Press release from The Global Warming Policy Foundation
One of the UK’s leading energy and environment economists warns that wind power is an extraordinarily expensive and inefficient way of reducing CO2 emissions. In fact, there is a significant risk that annual CO2 emissions could be greater as a result of Britain’s flawed wind policies when compared with the option of investing in efficient and flexible gas combined cycle plants.
The study ‘Why is wind power so expensive?’ published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation is the first thorough analysis of the true cost of wind power.
In his report, Professor Gordon Hughes (Edinburgh University) finds that
- Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity at a cost of about £120 billion.
- The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a cost of £13 billion, i.e. an order of magnitude cheaper than the wind scenario.
- Under the most favourable assumptions for wind power, the Government’s wind policy will reduce emissions of CO2 at an average cost of £270 per metric ton (at 2009 prices) which means that meeting the UK’s renewable energy target would cost a staggering £78 billion per year in 2020.
“The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment resources to a technology that is not very green, in the sense of saving a lot of CO2, but which is certainly very expensive and inflexible. Unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder,” Professor Hughes said.
The full report, with a foreword by Baroness Nicholson, is available here:
Professor Gordon Hughes
Dr Gordon Hughes is a Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh where he teaches courses in the Economics of Natural Resources and Public Economics. He was a senior adviser on energy and environmental policy at the World Bank until 2001. He has advised governments on the design and implementation of environmental policies and was responsible for some of the World Bank’s most important environmental guidelines. Professor Hughes is the author of the GWPF report The Myth of Green Jobs.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
Emma Nicholson was made a Liberal Democrat peer in 1997. She was MP for Devon West and Torridge from 1987 to 1997, first for the Conservatives and then for the Liberal Democrats. From 1999 to 2009, she represented South East England in the European Parliament.
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One of the offshore wind engineers pointed out recently that keeping the offshore towers level and intact is hugely difficult and requires lots of maintenance and rebuilding, almost constantly. Imagine the forces involved during storms. Another added expense for an already unwieldy, foolish idea.
Be Green says:
March 7, 2012 at 9:13 am
How come they are able to do it efficiently in Germany? Why would the economics of it work there and not in the UK or elsewhere?
=======================================================
Uhmm….. where have you been? Germany isn’t “do[ing] it” efficiently. They’ve taken older less efficient coal plants out of mothballs to fill the energy needs of Germany. They’re purchasing from other nations…. and their grid is in serious peril.
http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/5035-green-germany-half-a-million-families-sitting-in-the-dark.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/germany-in-skeptical-turmoil-on-both-climate-and-windfarms/
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/energie-anzeige/germanys-green-energy-supply-transformation-has-already-failed/
Renewable energy, to be put to any use of consequence would require an entirely new infrastructure. The costs of the switching devices alone make such an endeavor a ludicrous pursuit.
Of note, the Future Factory link included the logo information that the FF Project is Part-Financed by the European Union … European Regional Development Fund. Be interesting to know how transparent that financing is.
BE GREEN says:
How come they are able to do it efficiently in Germany? Why would the economics of it work there and not in the UK or elsewhere?
The solar power industry is collapsing in Germany because the free money of subsidies is being reduced because the govt cannot afford it any longer.
600,000 households in Germany have had their power turned off because of high prices due to green feed in tariffs.
Energy intensive industry is threatening to leave Germany because of the high cost of power.
If these are examples of how well it is working in Germany then guess you have different goals than the average person. Oh yes! The green goals are to destroy modern civilization and take us back to the Stone Age. In that case, green power is working very efficiently in Germany.
Self Aggrandisement
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2012/03/self-aggrandisement.html
Be Green,
“How come they are able to do it efficiently in Germany?”
Do they? Citations please.
So – is there any actual real, calculated breakdown of the cost of renewable power in the UK?
either from government inception (mid 80’s?) to date, with an associated Total Power produced figure? or perhaps an annual total power production, which could be added up since inception, and then divided by the capital and running costs invested over the years?
Surely, we could get to see a graph of expenditure versus benefits over the last 20 years or so?
And surely, the total net cost per kW/h should be decreasing? LOL
You mean building an offshore wind farm in the Baltic but not building the transmission lines to shore is efficient? You mean that dumping excess capacity into the grids of neighboring countries nearly fatally destabilizing their energy grid is efficient? You mean moving heavy manufacturing to other countries because your power supply is no longer predictable or affordable is efficient?
