Power Hungry (17 page)

FIGURE 13
Reliable Summer Generation Capacity in Texas, by Fuel Type, 2009 and 2014

Source
: Electric Reliability Council of Texas, “Report on the Capacity, Demand, and Reserves in the ERCOT Region,” May 2009,
http://www.ercot.com/content/news/presentations/2009/2009%20ERCOT%20Capacity,%20Demand%20and%20Reserves%20Report.pdf
, 13.

In its 2008 report, CERA determined that “in order to provide reliable capacity throughout the year, every megawatt of wind capacity needs to be matched up with a megawatt of dispatchable capacity.”
¹⁶
Those findings were affirmed in early 2009 by Peter Lang, an engineer with forty years of experience in the energy business who is based in Canberra, Australia. In a report called “Cost and Quantity of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Avoided by Wind Generation,” Lang concluded: “Because wind cannot be called up on demand, especially at the time of peak demand,
installed wind generation capacity does not reduce the amount of installed conventional generating capacity required. So wind cannot contribute to reducing the capital investment in generating plants. Wind is simply an additional capital investment.”
¹⁷

In other words, thanks to its variability and intermittancy, wind power does not, and cannot, displace power plants, it only adds to them. The conclusions reached by Lang, and the analysts at CERA, are similar to those reached by British consultant James Oswald, who studied the potential effects of increased wind-power consumption in Britain. In a 2008 article published in the journal
Energy Policy
, Oswald and his two coauthors concluded that increased use of wind would likely cause utilities to invest in lower-efficiency gas-fired generators that would be switched on and off frequently, a move that cuts their energy efficiency and increases their emissions. Upon publication of the study, Oswald said that carbon dioxide savings from wind power “will be less than expected, because cheaper, less efficient [gas-fired] plant[s] will be used to support these wind power fluctuations. Neither these extra costs nor the increased carbon production are being taken into account in the government figures for wind power.”
¹⁸

China provides another example of the limited role that wind power will play in cutting carbon dioxide emissions. In September 2009, Jing Yang of the
Wall Street Journal
reported that “China's ambition to create ‘green cities' powered by huge wind farms comes with a dirty little secret: Dozens of new coal-fired power plants need to be installed as well.” Chinese officials are installing about 12,700 megawatts of new wind turbines in the northwestern province of Gansu. But along with those turbines, the government will install 9,200 megawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity in Gansu, “for use when the winds aren't favorable.” That quantity of coal-fired capacity, Jing noted, is “equivalent to the entire generating capacity of Hungary.”
¹⁹

The obvious problem with the Chinese plan is that coal-fired plants are designed to provide continuous, baseload power. They cannot be turned on and off quickly. That likely means that all of the new coal plants being built in Gansu province to back up the new wind turbines will be run continuously in order to assure that the regional power grid doesn't go dark.

One other analysis of the wind–carbon dioxide question deserves mention: In November 2009, Kent Hawkins, a Canadian electrical engineer,
published a detailed analysis on the frequency with which gas-fired generators must be cycled on and off in order to back up wind power. Hawkins' findings: The frequent switching on and off results in more gas consumption than if there were no wind turbines at all. His analysis suggests that it would be more efficient in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to simply run combined-cycle gas turbines on a continuous basis than to use wind turbines backed up by gas-fired generators that are constantly being turned on and off. Hawkins concluded that wind power is not an “effective CO
₂
mitigation” strategy “because of inefficiencies introduced by fast-ramping (inefficient) operation of gas turbines.”
²⁰

During an interview, Hawkins told me that he had been studying the wind-power sector for years and had been motivated to do his analysis because “nobody has done a comprehensive study.” He said the wind industry has no interest in trying to produce proof that wind turbines cut carbon dioxide emissions. “Why do they have to prove anything with regard to CO
₂
emissions? The industry already has all the political sup port, and the media, behind it.”
²¹

Given the work by Lang, Oswald, and Hawkins suggesting that wind power doesn't reduce carbon dioxide emissions, what does the wind industry claim? In its 2008 outlook, the Global Wind Energy Council put forward a “reference scenario.” The trade group projects that by 2030, global wind-power capacity will be nearly 500,000 megawatts, a five-fold increase over 2007, when installed capacity totaled about 94,000 megawatts.
²²
If that massive expansion of wind power occurs, the group expects global annual carbon dioxide emissions to be reduced by 731 million tons by 2030. That sounds significant.

But the council warned that “under this scenario,
carbon dioxide savings under wind would be negligible
, compared with the 18,708 million tons of carbon dioxide that the IEA expects the global power sector will emit every year by 2030” (emphasis added).
²³
Put another way, at the same time that wind promoters are claiming that carbon dioxide reductions are a key benefit of adding new wind-power capacity, their own projections reveal that even if the wind-power sector continues to experience rapid growth, it will only reduce electricity-related carbon dioxide emissions by about 4 percent by 2030.
²⁴
And given that the electric-generation sector represents about 40 percent of total global
carbon dioxide emissions, that 4 percent reduction from wind—if it occurs—will be almost insignificant, amounting to a reduction of perhaps 1.5 percent of the total annual volume of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

In short, the wind-power promoters promise major carbon dioxide benefits, even claiming that carbon dioxide reductions are the industry's “most important environmental benefit.” But the wind industry has no proof that it can achieve that claim. And even if you believe the industry's data for optimum investment in additional wind capacity, the resulting reductions in carbon dioxide emissions will barely be noticeable.

