From Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present. Madness is far too polite a word. –-Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
They are among the nation’s wealthiest aristocrats, whose families have protected the British landscape for centuries. Until now that is. For increasing numbers of the nobility – among them dukes and even a cousin of the Queen – are being tempted by tens of millions of pounds offered by developers. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
In the course of the 25-year lifespan of the wind farm at Fallago Rig it could net the Duke anywhere between £18 million and £62.5 million. One industry expert estimated Fallago Rig could generate about £875 million income over the next quarter of a century for the Duke and his commercial partner North British Windpower. —Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape. –Sir Simon Jenkins, National Trust, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
Green taxes will make up more than a third of the price of electricity by the end of the decade, pushing up prices to new highs by 2020. Figures from Utilyx, the energy consultants and traders, forecast a 58pc rise in the cost of power by 2020, largely driven by the impending avalanche of green taxes due to come into force over the next 10 years. –Rowena Mason, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years. Electricity prices are likely to double as a direct result. The Government has to force energy companies to make electricity bills fully transparent so that the ever-increasing level of hidden green taxes are clearly listed for families and households. –-Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 8 July 2011
Energy firms have been asked to clearly explain how they calculate bills after concerns were raised that customers may have been overcharged after price rises. —Totally Money, 20 August 2011
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I read all your posts and agree with almost all, well 99.9999999% of them. Just on a personal rant, although there are no wind turbines near me, just a few small ones in the countryside where deluded and duped urbanite exported ‘good life farmers’ think they are helping, I object to every single turbine I see and I sign any partition in any town that is opposing them.
Apart from the utter waste of them, the lies about their usefulness, they look awful and blot every bit of land and piece of sky they pollute. Travelling along the coast from Holland into Denmark a few years back I was shocked to see these Wars of the World blots all along the coastal horizon and they looked terrible.
Keep up the blog and I in return I will sign every partition I see against them and rile any climate change lackey into a rage by telling them the truth behind their lies.
Glad I got that off my chest. Rant over.
Electricity in Britain is already ridiculously expensive – we pay around 20p (approx. USD 0.30) / killowatt hour day rate. Even fairly well off people are starting to feel the pain – my wife stays up until midnight before turning the washing machine on, to try to contain the cost. Poor people are increasingly having to choose between heating and eating.
Obama will do the same to America, if he gets his way.
Wind turbines are devices for turning the kinetic energy of wind into noise, audible for miles and more annoying than almost any other and destroying the sleep of those unfortunate enough to live near by, increased energy bills contributing to the poverty of the least well off, and a pitiful amount of electricity generally produced when it’s least needed.
Scam and insanity describe the “industry” exactly.
Isn’t that the point?
In a sane world, any government that channeled billions of pounds from ordinary working people into the pockets of wealthy aristocrats and landlords, would be met with howls of protest from the BBC, shrieks of outrage from the Polly Toynbee’s and Guardinista’s; labour party MP after MP would be rising in the house to attack the Tory led coalition. There would be no end to it.
yet nothing greets this infamy but deafening silence.
Far too little media attention is paid to the vested interest politicians have in these wind farm scams. Our Prime minister and the Deputy Prime Minister both have close relationships with family members who are benefitting enormously from the very policies these so-called leaders enforce. In any other country this would be considered fraud.
The ruling elite of Britain are a ridiculous breed whose interests, when not centred on enriching themselves by looting the public purse, routinely revolve around foolish notions that can only damage the country further. Unfortunately it would seem that most of the former advanced nations are now governed by people equally stupid.
Bishop hill has a post pointing out it is closer to 40 times the cost!
Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. None what so ever. If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for – green eco-nazis. So suck it up and pay your green taxes – you all elected them and you’re getting the justice you deserve!
Eric Worrall says, August 22, 2011 at 12:02 pm:
Eric, we were the same. We thought we had a reduced tariff in the wee small hours (something called ‘Economy 7’ – which we’d been on for 20 years). But then we took a hard look at our tariff. It seems that, over the years, the ‘Economy 7’ tariff had been gradually ramped up so that it was actually MORE expensive to run our washing machine etc overnight!! We asked British Gas (our dual fuel – I nearly said, duel fuel – supplier) to run our last year’s bills through a single tariff billing on their computer (we already had the twin tariff bills) so we could compare. (It’s a useful exercise that all users should go through. It cost nothing). It worked out much cheaper if we had a single tariff. The only way it worked for ‘Economy 7’ was if we were running an industrial amount of electricity overnight!
We – the stupid customers – are being steadily ripped off on current (bad pun!) billing by our suppliers who have a very long term plan to screw those poor people who still think overnight tariiffs are saving them money. We’re being had!
So how well do these things work when coated in snow and freezing rain?
In the US wind farms kill over 1,000 birds everyday, many of them endangered. Just imagine if an oil company were doing this.
Just think, if all the money thrown into wind and solar was put into Thorium or other advanced Nuclear technologies, we (Western Europe and North America) could already be close to getting many new and safe nuclear power plants up and running, and start planing on moth balling the older (slightly) less safer plants. Just like China and India.
