About those green jobs--China builds wind turbiens for Texas
Popular Science:
I suppose the Chinese would like to drill for natural gas in the US too, but there is no shortage of US firms willing to do that work. There is just a shortage of permits because Democrats want to strangle domestic production. It is interesting to see that their green jobs effort has been so helpful to China.Clean tech has seen a boost as the U.S. pours government funding into renewable energy, and China looks set to reap much of the benefits. Latest example: a Chinese wind-turbine company has just become the exclusive supplier for one of the largest wind-farm developments in the U.S.
The Shenyang Power Group has signed on to supply 240 of its massive 2.5-megawatt wind turbines to a 36,000-acre development in West Texas. The Wall Street Journal reports that the wind farm is also slated to receive $1.5 billion in financing from the Export-Import Bank of China.
This comes as the U.S. has increasingly out-sourced much of its wind turbine development. Less than a quarter of wind turbine components installed in the U.S. came from domestic production, and Europe currently holds the lion's share of turbine manufacturing. A Norwegian firm launched the world's first full-scale floating wind turbine this September.
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While I realise that the heavily subsidised Texas windmill industry fad is probably a mini-boon to those in Texas and elsewhere that assemble these structures, possibly too, the Texas landowners deriving income (lease or sale) for the huge amounts of land necessary to accommodate these windmill farms, not to mention (at least before this China connection) companies like Westinghouse who do some of the turbine motor manufacture/assemble north of Round Rock, it is in fact a much much larger boondoggle which through the same taxpayer subsidies, adds greatly to the (hidden) costs of electric generation and consumption. A feature, not a bug if your one of our progressive 'better's, I'd guess? But once the difficult technical challenges of integrating unreliable wind generation of electric with other current controllable and reliable means of electric generation (fossil fuel) are more clearly understood by the general public this hoax will continue to live on. The sooner reality sets in that wind generation, and probably solar as well, will _not_ become a viable replacement to current established forms of electric generation any time in the near future the better it will be for all of us.
ReplyDeleteAnd. As more of our progressive 'betters' belatedly realise the true impact wind farms, solar, etc. have regarding the enormous amount of acreage required and to some extent the detrimental effects on wild life, windmills/wind farms in general will then become the scourge that must be eliminated much like nuclear decades ago. That alternative energy development is a must _is_ a no brainer especially since developing our oil and gas resources has been almost completely halted by environmentalist/big government interference. And yet, our progressive 'betters'/big government, insist that the one serious 'shovel ready' energy alternative that could get us out of this energy dependency mess we are in, nuclear energy for electric generation, is completely off the table. When will the citizens of this great nation finally (if ever) wake up?