Wind turbines are a poor way to harness energy – but a very good way to generate public subsidies, says Andrew Gilligan.
By Andrew Gilligan from The UK Telegraph
Published: 7:00AM BST 13 Jun 2010
From the summit of Plynlimon, in the deep country of the Cambrian Mountains, there is a 70-mile panorama of the Cader range, hill after green-blue hill stretching into the distance, from the peaks around Bala to the shores of Cardigan Bay.
It was a view that caught the breath. It still does, in a different way. The view from Plynlimon now is of more than 200 wind turbines, nearly a tenth of Britain’s onshore total, stretching across ridge-lines, dominating near and far horizons. The author George Borrow wrote a whole chapter on Plynlimon in his classic 19th-century travelogue, Wild Wales. It’s not so wild these days.
Last week’s decision by Miriam González Durántez, wife of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, to join a leading wind-farm company has thrown the spotlight on one of Britain’s most controversial industries.
Mrs Durántez’s firm, Acciona, is seeking planning permission to add another 23 wind turbines to the view from Plynlimon, filling up some of the remaining skyline not yet occupied by them.
To opponents, land-based wind-turbines – there are currently 2,560 – are, in the words of the chairman of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins, “creatures from the War of the Worlds”, industrialising the countryside, invading precious landscapes.
Supporters are no less high-pitched. At the annual conference of the wind farm trade body, the BWEA, John Prescott, Mr Clegg’s predecessor, stormed: “We cannot let the squires and the gentry stop us meeting our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children. So let me tell them loud and clear: it’s not your backyard any more – it’s ours!”
The then energy and climate change secretary, now Labour leadership contender, Ed Miliband, said that it “should be socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area – like not wearing your seatbelt”.
Yet like so much else in the climate change debate, the emotions – on both sides – get in the way. Presenting wind farms as either an alien scourge or a moral crusade obscures what is surely the real question: are they effective at reducing CO2 emissions? Do the benefits they bring outweigh the costs they impose?
Read the rest of the story here:
h/t Neil Jones
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So much for protecting the environment, eh?
Follow the money!
“Creatures from the War of the Worlds”.
Very well said. Thats what they look like!
@Bruce Cobb – I don’t know if we have a special branch of self-regarding and utterly shameless opportunists who will do or say anything as politicians here in Old Blighty (UK). The likes of Prescott and the Milliband brothers are simply beyond belief.
John “‘I don’t want to be a member of the House of Lords. I will not accept it.” Prescott has now apparently given up the class war to become a Lord.
Given what he said above regarding wind farms and “the gentry”, it is beyond belief. Especially as his excuse for now becoming a lord was apparently due to pressure by his wife, who wanted to be a “lady”.
The money quote, as Bruce Cobb observes, is: “it’s not your backyard any more – it’s ours!” Mr. Prescott, possibly inadvertently, revealed the true Stalinist motivation underlying state-sponsored environmentalism – expropriation of private property.
My first post on UK wind has vanished into the ether !! here it is again
“Wind does not work.At the attached link scroll down to see the real-time delivery of power to the UK grid. The UK has c4500Mw of wind capacity installed.Just now wind is delivering 0.4% of the power needed. In real terms wind is working at 3.15% of its CLAIMED efficiency.I can assure you that this has been the case for over 6 months now with very little improvement on some days and a lot worse on many.last weekend at one stage wind was generating 11Mw. Don’t be fooled by the wind industry,look for yourself. I bet that this site will be taken off line soon as the truth hurts the scam merchants http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Wind does not work.At the attached link scroll down to see the real-time delivery of power to the UK grid. The UK has c4500Mw of wind capacity installed.Just now wind is delivering 0.4% of the power needed. In real terms wind is working at 3.15% of its CLAIMED efficiency.I can assure you that this has been the case for over 6 months now with very little improvement on some days and a lot worse on many.last weekend at one stage wind was generating 11Mw. Don’t be fooled by the wind industry,look for yourself. http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
I wonder, does the wind farm owners think the wind harvesting will get more efficient, or that electricity will get so expensive that the wind farms will be competitive. I wonder …
Since nuclear power is about 1/3 the cost of coal generated electricity, you have to go hmmm.
@Eric Anderson says: June 13, 2010 at 10:06 am
“Roger Sowell,
Interesting that “small hydro” is included as a “renewable,” but regular hydro is not. Do you happen to know the basis for the distinction they are making?”
I can help there. Hydroelectric is regarded as a ‘Mature Technology’ (in other words:- it works) and thus doesn’t get any subsidy. Similar for nuclear.
The reason all the “renewables” get enormous subsidies is that they don’t work or rather, like wind, they produce power when it isn’t needed and in such an unpredictable and variable way that no power distribution company would touch it if they weren’t legally obliged to do so.
Check out:-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wind-Farm-Scam-Independent-Minds/dp/1905299834/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1276452920&sr=1-1-fkmr0
An excellent book from the same publisher as the brilliant “Hockey Stick Illusion” by Andrew Montford.
Big Wind in the UK managed to produce just 0.8% of our electricity needs for the three months of “weather – not climate” December – February 2010. For days on end nothing was produced – almost certainly the wind generators were USING more electricity than they produced.
Is it any wonder that OFGEM (the UK’s Energy Regulator) has stated that the average domestic electricity bill (doubled in the last 5 years) will increase around three fold in the next decade. A quick look at the maths suggests that it will be worse than that.