In fact, even in Denmark—the country that has taken the wind-power experiment further than any other—embracing wind has not reduced carbon dioxide emissions or cut hydrocarbon consumption.

Denmark Provides an Energy Model for the United States

A
DVOCATES OF RENEWABLE energy love Denmark. And why shouldn't they? The Danes love themselves.

Surveys in 2006 and 2008 found that the Danes are the happiest people on the planet.
²
The surveys found strong correlations for satisfaction with availability of health care, higher personal income, and access to education. (In the 2006 study, the United States ranked twenty-third in the happy ratings.)
³
Although the studies don't mention renewable energy as an element of the happiness quotient, if the wind-power promoters are to be believed, then Denmark's happiness surely must correlate with the number of wind turbines that are installed in the country.

America's leading energy cheerleaders love to cite Denmark as the model to be copied. For instance, in a 2006 interview with
Discover
magazine, Amory Lovins enthused about wind power, saying that there is enough available wind energy in South Dakota and North Dakota “to meet the United States' electricity needs.” He went on, saying that “Denmark is now one-fifth wind powered.”
⁴
A few months after Lovins proclaimed Denmark's virtues, Fox News, the conservative news outlet, followed suit, saying that Denmark “has become a leader in the field of renewable energy” and that “renewable sources account for a greater share of the nation's energy consumption with each passing year.”
⁵

In August 2008,
New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman held up the Danes as the model for the United States. In the wake of the 1973 Oil Embargo, Friedman claimed, Demark “responded ... in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent.” Friedman went on to lament America's situation, writing that if “only we could be as energy smart as Denmark!”
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In mid-2009, Joshua Green, a senior editor at
Atlantic Monthly
, wrote a long article about renewable energy bemoaning the fact that the United States had not done more to embrace renewable energy. He said the election of Obama and a Democratic Congress had made “a significant shift in the nation's energy policy a real possibility for the first time in years.”
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Green then lauded Denmark: “Europe offers a model of how governments can lead the transition to clean energy and thereby reduce demand for fossil fuels. Denmark, which also suffered the shocks of the 1970s, no longer needs to import oil.”
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While all of the wind power and happiness in Denmark makes me want to fly to Copenhagen for a cup of coffee and a hug, a close look at Denmark's energy sector shows that its embrace of wind power has not resulted in “energy independence”; nor has it made a major difference in the country's carbon dioxide emissions, coal consumption, or oil use. Despite massive subsidies for the wind industry and years of hype about the wonders of Denmark's energy policies, the Danes now have some of the world's most expensive electricity and most expensive motor fuel. And in 2007, their carbon dioxide emissions were at about the same level as they were two decades ago.

Thomas Friedman may like the idea of energy independence, but the data shows that Denmark is not energy independent—it's not even close. The Danes import all of their coal. I repeat, Denmark imports
all
of its coal.
⁹
Those coal imports—and coal consumption among the Danes—show little sign of declining, even though Denmark's wind power production capacity is increasing. And Denmark is even more dependent on coal than the United States.
¹⁰

Green's claim that Denmark doesn't import any oil is true. Denmark is an oil exporter. But that reality has nothing to do with Denmark's embrace of renewables. Instead, it's a result of the country's decades-old decision to pursue aggressive offshore oil development in the North Sea.
¹¹
Perhaps if the United States were as sensible about offshore drilling as the Danes, the United States wouldn't need to import oil, either.

Alas, the hard facts about Denmark appear to matter little to America's leading purveyors of energy happy-talk. But the facts, particularly when it comes to wind, provide plenty of reason to be skeptical about Denmark's energy policy.

Once again, we must look at the numbers. Between 1999 and 2007, according to data from the Danish Energy Agency, the amount of electricity produced from the country's wind turbines grew by about 136 percent, going from 3 billion kilowatt-hours to some 7.1 billion kilowatt-hours.
¹²
By the beginning of 2007, wind power was accounting for about 13.4 percent of all the electricity generated in Denmark.
¹³
And yet, over that same time period, coal consumption didn't change at all. In 1999, Denmark's daily coal consumption was the equivalent of about 94,400 barrels of oil per day.
¹⁴
By 2007, Denmark's coal consumption was exactly the same as it was back in 1999.
¹⁵
In fact, Denmark's coal consumption in both 2007 and 1999 was nearly the same as it was back in 1981.
¹⁶

Denmark may be leading the world in wind-power installation and production, but the variability of wind assures that Denmark's production of coal-generated electricity will continue to rise and fall depending on the weather. The gyrations in the country's power sector can be seen by considering this fact: In 2006, the Danish grid consumed 50 percent more coal-fired electricity than it did in 2005.
¹⁷
The basic problem with Denmark's wind-power sector is the same as it is everywhere else: It
must be backed up by conventional sources of generation. For Denmark, that means using coal as well as the hydropower resources of its neighbors. As much as two-thirds of Denmark's total wind power production is exported to its neighbors in Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
¹⁸
In 2003, 84 percent of the wind power generated in western Denmark was exported, much of it at below-market rates.
¹⁹