Wind Energy - "green energy" scam?

luc

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Since I live in Germany and those wind energy facilities are more and more destroying the landscape here, I want to share a few thoughts on these things.

Well, as I said, they really do turn the whole countryside into what looks like a factory! And it really bugs me how many people in the world look at Germany as a role model in terms of alternative energy blabla when in fact they are strangling and dividing the population on the countryside so that those people in the big cities slurping their latte can pat themselves on the back on how progressive they are with "green energy" :evil:

These industrial wind energy facilities, as they are rightly called by those who oppose them, not only destroy the whole scenery, they are also apparently causing serious health issues, they make loud noises, forests are destroyed because of them, while many people make a lot of money...

There is a good thread on the health risks (so-called Wind Turbine Syndrom) here: https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,24792.0.html

You can find a summary about the health risks here as well: http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/2013/infrasound-from-wind-turbines-an-overlooked-health-hazard-sweden/

Several studies have found that living near wind turbines often create severe sleep disturbance and depression. They have also found an increased incidence of dizziness, tinnitus, hyperacusis, headache, increased activation of the autonomic nervous system, etc. [3, 4].

In addition to the audible sound, which can provide noise damage and be generally disruptive, mentally, spinning wind turbines also produce a vibrant infrasound that affects the inner ear and the central nervous system without damaging the hearing.

Infrasound is sound with frequencies below 20 Hz, corresponding to wavelengths of 17 meters and above, that is not perceived with normal hearing. This sound, if it is not mitigated substantially, propagates over very long distances. It arises from several sources, such as pulsating flows from chimneys, large eddies (such as wind turbines and large jet engines) and large vibrating surfaces. In scientific studies, infrasound from wind turbines has been measured at levels so low that the sound is not perceived by humans. It has also been determined that infrasound from wind turbines does not give rise to noise damage in the traditional sense [5].


The thing is, people who are not affected by this don't recognize what these monsters do to the scenery. In some regions in Germany you simply have no view on nature anymore - they planted these things on every hill and rob us of any sense of beauty and quiet "oneness with nature". I suspect it's really damaging psychologically. And it's infuriating how helpless we all are - everywhere they want to build these things there are citizen initiatives who oppose them, often very respected and well-connected citizens. But to no avail - the municipalities get huge subsidies, the farmers who "give" their land get something like 30k Euro a year (!), the companies make big bucks etc. etc. Then they have their lobbying organizations that they send in to convince people how great wind energy is and if there's resistance they say "oh, you sure read that on the internet, didn't you? It's all nonsense, here's why..." - that's what I've been told anyway.

Here is a good presentation (German) about the insanity on an economic level of wind energy: http://slideplayer.org/slide/7271586/

And here's a good rundown in English on how insane all of this is even from a purely economic perspective: _https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy

We urgently need to stop the ecological posturing and invest in gas and nuclear

The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’.

You may have got the impression from announcements like that, and from the obligatory pictures of wind turbines in any BBC story or airport advert about energy, that wind power is making a big contribution to world energy today. You would be wrong. Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance.

Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 per cent of global energy demand. From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent. Remember this is total energy, not just electricity, which is less than a fifth of all final energy, the rest being the solid, gaseous, and liquid fuels that do the heavy lifting for heat, transport and industry.

Such numbers are not hard to find, but they don’t figure prominently in reports on energy derived from the unreliables lobby (solar and wind). Their trick is to hide behind the statement that close to 14 per cent of the world’s energy is renewable, with the implication that this is wind and solar. In fact the vast majority — three quarters — is biomass (mainly wood), and a very large part of that is ‘traditional biomass’; sticks and logs and dung burned by the poor in their homes to cook with. Those people need that energy, but they pay a big price in health problems caused by smoke inhalation.

Even in rich countries playing with subsidised wind and solar, a huge slug of their renewable energy comes from wood and hydro, the reliable renewables. Meanwhile, world energy demand has been growing at about 2 per cent a year for nearly 40 years. Between 2013 and 2014, again using International Energy Agency data, it grew by just under 2,000 terawatt-hours.

If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That’s one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.

At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.

