Citing an American University study that reported foreign dominance of renewable energy grants, they proposed a moratorium on wind power grants from Treasury until the Senate can pass their "Buy America" legislation.
The American Wind Energy Association, backed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, disputes the facts and conclusions by American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop. The wind industry employs 85,000 people, AWEA said. "In three years, we went from two turbine manufacturers with facilities in the U.S. to nine, and four more have announced plans for factories here," it added. The AU study did not count foreign-owned clean energy manufacturing employment in the United States as "American" jobs, the association said.
"You do not want to stop these projects if two-thirds is American and one-third is foreign," Chu said on Friday.
'Wind is getting curtailed'
AWEA executives say that policy delay is the real threat to the U.S. competitive position. After strong expansion of wind power in the past two years, orders for the future are jeopardized by low natural gas prices, the recession's impact and transmission bottlenecks. If the U.S. wind sector plateaus, it risks losing technological leadership to European and Chinese rivals, AWEA says.
The current transmission system is too crowded already to deliver the wind power that exists today, Corbus notes. "It's a shame for wind [generation] to be curtailed, and that's happening. Wind is getting curtailed all over the place."
The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) also has opposed the senators' proposal, arguing in a letter to Geithner, "We submit that the very reason the United States is falling behind the rest of the world is because the Congress has created on-again, off-again public policy regarding renewable energy."
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory recently concluded that 38 U.S. states have the potential to generate at least 1,000 gigawatts of electricity from onshore wind power, in an updated analysis on its "Wind Powering America" site. These include Midwestern states like Michigan, parts of New York abutting the Great Lakes, and eastern Maine.
Eastern and Great Lakes states may decide that it's worth paying a little more in order to build their own wind projects, creating local jobs and boosting their tax base, said Ralph Izzo, chairman and CEOs of PSEG, the large New Jersey utility.
"I'd like a shot at developing a project," he said. His company is one of 10 in the newly formed Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy, headed by Atlanta-based Southern Co., whose region has among the poorest onshore wind power potential in the country.
The NREL wind integration study headed by Corbus concludes, however, that the most economical wind resources -- even when transmission costs are factored in -- are in the Great Plains. Izzo and other members of the fair transmission coalition disagree.
Uncertainty is biggest barrier, industry officials say
Reaching a goal of 20 percent wind generation in 2024 would require construction of 10 inter-regional high-voltage lines spanning a total of nearly 22,700 miles, at a cost of $93 billion. Such an ambitious goal won't be achieved under a business-as-usual approach, the study concluded.
"It's super important because of all the jobs that will be launched," said Corbus. "If you don't have the transmission, you don't have the wind going in, and you're going to have jobs lost."
NREL also studied another option, in which aggressive wind development offshore and along the Great Lakes halves the number of long-distance transmission lines needed to maximize wind power delivery.
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27 Comments
Add CommentIt's been very interesting reading European analysis (pro and con) on wind power there. The consensus seems to be that beyond a certain % of total electrical production the fact that required backup non-wind sources are so expensive (especially when used not very often) that it overcomes a lot of the cost advantages of wind power. The US is far from that point - perhaps 18-20% of total generation - so we should proceed to continue to build
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the only proper thing to do, for the love of the earth, is to phase the practice of moving carbon from under the ground, where it is doing no harm, into the biosphere, where it is, out of existence as fast as possible, the only alternative is to switch to "renewable" sources and get back into harmony with nature. We cannot undo the past, but we can give the earth the opportunity to, with sufficient time, recover from what has been done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow we see how a complex regulatory landscape, designed to accomplish certain things in the name of fairness, or environmental cleanliness, or some other quality that is easily identified but difficult to define precisely, comes back to bite us on our backsides.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am an ardent supporter of alternative energy and would love nothing more a reduced impact from human activity on the planet and its creatures, but once a mandate or subsidy enters the framework, we leave reality and take a ride into the unknown where corruption and bad decision making take place under a shower of public money.
