The Norwegian Oil Company's Floating Wind Farm

When it comes to wind power people come up with the most ridiculous complaints. 

One is that it "wastes" land. This one is a complete crock, as most wind farms are sited on productive farmland in places like Iowa and Minnesota.

Another is that wind kills birds. It does, by the hundreds of thousands. However, glass buildings -- like all the hotels and office buildings that Donald Trump owns -- kill billions of birds every year. Cats kill an additional two or so billion birds in the United States alone.

Another is that wind power is unsightly. What's more unsightly: A) tall, graceful turbines spinning in the wind, B) giant smokestacks spewing thick, black, sulfer-laden coal smoke, or C) nuclear power towers built along rivers and lakes, emitting huge gouts of slightly radioactive steam.

Well, the Norwegian oil company has a solution: offshore floating wind turbines.

The world's first commercial floating offshore wind farm, called Hywind, started sending electricity to the grid last October. Since then, the six-turbine, 30MW installation has been working well. Really well. In fact, Hywind has had a 65-percent capacity factor over the last three months according to Statoil, the Norwegian mega-corporation that built the wind farm off the coast of Scotland. (Capacity factor measures a generation unit's actual output against its theoretical maximum output. A capacity factor of 100 percent means the wind farm would be sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day since it's been in operation.)

That 65% capacity factor is higher than land-based wind and solar, and greater than many hydroelectric facilities, which have an average of 45% capacity. Since the wind is stronger and more consistent during the winter, Hywind's figure will be lower for the full year.

The wind farm is 15 miles offshore, eliminating all the complaints about wasting land, killing birds and being unsightly.

It uses the same technology that oil drilling uses: a floating platform anchored to the seafloor with suction anchors. This allows the platforms to withstand high winds and hurricanes, just as oil platforms do:

In October, the proximity of Hurricane Ophelia exposed Hywind to wind speeds of 125 km/h (80 mph), and later in December, another storm delivered "gusts in excess of 160 km/h (100 mph) and waves in excess of 8.2 m (27 ft)."

If you compare this success story to the abject failure that was the Kemper "clean coal" facility, which has now been abandoned after wasting billions of dollars, it becomes clear that the future of energy is renewables.