From the GWPF
At Last: Britain Pulls Plug On Green Energy Boondoggle
The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away –-Famous green proverb
Ministers have been accused of destroying 25,000 jobs and “bankrupting a whole industry”, after the Government unveiled plans to slash subsidies for green energy. Hundreds of solar companies are likely to go bust by Christmas after the Department for Energy and Climate Change confirmed it is looking to halve subsidies for new panels. –Rowena Mason, The Daily Telegraph, 1 November 2011
The row over solar subsidies is the latest manifestation of a long and fierce battle within the government between Chris Huhne’s DECC and George Osborne’s Treasury over the role of green growth in the UK’s economic recovery, made especially pointed by soaring home energy bills. “We may be out of touch with the solar lobby, but we are not out of touch with energy bills,” Barker told parliament on Monday. –Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 31 October 2011
At a time when household savers are struggling to get a 0.5 per cent return on an instant access saving account, some of these renewable energy subsidies – paid in the form of generous payments for the electricity produced, so called feed-in tariffs (FITs) – are guaranteeing annual returns of 10 per cent. It’s one of the biggest wealth transfers – from millions of ordinary hard-working tax payers to a few hundred of the hugely wealthy – in British history. It’s staggeringly unfair and, in the growing opinion of many, totally pointless. –Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 9 June 2011
The right hon. Lady says that we are out of touch. We may be out of touch with the solar lobby, but we are not out of touch with energy bill payers. She says that they are groaning under a £175 increase, but she wants to put that up. If we did not act now, consumers would face massive increases in energy bills. –-Gregory Barker, Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, House of Commons, 31 October 2011
Silicon Valley’s green geek scenario, which we can date at around 2005-2009 is now gurgling down the WC pan of history. Its elitist and totally unreal notions of extreme high priced electric cars for Nice People Saving the Planet, and designer Low Energy homes for the same Nice People, and nobody else, has gone down the tube. –Andrew McKillop, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 31 October 2011
Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial Department of Energy program. The bankruptcy comes about two months after Solyndra — a solar panel maker with a $535 million loan guarantee — also filed for Chapter 11, creating a political embarrassment for the administration of President Barack Obama, which has championed the loans as a way to create “green energy” jobs. –Reuters, 31 October 2011
Here’s the kicker: Market-driven energy choices are cutting more tons of CO2 in the U.S. than have been cut by wind and solar—even with their billions of dollars in subsidies. Natural gas-fired electricity generation has grown from 15.8 percent of America’s power generation in 2000 to 24.1 percent in the most recent 12-month tally from the Energy Information Administration. That 8.3 percent increase is enough to cut 120 million metric tons of CO2 per year compared to coal. Over the same span, wind- and solar-generated power grew to 2.75 percent of total power generation. That would cut CO2 by 108 million metric tons per year compared to coal power. So over the past decade, hugely subsidized wind and solar have done less to cut CO2 emissions than market-driven natural gas production. –-David Kreutzer, The Foundry, 25 October 2011
In Britain, once in the vanguard of action on climate change, the government is scaling back its green energy investment… Nobody expects a UN climate deal in Durban this year — nor next year, nor the year after. But meanwhile the coal keeps burning. Global production is set to rise by 35 percent in the coming decade, according to industry analysts. The cheapest, most abundant and dirtiest of all the fossil fuels is extending its grip on the world’s energy supply system. And nowhere more so than just up the coast from Durban. –Fred Pearce, The Guardian, 31 October 2011
We have to put shale in the context of other energy sources in order to convey a comparative analysis of the environmental impact. People forget the environmental costs of coal mining or oil exploration; nuclear also has its own risks. Natural gas is a form of energy that falls into the low risk category. Can the green lobby win the shale debate over environmental objections? I don’t think it can. Ten or 20 years ago it could have won when governments were willing to burn billions, but the economic climate has changed, we’re facing the biggest crisis in decades. No government in the world would give up this opportunity, not even the British government, which is very green indeed. –Benny Peiser, Natural Gas Europe, 25 October 2011
The U.K. pulls out just as the progressive citizenry of the City of Boulder has voted to create a municipal electric utility so that it can meet its Kyoto targets.
http://www.dailycamera.com/energy/ci_19242177
Next, Boulder leaders will begin a Great Leap Forward campaign and require that the residents cover their electricity consumption by building thousands of green backyard furnaces.
The EPA, under the guidance of Lisa Jackson, is also circling the drain, due in no small part to the toxic spill of overzealous regulation.
If we are going to spend money on the environment, Superfund cleanup should be job #1.
Swab the deck.
Gail,
In the light of the JAXA satellite results the statement quoted below clearly needs to be reversed.
QUOTES from United Nations Leader and World Bank Senior Advisor Maurice Strong:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about?”
“It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption pattern of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning and suburban housing – are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
Clearly Maurice Strong has got this the wrong way round, instead;
We now know that – The only hope for the planet is to bring industrial civilisation to the whole World. It is the Third World that lives unsustainably and in perpetual poverty via slash and burn, etc.
It is possible for the World to have it’s cake and eat it. Ever improving technology and efficiency improvements, and improving standards of insulation, are making that so.
I think that few people would have thought that left wing tree huggers, Green Peace and the World Wildlife Foundation would be anything but a benefit to society, instead their blinkered Teletubby simplistic assumptions about lifestyles and about energy in particular have turned them into a suicidal danger for society and mankind at large.
But perhaps there is hope. The next 20 years of the current minimum, predicted by Landscheidt some 20+ years ago, may bring some enlightenment to their blinkered brain cells.
