Wind Energy Issues

This page contains links to the articles on issues related to wind energy deployment.

Wind Deployment Issues

• The Simple Arithmetic of Wind Power
• Numerous reports from Maryland to Canada to France on wind turbine noise.
• Standard noise permitting does not account for the real problem.
• Huge industrial machines moving in the open air have negative effects

• Grand Cover-Up: Sierra Club Conceals American’s Growing Hostility to Wind Power

Environmental Impacts

• Wind Energy having population level effects on bird species

• Bluestone Wind, Broome County, New York
• How Many Birds Are Killed By Wind Turbines?
• Wind turbines are a threat to birds

• Wind turbines are a threat to bats

• Wind turbines are killing eagles

• Wind farms have cascading effects on ecosystems

• Wind turbines in Wyoming are killing eagles
• Wyoming Wind Projects Pose “Profoundly Dangerous” Threat To Golden Eagles (Why won’t the same thing happen to New York’s Bald Eagles?)

Wind Energy Costs

• Audited accounts show that far from getting cheaper, wind power is actually becoming more expensive
• Out to Sea: The Dismal Economics of Offshore Wind
• Great Britain offshore wind costs
• The dramatically falling costs of renewables are now a political, a media, and conversational cliché. However, the claim is demonstrably false.
• Offshore wind costs are not sustainable.

Wind Energy Analysis

• Donn Dears provides an objective analysis of wind energy
• The Wind is Always Blowing Somewhere Fallacy

Offshore Wind

• Robert Bryce: The disintegration of the turbine blade and resultant pollution that forced the closure of Nantucket’s beaches should scuttle the offshore wind scam.  But it’s only the tip of Big Wind’s Problems

• Offshore Wind Risks in the News   This post consolidates several offshore wind items.  Climate Change Dispatch describes an analysis that implicates offshore wind surveys with whale deaths.  Bud’s Offshore Energy has posted numerous articles describing the recent Nantucket offshore wind turbine failure and David Wojick explains the risk implications to further development.

• Offshore Wind Meets Reality This post updates the previous summary.  More issues with Vineyard Wind are described.  Paul Driessen points out that the East Coast wind turbines are all in areas affected by hurricanes.  

• David Wojick decribes issues with offshore wind.  He notes that “Biden’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposes to build a huge amount of floating offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.”  The problem is that the draft Environmental Assessment of the area designated for this monster project insanely ignores the cumulative environmental impacts of all the potential lease areas.  This problem is also a feature of New York’s offshore wind development. His description of the proposed floating offshore wind platforms proposed for Maine boggles the mind: “Simple physics says that if you want to put a 2,000-ton generator on top of a 500-foot tower with three 300-foot wings attached on a boat and have it still stand up in hurricane-force winds, it will have to be a mighty big boat.” 

• Robert Bryce published an article entitled The Offshore Wind Scandal is Even Worse Than You Think  that addresses one of the cumulative environmental impacts that New York and the BOEM are ignoring. In charts he explains where the money is flowing, describes potential impacts to whales, and includes a map showing that New York’s offshore wind developments overlap the migration paths of the critically endangered North American Right Whale.  The big green environmental organizations are abandoning whales in general and the remaining North American Right Whales in particular.  Bryce quotes an opponent of offshore wind: “What is Big Wind going to say when they kill the last whale? ‘Sorry’?” 

• Floating Offshore Wind  issues
• Offshore wind impact probe proposed
• Offshore wind needs to be transferred on shore using undersea cables that do not have a reliable history

• Our EnergyPolicy (OEP) hosted a panel discussion on New York State’s emerging offshore wind market, and the policy and business challenges facing this evolving sector, in its Energy Leaders Luncheon Series December 2019 event in New York City.  During the question and answer period the following question was asked: Will wind turbines in New York be able to withstand a Category 5 storm?

  Clint Plummer, the head of market strategies and new projects for Ørsted, the world’s largest owner, developer, and operator of offshore wind, responded that “wind turbines are designed to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, and they have built into their permit applications an insurance fund that can pay for repairs in cases of catastrophic loss from a storm more severe”. He said “a Category 5 hurricane has a return period in excess of 100 years, while the design life of a wind farm is 30-35 years, so wind turbines are not designed to withstand a Category 5 storm because they are not expected to experience one”. “Anything less than that up to a certain speed is just a really good day for producing a lot of wind power,” he said

• Offshore wind turbine spacing is becoming an issue that will add costs.  As turbines become bigger their wakes become bigger and that leads to a reduction of output at any existing turbine that is too close.  “An important new working paper from renewables consultants ArcVera is reporting that the wake effects behind the huge turbines that are now coming onstream are going to be much worse than previously thought.”

• Climate Act Offshore Wind New Uncertainty May 10, 2023

• Offshore Wind Contradictory Views July 7, 2023

• Climate Act Offshore Wind Costs September 11, 2023

• NY Offshore Wind Perspectives February 23, 2024