“President Macron must declare a moratorium on wind turbines” Bernard Durand (interview)

With the European elections fast approaching and energy Europe sparking much debate and disagreement among EU members, expert energy scientists have joined forces with activist NGOs to write a open letter to the President of the Republic, to demand a moratorium on land and maritime industrial wind power. In this text the authors denounce the uselessness of ENR (wind and solar) as well as a “forced industrialization of rurality”. Bernard Durand is one of the main protagonists of this initiative. Active member of the French association “Save the climate” and author of several works including “Un vent de Folie. Wind power in France: lies and scams?”, this trained geochemist has held the highest positions in the energy sector and is the author of numerous books on this subject; here he explains to us why it is useless and absurd to cover the territory with wind turbines. An educational presentation which allows us to go beyond the simple opinion of those who want it in others but not in their garden.

 

The European Scientist: You are one of those who sent a letter to the President of the Republic to raise awareness of the uselessness of wind power in France. Why this initiative? Who are your partners?

 

Bernard Durand: Industrialists and those who support them, political parties, elected officials, leaders, financiers, etc., tell us that wind power is essential in France:   to fight against global warming, to produce inexpensive electricity, to reindustrialize France, to create jobs, etc. The mainstream media, including public television (paid for by our taxes) have put themselves at their service. These “arguments” are broadcast ad nauseam by all possible advertising means to create Pavlovian reflexes in public opinion. But all of them are false. This is a deception which takes hostage people of good will but little informed about the realities of wind power, and it is undoubtedly the most important financial racket of this century, to the detriment of the citizens of this country.

 

Through this initiative we hope to contribute to finally making this understood, not to our government – ​​which in fact knows it, but does not want to act accordingly – because it is very difficult to make the King admit that he is naked and that too many powerful interests are now at stake, but to those who will read this letter and who will spread it step by step. 

 

The group behind this initiative is made up of engineers who are familiar with the laws of physics and how electrical networks work, and people who are fighting wind power on the ground.

 

TES: In your opinion, many anti-wind energy associations are content with a “NIMBY” position (not in my backyard), why is this insufficient?

 

BD: Not wanting wind power in your home because it bothers you but accepting it in others under the pretext that you have to put it somewhere since everyone   says it is essential is fiercely selfish and ultimately ineffective, even if here and there some will manage to move wind turbines away from their homes in the name of defending the environment, that of the heritage and the health of local residents, all things very important. But if the anti-wind associations finally understand that wind power is useless in France, it will be a unifying theme for them and they will then be able to act collectively and not separately.

 

And how can we accept this massacre even elsewhere than at home   if it has no positive counterpart? .

 

YOUR. : You claim to criticize wind power not on the basis of political convictions, but of engineering reasoning which is based on the laws of physics. Can you explain to us what these laws are? Why is wind power useless according to these principles? What alternatives do we have to produce carbon-free, abundant and cheap energy?

 

BD: There is no political aim in our approach other than that which consists of trying to finally make our politicians understand that due to the laws of physics, wind power is of no use in France, is very expensive for the community and can only bring us trouble.

 

We must first understand that the stability of our electrical network is only ensured if in all places and at all times the electrical power produced by all the power plants connected to the network is equal to the power demanded by the consumers, within extremely narrow limits, of the order of %. However, the electrical power delivered by a wind farm fluctuates considerably, very quickly and randomly depending on the power of the wind.

 

A wind farm is a so-called non-controllable power plant, because it produces electricity based on the weather and not on human will. The electrical power thus produced has no chance of being equal to the power required at any moment. It is therefore impossible to power a network solely with wind farms, it would be a permanent blackout. They must be associated with controllable power plants, that is to say whose power can be controlled by an operator (nuclear plants, lake hydroelectric plants, mainly fossil fuel plants) which do the necessary gymnastics   so that the total power thus produced is at each moment strictly equal to the power demanded by consumers.

 

However, these controllable power plants could perfectly well provide the power required on their own. Wind power is therefore perfectly useless from this point of view. In addition, two power plants are now needed instead of one to produce the same quantity of electricity, create new power lines and reinforce the old ones, manage this system, etc. All of this is very expensive and automatically increases the cost of producing our electricity completely unnecessarily (1). 

 

In France, wind power also has no interest in “decarbonizing” our electricity, since it, produced mainly from nuclear energy and hydraulic energy, is already by far the most carbon-free of all major countries. industrialized. Let us also observe that the carbon footprint of the life cycle of wind power, approximately 15 gCO2eq per kWh of electricity produced, is according to ADEME higher than that of nuclear power (4 g) and hydroelectricity (6 g). which he replaces.

 

The French were persuaded for a long time by constant propaganda that nuclear power plants could be eliminated using wind power. In reality this is not the case because it is necessary to permanently associate wind farms with controllable power plants for approximately the same total power. As hydroelectricity is now close to its limits in France and even in Europe, these controllable power plants can only be nuclear or fossil fuel power plants.

 

The choice for France is therefore not between wind (and photovoltaic solar) and nuclear, but between nuclear and fossil fuels.

 

Germany has chosen fossil fuels. From a climatic point of view, it's not brilliant. Let us hope for the climate that we will have the wisdom to preserve and even, to meet new needs, to develop our nuclear power, avoiding fossil fuels as much as possible to produce our electricity.

 

TES: For you the argument according to which the more we produce intermittent electricity (wind and photovoltaic solar) the more we decarbonize is biased. There would be many other priority investments to decarbonize. What are they ? 

