Wind turbines dot many landscapes today, but are they efficient sources of energy?
The polar vortex along with the ice and snow storms that swept through most of the United States during the past couple weeks tested the electrical grids in many states up to their breaking point. Even so, millions lost power while a great many others experienced periodic outages.
According to NBC News’ Gabe Gutierrez, officials with the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) acknowledged that the Texas power grid was “seconds or minutes — not hours — away from catastrophic failure.” ERCOT implemented rolling blackouts to stop the situation from becoming far worse that it would have otherwise been.
At the height of the power emergency in Texas, nearly half of its wind turbines froze as the result of the ice and snow. No one is placing all the blame on frozen wind turbines for the many power grid problems during the recent outbreak of winter weather. However, they were clearly a significant contributing factor to the power outages that occurred.
Frozen wind turbines and solar panels covered with snow tells us these sources of “renewable energy” can never replace traditional sources of power such as coal and natural gas that do not require favorable weather conditions in order to provide electrical energy and heat for our homes.
Frozen Wind Turbines
While wind turbines can add needed megawatts to the power grid, they failed the recent test of reliability. The problem, however, is deeper than just a failure to operate under severe winter conditions that occur each year in the U.S.
In an article by Christine Favocci, published February 15, 2021 in The Western Journal, she wrote this about the fact that wind turbines actually drain power from the power grid in severe weather:
The conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment has revealed that wind turbines in Minnesota and North Dakota built by Minnesota Power, Otter Tail Power and Xcel Energy will not only stop producing electricity but may also start consuming it.
In order to prevent damage to the motor, the turbines are heated to keep the components and their fluids from freezing. During the 2019 polar vortex, that safeguard drew 2 megawatts from the power grid.
Even for solar panels, which actually perform better in colder temperatures, the problem of ice and snow blocking out the light with no efficient way to clear each panel could render them useless.
During outbreaks of severe winter weather, wind turbines can actually use up needed electrical power just to keep them operational for future use.
When one considers the energy needed to create the parts for the windmills, transport them to the location, and establish a foundation for them, it’s quite likely that a wind turbine requires more energy to produce and put in operation than it will ever produce in its entire lifetime of twenty years.
Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a McCormick School of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, provides the following details of what id needed for one wind turbine:
48 tons of reinforcing steel bar
538 tons of concrete requiring 53 trucks to deliver it to the site
The clearing of 1,650 tons of topsoil
8 truckloads to deliver the turbine components[i]
To put one windmill in operation requires 900 tons of material as well as a considerable amount of fossil fuel for the trucks to bring all the materials and components to the site. The processes of making the steel and the concrete for the windmill also emit a great amount of carbon dioxide.[ii]
Mark P. Mills in his article, What’s Wrong with Wind and Solar, said this about the usefulness of windfarms to provide energy, “Building a single 100-megawatt windfarm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades.”[iii] Are not fossil fuels used in the production of plastics?
Once in operation, the windmill’s gearbox requires sixty gallons of oil in order to remain operational and someone must change the oil on a periodic basis. Once in place, each windmill remains dependent on fossil fuel requiring six hundred to one thousand gallons of oil each and every year.
The Problem with Car Batteries
What about electric cars that run on batteries? Does this hold the promise of getting rid of fossil fuels? No, they also fail the test of sustainability.
What would have happened in Texas if there had been millions of battery-operated cars also plugged into the electrical grid? Would that not have tipped the electrical grid in Texas far into the realm of catastrophic failure?
Sara Burrows, in a February 8, 2021 articles called The Spiraling Environmental Costs of Lithium Batteries Could Rival Fossil Fuel, wrote about her concerns with the Lithium needed for car batteries:
As we move into the era of “renewable” electricity, let us remember that the minerals used to make the batteries, used to store that electricity, are not renewable… or recyclable.
And the number of batteries we are going to need to meet the electricity needs of 8 billion people (16 billion in 50 years or so at the current population doubling rate) is enormous.
Every electric car battery requires around 25 pounds of lithium. And renewable energy grid storage systems for our homes and workplaces will require much more. Every smartphone, tablet, laptop and other battery powered device is also reliant on the “white gold.”
“Demand for lithium is increasing exponentially,” Wired reports. It doubled between 2016 and 2018, and is expected to be 8 times higher by 2027.[iv]
Besides lithium, car batteries that weigh 1,000 pounds also require cobalt and nickel. These items require massive mining activities in other parts of the world. Mark Mills wrote this about the need for materials in the production of car batteries, “At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.”[v]
The Devastating Environmental Cost of “Renewable Energy”
The so-called green pathways to “renewable energy” also fail the test of preserving the environment.
Sara Burrows wrote this about the great environmental damage that comes from mining the ingredients needed for car batteries:
Lithium mining inevitably harms the soil, pollutes the air, and especially pollutes the water, according to a report by Friends of the Earth.
“Like any mining process, it is invasive, it scars the landscape, destroys the water table, and pollutes the earth and local wells,” says Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile.
In Tibet, it is becoming commonplace to see masses of dead fish, yaks and cows floating downstream of a lithium mine on the Liqi River. . . .
