Newsbytes from the GWPF, Lies, Damn Lies And Green Statistics
Almost all predictions about the expansion and cost of German wind turbines and solar panels have turned out to be wrong – at least by a factor of two, sometimes by a factor of five. –Daniel Wentzel, Die Welt, 20 October 2012
When Germany’s power grid operator announced the exact amount of next year’s green energy levy on Monday, it came as a shock to the country. The cost burden for consumers and industry have reached a “barely tolerable level that threatens the de-industrialization of Germany”, outraged business organisations said. Since then politicians, business representatives and green energy supporters have been arguing about who is to blame for the “electricity price hammer”. After all, did not Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) promise that green energy subsidies would not be more than 3.6 cents per kilowatt hour? Now, however, German citizens have to support renewable energy by more than EUR 20 billion – instead of 14 billion Euros. How could Merkel be so wrong? –Daniel Wentzel, Die Welt, 20 October 2012
Cheaper natural gas prices in the U.S. could spell trouble for European chemical companies, as their rivals across the Atlantic benefit from lower costs. The U.S. shale-gas revolution has made natural gas roughly three times cheaper there than in Europe, and the U.S. chemical industry is reaping the benefits through cheaper energy and feedstock, leaving the European sector under the threat of increased competition. –Alessandro Torello, The Wall Street Journal, 24 October 2012
Peter Lilley MP has been appointed to the energy and climate change select committee, provoking an angry response from climate change campaigners. “The addition of climate change sceptic and oil company director Peter Lilley to the energy and climate change select committee is part of a growing picture,” said Greenpeace policy director Joss Garman. “With Owen Paterson as environment secretary and anti-wind campaigner John Hayes now energy minister, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Tories are gearing up to assault the Climate Change Act and increase the UK’s reliance on expensive, imported, polluting fossil fuels.” –Charles Maggs, Politics.co.uk, 25 October 2012
Last week, David Cameron chaired a meeting of the Quad — the coalition’s decision-making body — at which senior ministers attempted, and failed, to agree the precise content of the Energy Bill. According to a report in The Times, it could result in a cap on new onshore wind farm developments. –James Murray, GreenBusiness, 24 October 2012
Next month, the coalition government in Britain intends to publish its new energy bill. The coalition partners, however, are increasingly at odds over the direction of the United Kingdom’s energy policy. In view of growing antagonism, it remains unclear whether the bill can be salvaged or whether the increasing friction will lead to its delay. It is doubtful that an energy bill fudge would actually be workable, let alone economically viable. There is a growing risk that it will prove to be highly unpopular as the costs of these measures are likely to further inflate energy bills artificially. In this case, the crisis of energy policy making could quickly turn into a veritable government fiasco. –Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 22 October 2012
Poland’s use of a veto to block the EU’s draft energy roadmap for 2050 has no legal basis, according to internal legal documents from the Council of the European Union. There is only one problem with this interpretation: It is outdated. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Article 194 (2) gives member states a veto over the choice between different energy sources and the general structure of energy supply. –Benny Peiser, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 25 October 2012
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Looks as though even the liars are fed up with the lies.
The Big Green Lie involves Carbon forcing, renewable energy and peak oil….all proveable LIES. Bio-fuels are documented net energy losers, but the illusion of “free solar energy” from voltaics is less explored. For every ton of pure Polycrystalline Silicon required for the construction of a photovoltaic cell, you produce eight tons of Ammonium Chloridadized Silicon, a toxic carcinogen. No western manufacturer with EPA, OSHA and local land use restrictions can compete with our 401K invested Chinese slave state competition. Add to this Silicon base the necessary Boron and Phosphorus, and you now have a one-time, one-way molecular erosion system producing 1 watt/sq ft at 1.5 volts of Direct Current. This is absolutely useless for any practicle purpose, regardless of the level of subsidy. More on this analysis is provided in “Green Prince of Darkness” at Canada Free Press archive. Because of non-constant input RPM, windmills must also produce DC current, with high line and inverter loses. Remove your green goggles and none of this dogma makes sense. Find and share Truth….it is your duty as an Earthling.
