Learn More
DOWNLOAD SHORT VERSION (PDF)Industrial Wind Power Facts
Good at first blush, but the impacts are far greater than the benefits
WIND POWER PROPOSED IN MAINE
- Maine’s statutory goal, as established in LD 2283, An Act To Implement Recommendations of the Governor's Task Force on Wind Power Development, is 2700 megawatts of land-based wind power. This law was passed in 2008.
- This goal requires as many as 1800 turbines, each at 400 feet tall
- 360 miles of wilderness ridges will need to be blasted to prepare for these turbines
- 50,000 acres of new clearcuts are necessary for new transmission corridors
- At an anticipated output of 25% capacity, all this devestation will actually only produce only 675 megawatts
THE BENEFITS
When assessing the value of wind power, or any large development, one weighs impacts versus benefits. A calculation of Total Impact vs. Benefit must be made. With industrial wind, there are some marginal benefits:
- No fuel cost for operation
- Expanded property tax base for host communities, discounted by TIF
- A few property owners get lease payments from wind developers
- Intervenors often take mitigation payments as settlements
- Major new revenues for transmission companies like CMP
- Rapid return on investment for developers due to taxpayer subsidies
- 675 MW would add about 5% of available power to the grid
THE IMPACTS
With industrial wind, there are massive impacts:
- $7 billion "investment" borne by ratepayers and taxpayers
- Increased electric rates by as much as double and triple for Maine homeowners and businesses
- Decreased property values for all properties within view and hearing
- Health impairments from turbine noise and shadow flicker
- Increased taxes to pay for developers’ subsidies
- Bird and bat kills
- Wildlife habitat fragmentation
- Runoff, erosion, and landslides from steep slope clearcutting
- Negative visual impacts
- Harm to Maine’s invaluable “Quality of Place”
- Reduced tourism revenues
- Reduced carbon-capture by 50,000 acres lost to forest clearcuts
- Little employment, mostly temporary construction jobs
- No reduction of oil use or dependence
- No reduction of carbon emissions
UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS FROM THE WIND INDUSTRY
The wind power industry does not cite any body of empirical evidence that wind power:
- reduces emissions
- reduces reliance on imports of fossil fuels
- enhances “energy independence”
- can be easily integrated into a grid system
- reduces electricity costs
Their claims of performance or benefits are based upon theoretical concepts which have failed to materialize into actual practice over more than two decades worldwide.
MAINE ELECTRICITY GENERATION TODAY
Maine has over 4200 megawatts of electric generating capacity, yet load (need) is only 1000 to 1500 MW. Maine is a net exporter of electricity. Our New England grid has over 30,000 MW of electric generating capacity. Average load is about 16,000 MW during the day, dropping to about 11,000 MW at night. Peak load has never exceeded 30,000 MW.
At 30% and escalating to 40%, Maine’s Renewable (electricity) Portfolio Standard is the highest in the nation.
Maine’s electric generation mix is already very green and it does not rely on imports from overseas. Over 90% of Maine’s generation is from biomass, hydro, and clean natural gas. By contrast, the state of Iowa gets over three quarters of its electricity from coal plants.
Given current projections, there is no need for massive buildup of new electricity generation. The primary driver of electricity usage is population growth. According to the census Bureau, Maine's population is projected to be only 4% higher in 2030. New England is only projected at 6% and the Middle Atlantic Region is at 2.4%.
COSTS FOR ELECTRICITY IN MAINE
Depending upon the category of customer, Maine's electric rates range from 9th to 6th most expensive in the nation. Many states pay rates two-and-a-half times lower than ours.
Maine electric rates:
- In 1985 were only 9% higher than the US average
- In 1990, were 20% higher
- In 1995, were 49% higher
- In 2000, 52% higher
- In 2007, 59% higher than US average.
Today we remain approximately 60% more expensive than the rest of the country. These rates increase the cost of living in Maine and increase the costs to Maine businesses, making them less competitive in a global economy.
This disparity in our electric bills is an annual penalty on Maine businesses and consumers of $700 million, equivalent to 25% of our state tax collections.
At about three million dollars per MW for wind projects complete with remote transmission connections, the capital costs for installing a wind generating facility are around three times more expensive than for conventional generating plants. For instance, a typical natural gas facility would incur capital costs of about one million dollars per MW.