Do not take refuge in the idea that wind turbines could become more efficient. There is a limit to how much energy you can extract from a moving fluid, the Betz limit, and wind turbines are already close to it. Their effectiveness (the load factor, to use the engineering term) is determined by the wind that is available, and that varies at its own sweet will from second to second, day to day, year to year.

As machines, wind turbines are pretty good already; the problem is the wind resource itself, and we cannot change that. It’s a fluctuating stream of low–density energy. Mankind stopped using it for mission-critical transport and mechanical power long ago, for sound reasons. It’s just not very good.

As for resource consumption and environmental impacts, the direct effects of wind turbines — killing birds and bats, sinking concrete foundations deep into wild lands — is bad enough. But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty pollution generated in Inner Mongolia by the mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an epic scale, which is why the phrase ‘clean energy’ is such a sick joke and ministers should be ashamed every time it passes their lips.

It gets worse. Wind turbines, apart from the fibreglass blades, are made mostly of steel, with concrete bases. They need about 200 times as much material per unit of capacity as a modern combined cycle gas turbine. Steel is made with coal, not just to provide the heat for smelting ore, but to supply the carbon in the alloy. Cement is also often made using coal. The machinery of ‘clean’ renewables is the output of the fossil fuel economy, and largely the coal economy.

A two-megawatt wind turbine weighs about 250 tonnes, including the tower, nacelle, rotor and blades. Globally, it takes about half a tonne of coal to make a tonne of steel. Add another 25 tonnes of coal for making the cement and you’re talking 150 tonnes of coal per turbine. Now if we are to build 350,000 wind turbines a year (or a smaller number of bigger ones), just to keep up with increasing energy demand, that will require 50 million tonnes of coal a year. That’s about half the EU’s hard coal–mining output.

Forgive me if you have heard this before, but I have a commercial interest in coal. Now it appears that the black stuff also gives me a commercial interest in ‘clean’, green wind power.

The point of running through these numbers is to demonstrate that it is utterly futile, on a priori grounds, even to think that wind power can make any significant contribution to world energy supply, let alone to emissions reductions, without ruining the planet. As the late David MacKay pointed out years back, the arithmetic is against such unreliable renewables.

The truth is, if you want to power civilisation with fewer greenhouse gas emissions, then you should focus on shifting power generation, heat and transport to natural gas, the economically recoverable reserves of which — thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — are much more abundant than we dreamed they ever could be. It is also the lowest-emitting of the fossil fuels, so the emissions intensity of our wealth creation can actually fall while our wealth continues to increase. Good.

And let’s put some of that burgeoning wealth in nuclear, fission and fusion, so that it can take over from gas in the second half of this century. That is an engineerable, clean future. Everything else is a political displacement activity, one that is actually counterproductive as a climate policy and, worst of all, shamefully robs the poor to make the rich even richer.


To conclude: wind energy is destroying the scenery; it causes health problems; it kills birds; it costs more than it brings revenues (the only incentive to build the facilities are subsidies); if you factor in energy spent for production, raw materials etc. it is mind-bogglingy insane; and even without these considerations, the technology is, on principle, incapable of delivering any significant amount of energy whatsoever.

At least that's how it looks to me: wishful thinking at best, a complete scam at worst. Any thoughts?
 
Thank you for sharing this, luc! It is very good that issue finds a place here to bring some sense into the confusion about it (as gleaned from internet discussions) and to investigate, what's going on regarding it and where it could lead to.

Living in Germany either, I can't find pretty nice words on those facilities either. They just look really ugly to me. Some areas in Germany are like totally plastered with them already. And I think that they look eerie especially in the dark, with their red glowing lights - like the burning eyes of some kind of extraterrestrial monsters:

Dauer-Blinklicht-bei-Windraedern-vor-dem-Aus_pdaArticleWide.jpg


It may sound like parroting here, but actually my view on this is similar to yours: Those people in the cities endorsing them just don't live nearby to experience their negative effects, but they seem to exist inside a huge bubble. Because they use the fact of them being built and maintained for supporting their illusion of the 'green' energy scam of the so-called "Agenda 21". But the promised positive effects don't seem to reach those for whom they are purportedly intended - and they are a big cash machine for those responsible for those facilities indeed.

