The E.U.’s Wind Power Self-Deception

Anyone who keeps half an eye on the world energy scene might have been seriously baffled by some of the recent news from Europe. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol agreement on climate change, no government in the world has been proclaiming its desire to save the planet from the evils of global warming more loudly than the European Union, now representing 27 nations.

The E.U. has pledged, for instance, to go far beyond its agreed Kyoto targets for reducing its CO2 output, promising to cut its emissions by no less than 60 percent by 2050 (yes, you read that right: 60 percent, in little over four decades). To achieve this highly implausible goal, the E.U. particularly looks to generating its electricity from renewable sources; to this end, it has set itself a target of producing no less than 20 percent of its energy produced from renewables, as soon as 2020.

To underline just how absurdly ambitious these targets are, the E.U.