Energy Tribune
Today, the Governor’s Wind Energy Coalition, a group that represents governors from 29 states, will send a report to Congress and the White House urging the federal government to increase use of wind energy and to require utilities to derive 10% or more of their electricity from renewable sources no later than 2012.
The glossy 16-page report, called “Great Expectations: US Wind Energy Development,” is more of a brochure than a plan. And as is typical when politicians start talking about energy, the phrase “energy independence” rears its ugly head. In a letter that was sent to congressional leaders and President Barack Obama, the coalition’s chairman, Iowa Democratic Gov. Chet Culver, and its vice chairman, GOP Gov. Donald Carcieri of Rhode Island, declared that they wanted to work with Congress and the White House to “achieve one of the nation’s principal energy goals, energy independence, and increasing the role that wind energy plays in meeting that challenge.”
The report itself offers up the bogeyman of foreign oil as a key adversary that can only be slain by using more wind turbines. Oh, and of course, more wind energy will create “green jobs.” The report says that more mandates and subsidies for the wind industry will spur “investments that create thousands of good jobs that are critical to stabilizing our states’ and the nation’s economy. It will also reduce total consumer energy costs over time, diminish our dependence on foreign oil, decrease the trade deficit, and lessen carbon emissions.”
Of course, the report offers no proof that any of those benefits will actually come to fruition, but it says that “many policy makers” – note that it doesn’t say who those policy makers are – “are pressing for an accelerated move toward vehicle electrification as a means to improve both our national energy and economic security by diminishing our reliance on imported oil.”
While those claims are spurious at best, the real howler comes on page seven of the report, where the governors claim that having a national renewable energy policy will “improve the reliability of the nation’s power system, and reduce electricity generation costs for some consumers.”
Now, perhaps it’s not surprising that the governors are parroting the lines put forward by wind industry lobbyists. But the claim that wind industry will decrease electricity costs is just flat not true.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Administration agree that wind-generated electricity is among the most-expensive options when it comes to making electricity. In its 2009 World Energy Outlook, the IEA projected that onshore wind developments will be producing electricity at a cost of $94 per megawatt-hour between 2015 and 2020. That’s far more expensive than combined-cycle gas turbines, which the IEA expects will be able to produce power for about $78 per megawatt-hour.
International Energy Agency’s Projected Costs For Commercial Electricity Generation Plants That Begin Operations From 2015 to 2020
Source: IEA, 2009 World Energy Outlook
In December, the Energy Information Administration, published its Annual Energy Outlook, which contained the table below. The EIA’s estimates are even higher than those put out by the IEA, putting wind energy costs at about $149 per megawatt hour, a price that is nearly 50% higher than that of a conventional coal-fired power plant and nearly 80% higher than that of a conventional gas-fired combined cycle power plant.
Energy Information Administration’s Estimated Costs of New Generation Resources, 2016
Source: EIA, 2010 Energy Outlook
Alas, it appears that none of the 29 governors bothered to question the hype over wind energy. And now that the governors are advocating the increased use of wind turbines, expect Congress and/or the White House to accommodate them. The result of these new mandates and subsidies are all too easy to predict: higher electricity bills are on the way.
Original file available here: http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=3521
