Power Hungry

by Robert Bryce

  “I’m not going to have the windmills on my ranch,” quoth he. “They’re ugly.”29

  Ugly or not, wind power has become the most-hyped segment of the “green” energy alternatives. And few aspects of the wind-power hype have gotten more attention than the claim that adding wind turbines will mean big reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There’s only one problem with that claim: It’s not true.

  All About Power Density: A Comparison of Various Energy Sources in Horsepower (and Watts)

  Nuclear: 300 hp/acre* (56 W/square meter)30

  Average U.S. natural gas well, producing 115,000 cubic feet per day: 287.5 hp/acre† (53 W/square meter)31

  Gas stripper well, producing 60,000 cubic feet per day: 153.5 hp/acre† (28 W/square meter)32

  Oil stripper well, producing 10 barrels per day: 150 hp/acre† (27 W/square meter)33

  Solar PV: 36 hp/acre (6.7 W/square meter)34

  Oil stripper well, producing 2 barrels per day: 30 hp/acre† (5.5 W/square meter)

  Wind turbines: 6.4 hp/acre (1.2 W/square meter)35

  Biomass-fueled power plant: 2.1 hp/acre (0.4 W/square meter)36

  Corn ethanol: 0.26 hp/acre (0.05 W/square meter)37

  Note: Calculations may not be exact because of rounding. Assumptions: 1 Btu equals 1,000 joules, and 1 acre equals 4,000 square meters.

  * Calculation uses entire 12,000 acres of the South Texas Project.

  †Assumes well site is 2 acres.

  CHAPTER 9

  Wind Power Reduces CO2 Emissions

  GIVEN THE HYPE about wind power, it would be logical to assume that wind-power advocates have multiple studies on their shelves to prove that wind power cuts carbon dioxide emissions. The problem: They don’t have a single study to support that claim. Yes, they have reports based on models that look at various scenarios of wind-power use, and those models provide projections about what the carbon dioxide reductions might be.

  But the wind-power boosters do not have a single study—based on actual data collected from the world’s existing fleet of wind turbines and conventional electricity-generation plants—showing that wind power actually reduces carbon dioxide emissions. That’s remarkable, given that the Global Wind Energy Council has declared that “a reduction in the levels of carbon dioxide being emitted into the global atmosphere is the most important environmental benefit from wind power generation.”1

  In 2009, when I asked the American Wind Energy Association for studies proving that wind power reduced carbon emissions, association officials pointed to two reports relying on models that assume certain levels of future reductions.2 The Global Wind Energy Council could only provide its annual report, “Global Wind Energy Outlook 2008,” which, like the reports that used models, claimed that wind would, sometime in the future, decrease the use of hydrocarbons for electricity production.3

  But that claim ignores the fact that all wind-power installations must be backed up with large amounts of dispatchable electric generation capacity. In Denmark’s case, that has meant having large quantities of available hydropower resources in Norway and Sweden that can be called upon when needed. But even with a perfect zero-carbon backup system, the Danes haven’t seen a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. (Denmark’s wind sector is discussed at length in the next chapter.) And that bodes ill for countries that don’t have the access to hydropower that Denmark has. Nearly every country that installs wind power must back up its wind turbines with gas-fired generators.

  This reality was explained in a 2008 report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). In the 23-page report, the firm concluded that wind power “is more expensive than conventional power generation, in part because wind’s intermittent production patterns need to be augmented with dispatchable generators to match power demand.”4 The CERA report goes on to explain that wind turbines may be good for producing electricity during fall and spring, but wind power “has limited capability as a capacity resource as its production patterns generally do not correlate well with peak summer demand. Consequently, the capacity provided by wind projects is typically valued at 10% to 20% of their maximum rated capacity.”5

  In the electric power business, generating plants are rated by their “capacity factor,” which is based on the amount of time they will produce power at 100 percent of their maximum output. As the CERA report makes clear, many wind projects have a capacity factor of 10, 20, or 30 percent. But some grid operators are using capacity factors that are far lower than the estimates from CERA. For proof of that, look no further than the Lone Star State.

  Texas has repeatedly been lauded as a leader in wind power development. In 2008, the state installed nearly 2,700 megawatts of new wind capacity, and by early 2009, if Texas were an independent country, it would have ranked sixth in the world in terms of total wind-power production capacity.6 Republican governor Rick Perry, among the state’s most ardent supporters of wind power, declared a few years ago that “no state is more committed to developing renewable sources of energy.” He went on to say that by “harnessing the energy potential of wind, we can provide Texans a form of energy that is green, clean and easily renewable.” 7 The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club has also repeatedly trumpeted wind-power development, saying that it “means more jobs for Texas, less global warming from coal plants and less radioactivity from nuclear plants.” The group says that wind power in the state “has exceeded all expectations,” bringing in “an estimated $6 billion in investments and 15,000 new jobs” for the state.8

  In June 2009, shortly before the U.S. House of Representatives was to vote on a major cap and trade bill aimed at increasing use of renewable energy, President Obama reminded reporters that Texas had one of the “strongest renewable energy standards in the country.... And its wind energy has just taken off and been a huge economic boon to the state.”9

