Myths and Facts about Wind Energy and the Renewable Portfolio Standard
MYTH: A RPS is all about wind. There is not much potential for solar, geothermal and biomass.
FACT: Because the RPS is a market-based credit trading system, similar to the system that has reduced compliance in the Clean Air Act, it lets the market decide the kinds of renewable energy that any particular utility would use to meet the standard – thus bringing the most renewables on line for the least cost.
A 2004 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) using the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) National Energy Modeling System to examine the costs and benefits for a 10 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS found that under a 10 percent RPS sources of renewable energy such as geothermal, biomass, solar and landfill gas will constitute 34 to 44 percent of the nation’s non-hydro renewable resource generation with a total capacity of about 19,000 to 24,000 megawatts (MW).
MYTH: We will need to build 100,000 wind turbines to meet a 10 percent RPS requirement.
FACT: The average size of a wind turbine today is 1.5 MW (though modern turbines coming on line are as large as 2-3.5 MW). Using this assumption, the number of new turbines needed to meet the wind development that would occur under the 2004 UCS analysis of a 10 percent by 2020 RPS would range from 34,000 to 50,280. However, the DOE assumes that the average size of a wind turbine will increase to 3 MW by 2015. According to EIA projections, this would further reduce the number of turbines needed to 19,700 --
By comparison, the total number of communication towers in the United States was as much as 102,000 in 2000, and continues to grow at an annual rate of 6 to 8 percent according to the Federal Communication Commission’s 2000 Antenna Structure Registry.
MYTH: Wind turbines are unfairly subsidized by the Production Tax Credit costing taxpayers over $3.7 billion over 5 years. There are better ways to promote clean energy.
FACT: The PTC helps level the playing field between renewable energy and conventional power plants. Several studies have shown that without the PTC and other tax neutrality policies, renewable resources would pay as much as 1.5 to 6 times more in taxes per unit of electricity than fossil fuel and nuclear plants. This is because renewable resources are generally more capital-intensive than conventional plants and because the fossil fuel and nuclear industries already receive significant tax breaks. For example, according to a 2003 study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project, between 1943 and 1999, the nuclear power industry received over $145 billion in federal subsidies. During that same period, the wind industry received merely $1.3 billion – or less than 0.8 percent of the amount of subsidy available to nuclear power.
Fossil fuels enjoy a variety of special tax breaks as well. For example, fuel expenditures are typically deducted from taxable income. Wind, on the other hand, has no fuel costs to deduct, and because a higher proportion of wind energy cost is for equipment, pays more in property taxes and sales taxes. [The cite Kristy is looking for as part of a MA fact sheet would be helpful here.]
MYTH: If Congress adopts a 10 percent RPS we will have windmills polluting our scenic vistas.
FACT: The Union of Concerned Scientists examined the land area developed for wind turbines as a result of a federal RPS. Using the Department of Energy’s Modeling System, they found that only a very small fraction of the contiguous United States – ranging from approximately 0.11 percent to 0.26 percent – would be required for development. The actual footprint – based on current experience – is even less because more than 98 percent of the land area of a wind facility is still available for farming and ranching. Including transmission tie-ins and access roads, UCS computes that the actual footprint of wind facilities would be just 64 square miles – or 0.002 percent of contiguous U.S. land area (I think square miles, or a circle of a particular radius, is much more understandable and appears less large to a typical person.).
Any fair comparison of wind turbines to other forms of energy production should include the land area consumed by such things as mountain top removal, waste coal piles, fuel rod storage or cooling towers, all of which are likely to consume many more times the land area used by wind turbines, with much greater visual blight.
MYTH: Some Europeans are slowing down or stopping construction of wind turbines.
FACT: According to the Global Wind Energy Council, in 2004, Europe installed 5,774 MW of wind capacity – a 20 percent increase over 2003 levels and 72.4 percent of the entire year 2004 growth in the world wind market. Since 2000, installed wind capacity in Europe has risen by 165 percent. At present the total world wind capacity is 47,317 MW. Of that amount, 16,629 MW -- or about 35 percent -- has been developed in Germany, a country with far fewer wind resources than the United States. Some regions in Germany and Spain already get more than 30 percent of their electricity from wind.
