In an op-ed this morning, Crimson columnist and HPRgument blogger Eli Martin argues that “wind energy is not as perfect as it might appear; a closer inspection reveals that it does not meaningfully reduce our reliance on non-renewable energy sources.”
The gist of Eli’s argument is that the “unpredictability of wind power” requires about 80 percent backup power, which “means that wind energy will actually sustain, not replace, our reliance on non-renewables.” This is too clever, since any kilowatt-hour produced by a wind turbine and used by an electric customer can replace a kilowatt-hour produced by a coal or gas plant.
While intermittency (what I suspect Eli means by unpredictability) is a big problem for wind power, it is not cause to abandon all wind projects. Eli gets one big fact wrong when he writes that wind energy “cannot be stored for later use.” See pumped storage. We could also adjust the times when we use electricity to accommodate the time when wind power is produced, for example by charging electric cars at night. It’s not as if we’d have to throw out all of the wind electricity produced at the times of day when it’s windy or when we use electricity following current patterns.
Even if we accept that wind energy needs backup, (a) it’s better to have a natural gas plant running a few non-windy days each month than to have them running all year, and (b) the backup could potentially include other renewable sources, not just fossil fuels.
Another strain of argument, that “wind farms frequently end up being a blight on nature,” depends on a definition of environmentalism which I think creates a straw man. I exaggerate a bit, but I would consider Eli’s implicit definition of environmentalism to be the belief that we should protect the remote, the pristine, the pretty. While there are undoubtedly environmentalists who think this way, there are certainly alternate definitions which would lead to a completely different view of wind turbines; for example, I think that our primary environmental need is to protect the environments where people live. I would definitely accept (arguably) ugly, noisy wind turbines in every national park if they could help slow global warming and keep New Orleans above water.
Wind energy is one of the most economic renewable energy resources we have in North America, and it is also one with an enormous potential for total energy production. We can’t afford either to accept its intermittency issues as impossible to mitigate or to overthink their implications.
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