  Alas, the hype doesn’t match the reality. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages 85 percent of the state’s electric load, pegs wind’s capacity factor at less than 9 percent.10 In a 2007 report, the grid operator determined that just “8.7% of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period for the next year.” It added that “conventional generation must be available to provide the remaining capacity needed to meet forecast load and reserve requirements.”11 In 2009, the grid operator reaffirmed its decision to use the 8.7 percent capacity factor.12

  By mid-2009, Texas had 8,203 megawatts of installed wind-power capacity. 13 But ERCOT, in its forecasts for that summer’s demand periods, when electricity use is the highest, was estimating that just 708 megawatts of the state’s wind-generation capacity could actually be counted on as reliable. With total summer generation needs of 72,648 megawatts, the vast majority of which comes from gas-fired generation, wind power was providing just 1 percent of Texas’s total reliable generation portfolio. ERCOT’s projections show that wind will remain a nearly insignificant player in terms of reliable capacity through at least 2014, when the grid operator expects wind to provide about 1.2 percent of the state’s needed generation.14

  Given the data from the Global Wind Energy Council and ERCOT, it’s clear that wind power cannot be counted on as a stand-alone source of electricity but must always be backed up by conventional sources of electricity generation. In short, wind power does not reduce the need for conventional power plants, a point that was underscored in early January 2010 when Britain was hit by a record-setting cold snap. At the same time that energy demand soared due to the cold weather, Britain’s wind farms produced practically no electricity.15

  FIGURE 13 Reliable Summer Generation Capacity in Texas, by Fuel Type, 2009 and 2014

  Source: Electric Reliability Council of Texas, “Report on the Capacity, Demand, and Reserves in the ERCOT Region,” May 2009, http://www.ercot.com/content/news/presentations/2009/2009%20ERCOT%20Capacity,%20Demand%20and%20Reserves%20Report.pdf, 13.

  In its 2008 report, CERA determined that “in
order to provide reliable capacity throughout the year, every megawatt of wind capacity needs to be matched up with a megawatt of dispatchable capacity.”16 Those findings were affirmed in early 2009 by Peter Lang, an engineer with forty years of experience in the energy business who is based in Canberra, Australia. In a report called “Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Avoided by Wind Generation,” Lang concluded: “Because wind cannot be called up on demand, especially at the time of peak demand, installed wind generation capacity does not reduce the amount of installed conventional generating capacity required. So wind cannot contribute to reducing the capital investment in generating plants. Wind is simply an additional capital investment.”17

  In other words, thanks to its variability and intermittancy, wind power does not, and cannot, displace power plants, it only adds to them. The conclusions reached by Lang, and the analysts at CERA, are similar to those reached by British consultant James Oswald, who studied the potential effects of increased wind-power consumption in Britain. In a 2008 article published in the journal Energy Policy, Oswald and his two coauthors concluded that increased use of wind would likely cause utilities to invest in lower-efficiency gas-fired generators that would be switched on and off frequently, a move that cuts their energy efficiency and increases their emissions. Upon publication of the study, Oswald said that carbon dioxide savings from wind power “will be less than expected, because cheaper, less efficient [gas-fired] plant[s] will be used to support these wind power fluctuations. Neither these extra costs nor the increased carbon production are being taken into account in the government figures for wind power.”18

  China provides another example of the limited role that wind power will play in cutting carbon dioxide emissions. In September 2009, Jing Yang of the Wall Street Journal reported that “China’s ambition to create ‘green cities’ powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.” Chinese officials are installing about 12,700 megawatts of new wind turbines in the northwestern province of Gansu. But along with those turbines, the government will install 9,200 megawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity in Gansu, “for use when the winds aren’t favorable.” That quantity of coal-fired capacity, Jing noted, is “equivalent to the entire generating capacity of Hungary.”19

  The obvious problem with the Chinese plan is that coal-fired plants are designed to provide continuous, baseload power. They cannot be turned on and off quickly. That likely means that all of the new coal plants being built in Gansu province to back up the new wind turbines will be run continuously in order to assure that the regional power grid doesn’t go dark.

  One other analysis of the wind–carbon dioxide question deserves mention: In November 2009, Kent Hawkins, a Canadian electrical engineer, published a detailed analysis on the frequency with which gas-fired generators must be cycled on and off in order to back up wind power. Hawkins’ findings: The frequent switching on and off results in more gas consumption than if there were no wind turbines at all. His analysis suggests that it would be more efficient in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to simply run combined-cycle gas turbines on a continuous basis than to use wind turbines backed up by gas-fired generators that are constantly being turned on and off. Hawkins concluded that wind power is not an “effective CO2 mitigation” strategy “because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines.”20

  During an interview, Hawkins told me that he had been studying the wind-power sector for years and had been motivated to do his analysis because “nobody has done a comprehensive study.” He said the wind industry has no interest in trying to produce proof that wind turbines cut carbon dioxide emissions. “Why do they have to prove anything with regard to CO2 emissions? The industry already has all the political sup port, and the media, behind it.”21

  Given the work by Lang, Oswald, and Hawkins suggesting that wind power doesn’t reduce carbon dioxide emissions, what does the wind industry claim? In its 2008 outlook, the Global Wind Energy Council put forward a “reference scenario.” The trade group projects that by 2030, global wind-power capacity will be nearly 500,000 megawatts, a five-fold increase over 2007, when installed capacity totaled about 94,000 megawatts.22 If that massive expansion of wind power occurs, the group expects global annual carbon dioxide emissions to be reduced by 731 million tons by 2030. That sounds significant.

