Tag: wind turbines

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Meet ‘Just the Facts’ on Renewable Energy Myths and Realities

Hardly a day goes by without luminaries of the left like Vermont’s Independent Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders pumping half-truths, undocumented claims, and outright lies about the evils of fossil fuels versus the saintly characteristics of renewables like solar and wind power.

Here’s a typical example of the routine sort of cant Sanders deals on energy issues: “At a time when solar and wind are the cheapest forms of new energy in the world, Trump wants to open a BILLION acres of US water to oil drilling. Why? To line the pockets of his fossil fuel billionaire friends. The rest of the world moves forward, we get left behind.”

Thanks to the sharp-eyed researchers working for James Agresti’s Just Facts (based in Conroe, Texas), exposing the fallacies and fables in Sanders’ energy claims is no more difficult than a mouse click and a few minutes of illuminating reading. Apparently it’s not easy enough for editors and reporters at major mainstream media outlets to check out claims like those peddled by Sanders before publishing them as reliable.

Consider these 14 points from a Just Facts evaluation of the Sanders tweet quoted above:

  • The assertion that solar and wind are “cheap” is based on a metric called “levelized costs,” which fails to account for the fact that wind and solar don’t produce energy when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. Thus, they must be backed up by expensive energy storage systems or technologies that generate electricity on demand, like natural gas.
  • Due to the unreliability of solar and wind, the U.S. Energy Information Administration warns that its levelized costs for solar and wind “are not directly comparable to those for other technologies,” a vital fact that proponents of wind and solar often ignore.
  • After 40+ years of the U.S. government aggressively subsidizing solar and wind while discouraging the use of fossil fuels through taxes and regulations, solar and wind provided only 6.6% of all U.S. energy in 2024.
  • In addition to the federal government, some states have subsidized solar and wind so heavily that the New York Times reported in 2024 that “thousands” of “renewable energy” companies “are reeling” from a reduction in only one California solar subsidy, causing a “sharp decline” in rooftop solar installations.
  • Per a 2024 report by the International Energy Agency, “Although renewable energy technologies are becoming more cost-competitive,” “roughly 87% of global renewable utility-scale capacity growth in 2023–2028 is expected to be stimulated by policy schemes” in which “government policy is the primary driver for the investment decision.”
  • Despite claims from politicians like Gavin Newsom that solar is the “cheapest form of energy,” his state of California — which gets more of its electricity from solar than any other state — has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or more than twice the national average. This elevated rate doesn’t even account for all of the government spending on solar that is borne by taxpayers instead of consumers.
  • In Germany, which is a “global leader in sustainable energy production,” the average price of household electricity is 3.5 times that of the United States.
  • A diverse array of scholarly publications document that affordable energy is “essential for public health and economic prosperity,” while high energy prices drive up hunger, drive down wages, stoke unemployment, and harm people in a wide variety of other ways.
  • While admitting that “past economic growth and poverty reduction have been associated with high GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions,” a 2024 World Bank report calls for “trade-offs” because “ending poverty for the 3 billion people who struggle on less than $6.85 a day would come at a high cost to the environment.”
  • Contrary to claims that green energy subsidies create “good paying” jobs, they actually enrich selected investors while neglecting workers. As explained in scholarly publications like the encyclopedia Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, the financial benefits of renewable energy subsidies “largely accrue to the owners of capital” because “energy development” is “capital-intensive,” and growth in “the green jobs sector does not necessarily imply net job creation” since it reduces the jobs “that would have been produced from fossil fuels,” and thus, “net job creation may be zero (or negative).”
  • Western Europe’s abandonment of fossil fuel production and nuclear energy has left it heavily dependent on Russia for energy.
  • A shell company in Bermuda with deep ties to Vladimir Putin and Russian oil companies has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups that oppose fracking.
  • A 2021 Bloomberg report documents that Communist China dominates global supply chains for key components of the solar industry, including 78% of the world’s supply of solar cells.
  • A 2025 report by the International Energy Agency states that the “battery supply chain” for electric vehicles has become “increasingly geographically concentrated” in China, which was “responsible for 80% of global battery cell production in 2024.” The report also states that “China has also established a near monopoly on battery components production.”

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NY’s ‘green elephant’ climate projects are collapsing under the weight of . . . math

Nearly two dozen New York clean energy projects are likely to get scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — though the state powers that be don’t want to admit that it never did.

Officially, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, is simply refusing to renegotiate state contracts to build various wind and solar plants, likely leading its counterparties to pull out.

These companies want more cash because the projects’ costs have soared since the deals were inked — mainly because NYSERDA winked at unlikely early estimates with an expectation that it would OK more realistic numbers later on.

