Everyone Knows It's Windy

A Breezy Rant

Dragon kite above Tiananmen Square, Beijing

Those of us who came up in a different age still occasionally harbor the belief that facts, truth, science matters; that it hasn’t all just vanished into a tweeting flash of nonsense. In service of this delusion, I’m dedicating this newsletter to the topic of wind, because I think it distills the corruption and irrationality of our sad moment into its purest essence—190-proof Trumpism, the stuff that blinds you if you guzzle it.

My rant is occasioned by the news that the administration has stopped all approvals on wind farms across the country. As Katherine Krawczyk explains, for 15 years wind farms have applied to the Defense Department where

they’re supposed to undergo a ​“timely, transparent, and repeatable process to evaluate potential impacts” to national security and military operations. It’s a routine that has spanned presidencies, including the first Trump administration, and that typically revolves around making sure turbines don’t interfere with radars or federal airspace.

This has always been routine, until last summer when it became…impossible. Pete Hegseth’s DOD simply stopped replying, and didn’t explain why till last month when it sent a letter to developers saying it was “reevaluating how it reviews wind projects national security impacts.” Somewhere between 165 and 250 big projects are in limbo, and that’s obviously the point: not only does it screw up their financing, it means they may not get done in time to qualify for what tax credits are left from the Biden IRA.

To say that the national security grounds are bogus is to give them too much credit. As those radicals at the Financial Times explained, the security review used to take a “few days” to complete. These installations are on private land, far away from military bases. The government has used the same argument to try and block offshore wind farms, and the courts have overruled their objections. I imagine that in time judges will find in favor of these blocked onshore projects too, but the damage will have been done: no one in their right mind would invest in new wind power now, not when the president has declared quite frankly that his “goal is to not let any windmill be built.”

That this is stupid goes without saying. Those blocked projects constitute, the FT says, about 30 gigawatts of cheap clean energy at a time when we desperately need it. But it also goes without saying that the blockage serves two purposes. One is to artificially increase demand for fossil fuel (and the other Trump-favored power sources, like the expensive array of nuclear reactors whose development the government is currently generously funding). The other is to serve his febrile rage at the wind farm built off his Scottish golf course all those years ago. A policy that feeds both his appetite for corruption and supplies his narcissistic hunger—well, that’s a twofer that can’t be missed. Hegseth may have no idea how to win the war in Iran, but he knows how to win favor from dear leader.

Of course, it means indulging in a huge number of lies, from Trump’s claim that windpower is the most expensive energy on earth (actually, second-cheapest, right behind solar) to his claim that it causes cancer (one death in five on this planet comes from breathing the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel) to his claim that though the Chinese build and sell wind turbines they don’t actually use them. If he glances out the window of Qatar Force One on this week’s trip to China he’ll be forced to recant that one: the Chinese actually lead the world in producing not just wind turbines but wind energy. As Keith Bradsher reported last week

Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast.

Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric.

In fact, perhaps his Chinese hosts could arrange a field trip to their newest wind turbine, installed this week off the shore from Yangjiang. It’s, what do you know, the largest single-unit floating wind platform ever installed on planet earth, a single windmill that will supply enough power for 24,000 homes. As Adriana Buljan reports at that must-read site OffShoreWindBiz,

The project incorporates several new technologies, including a novel mooring system, an active ballast system, a smart monitoring system, and a 66 kV dynamic subsea cable, the developer said.

The floater is secured by nine suction anchors, using a combination of anchor chains and high-performance polyester mooring lines, marking the first application of such polyester cables in China’s offshore wind sector.

It’s not just China, of course. A few weeks ago, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 3 in the North Sea, sent its first power back to the UK. When it’s fully finished at the end of next year, reports Evelyn Hart, it will “generate enough power to meet the average daily needs of a population larger than Greater Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds combined.” Earlier today the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi announced a big investment in the project, reflecting what the fund’s head called its “approach of investing alongside experienced partners in high-quality infrastructure assets that support energy transition and deliver long-term value.”

