Image of the Day: Abandoned Wind Farm

 Dis you know wind farms can actually increase CO2 emissions?

Kamaoa Wind Farm, Hawaii. Image from Waymarking.com

Green Fail: Wind Farms Shutdown Due to Over Supply

Only our government could be this stupid. They subsidize wind farms with out tax dollars. Then, they shut them down due to over supply of electricity.



Via FOX News:

Wind farms in the Pacific Northwest -- built with government subsidies and maintained with tax credits for every megawatt produced -- are now getting paid to shut down as the federal agency charged with managing the region's electricity grid says there's an oversupply of renewable power at certain times of the year.

The problem arose during the late spring and early summer last year. Rapid snow melt filled the Columbia River Basin. The water rushed through the 31 dams run by the Portland, Ore.-based Bonneville Power Administration allowing for peak hydropower generation. At the very same time, the wind howled leading to maximum wind power production.

Demand could not keep up with supply, so BPA shut down the wind farms for nearly 200 hours over 38 days.

Green Fail: Half of all offshore wind farm turbines would be destroyed by hurricanes over 20 year period

President Obama has a goal to generate 20 per cent of our electricity from wind by 2030. One sixth is supposed to come from off shore wind farms.

(New Scientist)-Gone with the wind? Hurricanes could destroy the offshore wind farms the US is planning to build in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them. Keep on reading...

Fail: Billionaire T. Boone Pickens Wind Power Plan Runs Out of Air

After wasting $2 billion on General Electric wind turbines, Mr. Pickens has given up on his wind farm plans. He is looking to sell the turbines to Canadians who are being forced to buy them because of their laws.

Unfortunately market forces were not favorable to Mr. Pickens, and in December 2010 he announced that he is getting out of the wind power business. What does he plan to do with his $2 billion worth of idle wind turbines? He is trying to sell them to Canada, because of Canadian law that mandates consumers to buy more renewable electricity regardless of cost."

T. Boone Pickens had such big plans. Here is his propaganda video.

Dems steer $450 million in stimulus money to China for windfarm

Harry Reid's buddies seem to be behind this outrage.

(MSNBC)- Top Democratic fundraisers and lobbyists with links to the White House are behind a proposed wind farm in Texas that stands to get $450 million in stimulus money, even though a Chinese company would operate the farm and its turbines would be built in China.

The farm’s backers also have close ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who, at the height of his hard-fought re-election bid this fall, helped blunt congressional criticism over stimulus dollars possibly going to create jobs in China by endorsing a proposal by the Chinese company to build a factory in his home state. Although his campaign received thousands of dollars in donations from the wind farm’s backers and Reid stood on stage with them at a campaign event they hosted, his office declined to answer any questions about the wind farm’s organizers or their plans for Nevada.

Blowing Hot Air in the Wind

It figures. President Obama takes credit for wind farms built during the term of President Bush.

MSNBC reported:

The Obama administration is crediting its anti-recession stimulus plan with creating up to 50,000 jobs on dozens of wind farms, even though many of those wind farms were built before the stimulus money began to flow or even before President Barack Obama was inaugurated.

Out of 70 major wind farms that received the $4.4 billion in federal energy grants through the stimulus program, public records show that 11, which received a total of $600 million, erected their wind towers during the Bush administration. And a total of 19 wind farms, which received $1.3 billion, were built before any of the stimulus money was distributed. ( See a list of the projects here.)

Yet all the jobs at these wind farms are counted in the administration’s figures for jobs created by the stimulus.