Hi all!
Following this week’s Twitter exchange between Matt Ridley and Mark Lynas I thought a helpful fact sheet about Wind Energy would be useful. People can print it out, send to their relatives, MPs, Senators etc etc.
Thanks!
Josh
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Let’s look at that big zero in the context of world energy. According to this Bloomberg article (cited by Wikipedia) Wind power capacity now totals 238 gigawatts worldwide at end of 2011
China leads the world in installs in 2011, That figures, as they have all the rare earth metals needed.
Total world energy generation in 2011…can’t seem to find that yet. EIA/IEA reports don’t seem to be out yet for 2011. Last figure I can find from Wikipedia is:
132,000 TWh for 2008 with growth of 5% in 2010. so figure 140 Terawatt hours.
140 terawatt hours = 140 000 gigawatt hours
wind power in 2011 = 238 gigawatt hours (installed potential capacity, actual output is far less)
% of 238/140,000 = 0.16999999999999998 ~ .17 %
(Update, I misread the Wikipedia data, conflating Gigawatt hours with gigawatts, totally different. Thanks to HaroldW and others for pointing out my unit error. – Anthony
Harold W adds in comments:
The installed capacity of wind power is 238 GW.
Average efficiency is perhaps 20% (arguably a little higher or lower).
At that rate, energy produced annually is 417 TWh.
Fraction is still 0%, to the nearest whole number.)
417 TWh at 20% efficiency, calculates to 0.32% (417/132,000) This matches the Wikipedia chart below
Nearest whole number then is, zero.
Matt Ridley’s excellent essay, The beginning of the end of wind, in the first line says:
To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero.
That links to this Wikipedia graph:
Again, the nearest whole number to 0.3% is zero. But that data is from 2006, rendered in 2008, the citation says:
An attempt at showing world energy usage types with a bar graph. (Meant to replace w:Image:Cascading Pie charts.png by User:Mierlo, which uses a pie chart with misleading numbers like 41% for solar heating, when it’s actually 41% of 9% of 14% = 0.5%.) Values are taken from the pie chart, which is originally from the data in REN21 2006 global status report on renewables and the BP 2006 Statistical review (most recent data available at http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview)
I suspect the growth in other energy sectors pushed wind back a bit since then. And remember, these numbers are for installed capacity, which assumes the wind blows and the turbine functions at 100%, which we’ve seen in practice never happens at 100%.
One important point worth noting is that quoting wind output as a proportion of total energy is entirely valid because (a) wind does expect to contribute to transport via electric vehicles; and (b) the European Union mandatory targets are for renewables as a proportion of energy, not of electricity. Reportedly Tony Blair and his advisors misunderstood this when signing up.
Jim Turner says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:42 pm
“The stats for the largest turbine I can find are for the Northern Power Systems of Vermont NP100 Turbine; a 100kW design with a 21 metre rotor diameter and a maximum safe rotation of 59 rpm. I make that a tip speed of about 60 metres/sec, or about 135mph.”
Most bigger models seem to limit at 80 m/s or 288 km/h.
http://www.offshorewindenergy.org/ca-owee/indexpages/Offshore_technology.php?file=offtech_p2.php
Phil Clarke says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:56 pm
“No cheap Chinese imports in the US huh Smokey?
DirkH. We could start with Iraq”
I take it you talk Iraq war 2.0; if that war was entered because of “securing the oil supply”, then why didn’t the US ramp up oil imports from Iraq after occupying the country. Also, how would that have been more economic than continuing to isolate S. Hussein’s regime and run Food-For-Oil rackets. You know, oil is not an ideology, it’s a purely economic necessity and therefore such an alleged “resource war” would have to be motivated by economic reasons. But it doesn’t add up. So the motivation was a different one, don’t you think so. I know I can’t convince you but maybe I can seed some doubt in your brain; you know, I’m a merchant of doubt. Well, actually not, I give them away for free.
The following video is required viewing by several universitys in Michigan. The facts are undisputable, the long term outlook if technology does not improve is dim. There has to be fundamental changes to the way this planet generates and consumes energy. Thanks for the post.
http://thumbwind.com/2012/03/01/why-pursue-wind-energy-now/
Perhaps we’ll contribute to evolving the raptors to the point they can detect edge-on white 200 kph killing objects coming at them from below, unlike any other risk encountered in their multi-hundred-million-year genetic history? Of course, as the Punctuated Equilibrium theory requires, this means killing off all but some tiny population with said adaptation, which then will expand to fill all the vacated eco-niches.
Right.
As for “subjective natural beauty”, there’s an important industry based on it you may not have heard of: tourism. It ends wherever these beasts are installed.
_____
Other than that, a pretty good post.
DirkH says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Sorry, don’t have time to read the whole thing, but I may have to go back to it. The conclusion says:
The thing that caught my eye was point #7. The recent Chinese tree ring study produced a time line showing rising temps to 2006 followed by a decline to 2060. It would be interesting to compare the two records.
ThumbWind says:
March 10, 2012 at 2:27 pm
“The following video is required viewing by several universitys in Michigan.”
Watched it. I hope the students also get forced to read The Skeptical Environmentalist to be shown the lunacy of that simplistic propaganda film.
ThumbWind says:
The following video is required viewing by several universitys in Michigan. The facts are undisputable . . .
“Coal reserves, while vast, may peak in 2030.”
“Natural Gas may peak in 2040.”
*****
Since when are “maybe’s” indisputable?
DirkH says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:09 pm
“1DandyTroll says:
March 10, 2012 at 12:51 pm
“So, essentially, if wind power is so good so must be the warmer temps too, since they only work when its warmer, read above 0, an usual in during winter.”
