May 2, 2018
Letters, New York

Wind power is wasteful, unhealthy, anything but clean

The Buffalo News | May 2, 2018 | buffalonews.com

Carbon dioxide–emitting gas or coal-fired power stations must be cycled 24/7 due to the 24 percent efficiency rate of wind energy in Western New York, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The environmental costs of forging steel, creating concrete and rare earth metals for turbines are not calculated. Break-even cost of a turbine is 20 years. Wind turbines extract energy from the grid to start, and when stopped still require energy for the controls, lights, communications, sensors, metering, data collection, oil heating, pumps, coolers and gearbox filtering systems – all from fossil fuel. Wind turbines cannot be built, operated or maintained without using fossil fuels.

Through production tax credits, wind receives 20 times more subsidy dollars from the U.S. government than fossil fuel companies, according to the EIA. A total of $733,555,383 in U.S. subsidies and loan guarantees went to EDPR (subsidy tracker), a Western New York wind company, nominally Portuguese, of which, 24 percent went to the Chinese government, a major investor (Reuters).

Turbines produce infrasound, low frequency sound below the human threshold of hearing, also used as a military weapon because inner ear pressure pulses are disorienting. Long-term exposure damages health. Wind is wasteful, unhealthy, and economically disastrous, not clean.

Karen Engstrom

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2018/05/02/wind-power-is-wasteful-unhealthy-anything-but-clean/