The mayor of New York City would put wind turbines atop the Brooklyn Bridge under a plan announced Tuesday at a "clean energy summit." Will there be an ocean wind farm next to the Statue of Liberty?
Speaking at the event in Las Vegas, Michael Bloomberg, one of many politicians to whom hot air is no stranger, embraced wind power as the alternative energy du jour. He even offered his city's skyline as a site for perhaps the world's largest wind farm.
Mayor Bloomberg: Touting New York as the new "Windy City."
"Perhaps companies will want to put wind turbines atop bridges and skyscrapers, or use the enormous potential of powerful offshore winds miles out off the Atlantic coasts," Bloomberg told the summit.
"I think it would be a thing of beauty if, when Lady Liberty looks out on the horizon, she not only welcomes new immigrants but lights their way with a torch powered by an ocean wind farm."
Hizzoner had lunch earlier with Texas energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who has been tilting at windmills as part of his alternative energy campaign.
The energy summit was hosted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the liberal think tank Center for American Progress Action Fund and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The idea was to collect ideas to be presented to Democratic and Republican members of Congress. What the summit was really about was to drum up support for subsidies without which wind and solar are economically uncompetitive.
Wind and solar are also undependable. On windless and cloudy days they are useless and require conventional power sources as backup. Output isn't steady and can't be increased on demand. You can't make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder during peak periods.
"Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency," read a Reuters headline on Feb. 27. Seems the electric grid operator was forced to curtail 1,100 megawatts of power to customers on just 10 minutes' notice after the wind simply stopped blowing.
If money could be made on these alternatives, companies would be rushing to pursue, uh, windfall profits and wouldn't need any subsidies. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported recently: "In 1999, 2001 and 2003, when Congress temporarily killed the credits, the number of new turbines dropped dramatically."
If wind power is such an opportunity, why don't gazillionaires like Pickens just start building wind farms? Why the drive for taxpayer subsidies while Democrats suppress other energy sources such as offshore oil, shale oil and nuclear power?
Wind provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear power and 7% for hydroelectric. To replace natural gas' 22% with wind would require building 300,000 1.5-megawatt turbines occupying an area the size of South Carolina. Ask the Nimbys where they want them.
Modern turbines can be as tall as 400 feet and carry 130-foot, seven-ton, endangered bird-slicing blades. And don't forget the transmission towers and power lines to get the juice where it's needed. Building these wind farms requires five to 10 times more steel and concrete than a nuclear plant generating the same amount of power.
Wind turbines operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear plants. A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would generate more dependable power than 2,800 1.5-megawatt, occasionally operating wind turbines sitting on 175,000 acres.
If nuclear waste is your concern, consider that if we reprocessed our waste as other countries do, and if we use the French method of reprocessing, America could recycle its 58,000 tons of used fuel to power every U.S. household for 12 years.
The answer to America's energy needs is not blowin' in the wind.
Anyone want to invest in wind power? Anyone want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?