The largest source
of new renewable energy is wind power,
which accounts for 62 percent of renewable
electricity generation.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
doesn't publish accident data specifically
for the wind-power industry, but the Caithness
Windfarms Information Forum(CWIF) has created
a list of fatalities for the wind industry worldwide.
The list is compiled
from news reports and is unlikely to be comprehensive.
That there are
any fatalities in this industry should not be surprising.
Towers for modern wind turbines can rise 300 feet
or more and the blades for the rotors extend another
150 feet beyond that.
(For comparison,
note that the Statue of Liberty on its 150-foot
granite pedestal reaches 305 feet.)
A single wind farm can require erecting a thousand
of these 450-foot structures.
How many fatalities have there been?
Taking the CWIF fatalities
for the U.S. and removing deaths
that are only tangentially related to wind power,
shows that there were 10 deaths in the wind-power
industry over the years 2003-2008.
This would seem to make wind power much safer
than coal mining, which had 176 fatalities over the
same period.
However,
much less energy was generated by wind than by coal.
To project changes
in workplace safety from switching to wind
from coal, it is necessary to know the mortality
rate per megawatt-hour.
The low number of total deaths
in the wind-power industry is undermined
by the very low amount of power generated by wind.
Adjusting for power
production yields a surprising result.
On a million-megawatt-hour basis,
the wind-energy industry has averaged
0.0220 deaths compared with 0.0147 for coal
over the years 2003-2008.
Even adding coal's share of fatalities
in the power-generation industry, which
brings the rate up to 0.0164, still leaves wind
power with a 34 percent higher mortality rate.
For the record,
the workplace fatality rate for wind also exceeds
that for oil and gas on an equivalent-energy basis
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/26/wind-power-is-more-dangerous-than-coal-or-oil/
Abolish All Energy Subsidy Whores
& Saboteurs of the Global Commie Unionist
Corporate Criminal Regimes ;
Subsidies create complacency
within industry and reduce the incentive to innovate.
In most cases,
subsidies either transfer part of the cost for a market
viable investment to the public or direct investment
away from more efficient projects.
Either way,
they distort the market
and cost the many for the benefit of the few.
Ending subsidies for fossil fuels is a good idea
but it should be coupled with policy that eliminates
subsidies provided to all energy sources.
Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels
only to relocate the money in green energy
industries is the wrong path.
Wind, solar,
and ethanol are not new ideas -
the government's effort to subsidize
or mandate chosen winners is bad policy
that has persisted since the 1970s.
Ethanol,
for example, has been subsidized since 1978,
originally with the promise that the industry
would become viable within a few years, go off
the dole and compete in the marketplace.
But this has never happened.
Instead,
Congress passed a huge expansion
of the ethanol mandate, essentially forcing
Americans to use more of it even as it continues
to be heavily subsidized.
The government is taking
a similar approach with wind
and solar, even though experience in
other countries warns we shouldn't go down that path
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/29/reject-all-energy-subsidies-not-just-the-ones-for-fossil-fuels/
Exposing
The Enemies
Of Free Enterprise
http://thefreeenterpriser.blogspot.com/