In at least one earlier round, it simply rebid the contracts to reflect true costs, but that game is up now that those costs are becoming undeniable, and consumers are already screaming at the electric rate hikes needed to cover the bills.

It’s all part of the con that is New York’s 2019 Climate Act, a scam that set insane goals for decarbonizing the state’s electricity grid and outlined imaginary steps to paint the transition as practical. 

Green ideologues always figure deception is the best way to get governments started on such “reforms,” hoping they can then hector the politicians into keeping the scam going by concealing how exorbitant the costs really are.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped on board as he eyed a presidential run; his successor, Kathy Hochul, declined to call out the lunacy until now, when she’s running for re-election as the economic pain starts to hit.

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Wyoming: A thorough assessment of the threat wind turbines pose to eagles needs to be done

A programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment (“EIA”) is a comprehensive analysis of the cumulative impacts of the massive wind development underway in Wyoming. The growing adverse impact on golden eagles and other wildlife is especially disturbing. What can be done to limit the damage is a big part of the assessment.

There is National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) language for this. It is called a “Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)” looking at “cumulative effects.” The Feds completed two back in 2024. The first one was for multiple offshore wind projects in the New York Bight. They then completed one for the five proposed floating wind projects off California. These are good precedents for Wyoming.

Of course, both these offshore wind studies were Biden-era greenwash jobs that mostly ignored the obvious adverse impact on protected whales and other marine mammals. This does not mean that a good PEIS cannot be done for Wyoming.

A good start on the PEIS issues can be found in the numerous comments already filed in opposition to individual Wyoming wind projects. For example, the Two Rivers Project received over a hundred pages of detailed technical comments, many regarding the extreme threat to golden eagles. Two Rivers is part of what is called the growing “wall of wind” in southeastern Wyoming.

The Two Rivers comments are HERE.

One of the best is “Comments on Environmental Assessment of the Two Rivers Wind Energy Project on behalf of National Audubon Society and the Wyoming Outdoor Council.” It is really a 17-page research report including lots of data and maps. See letter #16 of 18 [see below].

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Trump Admin Strikes Deal With Energy Firm to Nix Offshore Wind Plans

A global energy corporation based in France has ceded leases off North Carolina and New York, where it planned to spend nearly $1 billion to build offshore wind turbines, back to the U.S. Department of the Interior and will instead redirect that investment into natural gas projects in Texas.

The “landmark agreement” was jointly announced by the department and TotalEnergies in Washington on March 23 and confirmed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné during a press conference at the 44th annual CERAWeek by S&P Global conference at the Hilton Americas-Houston.

Burgum said much of TotalEnergies’ offshore wind investments were tied to Biden-era “green energy” subsidies rather than direct power generation, forcing U.S. taxpayers “to pay for energy sources twice.”

“They were paying for it in terms of high utility bills, but they were all paying for it in terms of the taxpayer subsidies,” he said.

Under the agreement, the department will reimburse TotalEnergies “dollar for dollar” for the $928 million it spent on securing the leases, much of that placed in bonds required to develop federal lands, in exchange for the company agreeing to reinvest that money into a Texas LNG project it was already developing.

The vacated offshore leases were acquired in 2022. They are in the Carolina Long Bay area off North Carolina and in the New York Bight off Long Island.

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Wind Turbines Are Killing Bald Eagles—And China Is Cashing In

For more than a decade, Western governments promoted wind energy as a straightforward solution to complex energy and geopolitical problems. Wind power was marketed as clean, inexpensive, and strategically essential—capable of creating jobs, reducing emissions, and limiting reliance on foreign suppliers. 

That argument spread quickly through global climate conferences and corporate sustainability offices. What did not spread was an honest assessment of who profited from the transition or which environmental and strategic costs were ignored.

China captured more economic and geopolitical advantage from this transition than any other nation. Beijing did not simply participate in the renewable-energy sector; it built the manufacturing system that underpins it. 

Today, China controls more than 70% of the global wind-turbine supply chain and produces over 80% of the world’s rare-earth elements, which are essential for turbine generators. 

State subsidies, state-directed financing, and export mandates allowed Chinese firms to underprice Western competitors, effectively making the United States and Europe dependent on a Chinese industrial network for their own energy infrastructure.

This was not an unintended outcome. China expanded its coal fleet—adding roughly two new coal plants per week in recent years—to power factories producing “green” hardware for global export. 

While the United States retired more than 300 coal units since 2010, and Europe imposed strict emissions policies, China increased emissions to manufacture the very wind components Western nations relied on to lower theirs. The West reduced domestic production while China strengthened its industrial leverage.

