Bill Manzi.com

With offshore wind development in the news locally the New York Times has written about the Swedish experience with wind power. The article highlights some positives, but also levels some criticisms. It highlights a new $280 million dollar offshore wind farm that will be able to light 60,000 homes. The article highlights some of the prior criticisms of wind power.

Yet Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.

For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. Moreover, to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.

And then more negatives.

In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines is the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the northern Great Plains — far from the coastal population centers that need the most electricity.

In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.

In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.

In the United States, proposals to build large wind parks in the Atlantic off Long Island and off Cape Cod, Mass., have run into stiff opposition from local residents on aesthetic grounds.

“The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions claim,” said Euan C. Blauvelt, research director of ABS Energy Research, an independent market research firm in London. “You’ve still got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants.”

With all of that negativity towards wind power the article still has some very interesting tidbits, including how the Swedes utilize excess wind power to assist in generating hydro power.

Sweden has historically invested little in wind projects because it has two reliable sources of energy, nuclear and hydro, which each supply roughly half its power. And because hydro is renewable, Sweden already does well on the environmental balance sheet.

But these energy sources have their vulnerabilities: hydro, to low water levels; nuclear, to technical breakdowns. The Swedish government has also pledged not to build any new nuclear power plants.

Of course, Sweden does not need to build wind parks to get wind power. It could simply buy more surplus wind power from Denmark, which it uses, as does Norway, to pump underground water into elevated reservoirs. The water is later released during periods of peak electric demand to drive hydroelectric stations.

In this way, hydro acts as a form of storage for wind energy — addressing one of wind power’s biggest shortcomings. Sweden’s strength in hydro makes it a good candidate for greater development of wind power, according to analysts.

Sweden is subsidizing wind power through “green” certificates, which favor the use of renewable energy. The small extra cost is passed on to consumers.

And so the listed negatives are offset and actually exploited by the Swedes to generate clean power. And yes the Swedes also have local opposition and permitting problems for wind farms.

While Swedes staunchly support wind energy, they are as susceptible to the not-in-my-backyard opposition as people elsewhere. For years, residents opposed the wind farm near Malmo, known as Lillgrund, particularly after the builders obtained permission to raise the height of the towers. But the campaign to block the project failed.

Still, Mr. Floderus said the process took far too long, and Vattenfall is urging the government to speed up the approvals next time.

It is an interesting take on wind energy, with additional information on other European countries wind efforts. Read the article at this link.

A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the increasing anxiety the free trade agenda is causing, even in areas that have been considered to be “free trade winners”. The focus of the article was the state of Iowa, where agricultural exports and farm manufacturing exports have made the state a net winner in the trade wars.

Iowa, as much as any other state, is on the plus side of the ledger, says James Leach, a 30 year Republican congressman from Iowa who now runs Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. ‘It would be highly ironic if protectionist candidates prevailed in the Iowa caucuses.’

Iowa has John Deere and Maytag as major employers, but despite the increasing demand the manufacturing sector has some problems that have created unease even amongst those that continue to do well.

But the past couple of decades have seen a steady decline in once prized factory jobs, from a high of 252,700 in 1999 to 231,000 today. Just this year, Iowa lost about 1800 jobs when appliance maker Maytag, now owned by Whirpool Corp., shuttered its plant in its home town of Newton. (The jobs moved to Ohio, but foreign competition was a key reason Maytag was acquired by Whirpool.) Wages haven’t kept pace with inflation, and employers here, as elsewhere, have been paring health and retirement benefits.

Even those currently employed express grave doubts about the future.

The moods of even the most fortunate workers are clouded by unease. At Morg’s Diner in downtown Waterloo (pop. 68,747) Deere & Co. worker Tim McBride, 51 years old, knows he is one of trades winners. Thanks to record commodity prices and large overseas demand for crops, Deere has been adding 25 workers a week. Mr. McBride expects to earn about $85,000 this year as a member of a team that improves productivity and quality at the companies drive-train plant. But a year long layoff in 1984, when a strong dollar was crimping U.S. exports, seared him. More than two decades later, Mr. McBride worries that foreign competition could again put him out of a job. Tucking into a butter drenched pancake, he laments the ease with which a global economy enables companies to shift jobs to lower cost countries. ‘If the people in the United States worked for a dollar an hour, we still couldn’t compete,’ says Mr. McBride.

The Journal article also talks of the tension created by tiered compensation labor agreements, agreed to by the U.A.W. at the Deere plant in Waterloo. New hires mix with veteran workers who make substantially more. Again, many of those entry level workers blame the effects of globalization for depressing wages.

So where does that lead the candidates running for President?

“My sense is that the families of Iowa have now concluded that the modest benefit to them from cheaper goods that flow through Wal-Mart have been overwhelmed by stagnating wages,” says Leo Hindery, the former cable-tv chief who is now the top economic policy advisor to Mr. Edwards. “Iowa, like a lot of states, looks back at NAFTA and says,’NAFTA did not work as promised.’ ” Mr. Edwards criticizes NAFTA, which eliminated tariffs and other barriers between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, as bad for workers, saying it needs to be “revised” to include labor and environmental standards.

Both Hillary and Barack have criticized NAFTA, and both have been critical of Chinese currency manipulation. Even the Republicans have joined some of the trade criticism, with McCain and Huckabee both at least giving lip service to the damage being done to American workers by free trade. Romney, on the other hand, continues to extoll the virtues of free trade, calling for additional trade deals, and he leads the Republican pack in Iowa. Guiliani, through a spokesperson, spoke favorably of trade deals and hit the Democrats.

“Trade is a valid issue to discuss,” says David Malpass, an economic advisor to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, another Republican candidate. ” The mayor wants to discuss it in optimistic, growth oriented terms, rather than taking the attitude that Americans can’t compete with the Chinese, which is at the core of the Democrats position.”

It appears that Rudy feels that displacement and wage depression are simply part of the “growth agenda”, which should endear him to the Republican Club for Growth, but probably will not help him in industrial areas hard hit by foreign “competition”. I just cannot see the logic of allowing our dominant marketplace to be used to foster foreign job growth (at the direct expense of our labor force) and then borrowing the money to buy all of these foreign products. It is a policy that in my view is leading us to the brink of a huge drop in living standards in the United States in spite of some of the obvious benefits of free trade.