The waste of money due to investing in this system of wind power is huge - and in parallel there are still ongoing investments into traditional power sources like atomic power and coal power. The following commentary from 19th January 2014 on an article of a major German news outlet, the FAZ, goes into this (translated):

As the only country in the world, Germany allows itself the luxury to run two complete systems for energy generation in parallel, which are being operated to tremendous costs in partial load and sometimes even produce disposable power ["Wegwerfstrom"].

luc said:
A good rundown on how insane all of this is even from a purely economic perspective: _https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

Viewing this link in light of the above being shared, Germany still relies tremendously on traditional power generating systems due to the insignificance of the energy output by wind power into which so much money is being invested too.

In order to make some sense of the issue of wind turbines, the disadvantages and the general discussion for myself, I also went to Youtube. Several commentators to videos displaying the wind energy business in critical light accuse the video makers of being members of the atomic or coal power lobby. These commentators even seem to put more weight in on what they want to say if the source is a report from a major German news television outlet like ZDF for example. They then seem to think, it comes from powerful "anti-green" groups.

And still such people like those commentators remain to rely on traditional power energy for having their smartphones and other communication devices powered, in order to pursue their illusions of the significance and effectiveness of green wind energy. Thereby letting out, according to the article shared by luc above, that the production of wind turbines does involve rare earth minerals and coal which means quite an exploitation of ressources and is far from being clean.

You just can say: :jawdrop:

There's one commentary on one of these Youtube videos (it's a report by ZDF:_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_JcMWwQ3Q) which I find summarizes the problem pretty well in many parts, so I decided to translate it here:

The energy turnaround will lead into nothing - it will cost the citizens billions of money and will destroy the German countryside permanently. In huge parts it has already destroyed the scenery in a purely optical sense.

The energy is being run short artifically. We have to restrict ourselves more and more. It is as if you were thirsty but wouldn't drink anything, and then you would pat yourself on the shoulder that you have saved water.

Some few benefit on wind power (the subsidy cashier / pocketer) and many suffer (the tax payer). The production of wind turbines will damage nature vastly. In China only you find the rare earth minerals which are being required for production.

Whole stretches of land are poisoned in the course of extraction and the health of people is being ruined, in order to install the ridiculous wind turbines here with a green conscionce. The power is becoming more and more expensive instead of becoming cheaper.

New energy-intense industry will not settle here in Germany, and the existing one will migrate. High energy costs leads to companies losing their competitiveness on the market - which leads to a loss of workplaces as well as tax revenues. This impoverishes municipalities and communes.

400.000 people are being cut off from power per year because they are not able to pay their power bills any more. And that happens in a rich country like Germany. Energy supply needs to be an entitlement to affordable provision with basic supplies.

Thousands of wind turbines at sea currently provide only 8% of German power, and they are being artifically powered by diesel engines during slack periods [if there isn't sufficient wind], in order to have them not rusting away [meaning: to not just have them standing there without any use virtually]. Bird migrations are being disturbed. Important breeding grounds remain empty. Dead bats at the foot of wind turbines. The ecosystem is being set into a state of imbalance. Let alone the permanent infrasound which is being proven by now and which is still being negated by the wind lobby. Minks have bitten each other to death on farms overnight, because they were going mad. Humans are being influenced by it negatively as well.

These disadvantages are then willingly concealed. Here [communes are] only lured in by yields. By utopian yields, which afterwards have shown themselves to be fallacies for many municipalities. There are many examples - just search for them on YT. The expenditure is higher than the revenue. But for money people sell and betray everything.

The wind energy is a subsidy energy.

No solar energy, no wind energy can substitute the reliable nuclear energy. The technology eventually keeps developing on and on.

We want to protect nature by destroying it. No other country pursues the "energy turnaround" in such a maniac and imprudent way as Germany currently does. Energy can also not be "turned around", that is nonsense.

In the end it is nothing else than just another leftist-green nonsense ideology and it will fail like the Euro did and the importation of refugees as well, which was a dictation of a maniac welcome culture.

But against an ideology which is the latest fad neither data nor facts can be put.

And here's the original commentary for comparison:

Die Energiewende wird ins Nichts führen - Milliarden den Bürger kosten und die deutsche Landschaft dauerhaft zerstören. Hat sie schon in weiten Teilen rein optisch zerstört.

