Josh writes: Last Sunday Christopher Booker wrote a brilliant article “Why are greens so keen to destroy the world’s wildlife?” He says:
When Professor David MacKay stepped down as chief scientific adviser
to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) last year, he
produced a report comparing the environmental impact of a fracking
site to that of wind farms.
Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shalegas pad” covering five
acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year),
would produce as much energy as 87 giant windturbines, covering 5.6
square miles and visible up to 20 miles away.
Which made me think: where would you rather live, in a county full of giant turbines littering the countryside, killing eagles and bats and producing unreliable electricity, or one with a small discreet gas tap somewhere?
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I think it’s wise to have lots of different ways to make electricity. Coal, gas, and hydroelectric are traditional. Nuclear would be smart, though in past it has caused dangerous insanity in the body politic. Some wind and solar are a good idea too. That way, if there is a catastrophe like the Carrington event, we would probably still have some of our power generation working. I live in Minnesota; our likely catastrophes are blizzard, tornado, and flood. In California, they worry about earthquakes, mudslides, and drought. In New York, they had an — interesting time — getting things back together after a storm with high water; of course they can worry about snow and floods also. And there’s always Florida and hurricanes.
With lots of different kinds of power generation, we would have an easier time bootstrapping ourselves back into a modern civilization.
Of course (I think to myself) it’s wise to rely on the continuous, efficient generation more strongly than the intermittent.
A Carrington event would take out the electric grid itself. Doesn’t matter how the electricity is being generated if you can’t get it to your house.
“A Carrington event would take out the electric grid itself.”
Also it would probably take out most of the windmills and solar arrays as well. Expensive to fix those little beasties. Lots of delicate non-E.M.P. protected electronics. Built by the lowest bidder don’t you know.
Matt
You d o know it was the lowest bidder.
Sleep well!
Auto
The gas well will be exhausted after 10-15 years, the groundwater contaminated and depleted. The wind turbines will still be producing electricity and will have long ago paid for themselves. It’s well documented that wind turbine opposition is driven by vested interests within the fossil fuel industry.
andrew “The gas well will be exhausted after 10-15 years”
Probably.
“the groundwater contaminated and depleted.”
Without a doubt, but most likely from agriculture.
“The wind turbines will still be producing electricity and will have long ago paid for themselves.”
Unlikely. I cannot think of any wind turbine that has lasted for 15 years nor any installation that has paid for itself. Perhaps you could provide an example.
“It’s well documented that wind turbine opposition is driven by vested interests within the fossil fuel industry.”
If it is so well documented, why do you not provide that information? I wonder if there is such a thing as “unvested” interests. It seems you are regurtitating someone’s talking points. How difficult would it be for me to discover your source?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/19/fossil-fuels-and-vested-interests
Ah so, you are a shill for the Guardian. You see, certain writers develop “tics” or predictable and somewhat unique styles of writing and when you repeat those unique styles it reveals your alignment and sources.
“According to BP, the UK’s proven economically viable reserves would run out at current production rates in just seven years for oil, four years for gas and 12 years for coal.”
Yup, shilling for the Guardian. What a surprise.
As to the success of windmills, some work, some don’t, all fail eventually. Is it worth doing? For England it is worth it. When the fossil fuel runs out, it’s back to the dark ages.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/19/the-reality-of-wind-turbines-in-california-video/
Actually, it’s well-documented that wind turbine proponents are driven by vested interests in Big Wind, Big Green, and by CAGW ideology.
This fool actually believes that windmills last for ever.
How are wind mills going to pay for themselves when they cost more to operate than they can generate in actual electricity.
It’s been proven has it? Do you have actual evidence or is this just more of your paranoid fantasies coming to the surface.
BTW, coming on the same day that yet another paper trying to claim that AGW deniers are prone to conspiracy theories makes this nonsense especially ironic.
If wind turbine opposition is driven by vested interests within the fossil fuel industry, why does BP ( among other fossil fuel companies) own wind farms? Would they not be opposing themselves?
Josh’s cartoon is good, but let’s be fair. The well head is accompanied be either a set of storage tanks or a pipeline with a clear-cut right of way.
But Josh is right in the larger sense. I was listening to a books-on-tape, Oil Boom, by Russell Gold, that chronicled the development of the fracking boom. In a late chapter on the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, some one was lamenting how the frackers had come into old forest (actually 2nd old growth forest, the first being cut down in the 18th century), and had done damage by installing pipelines with wide right of ways so they can be inspected from the air. I was thinking at the time,
I have to agree with you. The drilling pads are not nice and green with bunnies running around. However, in the forest, they are a tiny speck. The pipeline cuts are a boon for the wildlife, the animals love the break in the trees. They also provide exelent access to the wilderness for recreational activity (hiking, hunting, etc.