Environmental impacts were similarly minimized. Wind turbines occupy large land areas and disrupt ecosystems, but the most visible consequence is bird mortality. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates, wind turbines kill between 500,000 and 700,000 birds annually in the United States alone. 

Independent ecological studies suggest the number may exceed 1 million when offshore installations are included. Raptors—especially eagles—are disproportionately affected. Federal data has documented incidents in which individual wind facilities kill dozens of golden eagles per year, losses that other industries would face major penalties for.

These impacts are structural, not accidental. Wind turbines are frequently built along ridgelines, prairie corridors, and coastal regions where airflow is strongest. Those same regions serve as primary migratory pathways. 

Developers, environmental review boards, and federal agencies acknowledge this overlap in planning documents, yet the information rarely reaches the public. What would be considered an unacceptable environmental cost for a fossil-fuel project is reframed as tolerable when produced by wind.

Wind’s operational limitations create further tradeoffs. Capacity factors—the percentage of time a turbine actually produces its rated power—hover between 32% and 35% in the United States. 

Because wind is intermittent, grid operators rely on natural gas or nuclear generation to stabilize supply. 

This backup requirement raises system-wide costs.

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Wyoming conservation group sues federal agency to obtain data on eagles killed by wind farms

AWyoming conservation group filed a federal lawsuit this month against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing that the agency is illegally withholding records on bald and golden eagle deaths at three wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

Mike Lockhart, a biologist who worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service for over 30 years, told Just the News that the data the federal government is withholding could help assess the true impacts of wind energy in Wyoming on eagle mortality.

“We have no real idea of how many birds are being killed. There’s birds that I suspect are being killed that just disappear in the presence of the wind turbines. And I think the numbers are enormous compared to what we know right now,” Lockhart said. 

Blocked as “Privileged and confidential”

Earlier this year, the Albany County Conservancy, based in Laramie, Wyo., filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records on the reported eagle deaths and injuries within two miles of Seven Mile Hill I/II, Ekola Flats, and Dunlap wind projects in southern Wyoming. 

The Interior Department responded by releasing 910 pages, while another 256 pages were redacted. The agency withheld the records under Exemption 4, which blocks the revelation of “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential.” 

The group filed an administrative appeal in May challenging the exemption and demanding the department release all the data it has related to the request. The ACC received no response to their appeal, and so they filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

File

ACC Complaint.pdf

Wind energy developers have been targeting the area of southeast Wyoming, which has some of the richest wind resources in the U.S. According to the ACC’s lawsuit, there will be 28 utility-scale wind farms operating across Wyoming by this summer, and some projects have over 500 turbines. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” conservationist says 

Anne Brande, executive director of the ACC, told Just the News that the ecological risks of so many projects make transparency in federal oversight all the more imperative. 

The law allows a certain number of eagles to be lost via a permitting system called the “eagle take.” Wind farm owners collect records on bird mortality as part of the eagle take permits the developers are required to have in order to disturb, injure and kill eagles.  This data is public information submitted to federal agencies as part of their permitting, Brande said, and there’s nothing in those records that could be legally withheld under Exemption 4. 

“It’s not proprietary. It’s dead eagles,” she said. 

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Trump Administration Halts Offshore Wind Farms, Citing National Security

President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday that it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects off the East Coast.

“Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms,” DOI Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”

President Trump “is bringing common sense back to energy policy and putting security first,” Burgum added.

In a separate news release, the DOI stated that the pause was also connected with “national security risks” identified by the Department of War in “recently completed classified reports,” according to reporting by Fox News.

According to the news outlet:

The department highlighted unclassified reports from the U.S. government in the past that have “long found” that massive turbine blades in large-scale offshore wind projects can create radar interference called “clutter” that can obscure legitimate moving targets and generate false targets.

In 2024, a Department of Energy report found that while the radar threshold for false alarm detection can be increased to reduce some of that “clutter,” the radar can “miss actual targets” when that threshold is increased.

However, on Monday the New York Times called the pause “a major escalation of President Trump’s crusade against offshore wind power.”

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MPs probe Crown Estate after it rakes in £1.1billion profit from offshore wind farms

The Crown Estate is facing fresh scrutiny as it emerged it is raking in over a billion pounds of profit from offshore wind farms.

The estate, which owns the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland on behalf of the monarch, recorded profits of £1.1billion in each of the past two financial years – an increase of £658m from 2022-23.

And as King Charles was urged to stop Britain’s seabed being used as a ‘cash machine’, The Mail on Sunday can reveal MPs on the public accounts committee (PAC) are set to investigate. 

