Power Hungry

by Robert Bryce

  The opposition to wind energy in Denmark is hardly unique. Europe now has about 400 anti-wind energy groups spread among twenty European countries.27 Canada has more than two dozen such groups.28 And the United States has about 100 anti-wind groups.29 In October, I attended a symposium on wind turbine noise in Picton, Ontario. Presenters at the conference included numerous medical doctors and PhDs. The consensus among the various presenters: wind turbines should have setbacks of at least two kilometers from any residence to avoid adverse health effects due to the noise. Alec Salt, a PhD scientist who works in the Department of Otolaryngology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was among the experts who spoke at the conference. Salt, an expert on the workings of the inner ear, said that “A physiologic pathway exists for infrasound to affect the brain at levels that are not heard. The idea that infrasound effects can be dismissed because they are inaudible is absolutely incorrect.” Salt continued, “We need to stop ignoring the infrasound component of wind turbine noise and find out why it bothers people.”

  The Canadian symposium occurred about the same time that a new documentary by Laura Israel about the wind industry was appearing at film festivals around the country. Watching the documentary, called Windfall, provided a bit of déjà vu, as it puts on the screen nearly all of the issues that I’d been hearing about in my own research since Porter had contacted me in January.30

  Israel’s documentary, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, focused on the wind industry’s attempt to build a number of turbines in Meredith, New York. Israel, who owns a cabin in the town, interviewed local residents and let viewers see how the town became bitterly divided over the issue of permitting the turbines. Some large landowners favored the siting of the turbines, in part because they were going to get royalty payments from the wind industry. That faction was led by the town’s long-time supervisor Frank Bachler, who is portrayed as a well-intentioned man who, in favoring the wind development, is only trying to help the area’s struggling farmers.

  But a majority of the townspeople opposed the turbines. The resulting battle for control of the town’s board provided a textbook example of democracy in action. After the board voted to approve the siting of turbines, three wind opponents ran for election to the town board with the stated purpose of reversing the existing board’s position on wind. In November 2007, the opponents won and quickly passed a measure that effectively banned industrial wind development in the town.31

  Israel’s film provides a much-needed view of the anger that rural residents are expressing toward the rapid expansion of the wind industry. One of the best examples of that backlash includes Israel’s interview with Carol Spinelli, a resident of Bovina, a small town located a few miles east of Meredith that imposed a ban on industrial wind development. Spinelli led the fight against wind turbines in Bovina, and she declares that the controversy is about “big money, big companies, big politics.” Discussing wind developers, she says “I refer to them as modern day carpetbaggers. And that’s what they are.”

  Israel also talked to a few homeowners who live near large wind projects. One of them, Eve Kelley, used language much like what I’d heard in my own research into the infrasound problem caused by turbines. The noise from the turbines, says Kelley, led to “dizzy spells, sick to my stomach ... Sounds like the noise is in the walls. The house is vibrating.”

  While the noise issue is bedeviling wind energy developers, the more immediate concern for the industry is low gas prices. Why? Wind competes primarily with natural gas–fired generation.32 And when gas prices are low, wind energy is at a big disadvantage in the marketplace, even with huge federal subsidies such as the $0.022 per kilowatt-hour federal production tax credit.

  In 2008, T. Boone Pickens, one of the wind industry’s most reliable boosters, said that gas prices must be at least $9 per million Btu for wind energy to be competitive in the marketplace.33 In March of this year, Pickens was once again talking up wind energy, and he declared that “the place where it works best is with natural gas at $7.”34 That same month, a reporter from Dow Jones summarized Pickens’s position by writing “Wind power is profitable when natural gas prices are about $7 a million British thermal units, Pickens said.”

  The bad news for the wind industry is that, for much of 2010, natural gas on the spot market has been selling for less than $4.35 In September 2010, Paul Sankey, an energy analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote that gas is in “fundamental oversupply” and will continue to be in oversupply through 2015.36 That fundamental oversupply is due to several factors including a surge in natural gas liquefaction capacity in places like Qatar as well as the enormous increases in U. S. gas supplies that are a direct result of the shale gas revolution.