For instance: I love windpower, but realistically it hurts birds, and bats, and takes over huge landscapes and the motors required foster an industry where human slaves in China are forced to labor in terrible condition in order to extract the rare-earth elements needed for these millions of exotic high performance generators in both windmills and the zillions of hybrid electric cars that are appearing. In the mean time new ideas about how to extract energy from wind go un-examined since they don't resemble the standard windmill design which seems to have presumed the lead. I'm hoping that new approaches to wind energy, as well as wave energy, ocean currents, as well as nuclear fission and fusion, and the conventional combustion of hydrocarbon fuelled engines continue to be with us and that we abandon the idea that any one solution is perfect.
In the mean time and specifically related to wind energy; I suggest that we be moving in a direction as proposed by a wind energy company called 'regenedyne' whose website is worth googling onto and watching their video. Very interesting.
Of course, the REAL problem is government intervention. While congress postures about "green jobs", various special interests attempt to benefit themselves by using federal power to suppress competition. If congress simply ended regulation, the great plains wind power would quickly dominate electric generation in the US. This would in turn put outdated, dirty coal and oil plants out of business because they can't compete on price. Natural gas and nuclear would supplement wind power and broadly distributed generation (including very small producers on Midwestern farms) would ensure steady supply. Distributed solar on consumer house tops would further spread generation while decreasing demand for huge transmission lines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat ever happened to the idea to use wind or solar to power electolyzers which can convert the electricity into hydrogen for use in fuel cells which, in turn, can generate pollution free power during off peak periods of wind power. It's all clean and the technology already exists.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust one more area where China will bolt past the flaccid USA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot politics just good sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLatest Chinese build Texas wind farm $1.5B. 125 Mwavg, excluding storage, transmission, and tens of millions annually for load balancing natural gas. $12B/Gw.
Big Oil knows any investment in wind must be balanced by a large investment in low efficiency NG. So much NG is needed that an Australian study has shown that it is better to skip the wind and build the high efficency NG plant instead.
The actual cost of American designed NRC approved nukes built by engineers in China is $1.2B/Gw with 4 year construction timeframes.
Indias new nuke waste burning 500 Mw GenIV power plant coming into service next year at a cost of $1.5B/Gw.
Both AECL and Westinghouse claim after the first dozen or so are built they can factory mass produced with 3 year lead times at less than $1B/Gw
Real study done by a real engineer looking at repowering Australia with solar and wind.
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_solar_realities_v2.pdf
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/
Solar PV with Pumped Hydro storage: $2800B
Solar PV with NaS battery storage: $4600B
Solar Thermal with storage: $4400B
Nuclear Power: $120B
The cost of the power lines with Wind & Solar was $180B - 50% MORE THAN THE ENTIRE NUCLEAR OPTION
While solar PV is three times the cost of wind, transmission and storage requirements are similar.
Most summers there are times when all across America there are no storm systems.
Virtually all wind sites would be producing well below average at a time when air conditioning needs and power needs are really high. A huge investment in storage or deadly radioactive radon and GHG spewing natural gas plant is required.
Of course, global warming is completely ignored. Just keep spewing the fossils and killing millions worldwide from fossil fuel air pollution.
A US investment in 2500 mass produced nuclear reactors paid for by ending fossil fuel use, would eliminate most air pollution saving 30 thousand lives annually, end the US contribution to the global warming/ peak oil problem within a ten year time frame, provide a huge job producing boost to the economy, require only a small part of our industrial capacity, and pay for itself in less than three years.
This obsession with wind power by delaying solution indefinitely kills several million people every year worldwide from toxic coal emissions and maybe very soon drags us over that civilization ending climate/peak oil precipice killing billions more.
