Salon: Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?

[GliderGuider]

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?

A fascinating new film about one small-town political fight takes on the pseudo-green wind industry

Viewed through a long lens, “Windfall” is about much more than the hidden costs and unexpected side effects of wind-power generation, or about a citizens’ uprising in the tiny town of Meredith, N.Y., in the Catskill region 150 or so miles northwest of Manhattan. (Mind you, both are gripping stories.) It’s about the American tendency — and very likely the human tendency — to look for magic-bullet solutions to complicated social and economic problems, where none are available. It’s a microcosmic version of the political divisions — between left and right, environmentalists and free-marketers, corporations and citizens — that have virtually paralyzed our republic. It’s a reminder that whenever a virtually unregulated industry (as in this case) offers capitalists a chance to defraud the little guy and make a bundle, they’ll do it. It’s a tantalizing case study that suggests ordinary people still have the power to steer a course between faceless bureaucracies and greedy capitalists, but only just — and only if they can find a way to overcome their differences and work together.

In the abstract, wind power sounds like a good thing to nearly everybody. It relies on an essentially infinite resource, carries little or none of the obvious environmental downside of coal or oil, and presents no Fukushima-style doomsday scenario. Wind generation has become a major focus of venture capital; Israel includes video of a hearing a few years ago at which T. Boone Pickens told a congressional committee that he could imagine, in the relatively short term, 20 to 25 percent of the country’s electricity demand being fulfilled by wind and other renewables. I have no way to evaluate that claim, but the experts Israel consults in the film think it’s hokum. Given the inherently inconstant nature of wind, they argue, it’s not a stable or permanent solution to our energy crisis, and is unlikely ever to amount to more than a drop in the bucket.

Setting aside the discussion of whether it’s worthwhile to pursue wind power in the first place — and we shouldn’t really set that aside — there might be locations in the Great Plains states, the Southwest and the high western deserts where wind farms, even on the enormous scale imagined by Pickens, would do no great harm. But as people in Meredith and numerous other communities in the wind-friendly rural Northeast and Great Lakes region have discovered, living anywhere near those gargantuan wind-harnessing engines is quite a different matter. These days, the typical industrial wind turbine is around 400 feet high — the height of a 40-story building, or twice the length of a jumbo jet. The blades alone can weigh upward of 35 tons, and the entire assembly anywhere from 150 to 400 tons (resting on a platform of concrete and rebar, which itself may be 30 feet deep and weigh several hundred tons). It’s an enormous construction site, culminating in a high-voltage electrical device, that emits a 24/7 whoppa-whoppa-whoppa noise and incessant low-frequency vibration, and is topped with a brilliant flashing light. By daylight, there’s the nightmarish strobe effect — the vast rotating shadow that falls across an entire neighborhood when the turbine is between you and the sun. (While the question of whether it’s actually unhealthful to live near a turbine is unresolved, it’s definitely unpleasant.) If your neighbor put one up in her backyard without asking permission, how would you feel?

People on both sides of the issue in Meredith assumed at first that the anti-turbine forces were an elitist minority, partly because the town board had always been dominated by the same landowning families, and partly because wind-power companies had signed people up to secret agreements that forbade them from discussing anything about the relationship. What ensued was a fascinating lesson in democracy (and a version of the same lesson the Tea Party and its supporters may learn later this year). After 826 people — more than half of Meredith’s total population — signed a petition opposing the town board’s pro-development policy on wind turbines, it turned out that the people who thought of themselves as the “real” residents were in the minority, and the jig was up for the wind industry in this one tiny corner of America. Yet as one newly elected board member reflects at the end of the film, nobody came out of this fight feeling good. A formerly harmonious community is now bitterly divided, and the Mitt Romney-style venture capitalists of wind power will just move on to the next town and sell their pseudo-green poisoned chalice to somebody else.
There is apparently still some serious PR work remaining to convince everybody about the value of panacea that is wind power. Whether the technology is hydro dams, coal plants, nukes or wind farms, for me the question is whether we are obliged to respect the opinions and preferences of the people who have to live next to them, whether they are pro or con.

[joshcryer]

1. Fascinating. Will check out the documentary some time and post a review here.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Wind has its place and its clearly not near occupied dwellings.

Have to wonder how many times the very large unit would have to be monkey wrenched by angry neighbors before they were are torn down. Its not terribly hard to do, insurance would not cover it more than once.

[GliderGuider]

3. Have there been any reports of monkey-wrenching on turbines?

I haven't read any yet, I'll have to go a-googling. It sure seems like they'd be vulnerable.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. The industry is well aware of the risk, but chooses not to acknowledge it.

Preferring to think its green cover and limited local physical security will be enough.

While I like wind power, it needs to be generated away from occupied areas. The ridges between Mojave and Tehachapi in California is a good example. Very good wind and not inhabited.

[joshcryer]

5. And risk a felony and prison time? These are multimillion dollar pieces of equipment.

Such acts are extremely rare, imo.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. People have risked arrest and jail for less

Monkey wrenching can also be a form of political activism with the cost of the destroyed material is one of the attractive elements.


The right answer is clearly to keep them and human habitation reasonably separated.

[wtmusic]

8. Monkey-wrench as in: climb a 400-foot tower and take it apart?

That's a helluva wrench.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. Monkey wrenching is damaging the offending object to the point of uselessness

GATSOs in the UK were a classic example: http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
It is not always done with a wrench.

[GliderGuider]

10. Wow, the GATSO pix are amazing.

The vandals are apparently using a "necklacing" technique. I'm much happier seeing it used on machinery than on human beings.

[wtmusic]

11. You're missing the "400 foot tower" part. nt

[GliderGuider]

12. One shouldn't need to interfere directly with the nacelle or the blades

There are essential electrical components at ground level, after all.

[wtmusic]

13. Meh

Those parts would be easily fixed - big risk-to-reward ratio.

There are thousands of miles of above-ground pipeline in the US. They get vandalized now and then with spills as a result, but the oil keeps flowing.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

16. You might be surprised how well the LADWP guards the water it steals from Owens Valley

In the past there were real threats and attempts at monkey wrenching over that ongoing theft. Today they would call it ecoterrorism.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. Nacelle and blades are the hardest parts to fix

and the most costly.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

14. There are several ways to get a chain up there...

And chains are not the only means of destruction.

[Yo_Mama]

7. Surely it's not that black and white?

I can't think of any energy production that doesn't have siting concerns.

Yes, those big wind turbines create a lot of noise, and beyond that in areas that can ice they can potentially be dangerous if they are near homes/trafficked areas.

In any one place, it could be a corporate scam - but that doesn't mean that it is when correctly sited.

[badtoworse]

17. They don't belong in areas where the tracts of land are small and housing is closeby.

If you only own a few acres and lease your property to a wind farm developer, you'll likely make substantial money if the turbine(s) are constructed. Your neighbor, who will get nothing, will still have to put up with all the negatives described - the noise, strobe effect when the sun is setting and potential danger from a blade failure.

There needs to be a substantial setback requirement from property lines before a wind turbine can be sited - IMO, at least 1000 feet and preferably 1500 feet. As a practical matter, that would mean that the leased property would need to be about 200 acres per turbine.