With the surge in oil prices, there’s renewed interest in alternative energy options. Numerous countries have gradually taken steps to promoting renewable or clean energy technologies, and it seems the United States is drifting more towards favoring alternative energy options as the Obama Administration is looking at banning off shore drilling along the continental shelf until 2012 and beyond. However, before we move farther down this road, a critical analysis of the pros and cons is a must.

A more serious assessment is now being applied to ethanol and its effect on food production. There’s now more caution on the use of ethanol, based on both economical and moral arguments, and the same approach also needs to be taken when analyzing clean technologies such as the use of wind turbines.

As a recent article in the Mail Online demonstrates, many countries in Europe are currently seeing the unintended consequences of their policies favoring the use of wind power.

The article notes that the wind turbines are proving to be very inefficient:

The most glaring dishonesty peddled by the wind industry — and echoed by gullible politicians — is vastly to exaggerate the output of turbines by deliberately talking about them only in terms of their ‘capacity’, as if this was what they actually produce. Rather, it is the total amount of power they have the capability of producing.

The point about wind, of course, is that it is constantly varying in speed, so that the output of turbines averages out at barely a quarter of their capacity.

This means that the 1,000 megawatts all those 3,500 turbines sited around the country feed on average into the grid is derisory: no more than the output of a single, medium-sized conventional power station.

The wind turbine’s production of energy not only fluctuates based on the varying speeds of the wind, but is also seasonal. For example, Britain’s wind turbines became largely inefficient in the winter when the weather was mostly freezing and windless, and to keep homes warm Britain was forced to import immense amounts of power from nuclear reactors in France.

Furthermore, the article also notes, each country in Europe is required to produce more wind turbines each year which will result in a higher increase of CO2 emissions because of the need to build more gas-fired power stations to function as a back-up energy source when the wind drops. Due to the unreliability of the wind, these gas-fired power stations must run for twenty-four hours a day to be prepared for any moment when the wind may diminish.

The article is also quick to point out how the production and installation of the wind turbines also brings forth an increase in CO2 emissions:

Then, of course, the construction of the turbines generates enormous CO2 emissions as a result of the mining and smelting of the metals used, the carbon-intensive cement needed for their huge concrete foundations, the building of miles of road often needed to move them to the site, and the releasing of immense quantities of CO2 locked up in the peat bogs where many turbines are built.

It is such unintended consequences of wind turbines that possibly make them counterproductive to their stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Like the production of ethanol in the United States, the production of wind turbines in Europe is a market that relies on the government. Wind turbines are very expensive to build, and often require a government subsidy in order to get them built.

Many countries in Europe are seeing the disastrous effects of relying on wind turbines, and some are even beginning to shift away from their reliance on them. Germany, for example, which has produced more turbines than any other country in the world, is now building new coal-fired stations.

Yes, wind turbines were supported with good intentions: to provide clean sustainable energy while also supporting environmental stewardship. However, wind turbines may be actually counter-intuitive to their original goals. While the rising oil prices are having adverse effects on everyone, when searching for alternative fuels, we need to be critical of the potential of unintended consequences they may bring upon us.

Posts on ethanol production and the ethanol subsidy can be found here and here.