The committee last week launched a probe into the Crown Estate’s leases on properties to members of the Royal Family after questions over the peppercorn rent paid by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to live in 30-room Royal Lodge.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the PAC, told the MoS: ‘Given that wind farms are such an important part of the Crown Estate’s income, the issue will inevitably feature when we do our inquiry.’ 

Greenpeace called on the King to intervene, alleging the Crown Estate has ‘exploited’ its monopoly position to charge hefty fees for the leases which, it claims, is forcing up UK energy bills.

The environmental campaign group claims the estate, whose £15billion portfolio also includes property and vast areas of land, removed a cap on the so-called ‘option fees’ developers pay to reserve rights to the seabed, contributing to the surging profits.

Once the wind farms start to generate electricity, the Crown Estate receives 2 per cent of the revenue generated. 

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RFK Jr. Probes Health Dangers Of Offshore Wind Turbines

eset by soaring prices, an increasingly hostile regulatory climate, and growing public opposition in coastal communities, offshore wind faces a new challenge from a powerful public official and erstwhile booster of strict climate policies.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate wind projects’ effects on the health and safety of commercial fishermen, Bloomberg News reports. Specifically, Kennedy in late summer quietly instructed CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to prepare such research. The office of the U.S. Surgeon General is also involved in the assessment.

Originally, the research was to be wrapped up within a couple of months, but its completion has been delayed by the government shutdown. “Work on this report has been halted solely due to the Democrat-led shutdown,” a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told Reuters.

Human Health Effects

To date, research on the human health effects of offshore wind turbines has been spotty, with a 2011 literature review finding “no peer-reviewed articles demonstrate a direct causal link between people living in proximity to modern wind turbines, the noise they emit and resulting physiological health effects,” according to The Hill.

But a study released in January by the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. warned of potentially harmful levels of metals from turbine protection systems. “The materials used to protect wind turbines from corrosion leach into the surrounding water, which could pose risks to ecosystems, seafood safety, and human health,” the study found. “Offshore wind farms release thousands of [tons] of aluminum, zinc, and iridium each year.” 

Professor Gordon Watson of the university’s School of the Environment and Life Sciences supports wind farms because of their role in reducing carbon emissions but adds, “There is limited data on how these metals affect the environment near operational offshore wind farms, so it’s hard to assess the full risks.”

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Shock New Report Lays Out The Full Scale Of Environmental Damage Caused by Onshore Wind Turbines

Fresh insights into the ecological devastation caused by onshore wind turbines around the world are contained in a shocking new paper published last month by a group of ecologists in Nature. The paper is paywalled and has attracted little mainstream media interest, but it highlights research that illustrates that the effect of utility-scale wind energy production “can be far reaching and sometimes have large and unexpected consequences for biodiversity”.

An annual figure of around one million bats are killed in the countries with the highest number of turbines, but harmful effects are seen in many other parts of the ecosystem. The number of top predators such as jaguars, jungle cats and golden jackals can be changed by turbines in tropical forest gaps leading to the “possibility for cascading effects” along similar latitudinal levels. 

In short, the science team notes that turbines can kill birds, bats and insects, change animal behaviour, physiology and demography and alter ecosystems. The installation of wind turbines invariably results in habitat degradation, but it is regions rich in biodiversity with minimal existing infrastructure that suffer the most.

The authors state that wind facilities “are recognised as an important driver for losses and degradation of irreplaceable habitats that are important for conservation.” Such areas, of course, can be found in the windy highlands of Scotland. For City-dwelling eco zealots, it is a case of out of sight, out of mind. Net Zero is all about money and power – bats and eagles have neither.

The Nature paper is a wake-up call about the increasing damage that is being inflicted on natural habitats by wind turbines that are steadily increasing in size and destructive potential. It is a summary of the latest findings about the effect of turbines and it is not sanguine about the future.

“Perhaps the greatest unknown in predicting future effects of wind power on biodiversity lies in the scope of the potential expansion of the technology and the cumulative consequences of this expansion for species and ecosystems”. A 2021 USA report on the potential pathways to Net Zero emissions is noted and this suggests using up to 13% of the land area for wind farms. The new Trump Administration is likely to put a stop to this madness which the scientists observe could have “dramatic consequences for biodiversity”.

The BP Deepwater Horizon accident is generally considered the worse US offshore oil spill. Estimates vary but it is thought to have led to the deaths of around 600,000 sea birds and the incident led to widespread condemnation by environmentalists that continues to this day. Slightly less publicity is given to the 500,000 bats killed onshore in the US by wind turbines every single year. In the UK, 30,000 is the estimated annual kill number, with Canada at 50,000 and 200,000 in Germany.

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