 

BD: I showed in my answer to your previous question why wind power, but it is also true of photovoltaic solar power, will in fact degrade the carbon footprint of our electricity if we want to develop it beyond what it is currently, contrary to what is constantly thrown at us. It will also automatically increase the cost of producing our electricity. 

 

All specialists know very well and our government also knows perfectly but acts as if it did not know it, that the decarbonization of electricity thanks to wind power is a myth. As they commonly say, “you don’t shear an egg”. To decarbonize our activities, we must act on sectors that are large emitters:   electrification of transport, provided that the electricity used is decarbonized, which is still our case for the moment, thermal insulation of homes, research into processes that consume less fossil fuels in certain industries (cement, metallurgy, etc.).

 

Relying on wind power for this is a fantastic waste of time and money.

 

TES: You speak of a “forced industrialization of rurality”. Can you explain ? It is an image that is the opposite of the campaigns of those who promote wind power. Did they deceive us?

 

BD: The name wind farm is an illusion. This bucolic name has nothing to do with reality.

 

It is in fact an uninhabitable industrial zone, and that is why we talk about the industrialization of rurality. And this industrialization is currently taking place at a forced pace, facilitated by laws and decrees which make recourse more and more difficult, to stifle dissent. It is in fact a real colonization of our rural and now maritime spaces, colonization financed by often foreign financial groups who rush on the windfall that constitutes the wind power subsidies generously granted by the State through contracts of 15 to 20 years !

 

In Hauts-de-France, in the Grand Est, in the North of Charente-Maritime, for example, entire villages are gradually being surrounded by giant wind turbines. Of course, seen from the Champs-Elysées, it's not annoying. But for the people affected it is a tragedy, and all the more so because they cannot bear it.

 

TES:   You mention the risks of blackouts linked to intermittent energy production. Some EU countries plan to compensate for intermittency by relaunching gas-controlled power plants. Why are you talking about an imposture?

 

BD: There are two types of gas controllable power plants used to produce electricity:

 

1 gas turbines, which operate on the principle of aircraft engines but which instead of producing thrust turn an electricity generator. They are very valuable because the power can be varied very quickly. They would   therefore be well suited to compensate for very rapid variations in the power of wind farms. But they have poor energy efficiency (around 30%) and the electricity they produce is actually very expensive. We therefore only use them for a short time during the year to deal with exceptional situations.

 

2 – Combined cycle gas power plants (CGCC) which combine a gas turbine with a steam engine heated by the still very hot gases produced by the gas turbine. The overall energy efficiency here is excellent (55 to 60%), much higher than that of a nuclear power plant (33%) or a modern coal-fired power plant (40 to 45%), but the reactivity is much less than that of a gas turbine. However, it is a little more complex than that of a coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power plant. In France, they are few in number and used mainly to cope with peaks in consumption, particularly in winter.

 

There is therefore in reality little technical benefit in replacing a nuclear or coal-fired power plant with a CCGT, other than greater energy efficiency. But if it replaces a nuclear power plant in our country, it will be to the detriment of our carbon footprint, because the carbon footprint of a CGCC, around 420 g/kWh, is around 100 times greater than that of our nuclear power (4 g) . On the other hand, in countries that use coal a lot to produce electricity, such as Germany, replacing a coal-fired power plant with a CGCC makes it possible to improve the carbon footprint, because that of a coal-fired power plant is order of 1000 g/kWh. 

 

The generalization of the use of gas to produce electricity also creates three very big problems in France and more generally in Europe. The first is geopolitical. It is produced less and less in Europe and we therefore have to import more and more of it, which puts us at the mercy of exporting countries, as we clearly understood with the war in Ukraine. The second is its cost. It must be very low like in the United States so that the electricity produced is not overpriced. The third is that methane emissions from the gas sector are much higher than assumed a few years ago. However, methane (the main constituent of natural gas) is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide produced by the combustion of fossil fuels, to the point that many scientists currently believe that gas power plants may not present advantages from a climatic point of view compared to coal-fired power plants.

 

YOUR. : You mention the cost of production and the increase in the price of electricity only third. Isn't this the first argument in the consumer's order of priority? 

 

BD: Certainly, but to understand why wind power increases the cost of producing our electricity, you must have a good understanding of the first two points.

 

YOUR. : What do you expect from President Macron? You are aware that energy policy depends on the EU and that the Germans are doing everything to impose the Energiewende which is at the origin of this situation that you denounce. How can you generalize your initiative at European level? Do you plan to write a second letter to Olaf Scholtz?

 

BD: I would like to be able to expect something in this area from President Macron, but I don't have the impression that he really understood what it was about. In any case he hides it well in view of his determination to want to build even more useless and expensive wind power in France, both at sea and on land *

 

It is true that it must fight against the European Union which has, with great constancy for years, sought to impose German-style Energiewende on Europe, based on wind, photovoltaic solar and fossil fuels, despite its crippling and duly noted defects. But these are the vital interests of our country, which we cannot allow to be sold off without reacting.

 

Writing to Olaf Scholtz is a fun idea. But getting this letter published by a major German opinion newspaper would be more effective. But is this easier to do in Germany than in France, where our media do not shine with their curiosity in this area.

(1)  Click to access Tribune-24-07-2023-faire-plus-deolien-en-France-would-be-a-monumental-error.pdf