Tag Archives for wind
The 100 Percent Renewable Dream: A Problem of Physics and Scale
The drumbeat of press about the declining costs of installing wind and solar generators has led most of the public and our policy-makers to believe that an energy transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar is just around the corner. However, this belief overlooks the fundamental physical limitations of producing electricity from wind and solar. There is a wide gulf between using wind and solar energy for marginal electricity production, as we are doing now in many places, and relying on it for the majority of our electricity.
In this piece, we will elaborate on the two biggest challenges of generating electricity from wind and solar – energy storage and energy density – and explain why making the energy transition a reality is not just a problem of technology but primarily one of physics and scale. Continue reading
Clean Energy Has A Dirty Secret
By Greg Walcher “Governments should temporarily provide funding for new energy technologies so that they can become market competitive with traditional energy resources.” So the Global Energy Network Institute and other renewable energy advocates have been saying for decades. Taxpayers … Continue reading
US Energy Reliability Gone With the Wind
By Matthew Kandrach October 11, 2019 It is too often assumed that making maximum use of renewables is the answer to addressing environmental goals. So easy is it to buy into this assumption that intermittent wind power is pulling ahead of … Continue reading
The Not-So-Dormant Commerce Clause and Coal-Based Electricity
By Paul M. Seby & Matthew B. Miller There is no doubt that coal-based electricity is currently faced with enormous challenges—both at the national level, with the flurry of federal regulations aimed at the coal industry, and at the state … Continue reading
Are wind turbines killing whales?
Environmentalists say navy sonar hurts whales, but ignore impacts of offshore wind farms by: Paul Driessen and Mark Duchamp Between January 9 and February 4 this year, 29 sperm whales got stranded and died on English, German and Dutch beaches. … Continue reading
Audubon goes over the edge
Ed. note: This article was originally published on February 9, 2016 and is printed here with permission from the author. The society’s misleading claims about a climate crisis in the Arctic must be corrected Robert W. Endlich The January-February 2016 … Continue reading
The social costs of renewable energy
An interesting study was recently published by University of California Davis researcher, Katherine Ingram that questions the impact of the wind industry on bats, and by extension, the agriculture industry. As one email headline linking to a Daily Caller article on this … Continue reading
The true cost of wind power
Here is another article that looks at the true costs of generating electricity from wind. As I have noted in many previous Coalblog posts, we consistently hear how wind generation has achieved “cost parity” with fossil fuels. However, a closer … Continue reading
Tom Kiernan, AWEA: Wind will “fall off a cliff” without PTC renewal
Reading EENews.net’s January 26, 2015 interview with the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association is an eye-opener. Despite repeated assurances that the U.S. wind industry is “vibrant” and competitive, Tom Kiernan flatly admits that without further extensions of decades … Continue reading