The mid-sized 540 MW CalPine plant in Westbrook is an example of how Maine could generate 675 MW of electricity in one small industrial park rather than sprawling wind turbines over 360 miles of pristine and remote ridges. The fuel for the wind turbines is free, but all other aspects of windpower, including functional lifespan, are far more costly.
A recent power purchasing agreement between a Massachusetts utility and a wind power company will increase customers’ rates by an average $1.59 per month. That utility has 7 times the number of customers that our utility, Central Maine Power Company has, and that single contract calls for the utility to purchase merely half the power from one wind farm. This alarming rate impact from a tiny addition of purchased power shows the potential devastating impact of widespread wind purchases.
COMPARING TEN RATEPAYER AND TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES
The total cost of wind turbines and transmission upgrades, as envisioned by recently enacted Maine law, will be $7 billion. Via electric rates and taxes, Mainers will pay for this, but it will produce less than 700 megawatts of electricity.
Policymakers in the federal government have determined that certain energy sources are more desirable and less viable than others, so government incentives are granted to various energies. Here are the federal taxpayer subsidies paid by energy source in dollars per MW/Hour:
Natural Gas and Oil $.25
Geothermal $.92
Hydroelectric $.67
Coal $.44
Nuclear $1.59
Wind $23.37
1. Wind projects can take the “cash in lieu of investment tax credit” or the 1.9 cent production tax credit. For example, in 2009, First Wind, Maine’s most active wind developer, took over $100 million of federal taxpayer “cash in lieu” monies. In 2009, $849 million (or 84%) of US subsidies went to overseas companies.
Iberdrola of Spain took $545 million through its American subsidiary. Almost all of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on US wind projects was for wind turbines, blades, and nacelles which were manufactured in foreign countries.
2. Wind developers also take a federal subsidy of 2.1 cents in renewable energy credit per kilowatt produced. Taxpayers bear this cost.
3. Despite creating imperceptible numbers of jobs, wind projects in Maine routinely get Tax Increment Financing and Community Benefit Arrangements which reduce their property tax obligations, thereby passing on tax burdens to other taxpayers.
4. Wind power is unpredictable, intermittent, and cannot be stored. So it must be used or lost as it is generated. The nature of this electricity requires an overbuilt grid that can handle these wild fluctuations and thermal stresses. Additionally, wind power is sited remotely, far from load (end users) so transmission costs are exacerbated even while electrons are lost in the distance traveled. Utilities build these unnecessary power lines and charge their ratepayers for the cost.
5. The only way that wind power can grow and still preserve system reliability is with grid expansion, like CMP’s $1.4 billion transmission upgrade (MPRP). Ratepayers will pay for this upgrade – as well as similar upgrades in the other New England states – through their electric bills.
6. In order to meet New England’s anticipated 12,000 MW of wind power buildup, the New England ISO forecasts building 4,320 new miles of transmission infrastructure with midrange costs between $19 and $25 billion. Ratepayers will get the bill.
7. Utilities are under pressure to acquire renewable energy (or credits) from industrial wind development in order to comply with the state Renewable Portfolio Standards. For each missing megawatt hour of renewable energy where the mandated percentages are not met, nearly every state in New England imposes a fee that is collected by each State's Public Utility Commission (PUC). The cost for either the renewable energy credit or the compliance fee is passed on to ratepayers in the form of higher electricity bills.
8. Current requirements mandate penalty payments for not meeting minimum renewable generating capacity levels. Penalties are currently 6 cents per Kw/Hr, escalating with inflation. Maine’s CMP & Bangor Hydro are presented with the incentive to sign with industrial wind generators to expensive long term contracts, or risk paying penalties with nothing to show for it. Maine ratepayers get the bill either way.
9. In the Pacific Northwest the Bonneville Power Authority overbuilt wind power for export to California, a state that mandated more renewable consumption. This critical mass of wind power is so difficult for the grid’s ISO to manage, it necessitated initiation of a surcharge on wind power which will be passed on to ratepayers. Maine’s buildup for Southern New England users could result in the same outcome.
10. Since Maine’s statutory wind generation capacity will be intermittent and will largely produced off-peak and off-season, the ISO-NE will have to procure quick-start generation to back-up wind and to balance the grid. Not only does this require maintaining excess capacity in traditional generating plants like natural gas, it renders such traditional plants inefficient as they constantly start and stop, like city versus highway driving. Aside from increasing emissions, these combined capitol generation costs and inefficiency costs are shared among grid participants. They are not paid by the renewable generators, but by ratepayers.