What might the Trump administration offer them as an alternative? Well, the administration has ordered the restart of fossil fuel drilling operations off Santa Barbara despite local and state opposition. Yesterday an old platform in the area caught fire and burned—26 people were evacuated, and thankfully none were killed, though two were injured. Here’s what America’s technological prowess looks like today

I think that sometimes wind gets shorter shrift than it should when we talk about renewable energy. It’s not quite as simple as a photovoltaic array—there’s still a moving part, that windmill blade. But of course this is just another form of solar energy (the wind rises when the sun heats the earth more in some places than others) and it is a miracle. In fact, it’s a perfectly complementary miracle. Along a coast, for instance, because it takes a while for the sun to heat the air molecules that produce the breeze, wind tends to build in power later in the afternoon, as the photovoltaic effect begins to ebb. And the farther north you go, the stronger the wind gets, which is useful since Greece has more sunshine than Norway. And wind speeds tend to be higher in the winter than the summer, thanks to sharper temperature gradients.

If you want an in-depth technical explanation of this miracle, Mark Jacobson provides one in this 2021 study. Among many other things, he points out that

In some locations, e.g. Europe, wind energy output follows heat load remarkably well on a diurnal basis. This is not only due to the day versus night wind speed peaks just discussed, but also due to the fact that low temperatures, which create heat loads, often occur behind cold fronts, where pressure gradients are strong, thus winds are fast. Low temperatures over land also often occur in the presence of strong temperature gradients, which produce strong pressure gradients and strong winds.

One irony of Trump’s anti-wind crusade is that this miracle was born here. Humans have long used wind, of course—to push boats, to grind grain. But we first put it to use to produce electricity on an industrial scale in the early 1940s at Grandpa’s Knob, about fifty miles south of my home in the Vermont mountains above the town of Castleton. An MIT grad named Palmer Putnam (and I was at MIT last week, and saw many impressive young people following in his wake) convinced the local utility to give him a shot at harnessing the Vermont winds (blowing eight miles an hour in Castleton when I drove by this afternoon). Vannevar Bush—more irony here—was in charge of the nation’s scientific enterprises during World War II, and he thought it would be a good idea to see if we could produce power this way; Putnam’s design used two blades, each 66 feet long and weighing eight tons. It worked just fine from 1942 to 1943, when a shaft bearing failed, and wartime shortages meant no one could scroung the part until 1945.

A study that year found that a block of six similar turbines similar to the prototype, producing 9 MW, could be installed in Vermont for around US$190 per kilowatt. But in those days it was cheaper to get power other ways, and so the project was never replicated. In 2012 a new project was proposed for the area, but like all Vermont wind projects in recent years, local opposition doomed it, reminding us that Trump is not the only person who doesn’t like to look at windmills.

I do, though. I’ve always thought they were remarkably beautiful, Calder mobiles come to life. And they keep getting better. The first big American installation was on Altamont Pass, near Livermore California—6,700 small turbines lined either side of I-580. They produced lots of clean electrons, but because of their size and where they were sited, their fast-moving blades were a bit of a bird Cuisinart. To be clear, wind turbines never come within an order of magnitude of avian destruction compared with tall buildings and power lines, not to mention domestic cats, not to mention the effects of climate change now setting off a generalized extinction crisis on this earth. But if bird mortality is not a reason to delay the move to clean energy, it’s also not something to be simply ignored. So here’s some good news: a recent “repowering project” on the pass replaced 569 of the old small turbines with just 23 newer and bigger ones, while still generating the same amount of electricity. Oh, and

Fewer turbines, spaced further apart, and equipped with modern bird-detection technology such as IndentiFlight, should reduce bird mortality in the Altamont Pass going forward.

“Brookfield Renewables has designed the [Mulqueeney Ranch] site and implemented state of the art technology to mitigate impacts to local and migratory avian species,” according to the MCE staff report.

“Turbines will be equipped with individual AI paired cameras to detect the presence of avian species which would trigger feathering/shut-off of specific turbines.”

