Examining ESG #98 - How Wind and Solar Might Be the New Climate Villains
This week’s edition drills into a provocative but increasingly unavoidable question: what if the technologies touted as climate saviors—wind, solar, and hydrogen—are actually heating the planet? Several studies reveal that far from being benign alternatives, these so-called renewables come with significant thermal side effects: raising nighttime surface temperatures, drying out soils, and even reshaping entire ecosystems. As the climate alarm narrative marches on with moral certainty, it's worth considering what type of transition is expected from all the trillions being spent - from what to what, and at what cost to human flourishing and environmental integrity.
CHART OF THE WEEK
SCIENCE
IPCC misrepresentations: comments made by former IPCC contributors after cutting ties with the politicized body — so scientists no longer subject to professional repercussions.
IPCC scientist #23 - Dr Madhav Khandekar: “I have carefully analysed adverse impacts of climate change as projected by the IPCC and have discounted these claims as exaggerated and lacking any supporting evidence.”
Revisiting the global hydrological cycle: is it intensifying?
Figure 11(a) Variation of the snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere according to GSL; thin and thick lines represent monthly values and running annual averages (right aligned), respectively, and squares are annual averages aligned in December of each year. (b) Seasonal variation of the snow cover, separately, for the first and last 25 years on record.
The snow part of precipitation is also interesting to examine, as snow is more directly related to temperature. Figure 11 depicts the evolution of the snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite temperature increases, no noticeable change appears on an annual basis. However, there are perceptible changes in the seasonal variation, namely in the most recent period where the snow cover has decreased during the summer months and increased during the autumn and winter months.
Our take: With the recent ending of winter, but snow and cold persisting for a further month around Ottawa, Ontario, it’s interesting to note how the global warming alarmists who predicted the end of snow have been completely wrong - as always - along with all the other claims of dramatic climate change, never mind change caused by human-produced CO2. Do you think the people who made all these claims that turned out to be false have changed their minds after reality gave them proof, or is it more likely they moved on and found another doomsday claim to hold onto, one a little further out in the future?
So-called Renewable Energy: Warming the Planet to save the Planet from Warming
I will argue that technologies such as wind, solar PV and electrolytic hydrogen are at best neutral in reducing anthropogenic warming and may in fact have a net warming effect on the Earth’s energy balance.
Starting first with hydrogen. Once hydrogen escapes to the atmosphere, it rapidly reacts with and consumes natural oxidants like ozone and hydroxyl radicals.
Note that ozone and hydroxyl radicals are critical components of our lower troposphere’s self-cleaning processes that work to suppress the build-up of natural and man-made pollutants. Furthermore, these atmospheric constituents are integral to nitrogen and sulfur cycling and as such are foundational to a healthy environment.
These fugitive losses, if large enough within a regional airshed, are said to give one tonne of hydrogen an equivalent warming effect as 11 tonnes of CO2.
David Keith, professor of Applied Physics at Harvard`s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences produced a number of studies that suggest if wind power is expanded to the point of being the largest source of power generation in United States, the resulting slowing of surface wind speeds and alteration of atmospheric circulation would result in a nighttime warming of more than 1.5 C over the first century of operation at such a scale.
Atmospheric wakes created by wind generators reduce convective cooling of the surface. In fact, his work shows the produced warming over the first century would be larger than if coal power were the primary source of power generation.
Now onto the question of whether utility scale solar PV plants warm or cool the environment? The straight up answer is that they cause warming of the environment and here is the rationale behind this critical assessment.
With solar PV, the climate warming potential associated with massive “black tops” is their color and shadow effect on underlying grass gives rise to warming of near surface air masses. The study titled The Photovoltaic Heat Island Effect: Larger solar power plants increase local temperatures suggests that large solar PV facilities can increase local temperatures by as much as 4 C and that the mechanism is indeed through alteration of the surface albedo.
