Fossil fuel industry shill Tom Harris has been on a campaign recently denouncing wind power. The reason is pretty obvious - wind power cuts into coal profits. But, I began to wonder just how much of a threat wind posed to coal and did some math.
Looking up wind power in the United States and Canada (Mr. Harris' home country), I determined the two countries generated about 185,000 gigawatt-hours from wind power in 2014. To generate that much electricity using coal would take about 23 million tons of coal. Coal varies in price depending on the quality and source, but $40 per ton is a good working price. At that price, 23 million tons of coal would cost about $900 million.
In 2014 alone, wind power took about $900 million dollars out of the pockets of the coal-barons and that amount is only going to increase.
Now, we can see why Tom Harris is engaged in this campaign.