HEALTH EFFECTS OF TURBINES
People living within range of turbine noise around the world report symptoms similar to the complaints of those living at Vinalhaven, Mars Hill, and Freedom; sleep disturbance, headaches, aggravation, anxiety caused by the intense sound of the enormous blades ripping through the atmosphere.The wind industry avoids and trivializes these well documented and very serious health concerns, and the Maine Centers for Disease Control has exhibited an apparent lack of medical ethics by ignoring the complaints of citizens whose lives have been negatively impacted by the first turbine installations in Maine.
HOW TO REALLY “GET OFF OIL”
The public has been led to believe that wind power will “get us off oil.” The reality is that we do not use electricity to heat our homes or drive our vehicles, the two largest demands for oil in Maine.
- 50% of Maine’s “energy” use is for transportation (gasoline and diesel fuel)
- 40% of our energy is for heating heating oil, natural gas and propane)
- 10 % of our energy is electricity, with 90% of that generated by biomass, hydro and natural gas.
Maine has but one oil-fired electricity generation plant, at Cousins Island. At 622 MW, this plant could light every lamp in Maine. But it is a “peaking” plant that is only called upon occasionally to provide electricity, like on hot July days when Boston’s air conditioners are in heavy use. Oil comprises a negligible portion of our electric picture.
- Nationally, approximately 1 percent of electricity is generated by burning oil
- 80% of Maine homes heat with oil, the highest percentage in the nation
- Almost 100% of Maine vehicles burn oil or diesel
To “get off oil” policymakers have been suggesting new electricity generation like wind power. But electricity isn’t used to heat or drive. Nationally, according to our own Department of Energy Information Administration, the U.S. only generates 1% of our electricity from oil.
Reduction in oil use is best achieved by:
- Reducing electricity costs, to convert from oil heat
- Developing technologies for non-petroleum powered vehicles
- Conservation/efficiency; we have old, inefficient housing
- Improving public transportation
Indsutrial wind acheives none of these requirements to "get off oil."
HIGH ELECTRIC COSTS HURT OUR ABILITY TO GET OFF OIL
In cold Quebec, where clean reliable hydro electricity is inexpensive, two-thirds of homes heat with electricity. Since Maine wind power will only increase our cost of electricity, it does not enhance our ability to get off oil by converting to electric heat.
If Maine someday were to convert to electric heaters and vehicles, that would likely result in a tripling of our electricity usage. The public would unlikely tolerate buying higher priced power while simultaneously buying more of it.
If we were to convert half of Maine vehicles and homes to electricity, those would largely be plugged in “off-peak” or at night, when the grid’s load is less than half its capacity. The capacity already exists in the grid to charge these vehicles and electric storage heaters at night. There is no need for expensive and unreliable wind power or for its massive new transmission lines.
At current Maine prices (approximately 15 cents) the per-BTU heating cost of electricity is 60% more expensive than heating oil. Oil is two and a half times as cost-effective.
Absent storage, the price of a gallon of heating oil would have to rise over $6.00 per gallon to equal today’s cost of electricity in heating. And the cost per barrel of crude would have to rise to $190.00 per barrel.
If the projected cost of delivered industrial wind electricity is 30 cents, it will be uncompetitive as a heat source until the per barrel price of crude oil rises to almost $400, and the per gallon price of heating oil tops $12.
INTEGRATING WIND POWER INTO THE GRID
Grid system operators in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Texas now have difficulty transmitting and distributing wind electricity while preventing power shortages. Integrating a level of wind electricity at the desired 20 percent of the region’s total generation would:
1. Unleash large quantities of CO2 emissions, as conventional generators would be operating far less efficiently (a 2 percent increase in inefficiency results in a 14-16 percent increase in carbon emission for thermal plants)
2. Require additional conventional electricity backup units at 90 percent of the installed wind capacity
3. Require building excessive new transmission lines to bring wind from remote areas and to keep it from constraining the transmission of traditional electricity
4. Require installing whole new systems of voltage regulation to accommodate the wind flux and thermal instability
CARBON EMISSIONS, CARBON CAPTURE
Reducing America’s use of oil and coal has many benefits, including the reduction of carbon emissions. Enlarging Maine’s forests by 1% would capture the same amount of carbon as it is alleged that wind power will reduce.
