One of the major weapons in the wind energy proponents’ quiver is a report titled 20% Wind Energy by 2030. It was published by NREL, the National Renewable Energy Labs, which is part of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, in May 2008. It lays out a blueprint on how the U.S. could attain 20% of its electricity production by 2030. It has been widely used as an authoritative source by just about every industry body and many green-leaning politicians as well, all the way up to President Obama. Since the DOE is headed by a Nobel-prize-winning physicist (Dr. Steven Chu), and they’ve got lots of money and PhD-level people, you’d think such an important report would be unassailable, especially by a mere mortal from a small town in Ohio, working out of his garage (literally). You might be thinking that I’m just another anti-wind agitator who would always find something to quibble about in any otherwise solid piece of work. I hope that after reading this posting you’ll have some appreciation of just non-quibbly the problems are, and how truly stupid we are for using it to justify all the financial, environment and social costs of wind energy. continue reading…