I hope this cartoon (and all of Josh’s work) gets wide distribution. How might it get published in (say) the Washington Post or the New York Times? I know . . . wrong papers . . .
The best part is only the wind turbines kill our eagles! We need that.
5 acres for the well head? Are you sure about that? It seems awfully high to me.
Most of the single well sites I’ve seen have fenced in areas less than 100ft square.
While they are drilling, the pads use anything up to five acres, and never less than three, as far as I can see from the drilling going on around me. They need laydown area for equipment, space to unload trucks, space for the holding ponds for the drilling mud and whatever else comes up the hole, space for mobile offices, etc., etc. They do make one heck of a mess at it, but at least it’s temporary. State law in my area requires complete remediation after they leave, and they do do that to a reasonable degree. One thing I could do without is the permanent open lanes from the pipelines, because they attract outsiders with dirt bikes and ATVs. THOSE people do an amazing amount of damage, tearing the hillsides to start severe erosion, poaching, even starting fires.
Nice effort but do try not to be so passe and so gauche. 9 out of 10 Academics and politicians agree – worthless wind turbines are art, as well.
The beauty of windfarms – in pictures – The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/may/02/the-beauty-of-windfarms-in-pictures
And this:
“It turns out that David Suzuki isn’t the only one that thinks wind turbines are beautiful. This year’s American Wind Energy Association’s National Conference and Exhibition not only featured the usual array of speakers, meetings and poster presentations, but also hosted the National Wind Art Exhibit, a display of paintings all featuring wind turbines from a group of internationally-recognized artists.”
And this:
“Chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, Thomas Becker, claimed the UK was missing out on a valuable energy source. In an interview with the Sunday Politics in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Mr Becker said: “The debate in the UK has become overly negative. In my opinion, wind turbines are beautiful.”
This is the National Science Foundation’s “holistic” and “interdisciplinary” approach to knowledge, synthesizing art and science for the “public good.” Sure enough, Environmental Science is looking more and more like a Picasso with each passing day.
“Over 25 years, he calculated, a single “shalegas pad” covering five
acres, with a drilling rig 85ft high (only needed for less than a year),
would produce as much energy as 87 giant windturbines, covering 5.6
square miles and visible up to 20 miles away.” McKay
But even this is far too generous, and probably deliberately so.
Wind turbines cannot run a blast furnace under any circumstances. The ore would be destroyed by the intermittancy of the power before any iron or copper could be processed. The volatility introduced into price and supply by worthless wind, and the resulting risk and losses to industrial metal producers, are hidden costs which of course good environmentalists mass produced by Universities are willing for everyone else to pay.
Take home point: you cannot smelt the metal to produce a wind turbine using wind power.
“you cannot smelt the metal to produce a wind turbine using wind power.”
Producing the concrete for the base of the windmill pylon requires an enormous amount of heat.
And burning the limestone to make the lime to make the concrete releases lots of CO2. One CO2 molecule for each CaO molecule. And lime is used to produce the steel. All to produce a wind turbine to reduce CO2 emissions. Circular reasoning?
Professor Mackay produced a pdf report, available online, “Renewable Energy without the Hot Air”. Although he is an uber-green he did point out that there is not enough landspace in the whole of the UK to generate our energy needs from wind. And even if you could there is nowhere to store it.
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air
http://www.withouthotair.com
This booklet is worth a read, as it has a lot of good info in it. However, Mackay has still not rectified the error where he says that electric vehicles are 5x more efficient than fossil vehicles. This is simply Green propaganda, and does not deserve to be in an otherwise reasonable account of the merits and pitfalls of Renewable Energy.
Ralph
Many thanks.
Based on a skim of perhaps a dozen pages – a very interesting book.
With numbers – so far as I checked them mentally – they seem reasonable.
Auto
Looking at the horizon in “Turbine Country” made me think of a WW1 battlefield’s “No Man’s Land” with all it’s barbed wire..
I don’t know if Josh intended that or not.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRxqFQoTCKXv6eXhy8YCFZAXkgodV-QHag&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjasta11.co.uk%2Fpage32.htm&ei=OjadVaXqL5CvyATXyJ_QBg&bvm=bv.96952980,d.cGU&psig=AFQjCNF_53hr2LYwT8CWZaguT__no5CYFA&ust=1436452400308762
OOPS! Sorry about redirect.
Here’s what I was trying to link to.
http://jasta11.co.uk/page32.htm
(SIGH!)
Scroll down just a little to “No Man’s Land somewhere on the Western Front”.
http://jasta11.co.uk/USERIMAGES/image-8(2).jpg
Thanks!
