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SEIFFE:  Wind Power

Monday, December 10, 2007

By Ralf Seiffe

Conventional wisdom holds that the “Windy City” refers to orating politicians not meteorology but one of the candidates running to replace Denny Hastert recommends harnessing the literal wind.  Appearing on WLS Radio Sunday morning, the Democrat running in the 14th Congressional District referred to the Union of Concerned Scientist’s claim that Illinois could get 70% of its electrical energy requirements from wind power.  If this is so--or even remotely possible--we should immediately put the claim to a scientific test. 

I have no doubt that the scientists are sincere in their belief but, I am more suspicious of environmental promoters and hustlers as well as the politicians they control.  After all, there wasn’t enough hangar space in Bali for all the private jets arriving ferrying the “concerned” to their conference on global warming.  And, politicians refuse to permit a wind experiment off Cape Cod because Teddy Kennedy’s view of the Atlantic Ocean is more important than real environmental progress. 

So, if Massachusetts, the home of the Union of Concerned Scientists, is too good for wind power, why not test the theory here in Illinois?  The target is rich because just over half of the nearly 190 million megawatt hours Illinois power plants generated in 2002 came from nuclear power and 45% came from coal fired facilities.  Those proportions may have changed slightly since then but regardless of their current ratio, reducing our dependence on either would seem to be a noble “green” goal. 

If the Concerned Scientists are correct, full deployment of wind-powered generating equipment could eliminate every coal-fired electrical generation facility in Illinois and allow mothballing of nearly half of our state’s nuclear plants.  If environmental concerns were as important to environmentalists as their private jets, this huge potential should generate the political and financial will to build a demonstration project to determine whether “renewables” can actually be part of our energy future. 

Technology doesn’t seem to be a problem, either.  General Electric will certainly take an order for generators that would harness the wind.  Companies like Tower Tech in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, are creating the intellectual property necessary to design these wind powered generators.  They have also attracted the financial capital required to acquire a former shipyard and actually build the machinery. 

“Green” politicians should be the energetic promoters of such an experiment if they want to achieve cleaner energy rather than maintain an evergreen campaign issue.  They should take the immediate step to authorize a 100% tax credit for anyone who builds a system--or finances it--that demonstrates the commercial viability of wind power.  A second, perhaps more important, step would be to prohibit meddlers from filing environmental lawsuits until the project is operational and the builders have recovered their investment.  Eliminating frivolous lawsuits would allow the builders to concentrate on the science rather than the politics and be a better use of state powers than pouring money into unproven, and for some, morally repugnant embryonic stem cell research.   

Moreover, as electric utilities are already heavily regulated, the state would actually retreat from its current position of determining which assets deserve cost recovery.  By providing a credit, wind power assets would not be in the utilities’ rate base and the project would not translate into higher electrical rates. If the project ever achieves a meaningful level of power generation, the utility would only charge consumers for operating expenses because it had already covered its capital costs. 

The real question is why this has not already been done.  Perhaps the Greens are afraid Ducks Unlimited will object on the environmentalist grounds that these machines are little more than Canard Cuisinarts.  Or, perhaps some naval-gazing philosopher will observe that we do not have an environmental impact statement on whether this project would render the local effects of beating butterfly wings in China null and void. 

More likely this project remains a dream because a successful demonstration would not only demonstrate inexpensive and renewable energy, it would also spotlight the power of the human mind to master the natural environment and turn it to human use.  I think that this is the Green’s real complaint.  All human activity leaves some evidence and attacking that residue seems to be their strategy to control the economy and put their thumb on the people who make it up.  If global warming were dis-proven tomorrow, these folks would find some new cause with which to exert control on their neighbors.  Until they change their focus to actually realize “renewable” energy rather than simply advocate limits on human activity, that will be my consensus.

Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader and Illinois Review.

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