  But the council warned that “under this scenario, carbon dioxide savings under wind would be negligible, compared with the 18,708 million tons of carbon dioxide that the IEA expects the global power sector will emit every year by 2030” (emphasis added).23 Put another way, at the same time that wind promoters are claiming that carbon dioxide reductions are a key benefit of adding new wind-power capacity, their own projections reveal that even if the wind-power sector continues to experience rapid growth, it will only reduce electricity-related carbon dioxide emissions by about 4 percent by 2030.24 And given that the electric-generation sector represents about 40 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions, that 4 percent reduction from wind—if it occurs—will be almost insignificant, amounting to a reduction of perhaps 1.5 percent of the total annual volume of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

  In short, the wind-power promoters promise major carbon dioxide benefits, even claiming that carbon dioxide reductions are the industry’s “most important environmental benefit.” But the wind industry has no proof that it can achieve that claim. And even if you believe the industry’s data for optimum investment in additional wind capacity, the resulting reductions in carbon dioxide emissions will barely be noticeable.

  In fact, even in Denmark—the country that has taken the wind-power experiment further than any other—embracing wind has not reduced carbon dioxide emissions or cut hydrocarbon consumption.

  CHAPTER 10

  Denmark Provides an Energy Model for the United States

  Today, America produces less than 3% of our electricity through renewable sources like wind and solar—less than 3%. Now, in comparison, Denmark produces almost 20% of their electricity through wind power.... When it comes to renewable energy, I don’t think we should be followers, I think it’s time for us to lead.

  BARACK OBAMA,

  Earth Day Speech, April 22, 20091

  ADVOCATES OF RENEWABLE energy love Denmark. And why shouldn’t they? The Danes love themselves.

  Surveys in 2006 and 2008 found that the Danes are the happiest people on the planet.2 The surveys found strong correlations for satisfaction with availability of health care, higher personal income, and access to education. (In the 2006 study, the United States ranked twenty-third in the happy ratings.)3 Although the studies don’t mention renewable energy as an element of the happiness quotient, if the wind-power promoters are to be believed, then Denmark’s happiness surely must correlate with the number of wind turbines that are installed in the country.

  America’s leading energy cheerleaders love to cite Denmark as the model to be copied. For instance, in a 2006 interview with Discover magazine, Amory Lovins enthused about wind power, saying that there is enough available wind energy in South Dakota and North Dakota “to meet the United States’ electricity needs.” He went on, saying that “Denmark is now one-fifth wind powered.”4 A few months after Lovins proclaimed Denmark’s virtues, Fox News, the conservative news outlet, followed suit, saying that Denmark “has become a leader in the field of renewable energy” and that “renewable sources account for a greater share of the nation’s energy consumption with each passing year.”5

  In August 2008, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman held up the Danes as the model for the United States. In the wake of the 1973 Oil Embargo, Friedman claimed, Demark “responded ... in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent.” Friedman went on to lament America’s situation, writing that if “only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!”6

  In mid-2009, Joshua Green, a
senior editor at Atlantic Monthly, wrote a long article about renewable energy bemoaning the fact that the United States had not done more to embrace renewable energy. He said the election of Obama and a Democratic Congress had made “a significant shift in the nation’s energy policy a real possibility for the first time in years.”7 Green then lauded Denmark: “Europe offers a model of how governments can lead the transition to clean energy and thereby reduce demand for fossil fuels. Denmark, which also suffered the shocks of the 1970s, no longer needs to import oil.”8

  While all of the wind power and happiness in Denmark makes me want to fly to Copenhagen for a cup of coffee and a hug, a close look at Denmark’s energy sector shows that its embrace of wind power has not resulted in “energy independence”; nor has it made a major difference in the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, coal consumption, or oil use. Despite massive subsidies for the wind industry and years of hype about the wonders of Denmark’s energy policies, the Danes now have some of the world’s most expensive electricity and most expensive motor fuel. And in 2007, their carbon dioxide emissions were at about the same level as they were two decades ago.

  Thomas Friedman may like the idea of energy independence, but the data shows that Denmark is not energy independent—it’s not even close. The Danes import all of their coal. I repeat, Denmark imports all of its coal.9 Those coal imports—and coal consumption among the Danes—show little sign of declining, even though Denmark’s wind power production capacity is increasing. And Denmark is even more dependent on coal than the United States.10