  Those low gas prices make offshore wind appear even more uneconomic. The cost of building offshore wind projects is about $5,000 per kilowatt, or about the same as building a new nuclear plant. For comparison, a new gas-fired generation plant costs about $850 per kilowatt.37 Those high costs are reflected in the prices that the developers of Cape Wind, the controversial offshore wind project near Cape Cod, are seeking for the electricity that could be generated by the turbines to be located in the waters of one of America’s most famous vacation spots. The likely cost for electricity from Cape Wind will be between $0.17 and $0.21 per kilowatt-hour. Another offshore project, off the coast of Rhode Island, Deepwater Wind, was recently rejected by that state’s public utility commission because the cost of electricity from the project was expected to be $0.244 per kilowatt-hour with annual increases of 3.5 percent per year.38 For reference, the average retail price of electricity in the United States is about $0.10.39

  The result from the wind industry’s high costs: devastation. In late October 2010, the American Wind Energy Association announced that during the first nine months of the year, just 1,600 megawatts of new wind capacity was installed in the United States,“ down 72 percent versus 2009, and the lowest level since 2006.” In a press release, the lobby group said the solution for its woes were—wait for it—more subsidies and mandates. The group’s CEO Denise Bode said that “the best way to galvanize the industry now will be continued tax credits and a federal benchmark [read: “mandate”] of 15 percent renewables in the national electricity mix by 2020.” Bode continued, saying that those subsidies and mandates “will send a clear signal to investors that the U. S. is open for business.”40

  Sure. But the business sector has already signaled that it doesn’t want what the wind industry is selling. The reason: even with huge subsidies available to wind-energy projects, natural gas–fired generation remains a cheaper, more reliable option.41 And even worse for the wind industry is that some industry insiders are predicting that the number of new wind generation installations will fall again, by as much as 50 percent, in 2011.42

  Unfortunately, officials in the Obama administration are apparently convinced that wind energy is the way of the future and that opposition to projects based on noise or other concerns is unwarranted. In late October, Energy Secretary Steven Chu dismissed the opponents of wind energy projects by saying, “There’s always some group ... that will really be against whatever.”43

  Perhaps that’s true. But some hard-core environmentalists are starting to understand that more wind energy projects will mean yet more energy sprawl. On November 8, five people, several of them from Earth First!, were arrested near Lincoln, Maine, after they blocked a road leading to a construction site for a 60-megawatt wind project on Rollins Mountain. According to a story written by Tux Turkel of the Portland Press Herald, one of the protesters carried a sign which read “Stop the rape of rural Maine.”44

  Ethanol

  I’ve been writing about the corn ethanol scam for more than five years, but I’m still not cynical enough. That was made obvious in October 2010, when the Environmental Protection Agency approved an increase in the amount of ethanol that can be blended into the U. S. gasoline supply from 10 percent to as much as 15 perce
nt.45

  The Obama administration, the same one that said it was going to follow the science rigorously, made the move even though the EPA’s own data shows that adding more ethanol to gasoline makes air quality worse. By granting the bailout, the EPA will allow ethanol producers to blend more of their corrosive, hydrophilic, low-heat-content fuel into our gasoline. And while the agency’s ruling limits the use of the higherethanol-content gasoline to model year 2007 and newer cars and trucks, the move further complicates the motor fuel market. America has the most balkanized motor fuel market on earth. Refiners are now producing about four dozen blends of gasoline and multiple blends of diesel fuel.

  Furthermore, the EPA bailout of the ethanol sector allows the corn fuel scammers to continue gorging themselves at the public trough. In July, the Congressional Budget Office reported that corn ethanol subsidies cost U. S. taxpayers more than $7 billion per year. Those subsidies are larger than those given to any other form of renewable energy.

