Wind Power: Not the Utopia We Were Sold On, Part Two

Is this making money for the power companies? 

Well, yes. 

In August of 2024, for example, the Wall Street Journal dove in and found:

New York state signed a contract in June to buy electricity generated by two large wind farms, Empire Wind 1 and Sunrise Wind, off the coast of Long Island. The projects are expected to begin in 2026 and 2027, with power delivered to Brooklyn (Empire) and Long Island (Sunrise). The state will pay $155 and $146 per megawatt-hour, respectively. These prices are steep, at least four times the average grid cost paid over the past year.

I'm told that the estimates we see about how much energy will be created by each windmill are grossly exaggerated.  That, in fact, each unit will only be operating at peak efficiency about 35% of the time, not the near 100% online time they base their estimates on. So I’ll take those estimates with a grain of salt, as usual. Plus, a slice of lemon. And a shot of tequila, if you don't mind.

I am also told that for each megawatt of power capacity, a natural gas power plant requires about one ton of critical minerals, while onshore wind plants require 11 tons. Additionally, there is the need for fossil fuels to move them around and install them. 

I can say with some certainty that absent these government subsidies, power companies would not be making money at all, much less the amounts we see in the WSJ example. 

I spoke a while back on the subject of the real source of corruption being government power. As with healthcare (and, for that matter, anything else), when government chooses winners and losers, graft (otherwise known as lobby efforts) is sure to follow. Have you ever noticed that the primary ingredient in any solution the left comes up with for any given problem, including energy, is somebody else’s money? This obviously meshes neatly with the graft and corruption Stevenson mentions, since without government’s headlong rush to funding this stuff, none of it would exist.

Keep in mind that this is all in the stated pursuit of solving global warming… mmmm... global cooling…err... sorry, “climate change,” which itself is a questionable basis for anything at all. (That's a topic I'll get to in a piece I'm already working on.)

These are not the only problems with wind power, of course. Yesterday, I mentioned health concerns and promised to cover that angle today. There’s been rumblings over the last few years on the topic. Nowadays, it is more of a constant backdrop in any conversation on the topic, and one the government and power industries try desperately to ignore

Wind turbines kill over 1 million birds a year, according to the American Bird Conservancy, and hundreds of thousands of bats, crucial in pest control. Offshore wind companies, such as Atlantic Shores and Orsted’s Ocean Winds, request permission in their environmental impact statements to harm whales, dolphins, seals and porpoises through sound waves produced.

And then we have the problem of what to do with the huge blades once they have reached the end of their semi-useful life. There are very few options for recycling them, so in many cases they sit baking in the sun, often for years. Usually, they simply get carted off to a field somewhere and buried, without regard to what will happen to them over time. It is estimated that by 2050, we'll have 47 million tons of the things, with no place to put them.

So, while the enviro-left champions wind and solar for "saving the environment," they clearly causing environmental concerns far more immediate and provable. 

All of these issues get pushed to the side when politicians see an opportunity to make it look like they’re "doing something" about a perceived problem; plus, they benefit from whatever money they can get in campaign donations from the people selling us these wind and solar installations.

The enviro-left likes t0 blame oil companies because they speak up against wind and solar, like there's some kind of conspiracy going on. It's like a knee-jerk reaction. If you say there are 12 billion stars in the sky, they’ll take your word for it. But if you say a policy pushed by the enviro-left is problematic, they’ll say you're lying and demand proof.

If you say oil companies are pushing oil because they want to control the energy market, the enviro-left will believe you. (Just don't say anything about how they already control the energy market.) They'll demand recorded, peer-reviewed, and documented proof from anyone suggesting otherwise.

The logical fact, however, is this: If the oil companies thought for a second that wind and solar were the future, they'd be using the massive capital they already have in their hands to build wind and solar farms in every zip code in the country. They'd be doing so even without government subsidies, and the left would meanwhile be screaming bloody murder, citing all the problems I've listed here and in yesterday's column, trying to stop their deployment and telling us there is a conspiracy. Capitalists, you see, tend to go where the money is. Since most of the enviro-left are not capitalists, they don't understand what drives such folks and therefore leap blindly to precisely the wrong conclusion.

Obviously, none of that is happening; they're not going in on wind and solar because they simply don't see that being where a reasonable rate of return is. There's literally no profit in it. That is your biggest clue on what our energy future is — and is not.