It was right around the time a man walked up to me, leaned close to my face and asked how much I had been paid to write a story talking about the benefits of the Weyburn wind project that I had an epiphany…
Brian Zinchuk: In opposing a wind project, Weyburn might want to be careful what they wish for
This is the column I referenced in those Weyburn wind stories. While I still very much question wind generation in a macro sense, I definitely had an epiphany when it came to NIMBY and the Weyburn wind project being presented by Enbridge. If an energy project can’t get built by an oil town, what’s going to happen when we want to start building reactors? Or a major pipeline is proposed?
And on Sunday, I stopped at the Bekevar Wind Facility. I posted a few videos from there, which I will eventually post as stories on the site. For the second time in a row, there was zero power being produced as not one turbine turned in the hour or so I was there. The wind was around 2-4 knots, according to weather reports.
“If an energy project can’t get built by an oil town, what’s going to happen when we want to start building reactors?”
I wouldn’t call wind farms an energy project – these projects only exist due to massive subsidies funded by taxpayers. And their output is only valuable due to the grid being forced to purchase their production. They are a completely unnecessary and unwanted project that helps destroy the existing oil and gas infrastructure, all the while pushing the anti-scientific AGW BS.
As more of these wind farms are built, the grid becomes less stable and electricity prices rise.
And of course, the carbon tax will have to keep going up to subsidize wind.
It is sensible to me that residents would want nothing to do with it, especially when you factor in the end-of-life issues.
Why is this difficult to comprehend? No different than how ranchers wouldn’t be onboard having a cricket processing facility producing “meat” in their backyard.
Here in less than sane Ontario we have a plethora of these monuments to imbecility. When approached to put one on our property. Firstly, there are minimum distance rules which mean I or my neighbors, or both, lose use of a portion of our farm. Secondly, absolute liability. If the tower is on your property it’s your’s if, and when, the energy company walks away from their ‘baby’.
You forgot one, Watto. The wind farms need an equivalent amount of spinning reserve, typically from gas turbines, for when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
Might as well skip building the bird choppers and just make the reserve the primary source right from the start.
I will throw this in again as usual. Tell me how you will build any electrical generating equipment of any sort without using coal, oil and gas? All other discussions are irrelevant. Without “fossil” fuels we return to a very primitive lifestyle.
Exactly. A wind farm is no more than a subsidy project that is also a horrible blight upon the landscape. And that is all it is. If local citizens object to such, they should be applauded for their good sense.
There’s a marked difference between paid mobs of low IQ purple-haired weirdos protesting pipelines, whose views are not representative of the locals and who are not in the majority, and sane locals resisting wind farms.
The former are required to be seen opposing a project that is popular and would otherwise be built without issues. These plants are given breathless wall-to-wall propaganda coverage in the bought-and-paid-for MSM.
The latter are normal, well-adjusted people who can see the con for what it is.
I’ve seen the permanent ugly visual blight that’s occurred in Assiniboia SK from the 50 or so wind turbines that almost surround the town. Weyburn’s an hour or so east. I’m sure many at that Weyburn meeting have seen it too and don’t want that for their town. The hidden threat in the “Be Careful What You Wish For” story title is the same Media nonsense that was thrown our way 24/7 during the 3 yr lockdown. Respect is easily lost.
Well, the behaviour I saw was very much in keeping with the purpled-haired crowd. And they were locals, even if their hair was not colours that exist in nature.
Wind “Power” has wrecked the countryside in Marxist Ontario and Pincher Creek. I visited the Pincher Creek Alberta turbines and have a photo of a Dead Eagle struck by the blades.
Nuclear is an Ultra Woke Globalist DEI Toxic Industry infested with FILTHY LIBERALS
Rainbow flags and Marxist HR.
Nuclear will bankrupt your Province.
BURN COAL, OIL and GAS. SCREW THESE FILTHY NUCLEAR KNOBS
The Spawn for Greenpeace lies again. Has the Sierra Club forwarded you your cheque yet? Maybe you want to fawn at the feet of noted nuclear supporters Lizzie May and Stephen Guilbeault?
