WIND FIGHTS BACK WITH TRUTH

The Truth about Wind Power in Denmark
Michael Goggin, 15 September 2009 (Into The Wind)

"On September 14, the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a fossil-fuel industry funded group, began distributing a collection of misleading and outright false claims about wind power in Denmark…presented in a…misleading and false manner.

"President Obama is correct that Denmark does produce 20% of its electricity from wind… [P]age 9 of IER’s very own study…[says Denmark met 19% of its demand by wind, 26% in West Denmark, in 2007]…How does IER twist these numbers to claim that Denmark only produces 5% of its electricity from wind? By not counting any electricity that ever flows across the country’s borders…Given that Denmark is a small country integrated into the massive European power grid, the equivalent for the U.S. would be to claim that electricity produced at a power plant in Rhode Island wasn’t actually “produced” if it crossed the border into Massachusetts or Connecticut."

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"The laws of physics (as well as the principles of economics) dictate that electricity will flow from where it is produced to where it is needed…[D]uring the winter, electricity flows from California to the Pacific Northwest to heat homes there, while power flows in the opposite direction to run California’s air conditioners during the summer…It should come as no surprise that wind power is exchanged on the grid in the same way that any other type of electricity, or for that matter any resource, would be exchanged in a market…Given that the U.S.’s electric grid network is about 100 times larger than Denmark’s and is only weakly tied to the grids of our neighbors, almost all wind power electrons produced in the U.S. will be consumed in the U.S. before they have a chance to cross into Canada or Mexico…

"IER’s claim that wind power flowing from Denmark to Scandinavia does not reduce carbon emissions is false. Market forces dictate that wind power added to the electric grid will displace the most expensive sources of electricity first, which will be carbon-emitting gas, coal, and oil-fired power plants…[E]ven if this were an issue in Denmark, it would not be a problem in the U.S. …[W]ind power in the U.S. will almost always directly offset fuel use and emissions at a fossil fuel power plant…In addition, because the U.S.’s land area is 200 times larger than that of Denmark and our wind resources are more diverse, U.S. wind resources will demonstrate much less variability than those in Denmark, making them even easier to integrate into the electric grid."

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"IER’s claim that Denmark has better wind resources than the U.S. is even debunked by their own map. A quick glance at the [wind maps]…is all that is needed to debunk this false claim…[L]arge regions of the U.S. have wind resources rated in excess of 500 Watts/sq-m, with many resource areas exceeding 1000 Watts/sq-m, while only very narrow strips of Denmark have resources that reach 500 Watts/sq-m. …[A] 2008 analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy found that there are over 13,000 GW of viable wind resources in the U.S., around 20 times more than the peak electrical demand of the U.S.

"Denmark’s relatively high electricity costs were not caused by renewables; even IER’s own study says so…[and] a closer look at historical electricity prices in Denmark clearly shows that, adjusting for inflation, the price of electricity increased drastically in the early 1980's and has fairly consistently remained at that level ever since. Because wind energy did not become a significant part of Denmark's generation mix until the late 1990's, it would be difficult to blame wind energy for Denmark's high electricity prices."