Actually Jerome a Paris is described as:

"Jérôme Guillet (energy banker, "Jérôme à Paris") Daily Kos, European Tribune"

i.e. he writes for Daily Kos and the European Tribune.

If I remember correctly, he has a very extensive background in financing for the windpower industry.

Mr Lawson

Thanks for getting back to me. I actually looked at the German report and the E.ON Netz Report at lunch today. Both these reports acknowledge that wind power does reduce carbon emissions. Specifically, Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience says "These theoretical arguments are substantiated by the numerical analysis of Traber and Kemfert (2009:155), who find that while the CO2 emissions in Germany’s electricity sector are reduced substantially (p21)". The abstract to the paper is also enlightening. It states "We argue that German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio." This is not an argument against wind power or other renewables, rather it is a criticism of the way in which it was done.

The E.ON Netz Report states in the foreword, "In policy terms, E.ON supports the objective of making the production of electricity using renewable energy competitive as quickly as possible. Only the achievement of this objective will enable renewable energy to make a globally significant contribution towards climate protection and the
conservation of resources."

Interestingly you note that "E.ON Netz has said nothing at all on that key issue since the 2005 report." I do not agree that this is ominous as a press release from the company dated 1 October 2007 says
"German Utility E.ON Netz GmbH has awarded ABB (Zurich, Switzerland) an order worth more than US$400 million to supply the power equipment that will integrate a 400-MW offshore wind farm into the German grid.
Scheduled to be operational in September 2009, the wind farm is expected to avoid CO2 emissions of 1.5 million tons per year by replacing fossil-fuel generation."

In summary, none of the reports you cite argue against wind as a viable energy source or as a means of reducing carbon emissions.

michael_in_adelaide I think you should read some of the rebuttals to Jerome's claims. In some countries like Germany wind power is doubly cosseted. It not only gets a subsidy (the feed-in tariff) but also electricity resellers are obliged to take any wind power that is going. Wind producers can't lose, only the customers and taxpayers. In Australia I think Renewable Energy Certificates under the RET will have a similar effect.

If Lawson is right it wouldn't help to bring back the ETS or the Green's $20 carbon tax since no CO2 will be saved. It is not clear that major transmission networks or energy storage will help at present. However I think gas fired backup may rapidly get more expensive so the economics will change. The next question is can we afford the high electricity prices? We being both households and aluminium smelters. If only there was a low carbon alternative cheaper than the gas/wind combo.

Not with standing, the economic arguments advanced by Mark Lawson reference to the Caithness Wind Farm site* shows that wind energy is not free from both a human morbidity and mortality incidence.
The details given are admitted to be not fully comprehensive. Rather they should be read as a “tip of the iceberg.”
Briefly, since the decade of the 70s up to 31 March 2010 their records demonstrate:
731 accidents,
Over 60 fatalities (47 were wind industry employees, 19 included workers not directly employed by the wind industry i.e. transport workers,
38 accidents resulting in human injury (29 wind workers, 9 members of the public).

Blade failure was the commonest cause of accident (172 recorded). Pieces of blade were documented as travelling up to 1300 meters from the turbine.
Fire accounted for 139 accidents. The biggest problem with turbine fire is due to the scattering of burning embers over a large area.
Other related causes of accident include: structural failure of the turbine, “ice throw,” and transport accidents related to the industry.
As far as I know the wind industry does not provide statistics in relation to health and or safety. Does anyone know if it is possible to determine a rate for wind induced fatalities and/or injury in terms of kW generated per year? Chapter 6, Switkowski report quotes the direct fatality rate in terms of GWe/year for a number of modes of energy generation, in respect to wind generation the report refers only to the Caithness data which is continuously up dated.

*http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

It's not been a good week for alternative energy -- the Port Kembla wave power generator sank in a storm a few days ago. My favourite Green scam comes from Spain, though, where the locals discovered that they could shine arc lights on to solar panels and sell the 'solar' electricity back to the grid at inflated prices for several times what it cost them to run the arc lights. What fun you can have with other people's money!

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/13/the-insanity-of-greenery/#more-18452

Mark Lawson here
Michael_in_ Adelaide - looked at your Jerome a Paris article. Its straight nonsense. The man is crazy. Not even the greeniest of the wind power lobby would dare claim that wind power reduces prices. Ignore him.
Loxton - you've misunderstood (or ignored) what I was driving at and, while it is commendable that you read the reports, you have confirmed the original article. I didn't say the German report was critical. I said it gave a true indication of cost. It does. After some desperate hunting you found talk of THEORETICAL estimates of carbon savings, which is completely worthless. I'm not sure where that came from in the report but it was clear in the conclusion that they thought carbon saving should be left up to market forces. Quite so. They are not against the need to save carbon, its not what they are on about. But they have made no estimation of carbon saving in their own right. Where is the net operator's estimation of carbon saved?
As for Netz Gmbh report, again the various comments you identify add up to precisely nothing. Netz is expanding its wind network because it is paid to do it, and of course they are paying lip service to wind. I never said they were against it, what I did say was that they made these statmeents about alarmingly high reserve requirements, then nothing from anyone.
So how much carbon has been saved from real life operation of networks? What are the losses from reserve requirements? How much efficiency is lost by retailoring the network. Answer those questions from real life experience and I'll thank you. These attempts to respin the reports are a waste of time..