These ‘energy saving’ ideas from environmentalists like solar panels, windmills and micro cars consume more energy than they produce or save and they subtract from our energy supply. Here’s how:
Consider windmills. The enviros say, “Look! The windmill is spinning around! And it is producing ‘clean energy’ with no pollution!”
And you reply, “But only when the wind blows…”
And they respond, “Yes, but it is ‘clean energy’ that is being added to our energy supply! If this windmill were not producing this energy, we would have less energy, right? And more of our energy would be coming from coal and nuclear and other ‘dirty’ energy sources!”
Nonsense, friends. Don’t let these people fool you. Look at the facts and analyze ‘green energy’ and you will see that it is a total fraud.
First, remember that you must expend energy to create energy. In other words you have to build power plants in order to generate electricity. And it takes lots of energy to build a power plant, whether it be nuclear or coal-fired or natural-gas-fired; to construct a power-generating dam on a river; or to fabricate a windmill.
Then the plant or dam or windmill must produce the amount of energy required to make it before it is “producing” any net energy at all.
And the amount of energy it takes to fabricate a windmill is very high compared to the small amount of energy that it produces. Because windmills are very inefficient.
If you want to read a complete analysis of the fraudulence of wind power, it is here
OK, so in order to manufacture one single windmill you have to expend energy to make the steel for the tower which is often more than 200 feet tall; you have to manufacture all the paint and then paint all that steel; you have to manufacture the three huge blades, sometimes as much as 150 feet long each; and you have to manufacture the multi-ton copper generator itself.
Then you have to manufacture all the other parts (the central steel axle, the housing etc.) and install an elevator inside the tower to take technicians to the top for routine maintenance and servicing. You also have to pour a substantial concrete footing, which also consumes energy to make the concrete and haul it around.
And you often have to take all that material up to a mountaintop to erect it. That takes a lot of energy. Some of it is done by energy-guzzling helicopters. And often new roads have to be cut through the forest to get to the mountaintop. It requires a lot of energy to make those roads.
And remember this very essential economic fact: Wind power contravenes the basic fact of Economies of Scale – that small things like 1 megawatt or 1.5 megawatt windmills are inefficient producers of energy that use resources inefficiently compared to big things like a 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor which uses resources efficiently and generates power efficiently.
That is why, for instance, most people shop at a supermarket and not at a mom-and-pop store; because the big supermarket is very efficient because of its size – Economies of Scale. And that is why it is cheaper and more efficient to generate power in a big nuclear plant hundreds of miles away and to string power lines across the land rather than having an electrical generator in the basement of every home.
Amazing to think about that, is it not? It would not seem to make sense if you thought about it. But it is true.
So you must expend a large amount of energy to manufacture the windmill and install it, then the windmill produces small amounts of electricity very inefficiently only when the wind is blowing.
And if the wind is not blowing, there is no energy. If the wind blows too hard then the windmill shuts down. If the blades ice up the windmill shuts down until the ice melts, sometimes by heating the blades… which consumes electricity.
If the wind is only blowing half-speed the windmill produces less than half the energy because these generators are designed for very specific wind speeds and are inefficient at lower speeds. And if the climate shifts naturally as it always does and there is less wind in any given year, then there will be even less energy.
Windmills also have a high failure rate because they are subjected to environmental stresses like wind shear that stationary power plants do not face. That too is extremely inefficient, to have to replace windmills that break down or destroy themselves. This is a serious and costly maintenance need above and beyond the usual maintenance requirements of a nuclear plant that further reduces the overall efficiency ratio of windmills.
And of course windmills kill birds and make some people sick.
So it takes years before the windmill even produces as much energy as it took to manufacture it, many more years than a standard power plant because the standard power plant (nuclear, coal etc.) is generating at much higher rates (about three times as many hours of the year) than the windmill does. And the nuclear plant actually uses much less in the way of resources per megawatt produced because of Economies of Scale.
Then enviros say, “Well then, we should put the windmills out in the ocean where the wind blows all the time…”
Nonsense. The Dutch tried it over the past 10 years and they now are shutting them down. Because it is twice as expensive or more to put them at sea. You have to drill down into the sea bed (very expensive) for the footings, and you often must install much bigger towers to reach down to the ocean floor, sometimes many hundreds of feet.