“Cheaper natural gas prices in the U.S. could spell trouble for European chemical companies, as their rivals across the Atlantic benefit from lower costs.”
I don’t think Germany will be too worried. The US EPA will put paid to any price discrepancies given enough time.
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=gm&v=81
electricity consumption 545×10^9 kWh
subsidy cost 20×10^9
20/545=3.7 eurocents per kWh
does an error of only 0.1 cents deserve this headline?
How could Merkel be so accurate!?
the GWPF, Lies, Damn Lies it seems
How could Merkel be wrong?
She isn’t – politicians are never wrong.
They just use technological inexactitudes.
Turbiines? I’m seeing double.
Who’d have thought an intermittent, low density energy source with low kinetic energy, over-scale with all else, built far too close to peoples homes, using massive resources and many vehicle movements, extra infrastructure, expensively running on unsustainable subsidies, unpopular with people who’s houses the depreciate, and views they ruin, impacting the nature and tranquillity of the rural countryside. To stand idle at low wind speeds, and achieve nothing significant other than a political placebo for mistaken beliefs and absurd paper targets that they wont meet, would run into difficulties?
” green energy subsidies would not be more than 3.6 cents per kilowatt hour”
I’m not willing to pay ANYTHING extra for green energy. 3.6 cents per kWh is a lot! Maybe
a thousand dollars a year to me.
What was that?
it is getting colder and wetter?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
how are we are going to get us warm?
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/03/25/fracking-for-gas-is-okok/
Renewable energy shares are plummeting: Renewable energy scare is finished
The only question is how should we model the fall? A first order equation suggests it will all be over on the 31st December … which by coincidence is the day the Kyoto Commitment ends.
Sergei, that subsidy was supposed to be per wind and solar generated kWh, not on *all* kWh generated. With wind and solar providing less than 10% of Germany’s power, that subsidy is 0.40 euro per kWh “greenly” generated.
Depending on how one does the numbers I think that Germany will find that they have to increase the levels of subsidies even further in about 5 years as the solar panels installed pre 2007 will start to reduce their output and will need to be replaced if the output per panel is to be kept up. The earlier wind turbines will come to the end of their life also, if any of those early ones are still going by then.
For anyone to replace their existing panels/turbines the current subsidy will not be enough to be viable as they won’t have made real money yet of the original installation. Although I am sure that on paper you can make it appear so that it looks like one made a euro or two.
The good news is that the manufacturers of panels and turbines are looking forward to those times as it will mean an increase in demand, replacement and new installations. More work for installers also. With a bit of luck we can re-use the vast concrete pads the turbines stand on, so that saves, but then perhaps they won’t pass the stress tests to last another 15 years.
The landfills will become flooded with obsolete panels, old turbine magnets and blades. And possibly millions of cubic meters of concrete.
Ever increasing levels of SF6 in the air, already detectable, as a side effect of panel production and increased mining for rare earth minerals for magnet production leaving an ever increasing number of toxic tailing ponds in their wake.
Is this the green world the “greens” had in mind?
sergeiMK
Quote in article is “more than EUR 20 billion” so using your 545×10^9 kWh and the figure of the subsidy given in the link as 5.3 € cents per kWh that gives 28.8 billion €, more than 20 billion € I think. For the author more than 20 sounded better than less than 30 I should [think].
Nope you aren’t seeing double.. it would be cool though if the double i s were tiny little turbines:)
Reblogged this on Truth, Lies and In Between and commented:
Smells like victory.
The green energy morons were warned that the cost would be unsustainable. Morons.
Germany have a big problem. They need two ramp ups of gas turbines each day. You have the morning peak, which solar can’t cover. You also have the evening peak, which again solar vcan’t cover. The middle of the day is fine, and energy prices approach zero due to huge amounts of solar generation. But how do you cover the cost of gas fired plants having to ramp up twice a day…
Oh yeah, the consumer pays. And then ends up blaming the “energy monopoly” (or something like that). Therefore the government has to intervene and do something..