Die Energie wird künstlich verknappt. Wir müssen uns immer mehr einschränken. Das wäre, als hätte man Durst, würde aber nichts trinken und sich dann auf die Schulter klopfen, dass man Wasser gespart hat.

An der Windkraft verdienen einige Wenige (die Subventionskassierer) und leiden Viele (der Steuerzahler). Die Produktion von Windkraftwerken schädigt die Natur erheblich. In China nur, findet man die Seltenen Erden, die zur Herstellung benötigt werden.

Dort werden ganze Landstriche bei der Gewinnung vergiftet und die Gesundheit von Menschen ruiniert, damit man hier mit einem grünen Gewissen seine albernen Windrädchen aufstellen kann. Der Strom wird immer teurer, statt billiger.

Energieintensive Industrie wird sich in Deutschland nicht neu ansiedeln und vorhandene abwandern. Hohe Energiekosten lässt Unternehmen nicht mehr wettbewerbsfähig am Markt auftreten - dadurch gehen Arbeitsplätze verloren und Steuereinnahmen. Damit verarmen Gemeinden und Kommunen.

400.000 Menschen wird in Deutschland jährlich der Strom abgedreht, weil sie ihre Stromrechnung nicht mehr bezahlen können. Und das in einem reichen Land wie Deutschland. Energieversorgung muss ein Anrecht auf leistbare Grundversorgung sein.

Tausende Windanlagen auf See liefern derzeit nur 8% des deutschen Stroms, die bei Flaute künstlich am laufen gehalten werden mit Dieselmotoren, damit die Dinger auf See nicht rosten. Vogelzüge werden gestört. Wichtige Brutplätze bleiben leer. Tote Fledermäuse am Fuße von Windkraftanlagen. Das Ökosystem gerät ins Ungleichgewicht. Ganz zu schweigen vom permanenten Infraschall, der mittlerweile bewiesen ist und seitens der Windlobby weiterhin negiert wird. Nerze haben sich über Nacht auf Farmen gegenseitig totgebissen, weil sie wahnsinnig wurden. Auch der Mensch wird davon negativ beeinflusst.

Diese Nachteile werden dann gerne verschwiegen. Hier wird nur mit Rendite gelockt. Mit einer utopischen Rendite, die sich nachher oftmals als Trugschluss für viele Gemeinden herausgestellt hat. Die Beispiele sind zahlreich - hier auf yt danach suchen. Der Aufwand ist höher als der Ertrag. Aber für Geld verkaufen und verraten die Menschen alles.

Die Windenergie ist eine Subventionsenergie.

Keine Solarenergie, keine Windenergie kann die zuverlässige Kernenergie ersetzen. Die Technik entwickelt sich schließlich auch immer weiter.

Wir wollen die Natur schützen, indem wir sie zerstören. Kein anderes Land verfolgt derart manisch und unüberlegt die "Energiewende", wie sie derzeit Deutschland vollführt. Man kann auch kein Energie "wenden", das ist Kokolores. Letztlich nichts anderes, als eine weitere Links-Grüne Schwachsinnsideologie und sie wird scheitern, wie der Euro gescheitert ist und der Flüchtlingsimport, als Diktat einer wahnhaften Willkommenskultur.

Aber gegen eine Ideologie die gerade in Mode ist, kommen leider Fakten, noch Tatsachen an.

In the end you can just say: What a waste of money on the cost of most citizen to preserve the illusion of a couple of bubble inhabitants with quite some influence! And that might be just a scratch on the surface here...
 
This whole "green energy" scam, of which the wind energy is part of, seems to fit perfectly into the man made global warming scam.

My country also started building those wind farms because EU demands that we have 27% of renewable energy production. Luckily for us, we don't need much more to get to that number, so I hope that they won't become too crazy with building them. So far, they plan to build 3 farms with total number of 116 wind turbines that will produce a maximum of 295 MWe. But how much is that?

Well, to give you an example, my country also recently started building cogenerators.

Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is more thermally efficient use of fuel than electricity generation alone. In separate production of electricity some energy must be rejected as waste heat, but in cogeneration this thermal energy is put to good use. Combined heat and power (CHP) plants recover otherwise wasted thermal energy for heating. By capturing the excess heat, CHP uses heat that would be wasted in a conventional power plant, potentially reaching an efficiency of up to 80%. This means that less fuel needs to be consumed to produce the same amount of useful energy.

And how much does one single CHP plant that we have built produce electric energy? It produces 424 MWe, which is equal to about 170 of those ugly wind turbines. In other words, it is very powerful, cheap and produces much less pollution than coal power plants because it uses natural gas, and you don't have to spread it across country, like with those wind farms.

Germany also likes it: "So far, Germany has set the target to double its electricity cogeneration from 12.5% of the country’s electricity to 25% of the country’s electricity by 2020 and has passed supporting legislation accordingly."

Germany also gets cheap natural gas from Russia via North Stream, unlike my country that has to pay some extra taxes to other countries, so it has a perfect opportunity to make a cheap electricity.

But no, the Germans have to pay the highest price for electricity in Europe, together with Denmark:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/8/8c/Electricity_prices%2C_first_half_of_year%2C_2015-2017.png
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/7/79/Electricity_prices_for_household_consumers%2C_first_half_2017_%28EUR_per_kWh%29.png

And on the second graph we can see that big part of the price goes to taxes. And those taxes go to this renewable sector that gets their expenses covered with them, because otherwise nobody would want to buy electricity from them because it would be just too expensive. Although, Merkel made some changes in 2016: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/07/12/germany-confirms-end-renewable-energy-feed-tariffs/

Germany is gonna be an interesting place to watch about this situation because it also plans to shut down 8 nuclear power plants till the end of 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Germany

In order to replace them, if it relies solely on wind turbines, it would have to double the amount of wind turbines, which already has more than 28 000, because in 2016 it produced almost the same amount of energy from those two sources. Or, build a new versions which are about 80% bigger that the old ones: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Wind-power-germany-1.png

But that still leaves coal plants, which they contribute a lot to German electricity sector:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Energiemix_Deutschland.svg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Energymix_Germany.svg

How are Germans going to replace them, in order to save the planet?

Buy more gas from Russians? Their friends across the Atlantic are not going to like that.

Make more wind turbines and thereby increase further the electricity price? German citizens are not going to like that.
 
To conclude: wind energy is destroying the scenery; it causes health problems; it kills birds; it costs more than it brings revenues (the only incentive to build the facilities are subsidies); if you factor in energy spent for production, raw materials etc. it is mind-bogglingy insane; and even without these considerations, the technology is, on principle, incapable of delivering any significant amount of energy whatsoever.

At least that's how it looks to me: wishful thinking at best, a complete scam at worst. Any thoughts?

There is an great deal of political and environmental green-washing going on, and wind power fits the bill. Solar Panel toxic waste is also reported on a lot; usually juxtaposed to nuclear power as per a unit of energy. The principles of the latter, although it produces energy, is like holding a spoon full of mercury hoping it does not spill.

There are many people today making a living in the green washing machine; some are well meaning and yet don't want to look at the other side - they refuse to, or the words pass unremarked between ears.

Unless wind-farming is done on a massive scale, which has low yields comparatively anyway, and which you well point out the many other issues, wind is not viable unless for someone with some land providing for their own energy needs and if using well engineered low impact equipment. There are other viable options for those people too (geothermal etc.)

As it stands, what do we really have that can produce the energy needs of civilization; oil, coal, hydro and nuclear with solar and wind and a few others filling small energy gaps. There are also some emerging designs, like Lilly Pads/Wave Power on the ocean. As for effectiveness (along with other factors) it says that "Waves generate about 2,700 gigawatts of power. Of those 2,700 gigawatts, only about 500 gigawatts can be captured with the current technology." Interestingly, the first patent was in 1799 for wave power generation.
 
A problem with green energy is that the rating never matches the actual output. James McCanney said that wind turbines are rated for 40-50 mph winds, which are rare in most areas. Below that speed, they are very weak.

Our electrical grid is a system that generation has to match demand within a very short period. Essentially the electricity being made immediately now, is being used now.
In areas where there is a lot of green energy and no storage, like solar in California, the power plants still have to stay on the ready- called "spinning reserve". Some of these plants that can respond quicker to the demand (or a drop of solar/wind power), are very inefficient and expensive. The bigger, more efficient plants waste energy staying ready - as they use steam to convert heat into mechanical energy and then electricity.

