Wind Power: Sustainable? (Part 2 of 3)

Sustainability is the capacity to endure through time.

A healthy old-growth forest and a healthy 90-year-old human are both examples of sustainable biological systems. They endure because within them the natural chemical cycles that fuel life have never been thrown too far out of kilter for too long. Balance has always been regained. In any system, sustainability depends on maintaining balance among competing forces.

Simply put: A sustainable process is one that gets you where you want to go in a manner that minimizes the collateral damage.

Any company that wants to be competitive in the long run must balance its economic, environmental and societal interests. Corporate officers can pretend that their economic success exists entirely separate from the environment and society. But, that sort of thinking is as desperately short-term as it is intellectually dishonest.

Why? Because economic gains are not made without environmental and societal costs, which will be paid with interest, by someone, eventually.

When a company pays up front—the company pockets the discount. And everyone benefits. When a company defers payment—who can say what the interest rate will be? Sure, a company might be able to defer payment so long that everyone associated with it will be dead, and that debt bequeathed to a future generation. That’s a moral choice.

Instead of deferred-debt-obligations, I believe in the logic of enlightened self-interest.

I encourage companies to seek the sweet spot—the place where their economic, environmental, and societal interests intersect.

You want to endure through time? Then work on a real world budget.

Minimize your negative impact on the environment and maximize your positive impact on society.

Those two goals, balanced against the profit motive, create the only security. The only hope for sustainability.

So, based upon this definition, is “wind power farming” on Appalachian ridgetops a sustainable endeavor?

Is the economic benefit to the “farmer” (a government-guaranteed return on investment of 13% per year plus deductions) in balance with environmental and societal impact?

Is the “farmer” receiving such a taxpayer boon under any prerogative to minimize negative impact on the environment and maximize positive impact on society?

Or is one leg of this three-legged stool too long?

This is a very big subject, and one that must be included in any rational discussion of US Energy Policy.

To reduce the question down to a false debate between wind and coal, or “green” versus “greenhouse gases” is to avoid the elephant in the room.

The elephant asks: How can the US provide sustainable electricity to its citizens?

The average American uses seven times the electricity of the average European. We all want a miracle cure. We view changing our ways as some sort of surrender, a sign of defeat.

Instead, we want Santa Claus to come to town with a “clean” energy source so “free” that the Tooth Fairy follows up with a rebate. It’s not surprising then, that if somebody says that’s what they’re selling, we’re buying, no questions asked.

Our government wants, with the intensity of a craving, to reduce our national reliance on fossil fuel-based electricity without reducing our need for cheap electricity-on-demand.

And that’s a good thing, a good want. The only problem is that it can’t all happen, not with the technology currently in play. Wishful “green thinking” won’t change that. Our grid has not caught up with our desire for fossil-fuel-free electricity on demand.

Taxpayer subsidies to wind energy providers will not change the fact that our grid cannot store electricity. Our grid produces and delivers electricity based on demand. Wind energy cannot be produced on demand. Wind energy is renewable, to be sure, but it's also erratic, and most produced during the months its least needed.

Are the billions in taxpayer subsidies to wind energy “money well spent”? Can these dollars be translated into fossil fuels saved, carbon emissions reduced?

And, most particularly, when considering the three-legged stool of sustainability, where corporate profits are balanced with minimal environmental impact and maximum societal benefit, how does Appalachian wind power stand up?

(see Part 3)