nergy use. In fact, the onsite energy use of wind plants is minimal, considerably less than the onsite parasitic losses associated with pumping water at conventional steam plants, operating pollution control equipment at fossil plants, drying and crushing fuel at coal plants, etc.
Despite the facts, the desperate misinformation campaign to muddy the waters about the benefits of wind energy continues. So far in this case it appears that the facts have prevailed, as the obscure, unsubstantiated, and deeply flawed website posting of a single Dutch anti-wind farm activist has been treated with the skepticism it deserves when directly contradicted by a large body of government and independent grid operator data and peer-reviewed studies showing that wind energy does result in the expected savings of fossil fuel use and emissions.
In the interests of space we won’t repost all of the data and citations here, but they can be found at the following links:
By Michael Goggin, American Wind Energy Associatio Manager-Transmission Policy, www.awea.org/blog