The entire basis of the push to displace dispatchable thermal power generation technologies with wind, solar PV and electrolytic hydrogen is based on the argument that the latter act to reduce anthropogenic surface warming from CO2 emissions. As discussed in this article, these arguments ignore the clear warming influences produced wherever wind, solar PV and electrolytic hydrogen plants are commissioned.
Do Wind Turbines Contribute To Global Warming?
The core problem is that wind turbines generate electricity by extracting energy out of the air, slowing down wind and otherwise altering “the exchange of heat, moisture, and momentum between the surface and the atmosphere,” the study explains. That can produce some level of warming.
Miller and Keith calculated the global warming avoided if the US, and every other country, eliminated its power-plant emissions by 2080, the avoided warming in the US in 2100 would actually be roughly equivalent to the added local warmth caused by the wind turbines.
According to the study, wind turbines measuring between 100 and 150 meters (328 feet to 498 feet) operating at night can pull down warmer air from as far as 1,640 feet in the air down to the surface, warming the surface of the earth, where it would impact the people, plants, and animals living near the turbines.
Wind energy farms generate renewable electricity, however, the three studies (Zhow 2013, Miller/Keith 2018, and Wang 2023), indicate they also change the local climate with both elevated temperatures at night and lowering soil moisture so key for food production.
The Wang study proves that soil moisture is reduced by wind farms not only downwind but also upwind. The much-publicized catastrophic climate change could now be caused by the introduction of wind turbines which increase surface temperature while drying out the underlying soil.
Our take: A provocative reminder that even our “clean” technologies come with tradeoffs. If wind power warms the earth while saving it, we may need to rethink what counts as progress.
The Photovoltaic Heat Island Effect: Larger solar power plants increase local temperatures
While photovoltaic (PV) renewable energy production has surged, concerns remain about whether or not PV power plants induce a “heat island” (PVHI) effect, much like the increase in ambient temperatures relative to wildlands generates an Urban Heat Island effect in cities. Transitions to PV plants alter the way that incoming energy is reflected back to the atmosphere or absorbed, stored, and reradiated because PV plants change the albedo, vegetation, and structure of the terrain. Prior work on the PVHI has been mostly theoretical or based upon simulated models. Furthermore, past empirical work has been limited in scope to a single biome. Because there are still large uncertainties surrounding the potential for a PHVI effect, we examined the PVHI empirically with experiments that spanned three biomes. We found temperatures over a PV plant were regularly 3–4 °C warmer than wildlands at night, which is in direct contrast to other studies based on models that suggested that PV systems should decrease ambient temperatures. Deducing the underlying cause and scale of the PVHI effect and identifying mitigation strategies are key in supporting decision-making regarding PV development, particularly in semiarid landscapes, which are among the most likely for large-scale PV installations.
Our take: Turns out even solar panels can turn up the heat—literally—especially at night and in the places we’re counting on most for deployment.
Wind farms have cascading impacts on ecosystems across trophic levels
Wind farms are a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels for mitigating the effects of climate change, but they also have complex ecological consequences. In the biodiversity hotspot of the Western Ghats in India, we find that wind farms reduce the abundance and activity of predatory birds (for example, Buteo, Butastur and Elanus species), which consequently increases the density of lizards, Sarada superba. The cascading effects of wind turbines on lizards include changes in behaviour, physiology and morphology that reflect a combination of predator release and density-dependent competition. By adding an effective trophic level to the top of food webs, we find that wind farms have emerging impacts that are greatly underestimated. There is thus a strong need for an ecosystem-wide view when aligning green-energy goals with environment protection.
Our take: When wind farms reshape entire food webs, it’s a good time to pause and ask whether “green” energy is always ecologically green.