In Britain, people die of cold every year. Many of these will die because they cannot afford the fuel bills which are made higher in order to stop the country getting warmer
It is good news, but even more needs to be done. The subsidies should be completely scrapped not just halved.
It is difficult to understand how anyone could have considered investing in solar given the UK’s northern latitude. It is quite obvious that at such northern latitudes Solar is unviable. The UK is not so warm that there is need for aircon in the summer when there is some prospect of sun (although due to its island nature the UK is notoriously cloudy). In winter when it is cold and dark (days are short) and when electricity demand is at its highest, there is all but no power from the sun. Solar no doubt has its place but it is not in Northern climes and this should be obvious to anyone with the slightest degree of commonsense.
Now if the UK can only scrap wind farms and get on with shale gas and nuclear it may have a viable future. If not, it is back to the dark ages in more ways than one.
No-one seems to be mentioning the most fundamental of all flaws in the solar energy argument..
For twelve hours a day – EVERY DAY – solar panels do not produce a single watt….!
David says:
November 2, 2011 at 6:28 am
No-one seems to be mentioning the most fundamental of all flaws in the solar energy argument..
For twelve hours a day – EVERY DAY – solar panels do not produce a single watt….!
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They do in Spain David………………….
I agree with Vboring to be honest. The government haven’t dealt with this consulation very well at all but the comments surrounding this announcement will only cause further damage to the industry as it will start to destroy consumer confidence and discourage those still looking to train within this industry.
There’s not enough space to list our feelings in detail but if you’re interested – http://www.tradeskills4u.co.uk/posts/fits-changes
Last nights front page headline in the Norwich local paper was about the city councils plan to cover their housing stock with solar panels now being at risk.
http://tinyurl.com/3z5tonp
I’ve had 2 letters published this year pointing out that the FIT is just a get rich quick scam, and I sent another one last night. Then this morning the regional paper had an article about a large scale PV array, and says that the owner Richard Atkins, of PV Farms, has been “racing against the clock to complete the scheme following a government review of subsidy arrangements for solar-energy projects.”
http://tinyurl.com/3poq6ay
I’m sure he has….. we can’t have the tariff reductions getting in the way of a nice little earner now, can we???
“The life-span of the farm is estimated at 25 years.” – I wouldn’t bet on it! Pierre Gosselin had a story earlier this year of a German PV farm that is already falling into disrepair after a couple of years…
What’s going on is that the writer of the article, John O’Sullivan, has been fired, and all articles writtenby him for his employer in the last two years have been removed from the Internet (or so his employers reckon – never heard of Google Cache or the Wayback Machine then…)
Scandalous.
Anthony/mods, I reckon there’s a full post in the offing around this if you have the time.
http://climaterealists.com/?id=8588
J Martin says:
November 2, 2011 at 12:00 am
Gail,
In the light of the JAXA satellite results the statement quoted below clearly needs to be reversed.
QUOTES from United Nations Leader and World Bank Senior Advisor Maurice Strong:…..
I think that few people would have thought that left wing tree huggers, Green Peace and the World Wildlife Foundation would be anything but a benefit to society, instead their blinkered Teletubby simplistic assumptions about lifestyles and about energy in particular have turned them into a suicidal danger for society and mankind at large.
But perhaps there is hope. The next 20 years of the current minimum, predicted by Landscheidt some 20+ years ago, may bring some enlightenment to their blinkered brain cells.
________________________________________________
Like everything else – MODERATION. I sure hope we see the CO2 dragon killed dead!
The biggest problem with the tree huggers is they never went through the Great Depression or anything else that would wake them up to the fact the real world is nasty and cruel.
I still remember the idiot in the Towers (9/11) who fought the rescuers because it was “Important” to complete the program he was creating on the computer!
He had absolutely NO connection with reality!
Now for the bloody windmills! Oh! I keep forgetting the Prime Minister’s Father in Law owns a bunch of them.
Latitude says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:15 am
David says:
November 2, 2011 at 6:28 am
No-one seems to be mentioning the most fundamental of all flaws in the solar energy argument..
For twelve hours a day – EVERY DAY – solar panels do not produce a single watt….!
=============================================
They do in Spain David………………….
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YES. In Spain they hook up diesel generators so that they can benefit from the feed in tariffs during the night!!!
One question arises is whether they run the same diesel generators during the day so as to get even more feed in tariff during the hours of sun light. Research has not answered that question but human nature being what it is suggests that there is a high probability of the system being milked whenever opportunity arises.
Crazy subsidy when you can fuel a diesel generator and still make money from it.
Latitude and richard verney – thank you – yes, I was aware of the Spanish scam using diesel generators…! Couldn’t make it up, could you..?
As a slight aside – the media is SOOOO much to blame for swallowing so many of the headlines about ‘capacity’ and ‘output’ of solar farms; windmills etc… A few weeks ago (before the current panic in the industry) our local (East Anglia) tv sent a reporter to stand in front of a new solar array, in the rain, interviewing the despondent-looking developer – and came out with the mantra ‘could power 1200 homes’.. At NO POINT did the reporter say: ‘How much is being generated as we speak..?’ A simple matter, surely, of walking to the recording meter at the back of the array, to discover no doubt that output would just about boil a kettle….
There’s an architectural trick you might like to adapt. A hollow column in the corner of the largest room, openings top and bottom, with a small fan inside shifting air up (or down). It can be emulated well enough with just a small floor fan with air stream bounced/angled up the corner. Supposedly can reduce heating/cooling load by as much as 40%. I’ve used it for years. Substantial increases in room comfort, as a bonus.
It’s long over due.
Solar PV has an EROEI of only 0.48,
It is unsustainable.
Good riddence.