Bishop Hill points to an essay in the Spectator Matt Ridley: The Beginning Of The End Of Wind which is a summary of the arguments against wind power. He (and I) were not aware of this point:
Putting the things offshore may avoid objections from the neighbours, but (Chancellor, beware!) it makes even less sense, because it costs you and me — the taxpayers — double.
I have it on good authority from a marine engineer that keeping wind turbines upright in the gravel, tides and storms of the North Sea for 25 years is a near hopeless quest, so the repair bill is going to be horrific and the output disappointing. Already the grouting in the foundations of hundreds of turbines off Kent, Denmark and the Dogger Bank has failed, necessitating costly repairs.
…
So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument — that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.
Though they may not admit it for a while, most ministers have realised that the sums for wind power just don’t add up and never will. The discovery of shale gas near Blackpool has profound implications for the future of British energy supply, which the government has seemed sheepishly reluctant to explore. It has a massive subsidy programme in place for wind farms, which now seem obsolete both as a means of energy production and decarbonisation. It is almost impossible to see what function they serve, other than making a fortune from those who profit from the subsidy scam.
Even in a boom, wind farms would have been unaffordable — with their economic and ecological rationale blown away. In an era of austerity, the policy is doomed, though so many contracts have been signed that the expansion of wind farms may continue, for a while. But the scam has ended. And as we survey the economic and environmental damage, the obvious question is how the delusion was maintained for so long. There has been no mystery about wind’s futility as a source of affordable and abundant electricity — so how did the wind-farm scam fool so many policymakers?
wind has been declared dead many times before. it has nine lives.
“decarbonisation” is a joke. How about all those gas-fired power plants that need to stay running in case the wind stops?? Are you telling me installing pillars under the marine gravel is energy-efficient, along with the continual repairs?? I think the people who claim wind reduces carbon are from the big-bank scoll of accounting.
The Tyndall Centre have made it crystal clear why shale gas is being put on the back burner.
“large scale extraction of shale gas cannot be reconciled with the climate change commitments enshrined in the Copenhagen Accord (2009)”
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/the-real-reason-we-cant-develop-shale-gas/
Isn’t making it cost double the entire goal?
Jimbo says:
March 5, 2012 at 5:34 am
….so how did the wind-farm scam fool so many policymakers?
Did it? Some of them may have been on the scam. How many are landowners / spousal land owners with windmills? How many with wind / carbon investments?
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In the UK, there’s a noteable one. The father in law of our prime minister trousers 1000 UK pounds per day from his subsidy farm http://windfarmaction.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/david-camerons-father-in-laws-350000-annual-bung/
Also on wind farms, the link below to a new scotsman article, talks about the growing opposition to the scottish parliaments insane infatuation with wind power, the subtext being that this is something the Conservative party could capitalise on – if they were smart enough.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/brian_monteith_tories_could_benefit_from_wind_farm_fears_1_2153563
Did your friend send a link to the source of those figures?
/Mr Lynn
5MW at 50 % efficiency is 10MW, converted to Kg force and multiplied by tower height gives a torque figure of around 80,000,000 Kg metres or 579,000,000 lb ft in old money. Plant your turbine in wet sand and gravel, add in tidal scoring, what can possibly go wrong?
The Arctic is currently behaving badly with runaway melt.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
amicus curiae
Did your friend supply a reference for the cost data? I would like to use the data in class.
Amicus Curiae says coal burning power is $79 per kWh. I think he meant MWh.
Howcome?
Einstein: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
The future of offshore wind: artificial reefs.
I thought wind and solar were supposed to be “free.”
amicus curiae says:
March 5, 2012 at 4:38 am
“….Power Generation Costs….Australian…..
Coal fired power station $79 per kw/h (kilowatt/hour)…”
I think you are out 3 orders of magnitude. In Canada I pay $0.10 / kw-hr. Perhaps your units should be MW-hr. The relative costs seem about right though.
Bill
wws says (March 5, 2012 at 5:37 am)
North Sea? That’s a pretty calm place that never has any really bad storms, right?
———
The Spanish Armada came through it totally unscathed. Oh, hang on a min….
“amicus curiae says:
March 5, 2012 at 4:38 am
Let’s Compare Power Generation Costs”
The rates quoted may or may not be correct, but let’s get the units right,
The rates are intended to be $/MWh (dollars per Megawatt.hour)
I added a comment on Christopher Booker’s recent article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/9120756/How-much-profit-will-a-turbine-turn.html with a tongue-in-cheek link to a “scheme” for getting continuous electricity out of wind turbines, even if there is no wind.
One response lambasted the suggestion (apparently failing to recognize satire and not reading the entire linked article). The respondent suggested “Try working out the sums.”
Had me laughing and chuckling for half an hour.
The ubiquity of the patently-absurd schemes promoted and built by governments (and carpet-baggers) is wreaking havoc with people’s ability to recognize and enjoy a joke. Or to perceive the deeper message.
It is very windy today in the UK and the total usage on the grid is 44,585MW and wind is producing 1069MW of that (dropping from a peek of 1500MW at 07.30 this morning). I dread to think how much it is costing per MW to produce but the power companies are required to buy it in preference to power produced by other means.
You can see the graph at http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html
Unfortunately I have not been able to find a site showing the comparative costs.
James Bull
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8212
case study on US shale gas just for some perspective
jlc says: March 5, 2012 at 6:42 am
[The rates are intended to be $/MWh (dollars per Megawatt.hour)]
Iin Europe it is M$/Whr.
(the metric system eh)
In Ontario, the current globally adjusted rate for wholesale power is CDN$0.485 per kWh. The actual price thanks to almost 0% contribution from wind today is $0.22 / kWh
Amicus Curiae,
Perhaps you meant megawatt hour? My domestic tariff, as high as it seems to me, is only around 15pence per kilowatt hour.
I don’t think I’d mind so much if the energy to maintain and repair the offshore windmills came from … the windmills.
Why do I find it amusing that the so-called “renewable” energy sources rely, each and every one, on fossil fuels for their support?
How many windmills does it take to make a windmill? ( we already know how much ethanol it takes to make a gallon of ethanol..)
Here is sunny and rainless North Carolina, a solar power station is being built under 10 miles from me. Of course, I’m being facetious when calling North Carolina sunny and dry. This is not even close to a desert here. So solar power does not make much sense here. The company building this (thanks to tax dollars subsidization) is taking 11 acres to build this. And this is the bad part, under ideal circumstances, it will only power 200 homes. There are over 200 homes in a 1 mile radius around the solar power plant! And the local paper acted like this was a good thing!
All of this “green” energy does not make sense! The only thing keeping it alive is taxpayer subsidization due to government policies. Wind and solar does not make sense for large scale deployment. Now I will admit that if solar becomes more efficient, as in greater than 50% efficient, then it would be viable for small scale deployment, such as on top of buildings and homes. But when are a long long ways before solar gets even 30% efficient, much less 50%+. And the more I see, the worse wind power becomes.
Why is it so hard to get people to think! Why can’t people see the obviousness of the truth! Green energy is a money pit. It cannot meet our energy needs.
Politicians love to give the public what the public wants — or what they believe the public wants. When a vocal minority controls the discussion and yells loudest, it’s no surprise they are the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, to use mixed metaphors. This problem is compounded when access to those in power is limited to only a few.
These things constantly remind me why the USA was founded on the principle of limited government. It’s an idea whose time has come again. When government is limited in scope and doesn’t attempt to control our lives or provide for all our various wants, corruption and waste are restrained.