Last week, in the tumult of the hundreds of emails that pour into my inbox each day, there was this intriguingly named nugget: Wind Power Can’t Cost-Effectively Be a Large Grid’s Main Source of Electricity
Whoa, I said, I’ll read this! I had just attended the Indiana Energy Conference and had returned with a miasma of new information to sort through.
So I did, and the press release trashes wind, waxing negatively about there not being enough wind to meet energy demands, and concluding that the need for a wind-generated power reserve, to store the energy when the wind isn’t blowing, is cost-prohibitive.
Bummer, dude, I thought, then I decided to look deeper.
The email came from the Reason Foundation, and quick search on my one of my favorite sites, Source Watch, revealed that Reason Foundation is funded in part by the Koch Family Foundations.
In fact, David Koch himself serves as a trustee.
Of course you’ve heard of the billionaire Koch brothers, of which David is one. And likely you know the efforts they are taking to disparage renewable energy. This recent London Guardian story reveals much about that.
Interesting coincidence: I had read a story just a few days before this Reason Foundation email, entitled: Enough Wind to Power Global Energy Demand: New Research Examines Limits, Climate Consequences. You can read it here.
Scary enough for the Koch bro to roll out the PR machine?
The source for the happy wind story, Carnegie Institute, comes up on Source Watch as well, though nothing damning rises to the service.
In fact, the folks behind Carnegie tend to like science, unlike the majority of conservatives.
Just to say, don’t believe what you read — on the face of it, at least. A little digging can reveal the sources behind a document. Always try and be alert as to who funded a study, because the discovery can be enlightening.
