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For First Time, U.S. to Lease Offshore Wind Blocks

U.S. offshore wind has lagged far behind the country’s onshore wind sector. Credit: Bigstock


WASHINGTON, Jun 4 2013 (IPS) - The U.S. government announced Tuesday that it would be going forward with long-discussed plans to auction federal leases off the Atlantic Ocean coast for the development of offshore wind energy.


"Developing this industry will help to create thousands of new jobs." -- Chris Long of the American Wind Energy Association














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  • AngelFive

    I too once believed wind power was the solution to global warming and climate change. That’s before I learned that it was just a scheme put forward by Enron in the late 1990s to swindle the ratepayers of billions. Enron’s plan was to use renewable energy to green wash its plan to build more gas fired power plants throughout California. Rob Bradley who was a known whistleblower at Enron worked there for sixteen years, almost as long as Ken Lay himself; from September 1985 to the mass layoff of December 3, 2001.

    Enron knew what most politicians and bureaucrats are unable to understand that most forms of renewable energy (except for hydro power) are intermittent and unreliable during periods of peak demand. Even hydro is unreliable during a drought. Solar has the highest capacity factor during peak demand when people are operating air conditioners, while wind power has the lowest capacity factor during peak demand because its highest production occurs in the early morning, late evening, and the middle of the night. This means increased emissions will be incurred by new wind projects in the form of more reliable gas turbine power during periods of peak demand; and therein lays the premise behind Enron’s swindle. Industrial wind technology is a meretricious commodity, attractive in a superficial way but without real value—seemingly plausible, even significant but actually false and nugatory.

    Those who would profit from it either economically or ideologically are engaged in wholesale deception. For in contrast to their alluring but empty promises of closed coal plants and reduced carbon emissions are this reality: Wind energy is impotent while its environmental footprint is massive and malignant.

    A wind project with a rated capacity of 100 MW, for example, with 40 skyscraper-sized turbines, would likely produce an annual average of only 27 MW, an imperceptible fraction of energy for most grid systems. More than 60% of the time, it would produce less than 27 MW, and at peak demand times, often produce nothing. It would rarely achieve its rated capacity, producing most at times of least demand. Whatever it generated would be continuously skittering, intensifying, magnifying the destabilizing effects of demand fluctuations, for wind volatility is virtually indistinguishable from the phenomenon of people whimsically turning their appliances off and on.

    Moreover, the project could never produce capacity value—specified amounts of energy on demand, something that should be anathema to regulatory agencies, with their task of ensuring reliable, secure, affordable electricity. The ability of machines to perform as expected on demand is the basis of modernity, underlying contemporary systems of economic growth, wealth creation and well-being.

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