wind power

U.S. Blows Hard at Chinese Wind Power Subsidies

by Fran Smith on December 23, 2010

in Energy, Ethanol, International, Sanctimony, Trade

Well, the U.S. has taken it one step further — it has gone to the World Trade Organization for “consultations” about China’s green energy subsidies, specifically for wind power manufacturing. As a result of investigations triggered by a United Steelworkers’ complaint, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced on December 22, 2010, that the U.S. is requesting consultations with China under the WTO’s dispute settlement provisions.

The U.S. says that under China’s Special Fund for Wind Power Manufacturing program,

. . . China appears to provide subsidies that are prohibited under WTO rules because the grants awarded under the program seem to be contingent on Chinese wind power equipment manufacturers using parts and components made in China rather than foreign-made parts and components.

According to a USTR press release, China is giving large grants to Chinese manufacturers of wind turbines and their components while excluding foreign parts manufacturers.

The size of individual grants currently available under the Special Fund for Wind Power Manufacturing ranges between $6.7 million and $22.5 million, and the recipients of these grants – Chinese manufacturers of wind turbines and Chinese manufacturers of parts and components for wind turbines – can receive multiple grants as the size of the wind turbine models increases. USTR estimates that grants provided under this program since 2008 could total several hundred million dollars.

These consultations are the first stage of the WTO’s dispute settlement process. In many cases, the parties at this point will reach an agreement to resolve the issue.  If agreement isn’t reached, the next stage is more serious and formal — it involves adjudication by a WTO panel and perhaps by the Appellate Body, and then the ruling’s implementation.

Some observers caution that the U.S. should be wary, as it could face challenges to its own funding of green energy programs and its “Buy American” program:

In President Obama’s stimulus bill, $71 billion was dedicated to clean energy funding, with an additional $20 billion for loan guarantees and tax incentives to support clean energy projects.  President Obama’s budget proposes $150 billion over ten years in clean energy and efficiency programs.  Clean energy job creation is also one of the central tenets of the Administration’s new Middle Class Task Force.  Given these policies, and other proposals pending in Congress, the United States needs to tread carefully in denouncing green-energy subsidies as violations of WTO rules.

In terms of green energy, the best approach is to let the market work, without subsidies that distort that market. Government support through green subsidies and incentives for particular industries, whether by foreign governments such as China or by the United States, are a form of industrial policy intervention to pick winners (and losers) and can lead to unintended consequences in addition to the trade implications, e.g., heavy support for corn ethanol and its effect on food prices and the environment.

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Constructive criticism on my wind farms blog

by Michael Fumento on February 9, 2010

in Odds & Ends

Regarding yesterday’s blog post, “The objections to wind farms,” I received constructive criticism contained wholly in the subject line, which I repeat verbatim:

“The Objections to Wind Farms – you — a–r-e an idot.” [sic]

I stand duly chastened.

The Objections to Wind Farms

by Michael Fumento on February 8, 2010 · 2 comments

in Energy

Despite massive subsidies, wind power still only provides about two percent of U.S. energy. Part of the problem is inherent. It takes a lot of turbines to produce the power that a single coal-fired or nuke plant can produce. So wind farms are going to comprise a lot of turbines. And that causes problems, as we’ve been seeing in a 10-year fight over constructing a 130-turbine offshore wind farm near Martha’s Vineyard.

It would be the first offshore wind project in the country and furnish about 75 percent of Cape Cod’s energy.

Ian Bowles, the Massachusetts energy and environmental affairs secretary, has called the project “symbolic of America’s struggle with clean energy. Its symbolism has risen above the number of megawatts.”

Although some protests have been dealt with, including potential hindrance to navigation and fishing and harm to birds, Indians are still against it. (I used to say “native Americans” until once when I was interviewing two of them and I kept saying “native Americans” and they kept referring to themselves as “Indians.”)

The Indians in the area practice a sunrise ritual on the sound and also say they may have artifacts buried beneath the seabed, according to the Washington Post. They’ve gotten the sound qualified for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, which could restrict its commercial use.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says that although his department is trying to broker a deal between the tribes and Energy Management, the company seeking to build the farm, “I’m not holding my breath for a consensus.” If both sides can’t settle on a compromise by April, he says, he’s going to just lay down the law himself in April and probably tick off everybody.

Michael Moynihan, director of the Green Project at NDN, a centrist think tank, told the Post, “It is emblematic of the difficulty of getting wind online, anywhere in America, with a system designed a century ago that is frankly hostile to renewable energy.”

Right. If it were just a few tightly-bunched turbines, it wouldn’t be a problem. But these farms, in addition to things like chopping up birds and bats have a big and obvious footprint.