  The increase in ethanol consumption was opposed by one of the strangest coalitions in modern American politics. In August, thirty-nine groups—ranging from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group—asked Congress to hold hearings about the proposed increase.46 Congressional leaders ignored the request.

  Of course, the ethanol lobby loved the EPA’s decision. Growth Energy, an advocacy group issued a press release applauding the move but insisted that “much more must be done to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.” That statement implies that all of the subsidies and mandates for corn ethanol have helped cut U. S. foreign oil imports. Here’s the reality: they haven’t done anything.

  Between 1999 and 2009, U. S. ethanol production increased sevenfold to more than 700,000 barrels per day, but during that same time period, U. S. oil imports actually increased by more than 800,000 bbl/d. Furthermore, and perhaps most surprising, is this: during that same time period, U. S. oil exports—yes, exports—more than doubled to some 2 million bbl/d. Data from the U. S. Energy Information Administration show that oil imports closely track U. S. oil consumption. Over the last decade, as U. S. oil demand grew, imports grew. When consumption fell, imports dropped. And ethanol production levels had no apparent effect on oil imports or consumption.47

  Thus, despite more than three decades of subsidies that have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, the ethanol industry has not, and cannot, show any decline in oil imports during the time period when it experienced its most rapid growth. Maddening as that is, the real outrage of the corn ethanol scam involves air quality. In 2007, the EPA admitted that increased use of ethanol in gasoline would increase emissions of key air pollutants like volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide by as much as 7 percent.48 In the documents the EPA released on October 13, 2010, announcing the approval of the 15 percent ethanol blends, the agency again acknowledged that more ethanol consumption will mean higher emissions of key pollutants.49

  That admission is driving environmental advocates like Frank O’Donnell, the president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington, DC-based group, to distraction. Right after the EPA decision, O’Donnell told me that the agency is saying that more ethanol will mean higher emissions of nitrogen oxide, and yet the ethanol bailout, is “coming at the same time that the EPA is setting tougher standards on smog.” Indeed, the EPA is implementing new rules on ground-level ozone that could affect dozens of cities.50 What contributes to the formation of ozone? You guessed it: nitrogen oxide.51

  Donald Stedman, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Denver, has been studying ethanol’s impact on air quality for two decades. His assessment of the EPA’s decision is nearly identical to O’Donnell’s. “More ethanol means worse air quality, period,” says Stedman, who adds that corn ethanol “doesn’t do anything to reduce greenhouse gases.”

  Evidence that the Obama administration is more worried about the farm lobby than urban air quality came within minutes of the EPA’s announcement. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack quickly issued a statement praising the move, saying that the increased use of ethanol “is an important step toward making America more energy independent.”

  Here’s a tip: whenever you hear the phrase “energy independent” or any of its variants, substitute the word “ripoff.” The EPA’s decision is yet another unfortunate win for the farm lobby and another loss for consumers and clean-air advocates.

  Finally, just in case you need one more example of the egregiousness of the ethanol scam, here it is: U. S. ethanol producers and blenders are now exporting record amounts of ethanol. Through the first nine months of 2010, the U. S. exported about 251 million gallons of the alcohol fuel—that’s more than double the export volume recorded in 2009. Among the countries getting U. S. ethanol exports: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

  To summarize: In October, the Obama administration bailed out the ethanol industry because the industry had built too much capacity. Administration officials and the ethanol scammers justified the bailout by saying it will help the United States achieve energy independence and cut oil imports. But rather than reduce oil imports, the ethanol scammers are collecting about $7 billion per year in subsidies from U. S. taxpayers so that they can ship increasing amounts of American-made ethanol abroad.52 And in doing so, the ethanol scammers are consuming nearly 40 percent of all the corn grown in the United States.53

  I’m running out of adjectives that do justice to the stupidity of the ethanol madness.