Alberta has the largest oil/gas/coal reserve in the country. We also have the largest wind/solar capacity. So there.
sarc off
I don’t see this as NIMBY.
I see this as an intelligent response to a stupid project (https://www.mrdbourke.com/which-part-of-the-graph-are-you/).
The good people of Weyburn will have a much more receptive response to an intelligent project that benefits them and society as a whole.
Throwing around the NIMBY accusation now?
Really?
I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Brian, but things like gas/coal or nuclear plants generate permanent jobs locally, but wind farms generate jobs in China, or for whatever jerks convinced the gov’t to buy into this crap, and now you’re shilling for these grifters.
Well done.
It’s not an accusation. It’s an absolute NIMBY.
If you’ve missed all the other stories I’ve written over the years, you will know I am well aware of the jobs as you mention, including my daughter’s and soon hopefully my son as well. Four of my neighbours work directly within coal-generated power, as miners or power workers. I’m well aware of it all.
I’m not schilling for anyone. I’m pointing out that it’s going to be a hell of a thing to build a reactor if we can’t build a wind farm. And the reactors are where the prize is.
Do you honestly think that allowing a wind farm to be built, will facilitate the building on a nuclear reactor?
Being opposed to NIMBYism and BANANA fascism does not mean inviting anything that comes along. Use energy density as a criteria for what you allow on your grid. Wind and solar don’t qualify. Coal, NG, hydro, and nuclear are all high density and do qualify.
Brian, you might consider that some of the opposition is principled. I am certain that you, on the ground are in a much better place to assess NIMBYISM than I am. However, being favour of this, on a macro level is no different than being in favour of a thermal plant being built that is fueled with $20 bills. Some local benefits will accrue from construction, but it is a hole in the ground to shovel tax money overall. Said thermal plant would actually be more useful than wind, as the power is reliable baseload energy, so the economics are a little better than wind.
I have a friend in a senior position at Emera, their cost for wind is about $0.50 kw/hr vs $0.06 for fossil thermal. An argument in favour of wind requires an argument in favour of a plant to build $200,000 Honda civics for purchase with tax dollars. There is no difference.
Would those be EV Civics?
Everything on roads rolls on petroleum enriched tyres.
Yes, I agree some of the opposition is indeed principled. But some is bordering on unhinged.
Wind mills are a fckn eyesore.
Last year in southern Ontario pretty darn close to Lake Erie I have pics of oil pump jacks working away while huge windmills spin in the background. You can’t not notice the monstrosities.
Anyone who builds a wind mill or solar farm and doesn’t build sufficient battery storage for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow is nothing less than a grifting asshole and needs to be jap-slapped.
Seen solar panel “farm” powering pumpjacks in SE AB.
Carbon offsets?
Virtual signals?
“Free” power?
the “”‘s should be on powering, not farm. How often do they power them? I’m guessing not often.
This only occurs due to carbon offset programs and regulations.
For the carbon offsets, the gov’t basically returns pennies (conditionally) from the billions stolen through carbon taxes. And they incentivize industry to apply for them, because they’re time-limited AND only available while funds remain. This makes companies compete for them before the funds are depleted by their competitors.
And the regulations keep tightening. The amount a site may vent keeps decreasing annually, as well as what combustible fuels may be used, and in what quantity.
And this is measured by site and not by equipment. With the obvious planned outcome being the complete phase-out of any energy source other than “green” energy.
No petroleum company uses solar panels based on economics. Not one.
… that’s at least twice Brian, that you’ve been asked about receiving Trudeau (tax-payer) dollars to write “the other point of view” on wind power. You’re not obliged to answer but it comes across as disingenuous to write very many columns exposing blatant unfeasibility (government corruption) of wind projects, and then very suddenly writing columns in support of wind projects. Something changed, thus the assumption of jornolithm; ie one who is not in the News business, but in the Propaganda business.
Another possibility is that he has received some form of incentive from Enbridge. Or believes that by supporting Enbridge, he is supporting what he might term a builder of “energy projects”.
