Green Energy -- Unintended Consequences

The problem with most technical "solutions" is that they create more problems than they solve. They are worse than useless. They have unintended consequences which actually mean they dig you into a hole.

Here is a bit from a posting on Roger Pielke Sr.'s blog Climate Science of an article by Henk Tennekes:

Wind energy is an engineer’s nightmare. To begin with, the energy density of flowing air is miserably low. Therefore, you need a massive contraption to catch one Megawatt at best, and a thousand of these to equal a single gas- or coal-fired power plant. If you design them for a wind speed of 15 m/s, they are useless at wind speeds below10 m/s and extremely dangerous at 20 m/s, unless feathered in time. Remember, power is proportional to the CUBE of the wind speed. Old-fashioned Dutch windmills needed a two-man crew on 12-hour watch, seven days a week, because a runaway windmill first burns its bearings, then its hardwood gears, then the entire superstructure. This was the nightmare of millers everywhere in the ‘good’ old days. And what did these beautiful antiques deliver? Fifteen horsepower at best, in favorable winds, about what a power lawn mower does these days. No wonder the Dutch switched to steam-powered pumping stations as soon as they could, in the late nineteenth century.

Since the power generated by modern wind turbines is so unpredictable, conventional power plants have to serve as back-ups. Therefore, these run at far less than half power most of the time. That is terribly uneconomical – only at full power they have good thermal efficiency and minimal CO2 emissions per kWh delivered. Think also a moment of the cable networks needed: not only a fine-maze distribution network at the consumer end, but also one at the generator end. And what about servicing? How do you get a repair crew to a lonely hillside? Especially when you decided to put the wind park at sea? Use helicopters – now THAT is green …!

Go read the whole article to get all the gory details of unexpected "problems" with that wonderfully simple solution for "green" energy, the windmill.

The problem with fanatics -- in this case "green" fanatics is that they tend to think linearly and simplisticly. When they see "a solution" they go bananas for it and don't "waste" any time investigating whether it is truly a solution and whether it carries any burden of unintended consequences. This is why fanatics are branded as people who see the world in black-and-white. I've always seen it as a muddle of gray. It is always a lot more complex than you first thought. Otherwise all those geniuses of two thousand and three thousand years ago would have arranged a paradise for us mugs to be living in today.