This is NOT a "Green" issue; it is about PRIVATE businesses profitting from PUBLIC property. If Cape Wind gets to make a profit from putting wind turbines in public waters, any other private business will want the same treatment: the ability to put private businesses on public property. Why not build a factory in a state park? Cape Wind is counting not having to purchase or rent property or pay any property taxes in order to profit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the simplest of economic terms, an alternative to generating power in the the Midwest, where generating resources are located, and inefficiently transmitting it to the East, where the consumer demand is located, would be to naturally (financially) encourage the relocation of demand nearer the production.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf our power strategy is to support remote generation and consumption meditated by costly long distance transmission, R&D of higher efficiency transmission is required to minimize total energy costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeh. In other news, coal producers and oil companies are against wind power too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's the government's job to weight the various interests against each other and set the economic conditions such that the optimum result is achieved.
Now if the government did its job all the time we would all have a much better life. But we'd have to get rid of lobbying and corporate influence (aka legalizrd bribery) first.
"You can't ignore the interests of the folks involved in the debate," Barton said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, yes you can. It's way past time for the government to get the heck out of the way of the economy. It's ironic...now that windpower is economically viable, all the lazy-bone laggards come out of the woodwork to whine that it isn't far for the mean upstart newcomers to compete with them "unfairly". To these wimps, a "free market" is one they freely control thanks to some edict handed down by a ship of fools in Washington.
Monopolies can only last with government collusion. Otherwise, there is no way for a failed business model to last. The force of law is the only reason these decrepit, teetering giants continue to exist. These lazy bums know the easiest, most cost effective way to do business is to pay a few million in lobbying fees in Washington instead of investing a few billion in infrastructure. The result is the idiotic, effectively state-run economy that we now have.
Actually, we not only can undo the past, in 10-15 years we will have to start taking the CO2 back out of the atmosphere due to the rising sea levels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis will be very expensive, but better than the alternative of Florida going back under the waves.
"It's the government's job to weight the various interests against each other and set the economic conditions such that the optimum result is achieved."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe hell it is. Maybe in a fascist state, but not in a free country.
"The gas industry, threatened by state policies that promote wind power, is asking regulators to impose penalties on wind generators that can't deliver scheduled energy when the wind dies down."
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How utterly ironic, that after decades of corporate welfare given to the well-entrenched and dirty fossil fuel industry, and squealing the loudest about carbon taxes, they're now asking regulators to penalize renewable energy sources like wind power when the wind subsides.
Why can't all the needed sources of energy for the future, work together in a symbiotic relationship along with a smart grid, to supply more energy with less emissions? Seems that the biggest threat to the fossil fuel industry has been nuclear for so long, hence the lack of any new generation nuclear plants, and now they want to strangle the renewable energy industry as well.
The idea that the turbines should be "built in the USA" is ridiculous. We are far better served by buying the highest quality for the lowest price, wherever that part comes from. This is the basic principle of economics that has driven the entire growth of civilization. If someone in another country can build the part for less money than we can, then they should build it and we should buy it from them and we will both be better off for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuote: saving 30 thousand lives annually
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnswer: ? this must be a misprint due to the fact almost a million people die of preventable parasite poisoning and imho 30,000 people DOES NOT make for a complete overhaul of a system which seems not to work UNLESS one does like the poster said .. employ lowpaid workers in China or elsewhere and THAT should NOT be acceptable.
As to the use of wind power one but has to look at what the disturbance of the wind channels has done to our weather.
Snow everywhere.
It's interesting to see that natural gas and other power sources are actually taking a hit from wind. Many skeptics, still don't believe that renewables will actually offset fossil fuels (they argue, instead, that demand will just increase as more renewables go online). The fossil fuel folks obviously don't feel that way, and are tilting back at windmills. In Wyoming, the nation's fossil fuel colony, it's even more complex. Read about how one oil man and political pawnbroker is fighting the wind industry there:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.hcn.org/issues/41.22/wind-resistance
ironjustice:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"As to the use of wind power one but has to look at what the disturbance of the wind channels has done to our weather. Snow everywhere."
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Hmmm.....I wasn't aware that wind turbines could "disturb wind channels," or even remotely think that they could affect our weather. Maybe you should publish the results of your research showing exactly how wind turbines make snow. <big grin>
Seems that Vancouver could have used quite a few of them if that is the case, since they really went out of their way to get snow trucked-in for the Olympics!