The wind wake effect of offshore wind farms affects the hydrodynamical conditions in the ocean, which has been hypothesized to impact marine primary production. So far only little is known about the ecosystem response to wind wakes under the premisses of large offshore wind farm clusters. Here we show, via numerical modeling, that the associated wind wakes in the North Sea provoke large-scale changes in annual primary production with local changes of up to ±10% not only at the offshore wind farm clusters, but also distributed over a wider region. The model also projects an increase in sediment carbon in deeper areas of the southern North Sea due to reduced current velocities, and decreased dissolved oxygen inside an area with already low oxygen concentration. Our results provide evidence that the ongoing offshore wind farm developments can have a substantial impact on the structuring of coastal marine ecosystems on basin scales.
Our take: Offshore wind may be low-carbon in some ways, but its wake leaves a broad ecological footprint—altering primary production, sediment flow, and even oxygen levels across entire marine basins. Is this what we are supposed to label as low environmental impact?
When it comes to energy production, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, unfortunately.
As the world begins its large-scale transition toward low-carbon energy sources, it is vital that the pros and cons of each type are well understood and the environmental impacts of renewable energy, small as they may be in comparison to coal and gas, are considered.
In two papers — published today in the journals Environmental Research Letters and Joule — Harvard University researchers find that the transition to wind or solar power in the U.S. would require five to 20 times more land than previously thought, and, if such large-scale wind farms were built, would warm average surface temperatures over the continental U.S. by 0.24 degrees Celsius.
Then, a few months ago, the U.S. Geological Survey released the locations of 57,636 wind turbines around the U.S. Using this data set, in combination with several other U.S. government databases, Keith and postdoctoral fellow Lee Miller were able to quantify the power density of 411 wind farms and 1,150 solar photovoltaic plants operating in the U.S. during 2016.
“For wind, we found that the average power density — meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant — was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts,” said Miller, who is the first author of both papers. “Most of these estimates failed to consider the turbine-atmosphere interaction. For an isolated wind turbine, interactions are not important at all, but once the wind farms are more than five to 10 kilometers deep, these interactions have a major impact on the power density.”
Texas wind farm affects land temperature
A Texas region containing four of the world's largest wind farms showed an increase in land surface temperature over nine years that researchers have connected to local meteorological effects of the turbines.
The land surface temperature around the west-central Texas wind farms warmed at a rate of 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade during the study period relative to nearby regions without wind farms, an effect most likely caused by the turbulence in turbine wakes acting like fans to pull down warmer air from higher altitudes at night, said lead author Liming Zhou at the University of Albany, State University of New York.
INVESTMENT/ECONOMICS
New NGO research uncovers massive greenwashing in European ESG funds
Extensive financial research by NGOs Urgewald and Facing Finance has uncovered massive greenwashing in European ESG funds, also known as Article 8 and Article 9 funds. More than 14,000 ESG funds traded in European markets were analyzed. Well over one-third (4,792 funds) invested more than EUR 123 billion in companies actively pushing fossil fuel expansion projects or lacking a credible Paris-aligned coal phase-out plan.
Our take: This article commits the ESG fallacy of equating fossil fuel involvement with inherent unsustainability, ignoring the crucial role oil, gas, and coal continue to play in energy security, economic development, and human flourishing—especially in emerging markets. By framing diversified, legally compliant investments as “greenwashing,” it substitutes activist purity tests for objective financial and environmental analysis, and demands ideological conformity from funds rather than transparency or performance.
Aussie pension fund hit with greenwashing penalty
An Australian pension fund is being sanctioned by a federal court in Australia for greenwashing misconduct.
Last year, the Federal Court of Australia ruled that the fund, Active Super, breached the law by investing in securities that, it claimed, were excluded from its investment universe by its ESG screens.
While its marketing materials promised that it excluded investments in oilsands, coal mining, gambling, and Russia, the fund allegedly violated those commitments in its direct and indirect portfolio holdings.
Now, the court has ordered the fund to pay a $10.5-million (Australian dollars) penalty.
“This is a significant penalty that sends a strong message to companies making sustainable investment claims that those claims need to reflect the true position,” said Sarah Court, deputy chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), in a release.
