It doesn’t, of course. I’m betting the title got your attention, though, just as a similar headline did when it appeared today on news aggregator fark.com. The story itself, posted on the web site of KATU-TV in Portland, Oregon, is a textbook example of the dangers of spin (or, at the very least, irresponsible journalism.)

For those who want the executive summary, here it is. Wind power has been very, very well developed along the Columbia River in the northwestern United States. New wind farms are going online regularly, and an ambitious plan is in place to further encourage and support wind power.

Wind, as any sailor will tell you, is a fickle thing. Sometimes you have none at all, and at other times you have more than you can use. There have been occasions, recently, when so much wind power was dumped onto the electrical grid that it exceeded the load on the grid, a dangerous condition that can cause voltage to rise and circuits to trip.

This is a great thing!  Isn’t it? Those western states have managed to generate so much wind power that we don’t know what to do with it all, right?

Wrong.

As the article correctly points out, traditional sources of electricity are still out there. Power plants that use fossil fuels and nuclear energy are generally built and operated at great expense by corporations who want to see a return on their investments. They’re not about to dial back their generation capacity, cutting their income, so that wind power can take over when it’s available.

If we have too much power, then, who cuts back? Hydro does. Hydroelectric power is also well developed along the Columbia river, and when the supply of wind power exceeds demand, the dams cut back their generation.  

When a hydroelectric dam stops generating, the water still needs to go downstream or the river will drop, so instead of passing the water through the generators, dams just send it over the spillways. Water passing over a dam’s spillway becomes highly aerated. Nitrogen dissolves in the water, and the excess nitrogen makes fish uncomfortable or worse. This is the basis for the KATU story — those wind turbines are forcing the dams to spill more water.

Is wind power hurting the fish? Of course it isn’t! There is no causal link here at all.

In the first place, they could dial back the wind power if necessary, feathering the blades of these modern, advanced turbines so that they catch less of the wind and produce less electricity. They don’t do it, presumably, because it would be stupid. They want to generate more power by clean, alternative means, and that’s why the wind farms are there.

They could shut down a coal-fired plant for the duration of the surplus. Trading dirty, resource-gobbling capacity for clean, renewable capacity makes sense! This isn’t done for the oldest reason of all, which is greed. The plant owner who shut down would lose money, because he gets paid to turn a non-renewable resource into both electricity and pollution.

What’s really killing salmon? Greed is killing salmon. Greed is more powerful than wind. The wind farms and hydro dams are continuing to provide clean, cheap, resource-efficient power, and in return they’re being told by the big coal-fired behemoths, “Sorry.  There’s not room in this town for the three of us, and we were here first.”

Would anyone care to bet on which of the major players in the fossil-fuel power industry paid off KATU’s reporter to blame it on wind?  My money is on PG&E.