And so the problems gets worse and worse.
What continually perplexes me is the disconnect that those who do not have to live with “green” energy developments in their backyards (mostly urban dwellers) are maintaining over the subsidies, which they continually claim we must support as taxpayers As Dr. Ross McKitrick an Environmental policy economist from UofG indicates, “Subsidies create short-term jobs that have to be financed by new taxes on profitable activity, which drives away long-term investment and ends up costing jobs”. Reports out of Denmark, Spain and Italy all show that renewable energy costs jobs in other sectors in large part because electrical energy costs must increase to support those subsidies, but general populace doesn’t seem to understand this and actually see the support for these kinds of schemes as favourable gov’t activity
And now that an intractable morass of bureaucracy has been wound into the energy sector, good luck getting your economy back on track.
The only thing that a politician is good at, is making regulations that require years of study to comprehend. Government by obfuscation. Three Card Monty on a national scale.
Steve C says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:18 am
Turbiines? I’m seeing double.
New spelling. Pronounced “turb-eye-EENS”.
Deutschland Uber Alles
to
Deutschland Unter Alles
in one easy renewable lesson.
Next up, the UK.
We would all like to believe that green renewable energy is a good thing, but it is like socialism: a good idea in theory, which doesn’t work in practice and is hugely expensive to operate and is totally unreliable.
Being see to be green is very trendy amongst many politicians; slowly but surely the realisation is growing that de-industrialisation and widespread poverty as a result of green energy is possibly not such a good idea after all.
Likewise, slowly but surely, the realisation is growing that the highly flawed theory of CAGW is nothing more than the product of the fertile imagination of data manipulators like Hansen and Mann.
This is not a question of left and right, more one of being either stupid and wrong, or correct and sceptical.
Wind turbines produce AC current which needs to be convered to DC if you want the output to transit long distance without incurring a heavy transmission loss, hence the need for Germany and China where wind turbines are situated a long way from where the power is needed. Germany is intending to build wind turbines upto 150km offshore and they will be in the North but the energy is needed in the South hence Euro 37 billion just tofacilitate the pylons and cables, Joke!! Today UK wind turbines have been producing 3.8% of our electricity demand with 48% coal, 18% nuclear and 26% gas but wind has been 1% to 1.3% for most of the week. At 3.8% we could generate 30% of our electricity demand but we would never know when this would happen and for how long, gas and silo fed coal dust thin wall coal generation can operate from minimal load to full capacity as quickly as gas and has a life of 40 years compared with a wind turbine half life, complete refit at 7 and redundant at 15 or less if off shore. Germany has 13,750 1st generation wind turbines that need to be replaced but there is no money to fund it so they will be left to rot as they expire a blot on the landscape. In the UK we cant plant another 30,000 by 2015 when our coal permits expire so we are in a fix if Germany can burn coal now and is building new coal why is the UK different??
“An ill wind blows from wind turbiines”
There’s an answer for that. http://xkcd.com/1119/ 😉
David Wells
Because the leaders of all three UK political parties are beyond goofy when it comes to the subject of the future of the nation’s energy supplies.
Not surprisingly, all three leaders are career politicians who have never dirtied their hands by having to operate in the real world. Therefore, they are guided by the philosophy of: “Does it work in theory?”, as opposed to the more realistic “Does it work in practice?”
The world would become a much better place if it became legal and enforceable for all leading politicians to have spent at least 15 years living in the real world – political researcher/advisor or working in PR does not count as working in the real world.
THIS has ‘central planning’ written all over it: ” … the EU’s draft energy roadmap for 2050 …”
Commit now, to *firm* plans extending out to 2050 … not even a 2, 5 or 10 year horizon, but 38 years straight into the future … riiiiiiiight …
Regardless of unforeseen events, developments, changes that *will* undoubtedly occur between now and then!
Just absolutely striking gentleman!
.