Feed: Wind Power: Questionable Benefits, Concealed Impacts - AggScore: 11.0

Wind Power: Questionable Benefits, Concealed Impacts

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img classalignleft srchttpmedia.townhall.comTownhallReub20105C2485C20100905T214727Z01NIL03RTRIDSP0AUSTRIA.jpg alt width225 height150 America is running out of natural gas. Prices will soar, making imported liquefied natural gas LNG and T Boone Pickens wind farm plan practical, affordable and inevitable. That was then.Barely two years later, America and the world are tapping vast, previously undreamedof energy riches as drillers discover how to produce gas from shale, coal and tight sandstone formations, at reasonable cost. They do it by pumping a water, sand and proprietary chemical mixture into rocks under very high pressure, fracturing or fracking the formations, and keeping the cracks open, to yield trapped methane.Within a year, US recoverable shale gas reserves alone rose from 340 trillion cubic feet to 823 tcf, the Energy Department estimates. Thats 36 years worth, based on what the USA currently consumes from all gas sources, or the equivalent of 74 years of current annual US oil production. The reserves span the continent, from Barnett shale in Texas to Marcellus shale in Eastern and MidAtlantic states to large deposits in western Canada, Colorado, North Dakota, Montana and other states and around the world.Instead of importing gas, the United States could become an exporter. The gas can move seamlessly into existing pipeline systems, to fuel homes, factories and electrical generators, serve as a petrochemical feedstock, and replace oil in many applications. States, private citizens and the federal government could reap billions in lease bonuses, rents, royalties and taxes. Millions of highpaying jobs could be created or saved. Plentiful gas can also provide essential backup power for wind turbines.Production of this much gas would reduce oil price shocks and dependence on oil imports from the likes of Gadhafi and Chavez, while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Talk about a game changer!Whats not to like Plenty, it turns out. The bountiful new supplies make environmentalist dogmas pass the end of the hydrocarbon era, America as an energy pauper, immutable Club of Rome doctrines of sustainability and imminent resource depletion, the Pickens Plan and forests of wind turbines.What to do Environmentalists voiced alarm. HBO aired Gasland, a slick propaganda film about alleged impacts of fracking on groundwater. Its claims have been a hrefhttpanga.uslearnthefactsthetruthaboutgaslandgclidCP7f5NX2n6cCFQ687Qod3ywLQQ targetblankroundly debunkeda for instance, methane igniting at a water faucet came from a gas deposit encountered by the homeowners water well not from a fracking operation. A politically motivated Oscar was predicted, but didnt happen.The Environmental Protection Agency revealed a multiple personality disorder. Its Drinking Water Protection Division director told Congress there is not a single documented instance of polluted groundwater due to fracking. Studies by Colorado and Texas regulators drew the same conclusion.EPAs Texas office nevertheless insisted that Range Resources was endangering a public aquifer and ordered the company to stop drilling immediately and provide clean water to area homes. EPA officials then failed to show up at the hearing or submit a single page of testimony, to support their claims.Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced plans to conduct a lifecycle or cradletograve study of hydraulic fracturing drilling and gas production techniques, to assess possible impacts on groundwater and other ecological values. Depending on whether the study is scientific or politicized, it could lead to national, statebystate or even citybycity drilling delays, bans or booms.The industry and many states that have long experience with drilling and are confident the needed regulations, practices and testing procedures are already in place. They voice few worries, except over how long a lifecycle study could take or how political it might become. In fact, its a very useful tool.But if a lifecycle study is warranted for hydraulic fracturing, because drilling might pass through subsurface formations containing fresh water, similar studies are certainly called for elsewhere wind turbine manufacturing, installation and operation, for instance.Turbines require enormous quantities of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth minerals all of which involve substantial resource extraction, refining, smelting, manufacturing and shipping. Land and habitat impacts, rock removal and pulverizing, solid waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, air and water pollution, and carbon dioxide emissions occur on large scales during every step of the process.Over 95 of global rare earth production occurs in China and Mongolia, using their technology, coalfired electricity generation facilities and environmental rules. Extracting neodymium, praseodymium and other rare earths for wind turbine magnets and rotors involves pumping acid down boreholes, to dissolve and retrieve the minerals. Other acids, chemicals and high heat further process the materials. Millions of tons of toxic waste are generated annually and sent to enormous ponds, rimmed by earthen dams.Leaks, seepage and noxious air emissions have killed trees, grasses, crops and cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given thousands of people respiratory and intestinal problems, osteoporosis and cancer.In 2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals and over 15,000,000 tons of waste. To double current global installed wind capacity, and produce rare earths for photovoltaic solar panels and hybrid and electric cars, China will have to increase those totals significantly unless Molycorp and other companies can rejuvenate rare earth production in the US and elsewhere, using more modern methods.Made in China turbines are shipped to the USA, trucked to their final destinations, and installed on huge concrete platforms new backup gas generating plants are built and hundreds of miles of new transmission lines are constructed. That means still more steel, copper, concrete, fuel and land. Moreover, the backup power plants generate more pollution and carbon dioxide than if they could simply run at full capacity, because as backups for turbines they must operate constantly but ramp up to full power, and back down, numerous times daily, in response to shifting wind speeds.Wind farms require roads and 7001000 ton concreteandrebar foundations, which affect water drainage patterns in farm country. The 300500 foot tall turbines affect scenery, interfere with or prevent crop dusting over hundreds of acres, and kill countless birds and bats. Farmers who lease their land for wind turbines receive substantial royalty payments neighbors are impacted, but receive no compensation.Despite these ecological costs, wind farm projects are often fasttracked through NEPA and other environmental review processes, and are exempted from endangered species and migratory bird laws that can result in multimilliondollar fines for oil, gas and coal operators, for a fraction of the carnage.Perhaps worst, all this is supported generously by renewable energy mandates, tax breaks, feedin tariffs, prioritized loading orders, and other subsidies, courtesy of state and federal governments and taxpayers. In fact, wind power gets 90 times more in federal subsidies than do coal and natural gas, per megawatthour of electricity actually generated, according to US Energy Information Administration data. And windbased electricity costs consumers several times more per kilowatthour than far more reliable electricity from coal, gas and nuclear power plants.Simply put, the wind might be free, when it blows. But the rest of the renewable, green, ecofriendly wind energy system is anything but.It might be far better all around to simply build the most efficient, lowestpolluting coal, gas and nuclear generating plants possible, let them run at full capacity 247365 and just skip the wind power.Lifecycle studies would be a positive development for all energy sources. In fact Think globally, act locally might be a very good motto for EPA and wind energy advocates.