November 20, 2021
Letters, Texas

Cost of green energy

Your turn, Nov. 20: Stop ruining the environment. | San Antonio Express-News | Nov. 19, 2021 | www.expressnews.com

Re: “Put damaging fossil fuels in the past,” Other Views, Tuesday:

It appears that the ability to use rational thought is not a requirement to be a professor at Texas A&M University since Andrew Dessler states, “Energy sources like wind and solar whose price – zero! – is set by nature.”

Wind and solar are definitely not free sources of energy. The costs to build and maintain wind farms and solar farms are astronomical. The reliability of those sources is strictly weather dependent. The storage of the energy converted from these is far from free. The only thing free is the wind, if it blows, and the sunlight, if it shines.

The windmills to generate power from these sources are expensive and require regular maintenance. The solar panels are expensive and subject to damage and degradation by the weather. The storage batteries require mining of resources that are limited and the mines, acres of land devoted to wind farms and solar panels, turn pristine landscapes into eyesores.

Louis Levy


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/11/20/cost-of-green-energy/