Article (link) describing how the wind power industry is hitting headwinds. Siemens, the world's 2nd largest manufacturer of wind turbines, lost nearly $1 billion in Q4, and is asking for govt subsidies to continue. A major wind power project off the coast i New Hampshire has been halted due to rising costs and legal disagreement over the project.

It's time to move forward and away from the unnecessarily expensive, unreliable, unsafe, and environmentally destructive wind power projects that blight our shorelines, require constant maintenance, produce electrical interference, and a host of other problems. Government subsidies are not the answer. Any government money should be used for reliable, safe, environmentally constructive projects that will yield benefits for current and future generations.

Spinning our wheels with wind power is simply wasting valuable time, that could instead be used to restore countless ecosystems and provide an improved quality of life for all.

A potentially major development in producing sustainable biofuels. Shell Oil and S&W Seed have entered into a joint venture to research sustainable oil seed crops for large scale production, including Camelina Sativa. S&W brings to the table a large portfolio in improving crop production using genetics.

Link

Camelina Sativa can be grown in marginal soils, and can be mixed with conventional crops for rotation purposes. Camelina also provides feedstock for animal feed, and can be harvested for its high omega-3 fatty acids for human consumption.

At this point water would be the only limiting factor. This illustrates the importance of moving forward immediately with massive investment of fresh water production technology and infrastructure.

It turns out that the increase of electric vehicles reduces asthma attacks because air quality improves.

"A study published earlier this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that in California, every 20 zero-emissions vehicles per 1,000 people in a given zip code led to a 3.2 percent drop in the rate of emergency room visits due to asthma."

I didn't know this before but apparently 200,000 US people die each year from air pollution.

So aside from improving quality of life, changing over to electric vehicles would also reduce emergency medical expenses significantly.

Here is the article that talks about the study.



In the US in Montana wind energy is now significantly cheaper than Coal. Here is the article


I don't personally care where wind projects show up. Oil and gas projects were disgustingly ugly as well. Not to mention the devastation of the coal industry to mountains and mountain tops.

The other thing I would point out is that while wind energy is now cheaper than gas, oil, and coal in 2/3 of the world (partly as a result of government aid) that the payback in lower medical costs to governments may be significant as air pollution levels drop.

There will be headwinds in any new technology endeavors. But I would think that in the wind turbine industry headwinds would be a good thing...

Comparing vehicle emissions now to years ago is disingenuous, diesel emissions in particular. Diesel emissions have been reduced dramatically with SCR/DEF, and they will continue to go down with advances in technology.

Link from US Dept of Energy showing benefits of biodiesel IRT emissions.

Additionally, hydrogen powered vehicles produce zero harmful emissions, just water. The biggest obstacle to using hydrogen for vehicles is the exorbitant cost to produce hydrogen. It is cheaper instead to simply use the source power to charge vehicle batteries. But with massive investment in clean power production infrastructure, economic costs of energy will go down and this obstacle can be avoided. And the need for mining of battery minerals (and subsequent ecosystem destruction) can be avoided.

At some point we will run out of Lithium as a mining source, either due to increasing cost to mine it, or simply that the sources dry up. It's better to pursue now sustainable alternatives of power production. Additionally, Lithium does not produce any power. An EV can indirectly produce just as much in harmful emissions as a traditional ICE vehicle. So the true benefits of Lithium EVs are much less than generally perceived.


Unfortunately wind is not a consistent nor reliable source of power. There are certainly edge cases where wind turbines can be used to augment the primary sources of power, such as nuclear, solar and hydro. But their total cost, including service and maintenance (solar farms incur virtually zero maintenance cost), along with their destructive nature to ecosystems along with unreliable nature of wind, makes choosing wind power as a primary source impractical. This is one reason why Siemens is asking for handouts to develop wind farms, at the same time these wind farms intrude on quality of life and destroy ecosystems in the process.

Comparing wind to oil wells or coal mines is again not relevant in the discussion of moving forward with nuclear, solar, and hydro as the primary sources of power, along with growing biofuel crops with the abundance of fresh water we will obtain with adequate government investment.