Wind speeds increased up to 50% over the last 150 years.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/fletcher.htm”
So, essentially, if it were true in my area, from one nudge to a nudge and a half. Yeah, that’s real scary wind sheer. O_o
:p
This old favourite from Elton John comes to mind.
Good article!
Thanks Josh 🙂
The one thing birdmills do well is to serve as icons for “breezy” in NOAA-NWS forecasts.
They also ruin a landscape, but that is just me.
Since the sky is not marked, wind turbines will just have to be fitted with “swept area marker rings” so that stupid birds will know where the limit of the safe zone is. Alternatively, “smart blades” could be fitted and programmed to observe the rules of air navigation.
On another topic, as of the end of 2011 there were 99 deaths due to wind turbines in the UK alone.
If you used a figure for Megawatts, and ended up with a figure of half what you get if you use Megawatt-hours, surely that means that we are only getting 2 hours a day from these things on average? That is very poor!
Billy says:
March 10, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Citation? Is that birds (I would imagine this to be far higher if so) or people?
DirkH says:
March 10, 2012 at 9:42 am
I can think of another very good reason, actually …. 🙂
Where can I get my
Neodymium-free wind power NOW!
bumper sticker at?
Phil Clarke says:
“No cheap Chinese imports in the US huh Smokey?”
That is a complete non-sequitur, which is irrelevant to your claim of 6 deaths a day from coal mining. I correctly called you out on it, pointing out that your implication that wind power in the West was comparable, when in fact [if your number is even correct] you must have been referring to countries like India, Russia, China, and others. So give us your references supporting your numbers, please, or we will know that you were just winging it.
Next, regarding your scurrilous claim:
“…and hundreds of thousands died in the wars to secure the oil supply…” is an indefensible canard.
Your linked citation says not one word about the Iraq war being waged for oil. That has always been the thoroughly reprehensible and dishonest claim by the Left, before, during and after the war. It is provably wrong. Yet you still bear false witness. Why do you lie about something that is so easily falsified?
Once the U.S. armed forces had decimated the Iraqi military, deposed Saddam Hussein, and pacified the country, there was no one in the world community that would have or could have stopped the U.S. from expropriating sufficient oil from Iraqi wells to pay for the entire war, and then some. At the time there were calls from some quarters to do just that.
But the U.S. did not take any oil without payment in full to the new Iraqi government. Furthermore, the U.S. spent countless $billions rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and military at American taxpayer expense. As in most all of America’s wars, the Iraq war was fought over idealism, not for fortune or aggrandizement.
That makes your mendacious statement false; you are either deliberately lying, or you are completely ignorant of well known, verifiable facts. I do not expect someone of your caliber to apologize, but readers here know that America did not take what they could have, when it could have been easily expropriated. That proves, ipso facto, that the war was not waged to take Iraq’s oil. It may have been based on faulty intelligence over WMD’s [which American leftist politicians such as Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and many others believed; they supported military action as much as anyone, as their warmongering statements attest].
So your duplicitous word games over daily coal mining deaths, and your own linked citation prove that you are dissembling. Readers here can make up their own minds as always. But it would have been better for your lost credibility if you had not made any of those comments.
Chinese coal mining is notoriously unsafe; what happens to the stat when you back China out? Wouldn’t the billions in subsidies for wind be better spent on research to develop cheaper and safer technology to mine coal, abundant worldwide — including Africa, which is in enormous need of cheap electricity? How many human beings die a day from the excruciating poverty in Africa, which can in the longer term only be alleviated by the availability of inexpensive electricity?
Wind turbine fatalities – human, UK;
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf
This might help. See especially pages 24 and 25. Numbers good to 2008.
http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2010/key_stats_2010.pdf
SadButMadLad says:
March 10, 2012 at 9:26 am
A few points.
“….Turbines might kill a few birds, but a few birds were also killed by high voltage power lines….. If you want to say the turbines kill birds, then you have to get rid of cats first who kill more birds….”
You forgot about the birds that take out cats. Hawks, owls, vultures, and bald eagles are some of the predator birds that kill cats. These are the same birds that wind turbines kill.
Kum Dollison says:
March 10, 2012 at 12:31 pm
“Wednesday, Mar 7, Texas got 22% of its electricity from Wind.”
At a time when it doesn’t need it. I did a quick web search when I saw your post and came up with this. The time when they need the extra power is exactly the time when the winds are in the doldrums.
Note that 22% at a time of low demand would work out to much less percentage-wise at a time of peak demand. On that basis, I’m even a little suspicious now of how the claimed 8-9% yearly contribution is calculated. Is that total wind generation actually used over the year relative to total used from all sources? Or, is it an average of the daily total wind generated relative to total generated by all sources, which would weight the wind more favorably in more ways than one?
Jim Turner says:
March 10, 2012 at 1:42 pm
“…a 21 metre rotor diameter and a maximum safe rotation of 59 rpm. I make that a tip speed of about 60 metres/sec, or about 135mph.”
I get 145 mph – close enough. I hope you are not suggesting that is not fast? It’s sure a lot faster than we typically drive here in the States, and I wouldn’t want to be dodging traffic at that rate.
Dr. Emmett Brown: No, no, no, no, no. This sucker’s electrical. But I need a windmill to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
Marty McFly: Doc, you don’t just walk into a store and-and buy Neodymium. Did you rip that off?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Greenpeace activists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their Neodymium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing full of used pinball machine parts! Come on! Let’s get you a toxic waste suit. We must rebuild the generator every 10 years.
@Kashua — There are roughly 100 million acres of this lovely planet now disfigured by these useless industrial monstrosities. That may be 0% or greater, but how much rustic and wilderness landscape being destroyed for no reason whatever are you in favor of?