The Problem with Wind Power
ADLER, JONATHAN H.
The Problem with Wind Power Hint: It has two wings, feathers, and goes splat when it hits the turbine. by Jonathan H. Adler Energy giant Enron is considering the construction of a new wind power...
...This is a recurring pattern in the environmental establishment's approach to energy...
...Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel around, and China already emits several times as much carbon dioxide per unit of economic output as the United States...
...According to Audubon, "more eagles are killed by wind turbines than were lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill...
...Hence new environmental concerns are hyped to keep additional energy supplies out of reach...
...As then senator Tim Wirth, who later oversaw international environmental policy for the Clinton administration, told the National Journal in 1988, "We've got to . . . try to ride the global warming issue...
...The "hot earth" site makes no mention of hydro in its discussion of renewable energy sources...
...The Asian giant has tremendous coal reserves, which it is likely to burn as it seeks entrance to the club of developed nations...
...energy corporation," to build "a complex web of giant wind turbines" in the heart of condor habitat...
...Experts have sought to develop bird-friendly wind turbines for years, with little success...
...One of the organization's goals is to cut off federal tax subsidies for wind projects in ecologically sensitive areas...
...In 1994, Wind Power Monthly published a grisly photo of a bird shredded at a wind farm in Tarifa, Spain...
...In their more frank moments, it seems to be an opposition to energy use in general...
...The federal wind energy tax credit, which environmentalists supported for years, expired earlier this year...
...Evidence of bird kills at wind farms isn't new...
...Fears of global warming may be sufficient to limit continued use of fossil fuels, if the Kyoto Protocol is adopted, but they cannot justify limits on wind, nuclear, hydro, or—next up on the block—solar energy sources...
...The Union of Concerned Scientists Web site contains an extensive discussion of wind power and other renewable energy sources, and yet there is no discussion of the bird kill problem...
...Wrong...
...by Jonathan H. Adler Energy giant Enron is considering the construction of a new wind power facility in southern California...
...its proposal to erect wind-powered turbines in the Tehachapi Mountains, north of Los Angeles, is the sort of project green activists usually claim is necessary to prevent ecological Armageddon...
...Yet green groups have been steadfast in their opposition to China's Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydropower project ever proposed...
...Burning coal is bad in their eyes, but not bad enough to justify building a giant dam...
...One would think environmentalists might prefer some alternative...
...Today hydropower is conspicuously absent from most lists of "green" power...
...Enron's investment in wind power has environmentalists overjoyed, right...
...With these breakthroughs in sight, green complaints start to rise...
...The problem for wind power is that the same currents that power wind turbines help keep condors, eagles, and other soaring species aloft...
...Allowing humanity a cheap, inexhaustible source of energy, in the words of Paul Ehrlich, is "like giving a machine gun to an idiot child...
...Wind energy is now inching toward economic viability—production costs have dropped approximately 70 percent since the early 1980s...
...In the 1970s, hydropower was hailed as a clean, renewable source of power...
...Enron says it has no immediate plans to erect the wind turbines in Gorman Pass, though it did file the project with the state...
...No longer...
...Audubon and other environmental groups are upset because the site is only a few miles from one of the last nesting pairs of California condors...
...Not all environmentalists, however, view the bird problem as a deal-breaker in the effort to promote alternative energy resources...
...Thus the best sites for wind power generation are also the most likely to present bird problems...
...Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway...
...Billboards in Houston (Enron's headquarters) and Los Angeles repeat Audubon's anti-wind message...
...Take the example of China...
...it is hard to imagine a worse idea than putting a condor Cuisinart next door to critical condor habitat," Audubon's David Beard told the press on September 13...
...What, then, explains environmentalist opposition to efforts to develop sources of energy that don't emit greenhouse gases...
...A Fortune 500 company, Enron has invested heavily in wind and other "alternative" sources of energy that do not emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases...
...Audubon claims the construction of turbines in "condor pass" could decimate the condor population, much as other wind farms have slaughtered golden eagles, American kestrels, red-tailed hawks, and other birds...
...At the same time that the Sierra Club and other groups claim America needs to develop alternatives to fossil fuels, they are calling for the removal of dams from coast to coast...
...At the same time, wind power's cost is above that of fossil fuels for most applications...
...Environmental activists claim the reduction of industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must be the nation's foremost environmental priority...
...Political support is also reaching a tipping point: Most electricity reform proposals circulating in Congress require utilities to generate a minimum percentage of power from "green" sources, including wind...
...Last month, the National Aud-ubon Society launched a campaign to stop the proposed wind farm...
...Likewise at the National Environment Trust's new "hot earth" Web site, which promotes wind as a "solution" to global warming...
...The Sierra Club calls for turning much of the midwest into the "Saudi Arabia of wind power...
...Several members of Congress have sought to renew it as part of a tax-cut package in the current Congress...
...It appears that the only "alternative" energy sources the environmental establishment will support are those alternatives we haven't got...
...if Enron gets its way," the Web site warns, "California condors could be sentenced to death...
...It's the worst thing that could happen to our planet," Lud-dite activist Jeremy Rifkin told the Los Angeles Times...
...Nonetheless, Audubon is making the defense of "condor pass" one of its primary campaigns this fall...
...The federal government spends over $1 million per year on condor conservation, while state and federal tax incentives subsidize projects that could put condors at greater risk...
...An Audubon Web site created for the campaign warns of plans by "Enron, the global Jonathan H. Adler is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and the author of Environmen-talism at the Crossroads...
...Bird mortality at wind power sites, such as Altamont Pass in northern California, remains substantial...
...Despite Enron's efforts to cultivate an eco-friendly image, the company is now in the environmentalists' crosshairs for pursuing alternative energy sources...
...Although environmental groups opposed many large dam projects, hydropower was praised as the wave of the future...
...Talk of new hydro projects, whether here or abroad, is verboten in environmental circles...
Vol. 5 • October 1999 • No. 6
