TW of installed wind power by 2030, we would need an aggregate rotor mass of about 23 million metric tons, incorporating the equivalent of about 90 million metric tons of crude oil. And when all is in place, the entire structure must be waterproofed with resins whose synthesis starts with ethylene. Another required oil product is lubricant, for the turbine gearboxes, which has to be changed periodically during the machine’s two-decade lifetime.
Undoubtedly, a well-sited and well-built wind turbine would generate as much energy as it embodies in less than a year. However, all of it will be in the form of intermittent electricity—while its production, installation, and maintenance remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, for most of these energies—coke for iron-ore smelting, coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns, naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for the synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass, diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery, lubricants for gearboxes—we have no nonfossil substitutes that would be readily available on the requisite large commercial scales.
For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.
This article appears in the March 2016 print issue as “What I See When I See a Wind Turbine.”
To Get Wind Power You Need Oil – IEEE Spectrum
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WIND ENERGY – not as “clean”, “green” or “renewable” as the bumper sticker suggests!
•••
SEE also :
- ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism
- IF CO2’s Your Poison, Renewable Energy Is No Antidote | Climatism
- UN Carbon Regime Would Devastate Humanity And The Environment | Climatism
- TRULY GREEN? How Germany’s #Energiewende Is Destroying Nature | Climatism
- GREEN Energy Is The Perfect Scam | Climatism
- DO NOT PASS GO! Seven Years Jail Time For Using Cheap Electricity In Australia | Climatism
- WESTERN Nations, Driven By A Global Agenda Of Climate Alarmism, Are Destroying Their Industries With Carbon Taxes And Promotion Of Expensive, Intermittent Green Energy | Climatism
- COP24 : Climate Alarmism Is Threatening To Destroy Australia | Climatism
DEUTSCHLAND’S Delusion: Unreliable Energy ‘Transition’ in Tatters – CO2 Targets Missed as Power Prices Spiral Out of Control
Posted: October 12, 2018 Filed under: COP24, Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Government Grants/Funding, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, RET, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms, Wind Turbine Syndrome (WTS) | Tags: Climate Change, COP24, Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Green Energy Failure, Renewable energy, RET, Solar panels, Solar PV, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, wind revolt, Wind Turbine Syndrome Leave a commentAFTER nearly a €TRILLION Euros of taxpayer’s hard-earned money spent, Germany’s #Energiewende program exposed as a catastrophic failure.
WHEN will this ideological push for symbolic, costly, unreliable, unwanted, economically and environmentally destructive ‘energy’ end?
STOP THESE THINGS
Destroyer of worlds: wrecking villages and an entire economy.
Germany has a history of clinging to lost causes: its ‘inevitable’ transition to wind and solar is just the latest example. As Berlin was overrun by the Red Army in April 1945, Hitler and his loyal aides and commanders kidded themselves that the Reich might soon ride again.
The Fuhrer and his newly wedded wife, Eva literally went out in a blaze of glory, rather than face capture and humiliation of the kind dished out to his Italian mate Mussolini. (There’s always something a little poetic about captains going down with sinking ships, even if the captain in question was a deranged monster, responsible for destroying Europe and tens of millions of innocent lives.)
A few generations on, Germans are watching history repeat.
This time it’s their position as Europe’s industrial and manufacturing superpower that’s facing, deliberate and self-inflicted annihilation. Germany’s…
View original post 1,841 more words
BLACKOUT Nation: Chaotic Delivery of Wind & Solar Causing Blackouts & Wrecking Australia’s Power Grid
Posted: September 3, 2018 Filed under: Australia, Energy Poverty, Failed Green Schemes, Government Grants/Funding, Green Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, RET, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Blackouts, brownouts, Climate Change, Climatism, Energy, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Solar panels, Solar PV, unreliables, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome Leave a comment“Resources Minister Matt Canavan said the incident demonstrated the need for urgent investment in reliable power sources. “The system has heightened vulnerability because of the reliance on interstate and unreliable power,” Senator Canavan said. “More investment in coal, gas or hydro would firm up the system, create more supply and bring down prices.”
CHOP CHOP Matt Canavan and the new, less-Socialist ‘conservative’ LNP party.
Taxpayers are doing it tuff and demand action on energy-poverty, not more words.
