The Wind Turbine Mistress: Too Expensive to Subsidise But Easy to Abandon

Blogger Tory Aardvark writes about the 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in the USA:

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the nonexistent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst focusing on energy and environmental issues for the Heritage Foundation, is not surprised. He asks:

“If wind power made sense, why would it need a government subsidy in the first place? It’s a bubble which bursts as soon as the government subsidies end.”

Breaking Wind – I guess the renewable wind bubble just burst in the Netherlands:

(Reuters) Electricity produced by offshore wind turbines has been declared too expensive, with the Netherlands government axing subsidies and transferring the burden to households and businesses in the wake of Europe's crippling debt troubles.

The country's 36 offshore turbines – each the height of a 30-storey building – produce electricity for more than 100,000 households, but the cost of subsidising the production had blown out to more than $6 billion a year.

The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.

It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.

But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies — the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year — while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies than wind.

Arguments over the high cost and maintenance of sea-based turbines, as well as complaints from residents about unsightly land-based models, have brought the Dutch to an impasse.

Offshore wind farms produce more electricity than onshore ones but it costs twice as much as onshore wind power due to the higher cost of materials, more expensive drilling methods, and more complex maintenance.

Wind turbines in the sea need to be more robust to withstand strong winds and salt water; their maintenance some miles away from the coast requires special equipment and transportation.

Drilling the seabed is more expensive as it requires a specialized workforce and equipment. Then there's the additional cost of connecting the offshore farms to the grid.

The outlook for Dutch wind projects seems bleak.

And yet Julia Gillard and Bob Brown are committed to spending over $13 Billion dollars of your money on these useless wind totems.

With the passing of the Clean Energy Future legislation, two new fat bureaucracies will be created – the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) which will coordinate around $3.2 billion in existing grant funding programs supporting research, development and demonstration of new renewable wind energy technologies.

That’s over $13 Billion dollars and counting – no wonder Julia Gillard needs the Carbon Dioxide Tax because no one in their right mind would fund the purchase and installation of wind turbines with their own money.

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