The worst problem which happened in Australia, is that green energy is not easily stored. They got rid of power plants but didn't take into account possible shortages and had blackouts. Hopefully this doesn't happen in Germany, etc!

There's a pipe dream pushed by Tesla to solve the Australian problem by having a huge amount of batteries that can store energy that can be used to supply electricity when green energy is low or demand is high. Honestly, it's not very feasible because batteries are not very efficient in terms of energy density. The size of that new Tesla battery grid could run the island of Manhattan for 10 minutes. Also, lithium batteries are expensive and very energy intensive to create- along with the toxic waste!
 
This is quite something to know about those wind-turbines!

I'm one guy who loved those turbines as a child, because just close where I live there's a small town which 30 years ago, or more, installed 2 wind turbines over the top of a hill and they where funny to look at. They always said that the small town under it was living happy enjoying the cheap costs of its powerlines. Those were the only 2 turbines I've seen for years and years, but then after a couple of trips in the south-east Puglia, Italy, looking at what was done there with those monster wind-farms, I began to wonder what was like to be living there all the time, staring at dozens of gigantic swirling helix instead of trees and a blue sky... a couple trips to Germany helped too to get a bad wibe about that!

Then it has been some times by now, around ten years of so, that Mafia researchers and journalists have spotted ties between Mafia, money laundering, and wind-turbines business. Just google 'wind turbine italian mafia' and guess what. And this goes against the assumption that it would be a remunerative business. The Mafia, in fact, view these acquisitions as a way to gain prestige and a stronghold on the local territory, through legit businesses, so it's not primarily about making money out of that.
 
It will be very fun to see how will the movement to electric cars coincide with the simultaneous reduction in electrical energy production from fossil sources that is planned in Germany and France.

Germany commits to ending coal power by 2038

Germany is to shut down all 84 of its coal-fired power plants by 2038.

The nation’s coal exit commission, made up of 28 members largely from industry and politics, decided on the date – it is expected to be accepted by the national government.

The group judged the change in policy was required to hit emissions targets and climate obligations – coal currently accounts for around 40% of the country’s electricity, only being overtaken by renewables as the primary source of power last year.

The plan is expected to cost around $45 billion (£34.2bn), which will be spent to help protect regions which depend on coal power.
It is thought Germany will have to rely on renewable energy to provide 65% to 80% of the country’s power by 2040, after having already decided to shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022.

The first stage of the coal shutdown will see a quarter of the country’s coal-burning plants to be shut down in the next three years.
Ronald Pofalla, Chairman of the government commission, said: “This is an historic accomplishment.

“It was anything but a sure thing. But we did it. There won’t be any more coal-burning plants in Germany by 2038.”


France bids adieu to 14 of its nuclear power stations

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the nuclear-reliant nation will close 14 of its 58 operational nuclear reactors by 2035.
The leader added between four and six facilities will be closed by 2030 but warned that reducing the proportion of the energy mix derived from nuclear sources does not mean renouncing the technology altogether.

France currently relies on nuclear power for nearly three-quarters of its electricity needs – the government aims to halve this by 2035, replacing it with clean energy such as wind and solar.

The President said: “I would have liked to be able to do it as early as 2025, as provided for by the Energy Transition Law but it turned out, after pragmatic expertise, that this figure brandished as a political totem was in fact unattainable.

“We therefore decided to maintain this 50% cap but by postponing the deadline to 2035.”

He added France would aim to triple its wind power output and increase solar output five times over by 2030, as well as close its remaining four coal-fired power plants by 2022 as part of efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and slash harmful air pollution.
The nation will commit €5 billion (£4.4bn) a year to renewable growth, financed by a fuel tax.


So Germany will not have any working nuclear power plants, and France coal power plants by 2022. And by then they both plan to have a couple of million of electric cars on the street. I think that they will need an awful lot of wind turbines for that plan.
 
So Germany will not have any working nuclear power plants, and France coal power plants by 2022. And by then they both plan to have a couple of million of electric cars on the street.

Talk about delusions...