Trees capture, or sequester carbon as they grow, and release it as they decay or burn. The world’s carbon does not go away. It can be stored and released at varying paces. Like wood, burning of oil or coal releases stored carbon as well.
At 90%, Maine is the most forested state in the country. Compare that to 29.6% of the world and 24.7% of the U.S being forested. This makes Maine a major player in carbon capture.
Sustainable forestry includes regeneration of forests, so that new growth trees will voraciously capture carbon as old trees are harvested. To permanently clearcut 50,000 acres of Maine forest to make room for industrial wind turbines would not only reduce current and future carbon sequestration, it would speed the release of the carbon that is sequestered in the cut wood.
Combine this increased carbon with the carbon emitted in the manufacture and transportation of the turbines as well as the increased carbon from backup generation, and any reduction of carbon from wind power is negligible.
In fact, if we accept the carbon reduction claims of the wind industry, the same amount of carbon can be reduced by increasing our forest cover by one percent.
The benefits of reforestation go beyond carbon removal. Consider also the addition of oxygen into our air, the improvement of habitat for rare birds, small mammals, and the insects they feed upon, and the stabilization of soils along riverbanks and in sub-alpine ecosystems.
Wind power has never closed a conventional thermal power plant. In fact, industrial wind power causes thermal plants to emit more carbon because they stand ever ready to adjust output up or down to mirror wind’s intermittency. Thermal plants must wastefully burn fuel and emit carbon in “spinning reserve” mode while wind plants are producing. They can not power-off because at any moment the wind could wane and the thermal plant would need time to heat its steam. Imagine the disruption to our lives and economy from the resulting power outages.
Between 1980 and 2006, US carbon intensity dropped by 43.6%. The European Union had a reduction of 30.1% over the same period. America ranks first in the world in generation of electricity from nuclear reactors. It is second in natural gas production, and fourth in hydro production.
Steel manufacturing is a major user of coal and emitter of carbon, two of the villains that industrial wind power is supposed to defeat. More than 35 million tons of steel have been used to build the steel towers used for wind turbines in the period 2007-09.
The Siemens turbines proposed by Angus King for his Record Hill Wind project in Roxbury weigh 304 tons. More than 6,600 tons of steel must be smelted and forged to build the 22 turbines proposed for that 50-megawatt wind project, which will actually produce about 12 megawatts at the 25 percent capacity factor achieved by land-based wind turbines in Maine.
To make that steel would require about 3,000 tons of “coking” coal and 9,000 tons of iron ore. Steel production requires the use of coke, which is a byproduct of pulverized bituminous coal. Coke production is a major source of pollution in the production of steel. Air emissions such as coke-oven gases, naphthalene, ammonium compounds, crude light oil, sulfur and coke dust are released from coke ovens. How does this address Maine's "carbon footprint"?
LANDSCAPE FOOTPRINT OF ELECTRICITY SOURCES
When weighing impacts versus benefits, “footprint” means more than carbon footprint. The Nature Conservancy report, Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America, listed the land required for various generation sources producing 1 million MW hours of electricity per year:
- Nuclear: 1 sq. mile
- Geothermal: 3 sq. miles
- Coal: 4 sq. miles
- Natural Gas: 8 sq. miles
- Petroleum 18 sq. miles
- Industrial Wind Power: 30 sq. miles
- Biofuels: 500 sq. miles
Maine cannot afford to proliferate industrial wind power across its remote and rugged mountains because of wind power’s vast sprawling footprint. That immense critical mass (1800 turbines) can at best produce a tiny amount (5% of the grid’s capacity) of unreliable and expensive electricity. Impact far exceeds benefit.
The place to locate wind power, if it is to be viable anywhere, is in flat desert and plains regions, or offshore. Not only do such locations allow denser concentration of turbines and shorter proximity to load, they tend to provide higher wind quality.