I support oil and gas in general, but if one of these companies branched out into wind & solar or any other gov’t subsidy grifting area (including CCUS), my support would immediately dry up.
Some perspective: I spent my formative years in junior high, high school and university debate. I even went to nationals in Grade 9. I met my wife and most of my lifelong friends through several years spent in Saskatchewan Youth Parliament.
In debate, you are given a topic, and at 9 a.m. you debate one side, and at 10 a.m. you debate the exact opposite side. You must be able to debate both sides of a topic, and expand your reasoning and arguments to do that. It was great training to look at issues from multiple perspectives.
And that’s what the story on the pro-side of the Weyburn wind project, and this column, were all about. As I pointed out in the column, I’ve written at least 99 stories about the macro issues of wind, its failings, and impacts particularly on the Alberta grid (because they have the best data). But that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of considering the other sides. And there are other sides. As for Watto wondering if I got an “incentive” from Enbridge, no, I did not. (Watto – CCUS has lengthened the life of the Weyburn Unit by multiple decades, and is the reason my daughter was able to find a job in Weyburn. It works, for enhanced oil recovery. As for climate – that’s not my concern. I want more oil)
The point of the column was that if NIMBYism takes hold, it’s going to make it nigh onto impossible to build other energy projects, from simple wells to pipelines to nuclear reactors. And if we go down that path, we’re going to be in a bad place for the entire energy industry. And the other point was cancel culture immediately steps in when one strays from the orthodoxy, whatever that orthodoxy is. You can see that in Watto’s allusion in the comment on this comment. If they stray, discredit, deplatform, destroy.
Just to be clear, I enjoy your articles and am appreciative of the work you do, Brian. My comment was not meant as an attack against you, but rather a possible alternative to ADD’s inference.
My career is in oil and gas. I was here before AGW was a thing. But I have seen its tentacles creep into the industry one at a time, and we’re quickly approaching the end game.
I can cheer for Cenovus, and yet be against AlPo. I can want the best for the hundreds of thousands who work in the industry and related industries in western Canada, and yet still be against grifters.
Wind and solar power exists only because of subsidies. Well, subsidies and lies.
CCUS also exists only due to hostile outside forces taxing the industry, and CCUS is seen as the least stupid of the many stupid options available. That doesn’t make it right.
I wouldn’t doubt that there are fields that could produce for decades more if they were injected with helium, or argon, or whose deposits could be reached if we spent decades digging down to them. None of these would be sensible, or economical, much as CCUS wouldn’t be without outside forces manipulating the game.
That said, we shouldn’t be playing their game and abiding by their rules. The proper response should have always been to ignore the dictates. Ridicule them for their easily-disprovable anti-scientific lies. Keep on drilling and pumping regardless of what they said.
Caving in to these scum one step at a time is only hastening our demise.
And know that if you are simply being the consummate professional by attempting to show both sides of a story, then my hat is off to you. Were the topic something different, I would appreciate your honesty. But in this case, I have enough understanding to see that one side represents industry, and the other represents liars and opportunistic grifters.
And I don’t fear NIMBYism as though it were some sort of contagion. I see the public resistance to these wind farms as logical and principled.
‘Wind and solar power exists only because of subsidies. Well, subsidies and lies.’
Yes and anyone promoting either wind or solar has joined the WACKO club.
More proof that stupid can’t be fixed.
Here, Here, Watto. Well Said!
Canada is getting poorer, faster. PP needs to go full Milei if we are to even have a chance. Every federal regulation and bureaucrat involved with regulating energy use and production needs to be on the street, day one. The provinces can handle the minimal regulation needed. Paris, shitty city, shittier accord. Gone. IPCC? No funding, no listening, no representation. EV mandates? Gone. Net 0? Net 0 energy regulation in 2025, totally achievable. All these must be done with maximum damage and then the earth salted so they cannot arise again.
Energy is our only hope.
Brian, if you’re just advocating for job creation we’d be better off paying the locals to just dig some holes and then fill them back in again. At least people would be getting some fresh air and exercise.
Mandate 150% land reclamation deposit and pay market price for electricity and the “investors” will find another sucker elsewhere.