Wind Energy

Anti-wind power study funded by…surprise!…U.S. fossil group By Chris Madison

The report raised eyebrows because the Danes are really good at wind energy–for example, they have come up with a system of power shifting and trading with their neighbors that can be a model for the United States when it gets serious about integrating windpower into the utility system. At the time, Danish energy experts rebutted the study’s major conclusions.

Now the Danish organization has publicly acknowledged that the report was funded by the Institute for Energy Research, a U.S. organization with close ties to the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

The Danish research firm also acknowledged that it was told that IER is funded by elements of the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

IER, a small organization staffed largely by former Congressional aides, has been conducting a vigorous anti-wind campaign based on poorly sourced assertions that wind energy is bad for the environment and is subsidized by the government to mask its true cost.

In addition to the Danish study, IER was tied to a Spanish wind study whose conclusions were subsequently undercut by Spanish energy officials.

By Chris Madison, www.awea.org/blog/

Oil industry behind critical wind energy report

Conservative think tank admits that report critical of Denmark’s wind power industry was commissioned by US think tank

A controversial report critical of the wind energy industry from conservative think tank CEPOS was commissioned and paid for by an American think tank with close ties to the coal and oil industries, according to trade journal Ingeniøren.

The report, which was published last September and concluded that Danish wind energy figures were misleading, was taken by CEPOS members to the US media in the months leading up to the COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen. The message behind the report indicated that the Danish wind turbine industry model was not effective.
Numerous experts have since strongly criticised the report’s conclusions, challenging many of the figures and the means in which those figures were obtained.

But now it appears that the report was indirectly commissioned and paid for by the American coal and oil lobby.

A press release from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) indicated that it had commissioned the report from CEPOS.

IER reportedly receives funding from the American oil and coal lobby. The think tank has posted a summary of the CEPOS report on its website which includes the claims that ‘in 2006 scarcely 5 percent of the nation’s electricity demand was met by wind. And over the past five years, the average is less than 10 percent — despite Denmark having carpeted its land with [wind turbines]’.

CEPOS CEO Martin Ågerup admitted to Ingeniøren that the report was both commissioned and paid for by IER. But he said he was not aware of IER receiving funding from the coal and oil industry.

www.cphpost.dk/business/119-business/48553-oil-industry-behind-critical-wind-energy-report.html