Ireland emissions: I was interested to see the Fred Udo piece mentioned in your post as I hadn’t seen that yet. It only took a few minutes to unravel the statistical trick Udo was using to get his results, which might explain why his analysis wasn’t published in a peer-reviewed journal and rather appears on an obscure Dutch anti-wind website. This appears to be a classic case of a lurking (or confounding) variable being used to misleadingly present correlation as causality; a comparable example is arguing that cigarette lighters cause lung disease since people who buy them tend to develop lung disease. In this case the lurking variable that is the actual causal factor appears to be cold weather and its impact on heating demand, data that Udo should have had access to but that (for reasons you can speculate) he chose not to use in his correlational analysis.

What tipped me off was in part 3, Figure 3 of his text, where Udo called out an event in Ireland around June 9-12 2011 when the carbon intensity of Ireland’s electricity production surged. I was curious what might have caused that event so, on a hunch, I pulled weather records for Ireland. Sure enough, there was an abnormally cold spell when temperatures fell into the 30’s and 40’s F, 10 to 20 degrees below normal for that time of year. Aha! Cold temperatures drive heating demand, forcing Ireland’s numerous fossil-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plants to fire up and run at a high level of heat production (and subsequently more emissions/MWh since CHP plants relative to the rest of the fleet are not optimized for electricity production, and CHP plants being run to produce maximum heat are not being operated in a way that is optimized for electricity production; moreover, it appears that the emissions associated with heat production are rolled into the data that Udo is using, so a CHP plant producing only or mostly heat and little or no electricity under cold conditions like these would score at infinity CO2/MWh). A smaller possible factor is that higher demand for electric heating drives higher merit order, less efficient fossil plants to operate to meet the abnormally high electric demand.

As one would expect, cold spells and home heating demand often correlate with high wind speeds, which is how Udo was able to draw his false conclusion that wind was the causal factor. Sure enough, a closer examination of the spikes in emissions/MWh in Udo’s data show that all are associated with cold spells, and only some are associated with an increase in wind output. It doesn’t take a statistician to tell you which is the causal factor in that relationship. Had Udo himself been more interested in finding the actual causal relationship at play here, he might have noted that the correlations between wind output and emissions intensity varied widely from month to month (as one would expect for weather-driven seasonal changes in electric demand), usually a strong indication that another variable may be the actual causal factor.
I should also point out that, contrary to Udo’s claims, EirGrid’s method of calculating the emissions savings of wind is accurate. The plant-specific heat rate curve that they are using would account for all of the impacts wind energy would have on the efficiency of the fossil fleets under all operating conditions.

Cost: To touch briefly on the cost issue, I’d suggest consulting with any of various independent analysts about how the cost of wind energy compares against other sources of electricity – some links are below. As is noted, the cost of wind energy has fallen drastically in recent years, though that hasn’t stopped some from using old data to perpetuate the myth that wind energy is significantly more expensive that alternatives. FERC’s collection of signed power purchase agreements showing the actual $/MWh costs for hundreds of generating projects from different electricity sources also backs up the conclusion that wind energy is very affordable. Moreover, when one looks at the history of extreme volatility in fossil fuel prices and the inevitability that fossil fuel prices are going to vary and likely increase in the future, wind energy looks even more attractive as a way to lock in an energy resource that will continue to have zero fuel costs for the life of the plant. Of course, that doesn’t even begin to factor in the massive environmental, public health, and societal costs of other sources of electricity production.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-07/wind-turbine-prices-fall-below-1-million-euros-per-megawatt-bnef-says.html
http://www.narucmeetings.org/Presentations/2008%20EMP%20Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Master%20June%202008%20%282%29.pdf
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/emp/reports/lbnl-4820e.pdf

Miscellaneous: On the topics of infrasound, property values, and other false claims used to attack wind energy, I’d suggest reading the consensus of scientists that all of those concerns are unfounded – the links are below. Of course, the most important point is that when compared to the massive environmental, public health, and quality of life impacts of other energy resources, wind energy and other renewables are far and away the best option for powering our society.

http://awea.org/_cs_upload/learnabout/publications/5728_1.pdf
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ems/reports/lbnl-2829e.pdf
As mentioned earlier, summaries of the evidence refuting the Bentek studies:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/09/the-facts-about-wind-energy-and-emissions
http://archive.awea.org/newsroom/pdf/04_05_2010_Colorado_emissions_response.pdf
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/realstories/The-Facts-about-Wind-Energy-and-Emissions.cfm
http://www.awea.org/newsroom/realstories/upload/110720-The-Facts-about-Wind-Energy-and-Emissions.pdf

Michael Goggin,
American Wind Energy Association