And we could also be dreaming of being able to mothball some of the older coal plants in a decade or so.
eck, nah, why would we want to do that. Killing thousands of birds and bats and destroying people lives and property values is much more useful.
As we all know – the GE’s, Enrons, Duke Energy, Pickens types are the one pushing for green in the US. Better to line your pockets with guarenteed income streams. The rich get a fair amount of blame ill deserved; but on this point some of them are very guilty.
At what point does conduct by Britain’s governing classes that is so obviously detrimental to the British national interest consistute a chargeable offence? Right across parliament our MP’s are culpable. Someone somewhere could do us all a big fat green favour by ‘re-educating’ these people about the error of their ways.
It may have to be a painful lesson.
News from this side of the Atlantic:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2011/08/environmental-fifth-column.html
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/08/20/rex-murphy-global-warming-runs-out-of-gas
On a brighter note, I’ve just read today’s piece on the “Tory Aardvark” blog.
It seems that the MOD are blocking all new wind farm applications within 50km of Eskdalemuir ie. nw England/sw Scotland, on the grounds of “seismic noise” interfering with their seismological station there.
I couldn’t find his ‘source’ to quote here, but if true it’s good to see a government department on our side for whatever reason.
Bruce Rogers says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Or a (stagnant air) high pressure during the middle of the winter? Generally when they’re needed the most, they’re completely useless.
JEM says:
August 22, 2011 at 1:03 pm
Actually, Pickens has backed way off the green energy meme using wind turbins. He got smart–finally.
Nothing sane about our Hugo Chavez …
You can refine gasoline and diesel from coal for about $30 a barrel oil equivalent. The USA has about 30% of the world’s known coal reserves … time we stopped fencing them off for wild mustang farms. It’s called “Fischer-Tropsche” the cost estimate was done by Univ of Texas, built a pilot refinery, for a Canadian oil sands company in 2009.
Why would the country with the largest fossil fuel reserves, according to our very own EIA, buy conflict oil from the Arabs. Stupid world isn’t it.
Travelling along the coast from Holland into Denmark a few years back I was shocked to see these Wars of the World blots all along the coastal horizon and they looked terrible.
Those silly Dutch building windmills! Of course for a long time the Netherlands was actually known for windmills, and they were considered pretty. I bet in the Middle Ages some Luddites whined about how ugly they were too (they used to be everywhere, much more common than the modern ones).
I don’t get the aesthetic argument against them. They are far less ugly than the pylons that carry the electricity, and the nuclear stations that will eventually replace them.
The issue is really that they should not be built if they cannot produce cost effective power in their own right. Subsidising power is an enormous drag on the economy, and would not be tolerated in the absence of a political motive.
“In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. ”
The good Dr North comments:
“Actually, Booker is “wrong” on this, as he has constrained his calculations to gas and wind equipment lasting the same time – a necessary approximation given the space limitations. It is even more entertaining when we calculated on a gas plant lasting at least twice as long as a wind farm. On that basis, offshore wind costs a staggering forty times more than gas to build.”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/08/madness-is-far-too-polite-word.html
Blatant fraud, in your face looting of public monies by an ever expanding elite who have no fear of justice, no conception of morality and probity. Corruption on a scale that would make a 3rd world despot blush with envy. The industrial scale planned theft of public monies by those entrusted with its safe keeping and sensible usage. The tragedy of seeing our ancient parliament failing to ask questions, our head of state failing to fulfil her duties as the ultimate guarantor of our nation. Life for ordinary people is fast becoming intolerable yet what choice is there when all three major parties have identical policies, have more in common with each other than with those who elected them and are determined to pursue a common narrative that if openly admitted would be abhorrent to the vast majority of the British people.
This is modern Great Britain today, they say the fish rots from the head and that just about sums up the rapid decline of the UK. The MSM in the UK is by and large complicit, the BBC is actively suppressing the truth about the wind farm subsidy fraud for reasons that include having a direct stake via their pension funds being heavily invested in eco green money laundering and profiteering. It seems our leaders have succumbed to a kind of mob madness, a rampant greed grips them and they steal from those least able to afford it to feed that greed.
Our elected representatives hiding the truth, hiding the rampant fraud of their predecessors, instigating fake and rigged inquiries manned by bought off regime stooges. Our elected representatives will not listen to reason, they have seemingly forgotten who they are supposed to serve, lost in an orgy of mindless unthinking looting of the public purse in the belief there will not be a reckoning. The people of the UK are getting angrier by the week, pushed and prodded and provoked by the political classes and constantly lectured and bullied by a hypocritical political elite. We in the UK are living in a transitional phase between a degenerate decaying democracy and a police state. What is happening in the UK could happen in the US.
Wil says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. None what so ever. If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for
Problem is Wil, all the political parties subscribe to the green agenda. So it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
My preferred solution is to throw the useless lying thieving f—ers out of the windows of Parliament into the river Thames and form a national salvation committee.
I agree with Wil, the Brits are getting exactly what they deserve. Here in the U.S. we are having the same problem with the politicians, but so far we’ve been successful in holding off Congress. Now we need to change the occupant in the White House so we can rein in the EPA.
These things need to replace their gearboxes every 5-7 years. Which, of course, is the most expensive part.