Compare that with the nearest power plant to my home, which I often pass on my bike rides. It’s small, but probably provides more power than hundreds of turbines. Nonetheless, being coal-powered it drew the ire of a number of local residents. So the owners did something really smart. They built a wooden wall around the plant, then painted a very nice mural on it depicting local history.

This being the land of George Washington, the murals include such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. The wall isn’t that high, yet it’s enough so that if you didn’t already know the plant was there you wouldn’t know it was there. It has smokestacks, but you never see anything come out of them. The only ugly aspect was the coal pile, and it’s now obscured.

Out of sight, out of mind. But you can’t do that with wind. Solar has its own problem, also based on inefficiency, in that it requires huge tracts of land for all the panels needed.

But if you’re looking for new facilities that don’t produce greenhouse gas emissions there is a fourth solution. Nuclear power. A natural gas-burning power plant under construction has just exploded, killing five people. Every year, American coal miners die violently in mines or slowly from exposure to coal dust. Nuclear power in this country has never killed anybody. No birds, no bats, and most importantly no humans. That’s also true in France, where 70 percent of their power comes from nukes.

And today’s nuke plant designs are less prone to accidents than ever.

The writing is on the wall. Go nuclear.

Windmills for spite

by Michael Fumento on October 11, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Features, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

“Clean Energy Splits France: It’s Carbon vs. Countryside in Environmental Battle Over Plan for Windmills Near Coastal Shrine.” So reads the Washington Post headline.

But is it?

The article concerns three windmills that some fear will obstruct the view of the awesome Mont St. Michelle Abby on the French coast, which becomes an island at high tides. Yet the article also points out that France is very accepting of nuclear power, which provides about 80% of the nation’s energy needs. Another 10% comes from hydro. And the number of windmills in question, three, provide less energy than the smallest nuclear plant made – which is to say those on naval warships.

No, this isn’t really about energy. It’s about politics. It’s making a statement. And quite literally, an ugly one.mont-saint-michel-lemont1

LibertyWeek 36: We Go Green

by Richard Morrison on April 1, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist join Michelle Minton in welcoming you to LibertyWeek 36: The Green Episode. We begin our environmental adventure with an update on the high cost of renewable energy and the good news from the coal laboratory. We then pass on advice for drinking green in Beer News and celebrate the recent observance of Human Achievement Hour. This brings us to the featured interview with our distinguished colleague and author Steve Milloy – where we explore his new book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them and its targets, from the Audubon Society to Zero Population Growth. Finally we round out the program with a little Olympic News.

Stimulating Alternative Energy

by Iain Murray on January 9, 2009 · 4 comments

in Environment, Global Warming, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere

In his speech on the stimulus package Thursday, President (Elect) Obama promised to double alternative energy use in three years. How likely is this?

Well, for a start we don’t use much alternative energy to begin with – slightly less than 7 quadrillion BTU of the 101 quads we use as a nation annually. Of those 7, 2 quads are related to the use of wood as fuel, something which is not normally viewed as environmentally friendly, and 2.5 are hydropower, an energy source once thought as environmentally friendly but now usually opposed as destructive. Of the remaining 2.5 quads, biofuels provide about 1 quad, and biofuels have become increasingly controversial and opposed – rightly – by many green environmental groups (source for these figures here).

So the more “acceptable” forms of renewable energy – “waste” biomass, geothermal, wind and solar – only provide just over 1 quad between them. Wind provides 319 trillion BTU and solar just 80. If these two forms of renewable energy are going to form the basis of Obama’s promise, the increase in scale needed to provide 7 quads between them in three years is simply inconceivable. A seventeenfold increase in these forms of energy would be a vast achievement, and one that would surely be trailed in the speech. It would presumably also require at least a seventeenfold increase in subsidies ($740 million in 2007 – see Table ES5 here) to about $13 billion annually, about the same as the Detroit bailout.

It seems likely, therefore, that, while there will be some wind and solar investment, perhaps some significant amounts, to meet a target of an extra 7 quads of energy, the only feasible source that is scalable to the intense required will be biofuels, but even that will require a massive expansion, and one that will have significant implications for crop prices, food prices and land use. The consequences may prove unacceptable to all but the agribusiness lobby and farm state politicians.

So it seems likely that the target of doubling the use of renewable energy does not actually refer to the full range of renewables at all, but just to those “acceptable” alternatives. This would imply that the target is only 1 extra quad of renewable energy by 2011, which, while it would represent a significant expansion of those industries, would amount to just a “drop in the bucket” of total US energy use. And, as we hear in the debate over ANWR every time it comes up, a “drop in the bucket” is just not worth doing…

It appears that this part of the stimulus package is, at most, a shibboleth.