In its ruling, the court said that the fund, “benefited from its misleading conduct by misrepresenting the ‘ethical’ nature of a significant part of its investments, which on any view enhanced its ability to attract investors… and enhanced its reputation as a provider of investment funds with ESG characteristics.”
Our take: This case highlights the internal contradictions of the ESG regulatory framework itself, which demands strict adherence to subjective and often conflicting criteria while failing to provide coherent, enforceable definitions of what qualifies as “ethical” or “sustainable.” The Active Super ruling punishes a fund for not aligning with its own nebulous ESG promises—yet those promises are shaped by a regulatory system that lacks objective grounding, elevates political fashion over energy reality, and forces funds into performative compliance rather than principled investing. In essence, ESG regulation both creates the problem and punishes its predictable outcomes.
1) Solar energy in the US is only competitive in locales where natural gas prices are unnaturally high. To wit, in the seven states in which solar’s breakeven is at least $10 lower than gas-fired, the average gas price is more than double that of the 27 states in which gas-fired’s breakeven is at least $10 lower than solar.
2) The US would be better off distributing and utilizing its massive supply of affordable natural gas than wasting hundreds of billions of rate- and tax-payer funds on subsidized and unreliable renewables that, in the end, are sure to destabilize our grids.
3) We’ve now seen enough to unequivocally reject claims that solar energy is the “cheapest” form of energy on the planet. What say you?
We say: This analysis slices cleanly through the solar hype, exposing a foundational ESG contradiction: renewables are only “competitive” where fossil fuels are artificially penalized. By showing that unsubsidized solar is more expensive than gas in the vast majority of U.S. states—despite using highly favorable solar assumptions—it undercuts the core green narrative that solar is the inevitable economic winner. The claim that solar is the cheapest energy source is only true in marketing brochures, not in grids governed by physics, cost, and reliability.
Follow the Money: How Climate Bureaucrats Are Robbing Taxpayers Blind
As the Biden administration gasped its final breaths, Jennifer Granholm’s last days as Energy Secretary were not spent ensuring accountability or delivering results. Instead, they were a frenzied, last-minute cash grab, a breathtaking rush to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of politically connected insiders. Was this truly about advancing clean energy, or was it just another brazen scheme to redirect public funds under the convenient guise of climate activism?
The deeper you dig, the clearer the pattern becomes: freshly minted nonprofits with no track record, billions funneled to organizations that barely existed months ago, and an astonishing lack of oversight in how these funds will be spent. No real infrastructure. No real impact. Just a money pipeline dressed up as environmentalism. But, of course, we’re told this must be done to ‘SAVE THE PLANET.’
I used to think the rhetoric about rampant green energy fraud was overblown. Now? The scale of outright theft is staggering. A recent investigative report called it "like throwing gold bars off the Titanic" (The Free Press). That phrase perfectly captures the madness of it all, billions of taxpayer dollars vanishing into thin air, handed out to NGOs that barely existed a year ago.
Even the EPA’s own Inspector General has now formally referred this $20 billion mismanagement to federal authorities, confirming the massive fraud and financial mismanagement behind these so-called “climate initiatives” (EPA).
Our take: today’s climate and energy policies are not about improving human flourishing or solving real problems—they are about expanding government control, enriching politically connected elites, and demonizing the energy sources that actually power the modern world. This $20+ billion “green” disbursement is a case study in ESG's moral inversion: punishing proven, life-enhancing energy while rewarding opaque, ineffective, and ideologically driven projects with zero accountability or technical merit. This isn't policy failure—it’s the logical result of an anti-human framework that treats energy abundance as a problem, not a solution.
ABSURDITIES
Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure
The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments.
Global carbon emissions are still rising and current policies will result in a rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. The damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts and it will be impossible to adapt to many climate impacts, said Thallinger, who is also the chair of the German company’s investment board and was previously CEO of Allianz Investment Management.
Our take: we recommend, as always, that financial companies conduct a proper due diligence on the ridiculous claims on display in this article.