Then you have to build all of the components with much more expensive materials like stainless steel to resist salt corrosion. And you have to lay expensive corrosion-proofed cables miles out into the sea to reach the windmills to bring the power to land.
And most significantly all of the government subsidy money needed for inefficient wind energy – money that comes from taxpayers including taxes on electric utilities – is drawing valuable capital from our efficient energy supply like nuclear. This is severely harming our overall energy supply.
Now think about photo-electric solar panels. They are generally built in aluminum cases, with glass on the front side and the photovoltaic layer in between. They are very heavy. It takes a lot of energy to make heavy stuff.
Oftentimes you will see larger panels mounted on steel or aluminum supports out in a field somewhere. It takes energy to manufacture those supports, particularly if they are aluminum which is energy-intensive to make.
Then the panels produce very small amounts of energy in return. In the Northeastern US, for instance, they only actually produce energy for about one of every 8 hours in the year (12%) because solar panels obviously do not work at night; there are many days that are cloudy, snowy and rainy; while on sunny days the panels produce little or nothing in the morning or the evening before and after the sun is high in the sky.
Yet we need power 24 hours a day. Meanwhile a nuclear plant operates about 75% of the year. (No machine can possibly operate 100% while 75% is considered efficient.)
It takes years before solar panels even produce enough energy to make up for the energy consumed in making them. And if they come from China, you have to account for all the energy needed to transport them from China to the US.
Then when the solar panels get dirty or covered with pollen in the Spring they produce even less energy. So who’s got all the Windex to clean them? This would be an extremely labor-intensive and costly process; that is why they never are cleaned and why they become less and less efficient until rain washes them, although that is never thorough.
Meanwhile after it snows solar panels can be covered for days or weeks, producing zero energy.
Solar energy is a total fraud.
And most significantly, all of the government subsidy money needed for inefficient solar energy – money that comes from the taxpayers including taxes on electric utilities – is drawing valuable capital from our efficient energy supply like nuclear. This is severely harming our overall energy supply.
And these solar panels have to be replaced after 25 years. So finally after they actually are producing a net plus of energy after years in service, they need to be replaced. Then the new panels require that same large amount of energy to manufacture and the same “payback time” before they are producing a net plus of energy. And solar panels contain toxic elements like cadmium. They need to be disposed of under strict enviro laws.
Then think about this: You should never, ever, ever poke holes in the roof of your house to install solar panels. Never. Because a good roof is your first defense against the weather; any carpenter will tell you that. Yet the solar installers, many of whom are hired off the street and know nothing about carpentry, poke dozens of big holes in your roof and destroy the integrity of the most valuable part of your house. Who knows how many homes have been ruined by solar panels.
Finally, I, Nikitas priced solar panels for my house in New England. My house uses about $600 worth of electricity per year, but the panels would cost… drum roll, please… $31,000!
Yes, thirty-one thousand dollars!
And then the only reason you would buy then is because the government – your taxpaying neighbor – pays for most of the cost in the form of a tax rebate (up to $20,000 federal and state) on the $31,000.
Solar panels are a totally fake energy source.
Now consider the micro car. You’ve certainly seen an environmentalist driving his tiny bug of a car around town and acting like he is saving the earth and is better than everyone else.
Not so fast…
OK, if the micro car is his only car, then fine. He is using less energy than he would with a bigger car. But the micro car is also more likely to be totally destroyed in an accident, needing to be completely replaced. This is very inefficient. And the driver is much more likely to be hurt or killed.
But often the micro car is a second car. The enviro theory is this: “I will drive my bigger car on long trips, but then I will drive my micro car around town to save energy.”
But what that really means is that all of the energy needed to manufacture the micro car is extra energy. Because it is an extra car. Right? You need to make the steel and the tires and the seats and the engine and all the other parts. The micro car then needs to be shipped to the dealer from the manufacturer.
And what’s worse, the micro car then only saves some of the energy that a bigger car would use. So let’s say your micro car saves 25 gallons of gasoline a year over your regular car driving around town. Wow! Big savings! says Mr. Ecology. I am really helping the environment!
Not so fast. Because imagine hypothetically that it took 2,000 gallons of equivalent energy to manufacture the micro car. That would mean that it would take 80 years of driving the micro car around town just to save the same amount of energy expended to manufacture it.
See how phony all these ‘green energy’ ideas are?
These examples show how “green energy” wastes more energy that it produces. And these are things that environmentalists never, ever want you to think about.
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