Does Wind Power Increase Carbon Emissions? Of Course Not!

It’s always quite amusing to see critics of wind power jump on some piece of dodgy reporting, or half-baked so-called research and use it to further their own anti-wind agenda. Is it a rare bat that has been found dead at the foot of a mast? A turbine that caught fire flashed around the world, or some quack doctor claiming wind turbines can damage human tissue?  Almost inevitably the anti-wind lobby ends up with egg on their faces. Here’s an example:

Some critics of  wind energy have made the headline-grabbing claim that windfarms actually cause a net increase in carbon emissions due to the fact that the vagaries of wind strength cause generating intermittency which means they must be “backed-up” with gas-fired generation.

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The claim seems to have been traced to a Dutch wind critic and retired physicist called Kees le Pair who posted a non-peer reviewed paper on his website last October. The claim was then picked up and disseminated by, among others, the right-leaning thinktank Civitas. Le Pair based his claim on an theorised scenario featuring a hypothetical 300MW windfarm near Schiphol airport. He said his analysis showed that, even on a windy day, a gas-fired power plant would need to be switched on and off throughout the day to cover the farm’s generating intermittency. This, he claimed, would cause a net increase in carbon emissions because it would be more efficient to just have a modern gas-fired power plant do all the generating, rather than having to power up and power down constantly.

But his claim has since been widely and roundly rebuffed. In January, Robert Gross, director of the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College London said:

“Extreme estimates usually result from flawed or overly simplistic methodologies, unrealistic assumptions, or misallocation of costs. UKERC undertook a thoroughgoing review of the evidence base available in 2006 on the costs and impacts of intermittency … Electrical engineering based modelling and simulation and increasingly empirical data from countries where the penetration of windfarms has reached a significant level (such as Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Germany and some US states), demonstrates conclusively that wind does reduce emissions.”

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Robert Gross

Another myth bites the dust- or is perhaps found blowing in the wind….