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Wind Energy Is Not Free
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
By: Patty Dineen
Gerson Lehrman Group
Gerson Lehrman Group: 7/20/10 Intelligently Connecting Institutions and Expertise - Wind Energy Is Not Free
Summary:
People look at windmills and see free energy. What they do not look at is what went into making the windmills, the aluminum tower, the concrete base, the copper wire, etc. Production of the input materials put a burden on the environment. In particular, it takes years for a windmill simply to pay back the energy used to make and deploy it.
Analysis:
Windmills historically were mostly used to pump water. When electrification came, most farmers switched to electric pumps. Today, idealistic folk want to go back to windmills, thinking that they provide clean energy. But one has to look at the whole picture. The windmill tower uses huge amounts of aluminum (15,000 kilowatt hours per ton), the sturdy base many tons of concrete (2,000 kWhr/ton), the generator and wires to carry electricity away, a lot of copper (75,000 kWhr/ton), and so on. Much of this energy comes from coal, with its associated emissions. Bauxite to make aluminum is shipped large distances, consuming petroleum. In short, the environmental impacts of wind energy are hidden in the industrial infrastructure.
The net effect is that it may take years for a windmill to repay the conventional energy debt incurred to make it. If windmills are deployed faster than the "payback" time, the move to wind energy may actually increase overall consumption of oil, gas and coal.
Wind turbines are currently deployed only where they are subsidized or mandated by governments and do not make sense on purely economic grounds (in part because of the use of energy intensive materials). Governments sometimes mandate that conventional utilities purchase a certain amount of alternative energy, which creates a "market" for wind output. In Massachusetts for example, Cape Wind recently signed a contract with National Grid for 24 cents per kilowatt hour, or about three times the wholesale cost of conventional electricity, because of such a mandate. In addition, there are tax concessions and sometimes outright taxpayer subsidies.
The wind energy industry is much like the defense industry, relying on governments to create business for it. Some argue that this is necessary to jumpstart the industry, but major firms have moved into the wind turbine business and feasible cost reductions have already occurred, without making wind competitive on economic grounds.
Relevant Subject(s): Utilities and Power Generation
© 2010 Gerson Lehrman Group.
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