ALTERNATIVES SHOULD ALWAYS BE CONSIDERED
If we ever decide that we do need more electricity, Maine has the ability to get it from many existing low-carbon sources, not all of them grid-scale. Americans and Mainers innovate. Exploration and research for better technologies can not cease. Important in evaluating those technologies is that in Maine, the calculation of Total Impact vs. Benefit is an important one. The following electricity sources win the Total Impact vs. Benefit test over wind:
- Geothermal Heat pumps
- Biomass
- Hydro, both indigenous and from Canada
- Solar
- Nuclear
- Individual-user, non-grid wind and solar
- Natural gas
- Tidal
WIND FAILS AS A GRID-SCALE SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY
Our compilation of Industrial Wind Facts concludes with a simple but poignant excerpt from physicist and environmental consultant John Droz, Jr.: Wind Power – How We Got Here. Droz reminds us of how wind power fails almost every historical test for viability in grid-scale electricity generation:
The first practical use of electricity, in the late 1800s, is generally attributed to Thomas Edison (a founder of General Electric). Of course there were actually dozens of people who contributed to making commercial electricity a reality. And there were a LOT of formidable hurdles to overcome. One of the initial primary issues was: where was this electricity going to come from? For the first hundred years or so, there were six over-riding concerns about commercial electricity generators:
1 - Could they provide large amounts of electricity?
2 - Could they provide reliable and predictable electricity?
3 - Could they provide dispatchable electricity? (a source that can generate higher or lower amounts of power on-demand, i.e. on a human-defined schedule.)
4 - Could they service one or more of the grid demand elements? (i.e., Base Load (the minimum amount of steady rate electric power required 24/7) + Load Following (regulation of power output in response to moment-to-moment changes in system demand, so as to maintain the system within predetermined limits) + Peak Load (the maximum load during a specified period of time.)
5 - Could their facility be compact? (the ability to site an electrical facility on a relatively small and well-defined footprint, preferably near high demand, e.g. cities. This would save on transmission lines which are extremely expensive, unsightly, and produce power loss.)
6 - Could they provide economical electricity?
The implementation of these criteria has resulted in the most successful grid system on the planet.
Many options were proposed to satisfy these six criteria. To maximize public benefit, each was individually and scientifically vetted (before being put on the grid) to ascertain whether the suggested source would comply with all of the needed conditions. Over time, what resulted from these assessments was that we selected the following sources to provide commercial electricity: hydroelectric, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil. (Oil is by far the smallest source, as only about 1% of U.S. electricity comes from that.)
Note that each of these current sources meets ALL of the above six essential criteria — and if they don’t (like oil now being more expensive) then they get replaced, by other conventional sources that do meet all criteria.
As a result, today, and a hundred years from now, these sources can provide ALL of the electrical needs of our society — and continue to meet all six criteria. It’s important to also note that ALL of the primary conventional sources use home-grown energy. Regarding our electrical energy sources, we have always been energy independent…a new element has been recently added to the list of requirements: environmental impact — and the current number one environmental impact consideration is greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. CO2).
Does industrial wind power make a consequential reduction of CO2?
No. Independent scientific study has ever shown that wind power saves a meaningful amount of CO2. In fact, the most independent scientific study done (by the National Academy of Sciences) says the opposite. Their 2007 report concludes that (assuming the most optimistic conditions) the U.S. CO2 savings by 2020 will amount to only 1.8%. An earlier EIA report said 1.3%. These are trivial quantities.
The result of the above deficiencies is that wind power has a Capacity Value of about 10%. Compare this to the conventional sources, where essentially all of them have a Capacity Value over 90%: a stunning disparity.
How can this possibly be? How could the U.S. be on the path to spend over a TRILLION dollars on an electrical source that fails five out of six of our historically important criteria, AND has no scientific proof that it even meets this new emissions criterion?
There is a solution — and it will cost a lot less that a Trillion dollars. 90% of what we do spend should be on improving the conventional sources that already "work." The remaining amount could go towards exploring new options that (by definition) would have to meet or exceed conventional sources (i.e. the six criteria). Then add conservation.
CONSERVATION, WEATHERIZATION, EFFICIENCY
Droz mentions conservation last, when it is actually our lowest hanging fruit. And should be mentioned first. We can all use less. Under the existing scheme, approximately 2/3 of industrial wind power’s installed cost will be provided by taxpayer subsidies. That would be about $4.3 billion dollars in Maine. If $4.3 billion were instead directed to conservation and efficiency programs it would equal more than $10,000 per residential structure in Maine, which could be used for incentives to encourage massive reductions in heating oil usage. This sort of stimulus would put thousands of local construction and mechanical tradespeople to work in sustainable jobs, stimulating Maine’s economy while materially reducing oil usage.