The Natural Limits of Wind Energy

The development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. With power generation still dominated by coal and governments failing to increase investment in clean energy, top climate scientists have said that the target of keeping the global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century is slipping out of reach.

The challenges of shifting to renewable energy, such as costs, regulation, financing, and poor reliability, will loom large for Germany’s energy leaders this week when they meet to discuss the country’s boldest infrastructure project since reunification. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision, after Japan’s Fukushima disaster two years ago, to abandon nuclear energy and switch to more renewable sources like wind and solar power, is being watched the world over as a possible model for others to follow.

From Alex Newman writing in the New American: Despite billions in taxpayer subsidies pumped into the so-called “green-energy” industry, almost 15,000 windmills — maybe more — have been left to rot across America.

Photo courtesy of Samsø Energy Academy

Over recent years many nations around the world have acknowledged the need to employ a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Whether it be due to the threat of diminishing oil supplies, or in an attempt to reduce their carbon emissions and the rate of climate change.

Michael Fitzsimmons submits:U.S. Energy Secretary Chu was recently quoted in a Financial Times article:“We’re in a crazy never-never land situation,” he said, describing how companies were not making investments and banks were not supplying loans because of the uncertainty about when, or whether, a cap on carbon would be imposed.