I have to wonder which scene the Pope was looking at when he said, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” But since he wants us to subsidize and export solar and wind technologies to developing nations, he must not mind landscapes covered by concrete structures and dead birds.
Heh. Well, when things DO go wrong with gas wells they go wrong in a very very bad way. Fracking isn’t even a science yet. Addair knew more about putting out oil wells when he died than the oil industry knows about Fracking.
Honestly I don’t really care one way or the other. The big windmills are nearly completely renewable and their locations are unlikely to “run out of fuel” in 6 years. Once placed and maintained they’re there forever.
The trouble with fracking fracking is that it DOES destroy the underment and give the people doing it the opportunity to push hazardous waste down the well instead of properly disposing it. It needs lots of regulation and zero mistakes to go right and you almost never get a second chance to install it correctly.
prjindigo says “Honestly I don’t really care one way or the other.”
Except your entire comment reveals that you DO care; pro-windmill, anti-fracking.
I also care. Windmills are good where they are good, such as remote Alaskan villages that have no grid and are happy to have unreliable electricity as compared to none whatsoever. If the wind is blowing, do your laundry. If not, then wait.
Fracking postpones “peak oil” a bit and buys some time.
prjindigo
Not true. They last about 7 years with “regular” maintenance, only 10-12 with “exceptional” maintenance … Which does not happen very often.
RACookPE1978…..You’d better do some research on “big turbines”
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I suggest you look at this for the real answer…..
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http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=65837
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“No one really knows how long a wind turbine will last until there have been wind turbines around that long.”
Joel, they’ve been installing wind turbines for about 100 years. The really big ones for 20 to 30 years.
The maintenance record is there for the looking.
Too bad you are afraid to look at anything other than propaganda.
Yup, you are correct, and the record shows that Mr. RACookPE1978 is not even close when he says, “They last about 7 years with “regular” maintenance, only 10-12 with “exceptional” maintenance”
PS MarkW
..
Look what good maintenance will do for you..
..
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/21/oldest-operating-wind-turbine-world-turning-40/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/9770837/Wind-farm-turbines-wear-sooner-than-expected-says-study.html
Toy
http://www.tvind.dk/images/om-tvind/Tvindkraft1.JPG?modal=1
Hey clipe
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Did you actually read the link you posted?
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I suggest you re-read it and pay close attention to the part that goes…..“Better turbines are being developed all the time, so it’s absurd to focus purely on the past as this report does,”
Joel D, do you mean the bit by Dr Gordon Edge, dthe irector of policy at RenewableUK, the body that represents Britain’s wind farm industry?
Hey Joel D
Your buddy seems to be everywhere – hoovering up subsidies.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/10375121/Wind-farm-subsidies-generate-900m-for-Britains-big-six-energy-suppliers.html
“Dr Gordon Edge, the director of policy at RenewableUK, said: “It’s simply untrue, and not looking at the full picture – blah, blah, blah”!
clipe
..
Do you agree or disagree with the statement that “Better turbines are being developed all the time” ????
More stuff and nonsense Joel D. Jackson.
Official reports have already identified the shorter lifetime cycles for the larger windmills. Their sheer size exceeds or causes to exceed normal operating parameters so that bearings fail, blades fail and the generator fails.
So to help counter the short lifecycles they’ve increased the maintenance and windmill rebuild frequency.
RACookPE1978 has accurately identified the current life cycle of the windmills. Note, this is counter to all announced planned or expected lifecycles as the windmill farms refuse to admit and include the new lifecycles; they’re only too happy to increase maintenance at extra charge.
More sheer absurdity Joel D. Jackson?
Typical eco-nut expectations. The future will bring new and exciting machines that will solve all of our problems!
The technology does not exist.
The technology requires substantial design analysis and physical testing.
Normally, the real world expects that unproven technology is proven first! Funded by non taxation derived sources!
Instead the eco-nuts want the government to throw stupendous amounts of cash at immature technology, all at the burden of citizens.
All subsidies should be eliminated immediately. Windfarms and solar bird fryers should be taken offline until their owners and operators can prove safe and economical operation!
Stuff that in your eco-nut beanie Joel. It is time for renewables to join the rest of the world’s capital equipment investment and deployment economic processes; they’ve had a free ride for much too long.
The industry has been fracking for over 60 years.
Why is it that the renewable energy fanatics feel that it is OK to lie?
After 50 years of experience at it, fracking is not even a science yet? Spare me.
