Wind Power? Forget It!
By Paul Homewood
If anybody is foolish enough to believe that wind power is having the slightest impact on the world’s energy needs, I would suggest they book into Realityville and check out the facts from the BP Energy Review.
First, this is how much electricity is produced from wind power. Note that very little is produced from most of the world, and how wildly subsidised wind power in the EU lead the way.
More importantly though is proportion of electricity generation which comes from wind.
Even in the EU it is below 10%, and it barely figures at all anywhere else. Globally it amounts to a paltry 3%.
But it actually gets worse! Because electricity only accounts for a fraction of total energy consumption, the real contribution of wind power to energy needs, or for that matter emissions, is negligible.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
one should question what happens when windenergy really takes off. Taking a major bite out of the natural flow of the wind can’t be without consequences for local climates. Obviously the whole balance of weather depends on the free flow of wind across the globe.
Blocking that in any significant way will inevitably lead to disruption. How shortsighted can you be to assume draining energy from any system won’t have consequences?
Don’t worry about it. If wind energy hasn’t really taken off after 30 years of trying with billions in taxpayer funds behind it, it ain’t going to! The retreat has already begun in some countries, though they are trying to conceal the failure because the politicians are terrified of the reaction if it is revealed too honestly and starkly with all the waste and graft involved.
this is something i also ponder. despite reading several environmental impact assessments in relation to wind turbine installations, not once have i ever seen anything related to what the effects of removing all that energy out of air masses will have.
Paul, you have forgotten to include how much that 3% has already cost the world in £/$/€ etc.
I suppose it’s possible enviro-whack jobs could use these figures to illustrate how much ‘potential’ there still is. The rest of us (the sane ones) will simply look on and shake our heads that so much has already been squandered for so little return – and still needs back-up from stuff that actually works.
That last chart is a staggering indictment of the futility of wind power .
Take a good look at who is buying coal stocks while condemning the industry. For one Soros. How many other cronies are doing the same thing? 80% of our power comes from coal. India and China are building a new one every week. At .04% of our atmosphere being carbon dioxide the only thing it dose is produce more food for an ever growing world. This coal scam makes all others pail in comparison.
Currently getting 0.49% 0.15GW of our requirements from wind
Our house runs on 100% electricity. If an unlucky driver takes out a power pole, I can expect the electricity to be off for about 4 hours. I have numerous packages of ice in the chest freezer. I can move a couple of containers of ice into the fridge. We also have a wood stove if that luckless driver goes off the road in the middle of a cold winter. Whether summer or winter, we can get by for a day or two, if necessary. About 4 hours off is about the longest we have had in 25 years.
I do not want to deal with such a situation every time the wind stops, as it just did in Oregon and Washington:
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
24 hours ago the wind was 25-30 mph average; gusts to 40.
@Blackpearl – I’ll see your 0.15 GW and raise you 0.10 GW at 22.30 tonight.
At 23:10 BST, we have 0.08 GW of wind, with demand at 26.83 GW!
@HorshamBren, will you take an IOU?
Hey, we’re up to a staggering 0.61 GW at 17:00 BST on Monday … I’m going to risk boiling that kettle !
Thanks, Paul, for the information. But the windmills picture is going to give me nightmares.
Why waste any more time or money on them, they are a complete waste of resources ! The UKs ~ 6,500 industrial wind turbines with a total capacity of 13GW are currently producing just 0.11GW see http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
so where’s the other 12.9GW we’ve paid billions for in ‘green taxes’ ??
Its 1.00am & my solar panels are producing 0% of capacity, don’t you just love green energy technology…….can’t wait for us to be 100% renewables
Sarc off
At 08:10 BST for the EU countries I have real time (or nearly real time) the numbers are:
UK 0.50 GW
France 0.73 GW
Germany 1.87 GW
Spain 1.47 GW
Denmark 2.5 GW
Belgium 0.4GW
Ireland 0.25 GW
There are a lot of links at this site
https://jaspervis.wordpress.com/tag/Germany/
Table ES4. Fiscal year 2010 electricity production subsidies and support (million 2010 dollars) Share of Total Subsidies and Support Coal, 10%; Renewables, 55.3% http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
“Direct expenditures accounted for 39 percent of total electricity-related subsidies in FY 2010 (Table ES4). These expenditures were mostly the result of the ARRA Section 1603 grant program, 84-percent of which went to wind generation.” http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requss/subsidy/
This is why renewables are built at all: “The billionaire was even more explicit about his goal of reducing his company’s tax payments. “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” he said. “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Warren Buffett http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304831304579541782064848174
I’ll not care to hear anything that BP has to say about one of its competitors. That would be like taking the governments word about what ISIS is.
The BP Review is regarded as the bible as far as energy statistics are concerned.
Wind power can never become a major player in power generation, because the wind power industry is a parasite on the overall energy industry. Fossil fuels are 30 times more efficient in producing energy than windmills. This means that just the wind power employees and their dependents themselves use more fossil fuel energy than they produce from their windmills. When windmills lose their political support and subsidies, they will be abandoned.
Peak Renewables…
When the subsidies and feed-in mandates are removed. 🙂
MikeW
“When windmills lose their political support and subsidies, they will be abandoned.”
Yeah but they’ve all got 20 year contracts as far as know
How can a Govt wriggle out of those ?
Declare bankruptcy .. Its not as though it is far from the truth !
Future growth business: Wind turbine recycling and disposal.
At tax-payer expense of course, because the scammers that took all the subsidy money will be long gone. !
Someday, 100% of our energy needs will be supplied by nuclear (probably thorium). We can do this today, and in a few years be producing energy less expensively than coal or kicking and screaming later, when that’s all we have left.
There is enough thorium and U238 in the earth’s crust to provide at our current energy usage, for 1.25 million years.
Atomic waste has a cost as well and has not been dealt with well so far. It is a garbage dump that no one wants in their yard. Have you taken that into account?
Learn about Thorium – start with this –
Kirk Sorensen 82 mins very good & understandable.
More links – http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1745.html
Thorium Fluoride, Molten-Salt Reactor, or LFTR – Safe, reliable, low cost/MW, load factor 90%. small footprint, no CO2, no long term waste (70 yr half life not 10,000), will consume existing wast from other reactor types, it can’t be used to make weapons, ( which is why development was stopped in the 60s).
What’s not to like ??