And, although it’s the most abundant, lithium isn’t even the most problematic ingredient of lithium ion batteries.
Cobalt and nickel are quickly becoming the new “blood diamonds” of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both are extremely toxic when pulled from the ground, often using child labor without protective equipment.
And, to top it all off, lithium-ion batteries are not recyclable, leaving their toxic contents to leach into landfills and ground water.[vi]
Wind turbines also fail the test of preserving the environment.
Besides the thousands of birds killed during the lifetime of wind turbine farms, the matter of disposing of worn-out parts from windmills has also become a significant problem across the world. Windmills wear out and create a huge need for landfill space in which to dispose of them as seen in the picture below.
Wind turbines have a life expectancy of 20 years, which creates a huge landfill issues.
Those who proclaim that “green energy” is good for the environment either do not recognize the fallacy of such a statement or seek to purposely deceive others regarding its significant damage to the world’s ecology.
A Return to the Stone Age
Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels says eliminating all fossil fuels would reduce the average earth temperature by .14 degrees Celsius. “That’s a very small change for putting humanity back in the Stone Age.”[vii] He understands the disastrous and deadly impact of the Marxist agenda behind those leading the charge for the elimination of fossil fuels.
In order for to supply food for just the population of the United States, we would need lithium batteries for the millions of trucks that deliver food from the farm and later to the stores. Not only that, but we now have millions of farm tractors and harvesters that use fossil fuel. How is it even conceivable to replace batteries in all the trucks and farm equipment upon which we depend for food?
Not only is it impossible to place lithium batteries in every car, truck, and piece of farm equipment with batteries, the process itself would wreak havoc on the ecology of the earth with the vast amount of mining that would require and vastly increase the cost everything involved in getting food to our grocery stores.
The radical agenda behind the Green New Deal in the United States and the UN’s Agenda 2030 would greatly increase fuel costs, which has already begun since Joe Biden took up residence in the White House. Such policies will also send food prices through the roof, which would devastate the lower class in America and virtually eliminate the middle class.
If fully implemented, the Green New Deal as espoused the radical left in America would become a financial bonanza for the rich and powerful. For everyone else, it would become an economic nightmare that would only get worse with each passing year. I believe Dr. Pat Michaels is correct in saying this and the Agenda 2030 espoused by the UN would push us toward the “stone age.”
The environmental policies of the left will disproportionately harm the poor and those on fixed incomes while providing the rich with much more wealth and a great deal more power.
The Urgency of Our Day
The climate alarmists tell us that we must act now in order to save our planet; John Kerry recently said that we only have nine years left, which ties in rather nicely with Agenda 2030 of the UN.
In 2007, Al Gore told us that by 2014 , the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would completely vanish along with the artic polar cap. These events, he claimed, would cause sea levels around the world to rise twenty feet. Just like all similar predictions of impending environmental doom that we have heard since 1970, Gore’s forecasts of doom proved to be utterly false.
Do you know that the first warning of impending flooding for coastal cities due to climate change appeared in the Washington Post on November 2, 1922? Warnings of environmental doom are not new and have a long track record of being false.
The urgency of our day does not arise from any impending climate emergency or even from COVID-19. The urgency of our time is that of Jesus’ soon appearing, which will precede a horrible time of death and destruction on the earth that the Bible calls the tribulation.
All other “emergencies” pale greatly in significance when compared with the nearness of this time when God pours out His wrath on a Christ-rejecting world.
For those outside of Christ, now is the time to place your faith in Him. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Just hours before His death on cross in our place, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
I love the simplicity of the Apostle John’s words in 1 John 5:11-12: “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Knowing Jesus as your Savior equals eternal life.
Please do not delay; call upon Him now! Tomorrow may quite literally be too late to avoid the terrible time of death and destruction that may arrive sooner than anyone can imagine.
For those securely in the arms of the Savior, now is the time to recognize you may soon be with Jesus in paradise via the Rapture. Please place your hope in Jesus’ imminent appearing to take us to the place He’s preparing for us (John 14:1-3).
Our bright hope in world overshadowed by deception, evil, and violence is the Rapture.
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[i] Mark P. Mills and Alexander Akley R. A/, “Destructive Myth of Green Energy: If you Want ‘Renewable Energy” Get Ready to Destroy the Environment.” August 6, 2019, from the International Chronicles website
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid
[iv] Sara Burrows, The Spiraling Environmental Costs of Lithium Batteries Could Rival Fossil Fuel, at: https://returntonow.net/2021/02/09/the-spiraling-environmental-costs-of-lithium-batteries-could-rival-fossil-fuel/
[v] Mark P. Mills, 41 Inconvenient Truths on the "New Energy Economy,” at: https://fee.org/articles/41-inconvenient-truths-on-the-new-energy-economy/
[vi] Sara Burrows, The Spiraling Environmental Costs of Lithium Batteries Could Rival Fossil Fuel
[vii] John Stossal, “Climate Myths” from November 20, 2019 on the Stossal TV Website @ https://www.johnstossel.com/climate-myths/