What I'm suggesting is we are decades away from perfecting anything that will take the place of fossil fuels. I totally disagree with the industry facing their Kodak moment. These windmills will never make enough power to make a dent in that industry. And please don't tell me about the rest of the world. If we were to cut all of our emissions tomorrow it would only be 15% of total world emissions. As for the petroleum industry, I'm thinking their Kodak moment should have come when nuclear energy was introduced. For the record, I have always owned by own business, and I'm very familiar with the history of Kodak.
These fossil fuel companies are in it because the windmills simply can't produce enough power alone.
I'm all for renewals, and I'm not suggesting that liberals care for the environment more than conservatives. As I believe it's the other way around. But that's another story. But I don't buy the "good jobs" BS any more than I did when Obama said it. Remember Solyndra? Good luck getting a "good-paying job" there.
Another point no one mentions is the fact that they have a life expectancy of 15-20 years. And it's very expensive and in most cases impossible to dump them.
“The blades are kind of a dud because they have no value,” he said.
Decommissioned blades are also notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. They can be anywhere from 100 to 300 feet long and need to be cut up on-site before getting trucked away on specialized equipment—which costs money—to the landfill. Once there the size of the blades can put landfills in a tough spot.
“If you’re small utility or municipality and all of a sudden hundreds of blades start coming to your landfill, you don’t want to use up your capacity for your local municipal trash for wind turbine blades,” he said, adding that permits for more landfill space add another layer of expenses.
So in our case, they have decided that it will cost too much to decommission them so we are going to leave them littering the ocean. Is this good for the environment? There are hundreds of acres set aside for these monstrosities with the very real possibilities of it being expanded anytime the Gov't wants
Also, I'm curious what's going to power our airplanes, cruise lines, and much other heavy equipment? Should we put a giant rubber band on the front of an airplane and wind it up?
We both agree that something needs to be done, I just don't agree with this. And when you look real close at how this is being done ie: The staging for this project is coming out of Port Jefferson, and they're running all the way off the RI coast? Why not Montauk? Could it be that they don't want the noise and mess in Montauk? Or would they rather run the equipment an extra 30 miles or so?
I have tried numerous times to get them on a podcast yet no one will go on the record giving us a good explanation of the details. And as we know that's where the devil is 🙂
You missed a few points there George - the point about the rest of the world wasn't with regards to carbon emissions, it was in regards to building out the manufacturing and technical expertise around renewable energy. We're already lagging - if we fall further behind, well - at some point, you can forget about being the world's #1 superpower and start aiming for 3rd or 4th. It's the same reason we got into the space race (hint: it wasn't about going to the moon).
And if you think the fossil fuel companies investing in these companies is about anything but fear of obsolescence and diversification, you're kidding yourself. No, renewable energy isn't at the point where it's capable of taking over the majority of power demand. Ask yourself - did China deploy nearly 900GW of renewable energy generation last year because they're environmentally conscious? Or was it because they wanted to reduce their dependency on oil (as a strategic and military objective) and because they wanted to get a jump on the manufacturing and engineering base for these products? The companies investing here are playing the long game - they're not expecting a payoff in 3-5 years, they're expecting to build equity stakes in companies that will develop into the large scale producers of 20-30 years from now.
As for the silly references to 'what's going to power our heavy equipment' - I don't recall anyone saying we should immediately shutter gas stations or oil refineries. The goal is longer term, to build up the country's capabilities so we don't fall behind the rest of the world, and to reduce dependency on a finite resource that often requires dependencies on foreign adversaries.
