More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" --Chapter 12. The most salient point in this chapter could be summed up easily:
1) “Every megawatt of wind power that is added to a given electricity system must be backed up with a megawatt of gas-fired generation.” That’s right. If your city or county or state decides to add wind mills to it electricity generation, it then needs to either add a back up or it needs to currently have enough energy capacity in the existing system to kick in when the wind doesn’t blow. And those “back-up” forms of generation must always be manned 24/7 just in case they are needed. Think about that for a minute. If you are a public utility and you are mandated to generate some of your power from wind, you know that this means more employment, more overtime pay for you workers, more capital equipment expenditure—all at the expense of taxpayers and customers that have to pay higher prices. This is a pretty sweet deal for utilities. Additionally, you have “green wash” cover by politicians, environmentalists, and the poor deluded average citizen that believes that something good is being done for the environment while shelling out more for electricity.
More to come.
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birds. Show all posts
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Power Hungry--The truth about "green" energy exposed continued
More from Robert Bryce's book "Power Hungry" . Chapter 11 deals primarily with T. Boone Pickens and his attempt to sell Americans on his plan. Of course, and no surprise to me, the Pickens plan was just an elaborate way of separating taxpayers from their money. However, there was one piece of information that I found interesting in chapter 11 concerning wind farms and that gets very little press:
1) Oil companies and power utilities have been fined heavily for killing birds. Many of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).
2) Despite the fact that wind mills are very effective bird Cuisinarts, they seem to have been exempted from MBTA.
3) “Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year are being killed by U.S. turbines.” This includes golden eagles.
4) Wind turbines also threaten bats.
At the end of this chapter, I concluded that the environmental movement and wind farm advocates consider birds to be an acceptable collateral damage on the road to the renewable energy utopia. Funny that they don’t hold wind power as accountable as other forms of energy generation when it comes to preserving nature.
1) Oil companies and power utilities have been fined heavily for killing birds. Many of which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).
2) Despite the fact that wind mills are very effective bird Cuisinarts, they seem to have been exempted from MBTA.
3) “Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year are being killed by U.S. turbines.” This includes golden eagles.
4) Wind turbines also threaten bats.
At the end of this chapter, I concluded that the environmental movement and wind farm advocates consider birds to be an acceptable collateral damage on the road to the renewable energy utopia. Funny that they don’t hold wind power as accountable as other forms of energy generation when it comes to preserving nature.
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