I would like to add a few points. First the Texas wind project does cover about 154 Sq miles but most of this land is still in production as farm land or unimproved as it was before the wind farm, and it is still used as residents for the owners of this land. Only about 19 sq miles was actually used building the sites "this includes access roads and laydown areas". Second the Ivanpah site is large but we must also remember this also includes the power lines connecting to the nearby distribution system, reserve park lands set up to build this plant. The most noticeable item in this discussion was the tortoise which at this point is being found under the collectors and seems to be happy. The downside is increased beading may be going on during the construction phase of this project.
Several comments that was made to me a year or two ago puts some prospective on this subject. We don't want windmills here put them out west where it wont hurt anything. About the same time I was told by some people who live in Columbus OH mine the coal in WV and burn it there where the want to do that kind of stuff and the damage has already been done. Some people call this NIMBY. We all want to use power we just don't want to see it in our back yard.
Kevin Fooce
fooce@hotmail.com
304-751-1448 work
304-675-6687 home
304-593-2875 cell
From: fyoung@mountain.net
To: WVHCBOARD@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 11:11:40 -0400
CC: wvec-board@yahoogroups.com; ec@osenergy.org
Subject: Re: [EC] [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
Two excerpts from the article:
"The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan."
"The Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles. Again, the math is straightforward: to have 8,500 megawatts of wind generation capacity, California would likely need to set aside an area equivalent to more than 70 Manhattans. Apart from the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is inaudible
to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the turbines." (emphasis added- F.Y.)
-----------------------------------------
Frank's commentary- If we are going to mathematically render uninhabitable all lands on which "inaudible" but harmful effects emanate from power generating facilities, we would include all areas downwind of coal fired generating facilities that generate particulate matter- because such particulates are demonstrably responsible for thousands of premature human deaths.
"In 2000 and again in 2004, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force quantifying the deaths and other health affects attributable to the fine particle pollution from power plants. In this newly updated study, CATF examines the progress towards cleaning up one of the nation's leading sources of pollution. The report finds that over 13,000 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants."
"Simple" and "straightforward" math- indeed!
Frank
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 9:00 AM
Subject: [WVHCBOARD] The cost of wind and solar energy
Robert Bryce ("Power Hungry" author) is back w/ some figures on
"energy sprawl." Once again, he's good at debunking the notion that
wind and solar are "free"--but five words from the end of the piece he
gets to his pet alternatives, natural gas and nuclear power.
Op-Ed Contributor
The Gas Is Greener: The Cost of Renewable Energy Sources
By ROBERT BRYCE
Published: June 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08bryce.html
IN April, Gov. Jerry Brown made headlines by signing into law an
ambitious mandate that requires California to obtain one-third of its
electricity from renewable energy sources like sunlight and wind by
2020. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now have
renewable electricity mandates. President Obama and several members of
Congress have supported one at the federal level. Polls routinely show
strong support among voters for renewable energy projects — as long as
they don’t cost too much.
But there’s the rub: while energy sources like sunlight and wind are
free and naturally replenished, converting them into large quantities
of electricity requires vast amounts of natural resources — most
notably, land. Even a cursory look at these costs exposes the deep
contradictions in the renewable energy movement.
Consider California’s new mandate. The state’s peak electricity demand
is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require
(if you oversimplify a bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy
capacity. Let’s assume that California will get half of that capacity
from solar and half from wind. Most of its large-scale solar
electricity production will presumably come from projects like the $2
billion Ivanpah solar plant, which is now under construction in the
Mojave Desert in southern California. When completed, Ivanpah, which
aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity, will cover
3,600 acres — about five and a half square miles.
The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity,
California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah,
covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large
as Manhattan. While there’s plenty of land in the Mojave, projects as
big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns. In April, the federal
Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction on part of
the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which is
protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Wind energy projects require even more land. The Roscoe wind farm in
Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154
square miles. Again, the math is straightforward: to have 8,500
megawatts of wind generation capacity, California would likely need to
set aside an area equivalent to more than 70 Manhattans. Apart from
the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on
the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is inaudible
to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the turbines.
Industrial solar and wind projects also require long swaths of land
for power lines. Last year, despite opposition from environmental
groups, San Diego Gas & Electric started construction on the 117-mile
Sunrise Powerlink, which will carry electricity from solar, wind and
geothermal projects located in Imperial County, Calif., to customers
in and around San Diego. In January, environmental groups filed a
federal lawsuit to prevent the $1.9 billion line from cutting through
a nearby national forest.
Not all environmentalists ignore renewable energy’s land requirements.
The Nature Conservancy has coined the term “energy sprawl” to describe
it. Unfortunately, energy sprawl is only one of the ways that
renewable energy makes heavy demands on natural resources.
Consider the massive quantities of steel required for wind projects.
The production and transportation of steel are both expensive and
energy-intensive, and installing a single wind turbine requires about
200 tons of it. Many turbines have capacities of 3 or 4 megawatts, so
you can assume that each megawatt of wind capacity requires roughly 50
tons of steel. By contrast, a typical natural gas turbine can produce
nearly 43 megawatts while weighing only 9 tons. Thus, each megawatt of
capacity requires less than a quarter of a ton of steel.
Obviously these are ballpark figures, but however you crunch the
numbers, the takeaway is the same: the amount of steel needed to
generate a given amount of electricity from a wind turbine is greater
by several orders of magnitude.
Such profligate use of resources is the antithesis of the
environmental ideal. Nearly four decades ago, the economist E. F.
Schumacher distilled the essence of environmental protection down to
three words: “Small is beautiful.” In the rush to do something —
anything — to deal with the intractable problem of greenhouse gas
emissions, environmental groups and policy makers have determined that
renewable energy is the answer. But in doing so they’ve tossed
Schumacher’s dictum into the ditch.
All energy and power systems exact a toll. If we are to take
Schumacher’s phrase to heart while also reducing the rate of growth of
greenhouse gas emissions, we must exploit the low-carbon energy
sources — natural gas and, yes, nuclear — that have smaller
footprints.
Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is the
author, most recently, of “Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy
and the Real Fuels of the Future.”
------------------------------------
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