Look at this report from a bunch of AGW alarmists – but at least, as Engineers, they HAVE done the maths!
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Generating_the_future_report.pdf
Just read that – every conceivable renewable PLUS 70 nuclear or large coal plants with CCS (which also doesn’t work). And that is just to meet the 80% reduction in emissions that we are legally committed to!
Buff Huhne and the Liberal Democrats (the back end of the pantomime horse which forms the UK Government now) want to go to 100% reduction by 2050 (will we still be allowed to breathe?) and scrap all nuclear! And you think Obama and Jackson are stupid!
The people pushing this scam must be held to account.
Gail Combs says:
June 13, 2010 at 9:39 am
says….
The only use I can see for windmills is the traditional one of using them for moving water up hill. Two lakes with a generator between is the only reasonable possibility for making the blasted things anywhere near viable for a country’s energy needs. That system would at least allow the energy to be stored so it could be used as needed.
….The article is specifically mentioning Lincolnshire. As a resident of the Lincolnshire Fens can I point out the error in your proposal?
“Navy Bob says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:18 am
The money quote, as Bruce Cobb observes, is: “it’s not your backyard any more – it’s ours!” Mr. Prescott, possibly inadvertently, revealed the true Stalinist motivation underlying state-sponsored environmentalism – expropriation of private property.”
Actually, it’s Marxist, not Stalinist – it’s plank 1 of the 10 planks of the communist manifest.
“1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_manifest
The irony of socialists decrying country squires is that windfarms transfer wealth from taxpayer to landowner. The PM’s aristocratic father-in-law stands to coin it from installing heavily subsidised windfarms on his land
yet another reason to eat the rich
Maybe an important note of interest and to be followed up; since 1990 windforce in the Netherlands decreased linear with roughly 30%. In January, Febrary and March this year there was a decrease of 50% compared with previous year.
Roger Sowell, wind energy does not replace gas/coal/hydro or any other power generation. They have to run in conjuction with wind because wind is not reliably consistant. Just because an area averages Xmph wind does not mean it wont stop blowing for 10min-couple ours. Therefore the capacity has to already be up and ready to pick up the load.
Also, as to why hydro is not considered renewable. In Oregon the greenies claim it is not renewable because of the impact on salmon runs. At the same time they are trying to protect the seals who consider damn their personal salmon larders because that is natural. Go figure.
Please take a look at the book “The Wind Farm Scam” and see what it has to say about wind energy! A good UK perspective!
Ecotretas
As soon as I saw “Are they effective at reducing CO2 emissions?” I knew this fellow Gilligan was in the bag for AGW ie. believes CO2 is the problem. What I wished I had seen was “As [increasing scientific opinion] now shows, it’s all based on a false premise, because CO2 is not causing any identifiable climate change anyway”.
Where are all the clever scientists and speakers who know this? Why do we never see any letters from them to the Editor of the UK Telegraph and other papers, that the PUBLIC will see? Oh, yes, there’s plenty of blogs and excellent people like James Delingpole; and there’s all the proof that is needed, but it’s not getting into the MAIN paper.
Just a day or so ago in the Telegraph appeared the words “the devastating effects of climate change” in a reference to a new NASA project. This is what the public read.
After all this time, after Climategate and all we see on WUWT and elsewhere, it is really so frustrating. Can’t someone with some push DO something?
@ur momisugly Fenbeagle says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:31 am
“.The article is specifically mentioning Lincolnshire. As a resident of the Lincolnshire Fens can I point out the error in your proposal?”
Are there no suitable sites in the Lincolnshire Alpine region?
DirkH – true, but Stalin, like Mr. Prescott, was Marx’s theory made flesh.
@Martin Brumby: actually, California had 3 small hydro projects that received $2.7 million in subsidies since 1998 – for a total of 31 MW installed capacity.
But as I said earlier, California is nuts. In many more ways than one.
Installing just 3 such plants in more than a decade should give an idea of how difficult it is to obtain a construction permit from the greenies.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/new_renewables/index.html and see table near the bottom.
“Mack says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:20 am
My first post on UK wind has vanished into the ether !! ”
Using the substring “sc*m” does that to your text… after a while, a moderator will pick you out of the spam bin. Seems to be a fixture of wordpress.
I wonder where all the people from the population growth will go in the next 20-30 years?
I believe EU calculated the need for some 50 million more people coming into EU, and that’s on top of internal population growth. So where will all them people live, especially considering that some parts of some countries are strenuously against things like skyscrapers since they’re so ugly and they destroy the otherwise perfectly good skyline, not to mention the view.
If people want propeller heads in a back yard, they can have ’em in their own back yards.
ROTFLMAO. Look what i found:
http://www.wind-energy-the-facts.org/en/part-2-grid-integration/chapter-7-economic-aspects-integration-costs-and-benefits/wind-power-will-reduce-future-european-power-prices.html
h.oldeboom says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:39 am
One of my favorite mysteries is the 30 year decline in average wind speed at Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts.
http://www.bluehill.org/climate/annwind.gif
http://www.bluehill.org/climate/200909_Wind_Speed.pdf
James Lovelock once said it takes over 900 square miles (he used kilometers, I converted to miles) of wind farms to generate 1GW of electricity.
The Brave Don Anthony Quixote Watts and his faithful esquire Charles “The Moderator”, while fighting against Windmills:
“Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”
“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.
“Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.”
“Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.”