STOP THESE THINGS
Adelaide SA’s unscheduled earth hour – 28.9.16
The chaotic delivery of wind and solar has left Australia’s Eastern Grid on the brink of collapse. The Eastern Grid connects Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
Reliable coal-fired generators have been knocked out of the game, made uneconomic thanks to renewable energy policies that direct more than $3 billion a year in subsidies to wind and solar, and which give wind and solar preferential access to the grid.
The most recent losses – Victoria’s Hazelwood and South Australia’s Northern power plants – resulted in the removal of more than 2,200 MW of reliable supply, at a time when Australia needs it most.
When the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in, wind and solar power output collapses, like night follows day.
That (now routine) chaos has two immediate consequences: spot prices for power go through the roof; and…
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UNRELIABLE Energy’s Dirty Dozen: 12 Reasons Why Chaotically Intermittent & Heavily Subsidised Wind & Solar Power Make No Sense
Posted: August 28, 2018 Filed under: Fact Check, Government Grants/Funding, Green Energy, Pal-Review, Renewables, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: carbon dioxide emissions, climate, Climate Change, Climatism, CO2 Sensitivity, Fact Check, Global Warming, Government grants, NEG, Paris Accord, Peer Review, RET, Subsidies, weather dependant, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome Leave a commentBRILLIANT ‘peer-reviewed’ list of 12 unequivocal reasons why weather-dependent wind and solar ‘power’ is guaranteed to wreck your economy and your livelihood…
ALWAYS like to highlight point 4 in debate with proponents of unreliables…
4. Renewable Energy Becomes More Costly The More It Is Deployed … Renewable Energy Expansion Ensures More Fossil Fuel Installation Is Necessary As Backup
IN other words, the more windmills or solar panels, the more *emissions!
(*If harmless CO2 emissions have been brainwashed into you as being the enemy within, that is.)
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It takes a special brand of delusion to believe that the world can run on sunshine and breezes. For wind and sun worshippers, disastrous examples like South Australia – where mass blackouts and load shedding have become the new normal – require not just practiced delusion but a form of self-flagellating stoicism, as well. Oh, almost forgot to mention, that RE superpower suffers the world’s highest power prices. And it reached that infamous status after it blew up its last coal-fired power plant.
The wind industry has had more than 30 years to get its act together. It was built on subsidies and wouldn’t last a minute without them. But, still, there are plenty happy to roll out the excuses and plead for more of the same.
When STT kicked off in December 2012, it was hard to find anyone with a harsh word to say about wind power. However…
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RENT SEEKER’S NIRVANA : Ultra-Rich Pocket $Billions in Wind & Solar Subsidies at Our Expense
Posted: July 29, 2018 Filed under: Energiewende, Energy Poverty, Failed Green Schemes, Government Grants/Funding, Govt Climate Agenda, Green Energy, Renewables, Solar, Unreliables, Wind Farms | Tags: Climate science, Energy Poverty, Fuel Poverty, Global Warming, Government grants, Green Energy Failure, green energy scam, NEG, Renewable energy, Rent seekers, RET, Solar panels, Solar PV, Subsidies, unreliables, wealth redistribution, wealth transfer, Wind Energy, wind energy scam, Wind Farms, wind power, Wind Turbine Syndrome Leave a comment“AT present, the combined subsidies to wind and solar exceed $4 billion a year, and the number of permanent jobs generated is completely trivial; the instant the subsidies go, so do the jobs briefly ‘created’: Cut the Subsidies and ‘Green’ Jobs Instantly Vanish: 80,000 German Solar Workers Sacked.
“The reason that we’re still talking about this nonsense is all political.
And the reason that it’s political is because there’s money in it. Serious money.
Being able to sell a product with no inherent value, takes audacity; but it can be done.
Here’s how: …”
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The hundreds of $billions paid in subsidies to intermittent wind and solar constitute the largest wealth transfer in economic history.
In Australia, the Federal Government’s Large-Scale RET gouges $60 billion from power consumers over the life of the scam, and redirects it to such worthy outfits as AGL and our favourite whipping boys, Infigen. In the history of the Commonwealth, no other single industry subsidy scheme comes anywhere near it in value.
When motor manufacturers, General Motors Holden and Toyota put their hands out for a measly $500 million to maintain their Australian operations, then PM, Tony Abbott told them would “not chase them down the road waving a blank cheque at them“.
A mere half $billion would have saved something like 20 or 30,000 jobs across the sector.
At present, the combined subsidies to wind and solar exceed $4 billion a year, and the number of…
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