And as Justin Gerdes reports, this kind of repowering could happen at every wind farm across the country.

“By replacing aging turbines with modern technology at existing sites, the United States could more than double its current onshore wind capacity and electricity generation without requiring new land,” write the authors of a Stanford University study published in March.

The study finds that repowering could increase the U.S.’ onshore wind nameplate generating capacity from 153 gigawatts (GW) (as of 2024) to 314 GW at existing wind farms.

“Repowering is a key, yet overlooked, strategy to accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy future in the United States,” the authors conclude.

Data from the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie confirms the near-term repowering opportunity in the U.S.

“The repowering market remains strong, as Wood Mackenzie projects that 18 projects will drive 2.5 GW of capacity additions in the next three years,” according to a December 2025 WoodMac press release.

I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of my line that though sunlight must travel 93 million miles to reach the earth, none of those miles go through the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, there is no drone on earth that can shoot the breeze. This is where the planet desperately wants to go. Our job is to change our nation’s politics so the wind can blow free.

In other energy and climate news:

+It’s not too late to run for something in the upcoming elections, and Lead Locally is great at training up candidates. Here’s the application form!

+The world is a big place, so no one noticed for a while when a climate-weakened rock wall slid into an Alaskan fjord last summer, triggering a…300-foot tall wave. (Cruise ships frequent these fjords, and several were actually nearby, but thank heaven none sailed in that day). Now scientists have scoured the area. As Christian Elliott explains,

The Tracy Arm landslide was preceded by an unusually rapid retreat of the South Sawyer Glacier, leaving the rock slope that ultimately collapsed bare and unsupported. That same rearrangement of land elements is increasingly occurring throughout Alaskan fjords and around the world. As glaciers retreat and thawing permafrost lubricates slopes, these giant landslides may become more frequent.

+The great Jacqui Patterson continues her work chronicling Big Oil’s outreach to Black America. Her first Fossil-Fueled Foolery report came when she was still at the NAACP; now at the helm of the Shirley Chisholm Legacy Project she published round three this spring, with a video contest coming. As she documents

The fossil fuel industry has learned to weaponize the language of our own movements and take heartless advantage of the vulnerability wrought by the extractive economy for which they are primary purveyors. By co-opting the nomenclature and even the values of civil rights, equity, and economic justice, these corporations attempt to manufacture consent for their continued violence against our communities

+That inspired EV salesman Donald Trump is running up some big numbers for his friends in China by blockading the Strait of Hormuz

China exported more electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles than gas or diesel cars for the first time in April. Automakers expanded aggressively overseas, the China Passenger Car Association said Monday.

New-energy vehicles made up 52.7% of China’s 769,000 total auto exports in April. NEV exports more than doubled from a year earlier, reaching 406,000 units.

+Gary Ferguson is one the country’s great authorities on one of the country’s great trees, the Ponderosa Pine, and he has a fine essay in the Times summarizing the threat to those forests, and with it the western landscape

After about 26 years of exceptionally high heat and drought, hundreds of millions of these trees in lands stretching from New Mexico and Colorado to the southern Sierra Nevada of California have died. And in many places, something even more startling is happening: The trees aren’t coming back.

Ecologists warn that in just 25 years, more than 70 percent of the Southwestern needle leaf evergreen forests, which include ponderosa pines, may be replaced by grass in what might qualify as the first significant post-climate change landscape in America.

One of the biggest consequences is the loss of shade. Without the forest canopy overhead, snow can evaporate quickly instead of trickling into rivers, streams and aquifers. In the mountainous parts of the West, where roughly 70 percent of freshwater runoff originates as snowpack, that’s a huge deal, a sign of a catastrophic feedback loop beginning to form.

+I keep saying that if the last few years were about solar panels and wind turbines, batteries will be the star in the next couple. A new report from Australia says that the boom in home batteries is so intense that it’s pulled the country back within striking distance of its goal to run on 82% renewables by 2030.

