“Amid a deep freeze in Texas that devastated the U.S. energy sector, social media reports claim that they sprayed a recent picture of a helicopter using fossil fuels, and a dishwashing detergent, with fossil fuels, around a wind turbine.” in Texas. The picture in question was written incorrectly: it does not come from Texas, but rather from Sweden, and it is a few years old.
Examples of postings that make this claim can be found here, here and here.
As reported here by the technology and science website Gizmodo, the picture in the reports actually shows a helicopter doing a dehydration test on a wind farm in Uljabuouda in the Arjeplog municipality, Sweden, during the winter of 2014.
The image appears in an article from 21 January 2015 on the Swedish news website Ny Teknik describing the ice melting technology (here) where it attributes the photo to Alpine Helicopter. The photo also appears in a presentation entitled “Airborne-icing solution for wind turbines” from the Swedish company Alpine Helicopter (see slide 9) here).
In 2016, the image appeared in a post on ‘Watts Up With That’, a blog promoting the denial of climate change (here). It also appeared on the blog EnergySkeptic.com in early 2019 (energyskeptic.com/2019/wind/).
The image was recycled on social media during a rare freeze in Texas that forced the state’s electricity grid operator to impose rotating power outages due to the higher power demand (here).
As Reuters reported here, it is true that ice storms knocked out nearly half of Texas’ wind power generation capacity on February 14 when the cold trigger shut down turbine towers while driving electricity demand to record levels.
The winter energy woes in Texas have cooled cold bone, combined with snow, sleet and sleet, and this past weekend gripped much of the United States from the Northwest Pacific across the Great Plains and Mid-Atlantic states. .
The effects of freezing are by no means unique to wind power or other forms of renewable energy. According to Reuters’ calculations, historical cold has eliminated approximately 3.3 million barrels per day of refining capacity, which equates to 18% of national capacity, and industry analysts believe that crude production could be affected for days or weeks (here).
Several reports mention the ‘irony’ of ‘a helicopter running on fossil fuels that produces a chemical of fossil fuels on a wind turbine produced with fossil fuels during an ice storm’ (here). However, as the article by Ny Teknik (here) explains, the Alpine Helicopter sprays hot water, not a chemical.
The article does say that the water is heated with an oil burner. But as Gizmodo points out (here), Ketan Joshi (climate and clean technology analyst) (twitter.com/KetanJ0) noted in a 2016 fact check (here) that the amount of greenhouse gas used to power a wind turbine with ‘ removing a helicopter is very small compared to the amount released by power stations fired by gas and coal.
VERDICT
Failure. The image in question does not show wind turbines in Texas, but does in Sweden.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Update 17 February 2021: Add paragraphs 10 and 11 to address helicopter sprayed liquid