Why Wind Power is the Greatest Economic & Environmental Fraud in History

When called upon the think of certainties, gravity springs to mind (at least on earth). Although, for the wind industry it does tend to deliver harsh results – see above, yet another fatal collapse, this time in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Another certainty, is that once people tackle the facts, they turn against wind power with a vengeance. Tom Brewer is a Senator from Nebraska who has not just turned on the wind industry, he is determined to destroy it. Here he is doing just that, a couple of months ago.

Brewer at the Legislature: Wind energy is testament to greed  
North Platte Bulletin
Sen. Tom Brewer
22 August 2017

I went to a meeting about Wind Energy in Mitchell, S.D. this week. There, I met representatives from more than a dozen South Dakota counties, a member of the South Dakota legislature, county commissioners and nearly that many people from Nebraska.

While I sat and listened to the many horror stories of citizens being forced to live with wind turbines near their home, it reminded me of how important our struggle against the wind energy scam really is.

I wonder how many land-owners willing to sign the 50-year easement to build one of these 550-foot towers planned for sites in Nebraska are actually willing to live near one?

I wonder how many wind energy company executives are willing to live near one? The Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln is only 400-feet-tall, by comparison.

The collusion between wind energy and government disgusts me. If the Federal Production Tax Credit for wind energy didn’t exist, you would not see another industrial wind energy turbine built. As Warren Buffet said,

“….on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

He is absolutely right. Wind is an incredibly inefficient way to make electricity. Something that only makes electricity 30-40% of the time is why the industry will never stand on its own, without being propped up by tax dollars. These dollars are taken by the federal government in taxation from all of us and then transferred to a few lucky people who own wind energy companies.

Land owners are paid for their easement by the wind energy company with these dollars, many of whom live nowhere near the wind farm on their land. All of this is done because some wrong-headed mastermind in Washington D.C. decided wind energy was “green.”

I’m all for “green” or “alternative” sources of energy, but wind energy is neither of these.

An industrial wind turbine will never produce enough electricity in its entire lifetime to offset the so-called “carbon footprint” that is needed to manufacture, install and maintain it.

Aside from tax dollars, wind is also utterly dependent on “conventional” power plants (coal, gas, etc) because when the wind doesn’t blow, the wind farm still “owes” the power grid the rated generation capacity.

Roughly 800 megawatts are produced by about 475 industrial wind turbines currently in Nebraska. Those 800 megawatts have to be delivered to the power grid every single day, whether the wind blows or not.

Additional capacity has to be built into near-by conventional power plants to pick up the slack from the wind farm when it’s not making power. Additional generation capacity isn’t free, and its cost is reflected in the electric bill consumers have to pay. When you look at the “all-in” cost of electricity production, making these 800 megawatts all from coal in the first place would be “greener” and much cheaper than using wind.

People argue that wind energy is a “private property rights” issue. I hear it all the time – who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do on my land? I understand this, but my question is – who pays the neighbors who had no say in the siting of these things?

Who pays for their loss of property value? Who pays for the constant torment brought on by the incredible noise these turbines make? The 24/7 vibration constantly shaking their house? The flicker coming from the shadow of the blades causing migraines and nausea?

Can you imagine a constant 55-decibel noise (like a window air conditioner) invading your home and there was nothing you could do to stop it?

That was reported by a person whose house is 1.3 miles from a wind turbine. Imagine what it’s like for the person who is only 1,000 feet from one of these things.

One thousand feet is the setback the wind energy companies fight for from county planning and zoning boards. Who fights for the property rights of people affected by these things?

We will meet with executives from NPPD concerning the R (transmission) Line again next week. I’m sure we’ll hear the R Line has value in balancing electrical loads and relieving “congestion” on Nebraska’s power grid.

As I have stated before, I believe the chief purpose behind the current routing of the line is to service future wind energy projects in the Sandhills. I hope to convince them to change the routing and avoid the most environmentally fragile area of our state, but I am not very optimistic.

The way Nebraska state laws are set up right now, the only citizen recourse to an NPPD board decision is litigation in the courts. Nebraska doesn’t have a “Public Utility Commission” like many other states do.

There is no entity of Nebraska state government to which a citizen can appeal an NPPD board decision.

Whether they keep making electricity or not, these gigantic steel and concrete structures will be there for generations, monuments to the greed of a few in a short-sighted land rush to hurry up and get them built and collect their profits off the backs of taxpayers before Uncle Sam wises up and shuts off this gravy train.

This is despicable public policy. It hurts people. It hurts Nebraska, and I’m going to do everything I can to stop it.
North Platte Bulletin

Here is Senator Brewer on the war path, again.