I find the politics of jobs more than a bit disturbing. It seems that some near sighted folks are throwing out crap just to dirty the laundry on this issue. I agree we need to create jobs, but the manufacture of the equipment has been headed to China and elsewhere for many years now. Why all of a sudden make that an issue? Every wind farm needs maintenance staff, and that is where the jobs are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust like many issues in this country, we take way too much time debating the fly poop in the pepper. We should throw that stuff aside and get on with making clean energy from wind a reality.
So the gas guys don't think it's right that the wind farm guys get subsidized out the wazoo, because of somebody else's nutty fear of CO2? And they think that the wind farm guys should be able to pay for their own transmission lines if they want to sell their overpriced electricity? What do they think this is, a free market or something?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, YEAH. It is supposed to be a free market, and the gov't. should not be blowing our tax dollars on this - it's unconstitutional and none of their darn business.
And they screw it all up so bad everything costs more for everybody and cost-effective innovation is stifled.
I'm all for wind and solar - just as soon as it costs less than the energy I'm buying now. Until then, the new guys need to go back to the drawing board.
Neodymium - where are US manufacturers going to get it? It takes hundreds of pounds of neodymium to make a very large wind turbine generator. China has the monopoly thanks to progressive ecopolitical decisions. www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1. "A single mine in Baotou, in Chinas Inner Mongolia, produces half of the worlds rare earths. Much of the rest particularly some of the rarest elements most needed for products from wind turbines to Prius cars comes from small, often unlicensed mines in southern China.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina produces over 99 percent of dysprosium and terbium and 95 percent of neodymium. These are vital to many green energy technologies, including high-strength, lightweight magnets used in wind turbines, as well as military applications."
China has announced that in 2012 it no longer will export many of the rare earth elements. It won't matter what policies progressives put in place, if you don't have the resources, you can't make it here!
Why didn't the author look at the upstream supply of materials? The supply problem is well known within the windmill production circles.
Wind power is a creation of politics and an artifact of the Carter wing of the Democratic Party. Ever since Jimmy's mommy told him to wear a sweater in the White House the country has poured money down the alternative energy rathole and has nothing to show for it except for a gang of lobbyists and industries who have been sucking on this taxpayer funded sugar tit for years. If its such a damn good deal why do you have to finance this energy source with tax credits and stimulus funds like a frustrated parent who hangs a pork chop around his brats neck so the dog will play with him? Time to let this junk try to make it on its own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDamn those fishermen too, how dare they sell those public property fish!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisffarkle: "It is supposed to be a free market, and the gov't should not be blowing our tax dollars on this - it's unconstitutional and none of their darn business."
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GEEZ....just where has all your outrage been while the government subsidized the fossil fuel industry and nuclear?
Even the 2005 GOP Energy Bill was MORE OF THE SAME subsidizing the status quo and BIG OIL to the tune of billions of dollars -- this to an old, established and entrenched, dirty industry that has been making RECORD PROFITS!
Apparently you don't know just how hypocritical you sound.
Another thing -- In all my life, I've never heard so much delusional political rhetoric and rants about constitutionality from the fringe groups, and it seems that is the new objection to everything that threatens their ideology and the conservative policies we've been following for 30 years!
Get over it....renewable energy is good for our planet!
hrumphgrumble:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If it's such a damn good deal why do you have to finance this energy source with tax credits..."
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That's exactly what I've been saying about BIG OIL and the well-entrenched fossil fuel industry, that's been around for 150 years, and has been dictating our energy policy, including writing the GOP 2005 Energy Bill.
You would have thought they could stand on their own two feet by now, instead of being just another corporate welfare whore, funding the manufactured doubt industry with their years of RECORD PROFITS!
Big oil is about cars,until far more of them are electric wind is a non issue for them.Gas and coal are going to be the big losers in the end.Tough luck let the free market rule.Nice thought but Congress is sure to get involved.
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