Yes gregfreemyer, five acres is far too high. There is one adjacent my kido’s lot, no more than two city lots 80’x140′. Green grass all around but for the 50’x50′ gravel pad and fence about the well and equipment. Very quiet, sometimes a soft hum. Unless you have a some disdain for metal or two lots missing a house you would never even know it was there. But were I come from this area provide the energy 24/7/365 that heats and cools the US’s homes, powers the US’s transportation, but as for relying on the sun shining (not today and many) and the wind blowing (not today and many) with hot black acre-eating panels or noisy obnoxious bird-shredder monstrosities needing to be replaced every decade or two? You won’t find them here, thank goodness.
Yes, I will take Josh’s Fracking County option with the hundreds of years of reserves I hear. Personally I think even that is a bit too low and abiotic will be proven to be the source.
Josh: I love your work and don’t mean to criticise, but an operating shale gas well site is less than 2 acres It is about 3 to 4 acres while drilling and hydraulic fracturing is conducted, but as soon as the wells a complete and they go into the 30 plus years of production, the actual pad is reduced to about one acre plus the access road. And we are drilling sites with up to 18 or 20 wells on each.
Oh, and as a follow-up, that one-acre production pad includes the gas processing units (separators, basically) and the condensate storage tanks, as well as the meter and connection to the underground gathering pipeline.
Moreover, we DO have bunnies and other critters at the sites. I have spotted deer, rabbits, bear, raptors, coyotes, and the myriad other small indigenous animals using the land immediately around our well sites.
Something I haven’t mentioned yet about gas. While the wells are fairly innocuous after completion, the compressor stations that gather the gas and pump it into long distance pipelines are not. Typically 40 acres, huge buildings that house the compressors, 100+ foot towers to flare off gas, going 24/7/365, high tension electric lines leading in, and for some reason they insist on placing them on high ground where they’re visible for a long way. I’ve noticed that one small farmer that lived on land immediately adjacent to one of these monsters simply abandoned their place and moved away.
Mhhhhm.
And they give us power.
Hmmmh.
Auto.
Old Coach says “and for some reason they insist on placing them on high ground”
High voltage transmission lines are made as straight as reasonably possible. Sometimes that means high ground, sometimes low ground. Obviously you are more likely to notice the parts that are on high ground.
Old Coach says “I’ve noticed that one small farmer that lived on land immediately adjacent to one of these monsters simply abandoned their place and moved away.”
I am mildly curious as to her actual reason for moving. Debt? Death in the family? Got tired of farming? Eyes sore from looking at transmission towers? I find them fascinating and take pictures of them especially if I can line them up so I’m looking through a dozen or so towers. Perhaps she didn’t like the thought of being near that much electricity crackling overhead. I don’t get out of my car to take these pictures — stop for a moment and then hurry out from under.
I had a long discussion with my brother concerning gas in the water due to oil and gas operations, he kept insisting that friends of his in Wyoming had natural gas in their water because of fracing. After a long period of explaining how the fracs travel only a few hundred feet out from the well bore. He finally admitted that they had gas in their water prior to any oil and gas drilling. Most zones which are being fraced today are at least 5000 feet or deeper below the surface of the land. It is a physical impossibility for a frac to reach the surface of the land. We do not have enough horse power to push the water that far from the well bore. Rock mechanics, overburden pressure, and several other factors contribute to this.
Unfortunately oil and gas people have been poor stewards of the earth in the past, and using fresh water to do these huge fracs is another example of our problems. Recently we have been using well water which is brackish, (unsuitable for irrigation and drinking), for these large fracs. The water can be recycled and used for a number of fracs after flow back. When finished with this water it is pumped back into zones in the subsurface and disposed of.
I am a Petroleum Geologist, and just keep laughing at these people who are protesting fracing in this country. (Please note that I am using the industry accepted spellings for the various forms of frac). They have all these arguments, most of which are totally bogus.
Wells have been fraced since the early time of the industry in the 20th century. In the old days they would lower nitroglycerine down the well bore and set it off at the bottom of the well to fracture stimulate the producing zone. Then we progressed to hydraulic fracturing using water loaded with sand. Today the frac fluids are a mixture of chemicals designed to help break the rock along with a significant amount of sand mixed into the fluid. The sand is designed to keep the fractures from closing after the frac is ended.
The one thing that troubles me about wind power is the lack of raw numbers. What is the honest cost of delivery to my outlet? I’d like to see the cost with the following breakouts: KWHr cost counting only operating expenses and profit; KWHr cost including all capital costs for towers; Total cost including distribution (since line loses are going to be huge given the long-haul nature providing hundreds or thousands of miles of HV lines); installation and operating expenses. I’d like to see the numbers showing both subsidized and unsubsidized costs per KWHr. I can’t seem to find honest numbers and I need numbers to know if we are making good or bad decisions. Also, when I can’t easily find the numbers, then I assume someone is ripping me off!
EPA
Enviromentally PAID administration