Wind-Power Detractors’ Claims Refuted

The Toronto Star recently examined some of the claims made by wind power opponents and offered counter-arguments from various industry experts.

A commentary by Michael Trebilcock, published by Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute, argued there is “no evidence” that industrial-scale wind developments will substantially reduce carbon emissions. Trebilcock claimed that Denmark had yet to close any fossil-fuel plants and that it now uses 50 percent more coal due to wind power’s unpredictability.

But Poul Erik Morthorst, a senior energy researcher at the National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy at the Technical University of Denmark contradicted this claim and said that Danish coal use has decreased 19 percent and natural gas use has declined 26.6 percent while wind and other renewables have increased 11.1 percent.

Moreover, while Denmark’s gross energy consumption has increased nearly 7 percent since 1990, CO2 emissions have fallen over 13 percent over the same time period.

Another liability of wind power, say opponents, is the need to back up 100 percent of wind capacity with natural gas plants, to maintain grid stability.

But the chief operating officer at Ontario’s Independent Electric System Operator told the Toronto Star that every form of power generation needs some degree of backup—and that much of that backup capacity already exists.

Without wind energy, that backup capacity would have to consume more natural gas to compensate for the reduction in coal use.   But as wind energy is added to the mix, more carbon-free energy is used and less natural gas is burned over time.

While it is true that running natural gas plants intermittently is less efficient than running them continuously, a peer-reviewed study by Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University estimated that "carbon-dioxide emissions reductions from a wind plus natural gas system are likely to be 75 to 80 per cent of those presently assumed."

Finally, some complain about the cost of wind power, pointing out that new wind energy costs about twice as much per kilowatt-hour as what customers are accustomed to paying.

However, analysts from Navigant Consulting told the Star that other new “clean” sources of power, such as nuclear plants, would be equally expensive when compared to the equivalent capacity from a combination of natural gas and wind power and would entail additional problems such as the management of nuclear waste.

In Denmark, wind power has actually resulted in the reduction of spot-market electricity prices. Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have found that when wind was being sold into the market, wholesale prices fell between 2 per cent and 15 per cent in three different regions of Denmark, creating savings that exceeded the feed-in tariff premiums being paid for wind.

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