BREWER: Wind energy is not ‘Nebraska Nice’
Scottsbluff Star Herald
Sen. Tom Brewer
6 October 2017

There is a term used a lot in the Nebraska Capitol. “Nebraska Nice.” Wind energy is not Nebraska Nice. Wind energy is a scam that hurts people and animals, wastes billions in tax dollars, and isn’t “green” energy by any definition of the term.

Industrial wind energy projects also make terrible neighbors and will utterly destroy the most environmentally sensitive part of our State.

Last week the Natural Resources Committee held an interim study hearing on public power. A portion of that hearing was devoted to “renewable” energy (wind energy).

The chairman of the committee, Sen. Dan Hughes, supports wind energy, but to his credit, he ran an excellent hearing and was exceptionally fair to all who participated. Sen. John McCollister of Omaha is on the committee. He posted an op ed in the Omaha paper this week about how wonderful wind energy is.

This probably explains why he left the hearing early and didn’t hear the many citizens who testified against it. I hope he shows more courtesy to his constituents than he did the people who took time away from work and family and drove hundreds of miles from all over the state to be at that hearing.

We are just beginning to understand the health effects on people and animals of the low frequency noise made by industrial wind turbines known as “infrasound.”

The aerodynamic reflection from the blade when in alignment with the tower causes a “thump, thump, thump” that cannot be ignored. The sound, which is most disturbing at night, invades the quiet of our bedrooms and disturbs Nebraskans who are trying to sleep.

The “shadow flicker” from the blades passing in front of the sun casts disorienting shadows in homes more than a mile from the turbine and causes vertigo and nausea and has been linked to migraine headaches.

Many industries in the U.S. receive some kind of government subsidy, but the wind energy industry is 100 percent reliant on federal subsidy known as the production tax credit.

Wind projects don’t farm the wind, they farm tax avoidance credits as confirmed by Warren Buffet who admitted, “That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” Under the current policy, the industry is forecasted to reap $24 billion in subsidies between 2016 and 2020 or electricity production subsidies — nearly double the subsidies planned for any other renewable option.

None of these figures include the significant benefits granted the industry in the form of state production tax credits, lower local taxes, and ratepayer-funded transmission. Our country is over $20 trillion in debt. Why are we paying this kind of money for an intermittent source of electricity that only makes power about 30% of the time?

Since wind power is intermittent, no amount of wind turbines installed in the U.S. will result in an existing “dirty” power plant being decommissioned nor will it negate the need to build reliable generation. Americans are being asked to pay for two energy systems, one that produces wind energy and the second that delivers reliable electricity. Obviously, this excess generation capacity costs money to build and operate and that cost gets added to the rate-payers bill.

My legislative aide and I just spent ten days in Germany. The Germans are finding out the hard way how disruptive and costly reliance on wind power is. Catastrophic, cascading failure of the national power grid is now a daily struggle to prevent in Germany. Plans to decommission their last remaining nuclear power stations have been put on hold because of how unstable their power infrastructure has become.

Connecting a wind farm to the grid often requires new powerlines and the use of eminent domain to forcibly take land from people to build a power line across their ground for no other reason than to cater to the wind developer. Despite NPPD denials, reports from their own meetings clearly state the “R Line” has been, “…proposed chiefly to provide access for wind energy developments in Cherry Co…” This project will tear through the heart of the most sensitive part of Nebraska’s Sandhills.

Wind energy development in the Sandhills of Nebraska will cause damage to the ground (blowouts) that can never be mitigated or repaired. Wagon ruts from pioneers from over a century ago are still visible in the Sandhills. How can 20 semi-loads (just to put up the construction crane) cross the Sandhills without permanent damage?

Countless more concrete trucks and loads of blades and tower sections will put a lasting scar on a place that has no equal in the world.

Untold numbers of birds and bats are killed, including threatened and endangered species. The government even issues 30-year permits for the “taking” (killing) of bald and golden eagles. Siting hundreds of turbines in the Sand Hills with blades spinning at 200 mph at the tip presents a danger to flying creatures like nothing else.

The lost property value a neighbor to a wind turbine suffers is not compensated. Who would buy a house next to an industrial wind energy facility? The lost use of that portion of a neighbors ground inside the minimum safe distance from a wind turbine is not compensated.

Wind Energy companies fight for the smallest set-back they can get to maximize the number of wind turbines they can build in an area with no regard for their neighbor’s property rights. Wind turbines run-off wildlife and spoil hunting in rural areas. They spoil pristine views and tourism.

The promised boon in property tax revenue for local governments is over-rated and often doesn’t materialize as promised. Unless the local resident has the proper licenses and training certifications, the so-called “jobs” that are created by a wind energy development are taken by here-today-gone-tomorrow workers from out of State.

One in four wind companies go bankrupt before their projects are even finished and are often bought by foreign investors. Much of the power wind energy does manage to generate in Nebraska won’t even be used in Nebraska.
Scottsbluff Star Herald