Why No to Wind
BBC ‘PANORAMA’ QUESTIONS WIND COSTS
‘What’s Fuelling Your Energy Bill?’, broadcast on Monday, 7 November, 2011, builds on a number of recent reports by economists, banks, energy experts and learned bodies which question the efficacy and affordability of the Government’s wind-based renewables policy. This is being paid for through massive production subsidies that are concealed in domestic and industrial energy bills.
The programme again exposes the way that, according to Professor Sir David King, Government Chief Scientific Advisor, 2002-2007, Tony Blair signed up to EU carbon targets without understanding the difference between electricity and energy.
This was subsequently exacerbated by unilateral UK targets embodied in the Energy Act, 2008.
According to economists, the UK now bears by far the highest cost burden of all EU countries in meeting carbon targets: around a quarter of the cost across the whole EU.
The programme examines the contribution of renewables subsidies to rising energy bills which are damaging industrial performance and seeing a very rapid rise in the numbers of households in fuel poverty
FUEL POVERTY AND WIND SUBSIDIES
The head of the Government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group says the Coalition is underestimating the scale of the problem. Derek Lickorish said: “The situation is dire and the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group is extremely concerned.
“We’re looking at 6.6m households in the UK in fuel poverty by the end of this year compared to 2m in 2004.1
Meanwhile the government budget to fight fuel poverty has been slashed from around £300m to £110m. The Advisory Group has called for the funding to be reinstated.
WARNINGS ABOUT WIND POWER COSTS
Many experts have been warning government for years about the impacts of green taxes and sky-high renewables subsidies, in particular the Renewables Obligation, on fuel poverty.
Professor Sir David King, former arch-Windy and Government Chief Scientific Advisor, 2002-2007, told BBC Radio 4’s The Investigation in 2008 that the government was placing too much emphasis on wind power to reach targets and that this would mean more people suffering from fuel poverty.
“These are difficult numbers to estimate but numbers around half a million are not at all unrealistic,” he said.
Maria McCaffery, then Chief Executive of British Wind Energy Association, the wind industry trade body, responded with exactly the same argument that we now hear from Energy Secretary Chris Huhne: “The expectation is that it [wind power generation] will in time drive down the basic cost of energy and actually help the fuel poverty situation, that certainly is our expectation.” 3
How this is supposed to happen with a 100% production subsidy on onshore wind power generation (200% on offshore), huge backup and curtailment costs and a minimum of £200 billion in grid engineering costs associated with handling large-scale intermittent generators is not explained by the wind industry or Mr Huhne.
This is not an evidenced argument, it would be better described as blind hope or an article of Green faith.
EXTRA DEATHS
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics There are 27,000 extra deaths in the UK each winter compared to other times of year. Most of these deaths can be ascribed to cold.4
The UK figure is one of the highest in Europe, worse than France and Germany, and worse than Norway, Sweden and Finland which have much worse winter weather.
FAILING THE POOR
Nearly £2 billion a year is now being spent on Renewables Obligation subsidies.
This money could drastically reduce fuel poverty and CO2 emissions, as well as kick-starting the economy, if it was spent directly on improving the fuel efficiency of homes and enforcing higher building standards for home insulation and heating.
All experts agree that this is the most cost-effective way of reducing CO2 emissions.
But, it seems that government would rather stand by and see this money, paid from our electricity bills, going into the pockets of multinational energy companies or private wind speculators.
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1 ‘Government fuel poverty targets likely to be missed’, Channel 4 News, 12 august 2011.
2 ‘Poverty fears over wind power’, BBC News , 4 September 2008.
3 Ibid.
4 Professor John Hills, ‘Independent review of fuel poverty’. Professor Hills’ interim report was published on 19 October, 2011 and is available from the DECC website.
WHY WIND IS NOT
BEST SOURCE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
Energy Production
How much energy does a wind farm produce? The Wind Industry would have us believe that a Wind Farm is one of the best sources of Renewable Energy and that we should invest in this technology at any cost. This is not true. For example here are the load factors (more on what is load factor in a moment) of different types of energy production :
| Energy Technology | Load factor |
| Sewage Gas | 90% |
| Farmyard Waste | 90% |
| Energy Crops | 85% |
| Landfill Gas | 70-90% |
| Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) | 70-85% |
| Waste Combustion | 60-90% |
| Coal | 65-85% |
| Nuclear Power | 65-85% |
| Hydro | 30-50% |
| Wind Energy | 25-40% |
| Wave Power |
25% |
As you can see, Wind Energy has the poorest performance due to the intermittency of the wind. More and more “less windy” sites are now being developed whose load factor will be much less tan 25%. For example: The Burton Wold Wind Farm consists of ten Enercon E70-E4 wind turbines @ 2 MW nameplate capacity for a total installed capacity of 20 MW. In 2008 the wind farm generated 43,416 MW·h of electricity. (Note 2008 was a leap year.) The capacity factor for this wind farm in 2008 was just under 25%:
What is Load Factor?
The concept of load factor deals with the day-to-day productivity of electricity generating plant. Different energy technologies have different load factors, no individual power plants is always available to supply electricity. All power stations are unavailable at certain times, whether for routine maintenance or for unexpected reasons.
The load factor of an energy technology is the ratio (expressed as a percentage) of the net amount of electricity generated by a power plant to the net amount which it could have generated if it were operating at its net output capacity. This is the formula for the Burton Wold Wind Farm example used earlier:
Wind farms can be treated statistically in exactly the same way as conventional power plant. For any type of power plant it is possible to calculate the probability of it not being able to supply the expected load. As wind is variable, the probability that it will not be available at any particular time is higher. Wind energy has a lower load factor than any other technologies, as shown in the table.
Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals
We are not reducing our carbon emissions by the use of wind turbines.
Germany’s renewable energy companies are a tremendous success story. Roughly 15 percent of the country’s electricity comes from solar, wind or biomass facilities, almost 250,000 jobs have been created and the net worth of the business is €35 billion per year.
But there’s a catch: The climate hasn’t in fact profited from these developments. As astonishing as it may sound, the new wind turbines and solar cells haven’t prohibited the emission of even a single gram of CO2. Even more surprising, the European Union’s own climate change policies, touted as the most progressive in the world, are to blame. The EU-wide emissions trading system determines the total amount of CO2 that can be emitted by power companies and industries. And this amount doesn’t change — no matter how many wind turbines are erected. Experts have known about this situation for some time, but it still isn’t widely known to the public.
Click here to read the full article – an extract from which is here (from the website http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,606763,00.html):