Carl Binning, Clean Energy Regulator, says the surge in rooftop installs and home batteries, boosted by the federal rebate, has stunned everyone, including the industry itself, and offered a new avenue to that 82 per cent target.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan assumes another 28 gigawatts of large scale renewables is needed to meet the federal target, a little under 10 GW of additional rooftop solar, and about 5 gigawatt hours (GWh) of home storage.

Binning says home battery storage is already at 11 GWh, and heading for 40 GWh, eight times the ISP assumptions. And the record 441 megawatts (MW) of rooftop solar applications in the month of April points to an annual run rate of around 4 GW. Even if it were 3 GW, that still would beat the ISP assumptions.

+Every once in a while, one’s happy for the work that goes into a book. Here’s a video clip from a member of the British Columbia legislative assembly, lightheartedly convening a book group to study my last volume, Here Comes the Sun. It turns out that one of constitutents, Tannis Wightman, sent a copy of the volume to every member of the legislature, not to mention every member of Canada’s parliament.

+A dedicated group of activists walked fifty miles across New Jersey to the State Capitol last week, to push for passage of the Make Polluters Pay climate superfund bill. As Zach Blackburn reports:

“We’ve seen this playbook before. Big corporations rake in record profits, then walk away and stick working people with the bill,” said Nedia Morsy, the director of Make the Road New Jersey. “Working families shouldn’t be the ones shouldering the cost of climate change.”

The advocates join a growing chorus of New Jerseyans who seek to see the bill passed before this year’s state budget. In March, three Budget Committee senators — Renee Burgess (D-Irvington), Gordon Johnson (D-Englewood), and Patrick Diegnan (D-South Plainfield) — said the committee should pass the Polluters Pay Act first.

Meanwhile, across the border in New York Cathy Becker outlines three new bills to try and cope with the climate insurance crisis. My favorites:

S186A: Insure Our Communities Act. This bill would prevent property insurers from furthering the climate crisis by insuring and investing in new oil, gas and coal projects. Instead, insurers would be required to invest in building our communities under the state Community Reinvestment Act.

and, much like similar legislation (SB 1166) in Hawaii,

S8585: Recovery for climate disaster losses. This bill would allow the New York Attorney General, private insurers doing business in the state, and the New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association to seek damages from fossil fuel corporations in cases of climate-related disasters.

+Important piece from Australian researcher Tamara Krawchenko, attempting to measure the carbon impact of warfare.

This isn’t a minor oversight. Militaries are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has generated an estimated 311 million tonnes of what’s known as CO₂ equivalent, comparable to the combined annual emissions of Belgium, New Zealand, Austria and Portugal. CO₂ equivalent is the metric used to compare the warming impact of various greenhouse gases to carbon dioxide.

Recently published research calculated that the first 15 months of Israel’s war in Gaza generated more than 33 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, comparable to the combined 2023 annual emissions of Costa Rica and Slovenia.

+I suppose it was inevitable. There are enough solar panels in Chile now that thieves have begun to steal them. Antonia Mufarech reports that

In this narrow strip of the Andes, exceptionally sunny conditions, market-based electricity pricing and a favorable investment climate have fueled a swift photovoltaic build-out, from just 3% of total installed capacity in 2015 to a third of the system today, according to government data. Following a pattern in other places like California and the UK, this solar boom has brought crime along with it. But here the trend is turbocharged by more remote expanses and entrenched organized crime, posing risks for Chile’s critical infrastructure, with potential consequences for grid reliability and foreign investment.

“The theft of cables, panels or electronic equipment can temporarily shut down entire solar parks and cause significant economic losses,” said Erwin Plett, chief executive officer of renewable energy advisory Low Carbon Chile SpA, adding that it also drives up security and insurance costs. “Chile remains one of the most attractive renewable markets in the region, but maintaining that leadership requires ensuring the security of energy infrastructure.”

+Finally, just a heads up that our friend the sun not only supplies light, and warmth, and via photosynthesis our supper, and now all the power you could ever need. It also happily offers entertainment. A big coronal mass ejection on Sunday should reach the northern U.S. tonight in the form of northern lights. Enjoy!