I think that they will need an awful lot of wind turbines for that plan.

Only wind energy doesn't work. And to the very, very small degree that renewables do work, they don't provide base load supply - for that you need coal, nuclear or natural gas. What's more, you need to balance out the unreliable renewables, which only works with power plants that you can easily turn up or down - which only works with natural gas!! So if they don't want coal or nuclear, then I know someone who's gonna like the plan:

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Wind turbines are very idiotic. They don't work if there is too little wind or too much wind.
It's fun to watch how they fail:

Also, they are dangerous for the wildlife, and are an important source of infrasounds that cause discomfort and disease. What a marvelous idea!
 
Also, they are dangerous for the wildlife, and are an important source of infrasounds that cause discomfort and disease. What a marvelous idea!

I live in an absolutely beautiful landscape, but there are 6 of these monsters close by. I hate them with a passion, and it makes me SO angry. It's such a stark reminder, even in that quiet and beautiful spot I inhabit, of the absolute insanity of this world. I mean, the destruction of the landscape ALONE would be enough to be against these things. But if you know that they simply don't produce anything worth speaking of, cost more energy to ship and build than they will ever produce, cause serious health problems, BLINK at night (!!), PLUS are subject to political correctness - can't criticize them, then maybe you understand why I must do breathing exercises whenever I see these things.

One silver lining though: half of the time, they don't move, even if there's lots of wind. That's because renewables screw up the grid so you need massive load-balancing... Who came up with this genius idea again? :headbash:
 
Wind turbines are very idiotic.

Very!

Not to mention they have a shelf life with degrading components and superstructures under continuous stress that will eventually reach the height of the bell curve (as seen in the video fail) in larger numbers - and more issues.

From Forbes


This was from 2012, and by the way it is still hyped and planned you would not know it's the "end of the line"...and yet it is a highly subsidized line.

snip said:
But it could be getting a lot worse for wind. A fascinating new report by George Taylor and Tom Tanton at the American Tradition Institute called "The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity" asserts that the cost of wind power is significantly understated by the EIA's numbers. In fact, says Taylor, generating electricity from wind costs triple what it does from natural gas.
[...]
He explains that he started with 8.2 cents per kWh, reflecting total installation costs of $2,000 per kw of capacity. Then backed out an assumed 30-year lifespan for the turbines (optimistic), which increases the cost to 9.3
[...]
He explains that he started with 8.2 cents per kWh, reflecting total installation costs of $2,000 per kw of capacity. Then after backing out the effect of subsidies allowing accelerted depreciation for wind investments you get 10.1 cents. Next, add the costs of keeping gas-fired plants available, but running at reduced capacity, to balance the variable performance of wind -- 1.7 cents. Extra fuel for those plants adds another 0.6 cents. Finally, tack on 2.7 cents for new transmission line investments needed to get new wind power to market. The whole shebang adds up to 15 cents per kwh.
[....]
Natural gas power plants {the number used is 0.06 cents kWh} do not require any kind of taxpayer subsidies. Gas is plentiful, and it's far "greener" than the coal-burning plants that are being phased out every day. Wind has a place in the generation mix, and if consumers are willing to pay through the nose for 100% wind power, then they should be free to do so. But it's hard to justify wasting more taxpayer dollars propping up a technology that has had more than a decade to establish itself and yet still can't stand on its own.
 
I'm continually amazed that people don't seem to realize that there is a huge difference between X Watts of solar or wind, and X Watts of nuclear, coal, gas, etc.

Sure, the numbers are the same, but if it ain't optimally windy or sunny, you get way less than that.

So, like when Google says they have 3GW of solar/wind power to offset the 3GW they pull from the grid, that's by definition retarded. Even if those "renewable" sources DO actually provide 3GW consistently, the same people pushing for that stuff are also saying that global warming will change the climate.

If the climate changes (hotter or colder), so most likely does the amount of sun + wind (DUH!).

The only thing these wonderful "renewable energy" sources are renewing is human stupidity.
 
In my local park there were mini wind turbines attached to solar street lamps. But I never saw them spinning. Not even once. A couple of days ago they removed them so the lamps now run just on stored solar energy. Wasted money.

This clip is funny but true:

 
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