  APPENDIX A: UNITS AND EQUIVALENTS

  Electricity Units

  1 watt (W) = 0.00134 horsepower, or 1 joule/second (J/s)

  1 kilowatt (kW) = 1,000 watts, or 1.35 horsepower (hp)

  1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) = 1,000 watts for 1 hour

  1 megawatt-hour (MWh) = 1 megawatt for 1 hour

  1 megawatt (MW) = 1,000 kilowatts, or 1 million watts

  1 gigawatt (GW) = 1,000 megawatts, 1 million kilowatts, or 1 billion watts

  1 terawatt (TW) = 1,000 gigawatts, 1 million megawatts, 1 billion kilowatts, or 1 trillion watts

  Power Units and Equivalencies

  1 electric lamp of 100 W = 0.1 kW

  1 car engine with a 60 hp engine = 44 kW

  1 turbine rated at 1 megawatt (MW) = 1,350 hp1

  1 nuclear plant with 1,000 MW of capacity = 1,350,000 hp2

  1 gallon of oil equivalent per day = 0.71 hp (529 W)

  1 barrel of oil equivalent per day = 30 hp (22.1 kW)3

  1,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day = 5 hp (3,819 W)4

  1 day of Saudi Arabia’s oil production = 250 million hp (186.5 billion W, or 186.5 gigawatts)5

  Energy Units and Equivalencies

  0.1 joule = energy used in average golf putt6

  1 Btu = energy released by burning 1 wooden match = 1.055 kilojoules

  1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1,031 Btu7 = 1.09 megajoules

  1 cubic foot = volume of a regulation basketball8

  1 cubic meter of natural gas = 35.3 cubic feet of natural gas

  1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity = 3,412 Btu = 3.6 megajoules9

  1 gallon gasoline = 125,000 Btu = 125 megajoules

  1 gallon gasoline = 36 kWh of electricity

  1 ton of oil = 7.33 barrels (bbl) of oil

  1 bbl of oil = 42 gallons, or 159 liters10

  1 bbl of oil equivalent = 5,800,000 Btu = 5.8 gigajoules

  1 bbl of oil equivalent = 1.64 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity11

  1 bbl of oil equivalent = 5,487 cubic feet of natural gas12

  Note: Equivalent units between oil and electricity are notoriously difficult. These equivalences only measure the Btu content of each and do not account for any heat lost during the conversion of oil to electricity, which normally results in a loss of about two-thirds of the heat content.1 Bertrand Barre and Pierre-Rene Bauquis, Understanding the Future: Nuclear Power (Strasbourg: Editions Hirlé, 2007), 11.

>   2 Ibid.

  3 This assumes continuous horsepower (twenty-four hours per day). The power metrics of oil were determined thusly:1 bbl of oil = 5,800,000 Btu.

  5,800 megajoules / 86,400 seconds = 67,129 watts (assumes 1 Btu = 1,000 joules).

  67,129 watts times 0.33 (to account for heat loss during conversion to electricity) = 22,152 W (22.1 kW); 22,152 W / 746 W = 29.7 hp. Call it 30 hp per barrel.

  4 Here’s the math:1,000 cubic feet of gas = 1,000,000 Btu.

  1,000 megajoules / 86,400 seconds = 11,574 watts (assumes 1,000 Btu = 1 megajoule).

  11,574 watts times 0.33 (to account for heat loss during conversion) = 3,819 W (3.8 kW).

  3,819 / 746 = 5.1 hp. Call it 5 hp per 1 mcf of gas.

  5 This assumes 1 barrel of oil = 30 hp.

  6 Matthew Futterman, “The Terror of the 10-Foot Putt,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528252062525413.html.

  7 Energy Information Administration, “Natural Gas Basics,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/non-renewable/naturalgas.html.

  8 Alberta Government, “Energy Measurements,” http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/About_Us/1132.asp.

  9 BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2009, http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2009_downloads/renewables_section_2009.pdf.