An objective cost effectiveness study conducted by an independent and unbiased organization before any public investment was made would have supplied the decision makers with a reasonable range of costs to be incurred relative to other electrical energy sources. It would have saved the UK and everyone else who would have chosen to heed the recomendations an enormous amount of scarce economic resources (money). At least they would have had an idea of how much more it would cost to generate electric power with windmills than with their most economical sources.
What seems like a “slam dunk” to the lay person, unmindful of the numerous costs involved in collecting “free” energy, would be put into proper perspective by the operations analysts, cost analysts and engineers performing the study. Windmills, solar panels, solar concentrators and the like can have a role now and in the future, but they are basically niche solutions where conventional gridded electric power is not an economically practical option.
OT
An appeal to german readers. Please visit http://goo.gl/QgSx5 for a poll on climate change at the University of Hamburg.
For the government it doesn’t really matter how much the wind energy costs. That’s because it’s not funded by tax but by carbon credits. So the energy companies and their customers (us) will be paying that £78b, and not the government. So the government gets the credit for (notional) CO2 reductions while the cost is borne by the consumer. You have to admire whoever thought that one up.
Don’t panic anyone, IPCC 5 will suggest harvesting sunbeams from cucumbers – no CO2 and they go like the blazes.
Now’s the time to get into Cucumber futures.
@Be Green
Read this.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/01/25/energy-expert-germanys-renewable-energy-transition-will-fail-spectacularly-heavily-damaging-the-economy/
A quote which exemplifies the “efficiency” of the German approach to wind power, “Construction of the offshore wind parks is now progressing rapidly. But there’s just one problem: the huge high voltage power transmission lines needed to bring their power to Germany’s industrial heartland to the south are missing! More than 3000 km of these lines are needed, but are nowhere near in sight. The government forgot about those too.
In the USA, the taxpayers and consumers would save money if no commercial electricity was generated from wind power. The power costs much more than conventional energy and is subsidized. If we can get rid of the mandates to purchase alternate energy, we would all be better off.
They don’t do it efficiently in Germany. The economics don’t work anywhere.
This is I’m sure what most MPs and Ministers would all agree with. The great tragedy about politics in Britain these days however, is that the vast majority of MPs are professional politicians who have gone through the constituency process in the early careers with little or no experience of business life, or have any alternative jobs to go to if they lose their seats. This means that few of them are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and speak out against Camerons stupid policies on wind farms and AGW generally for fear of getting on the wrong side of those that matter. Logic no longer applies with most of them, It’s more important not to court the wrath of their seniors for causing trouble. This effectively means that the power of parliament as a forum echoing the voice of the people is reduced considerably, and the nation is the worse for it.
“Why is wind power so expensive?”
Because it’s free to the green (peace) corporatist lefties who’ve all inv(f)ested in the “free” (tax) market.
Be Green says:
March 7, 2012 at 9:13 am
How come they are able to do it efficiently in Germany? Why would the economics of it work there and not in the UK or elsewhere?
THEY DON’T. I suggest you buy some german papers and read. They buy huge amounts of nuclear power from us in france and I now reopening their coal powered facilities. Green power does not pay the user it pays the providers. The germans are learning this very quickly as are all europeans except those on the massive gravy train.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/04/fantasies-collide-with-reality.html
All noted by Christopher Booker, nearly a year ago?
“Edward Bancroft says:
March 7, 2012 at 8:52 am
“…which means that meeting the UK’s renewable energy target would cost a staggering £78 billion per year in 2020…”
When the 2008 Climate Change act was being enabled we were told that the cost would be £18 billion a year. If the GWPF figures are true then we have been well and truly grossly mislead”
The GWPF figures are low. And what where you thinking to allow yourself to be “well and truly grossly mislead”?? For the “chilllldreeennn”??
Winston Churchill said it very well in his statement that the best argument against democracy and allowing Joe Blow to vote was a 10 minute talk with somebody on the street.
BUT….not to worry.When economies collapse,welfare entitlements will be stopped,and the street people “employed” to blow on the blades,thus allowing the bird blenders to produce enough power to keep God knows what triple a battery thingie running.Darwin was wrong.Mankind is not evolving,we are de-volving at an alarming rate.(Welll-,at least 50% of us)
And no,I don’t mean to sound cruel.Just tired of PCness stupidity disguised as “love for our planet”.
George Lawson says:
March 7, 2012 at 11:18 am
Actually, “politics” IS their “business”–they do anything and everything to keep their “jobs”, even if it includes bankrupting their once-great country.
Toss the bums out, Englanders–it’s your only hope.
@ur momisugly kadaka (KD Knoebel) 8:44.
I was about to congratulate you on a splendid piece of satire as I thought you were describing the ubiquitous American Farm WindPump invented in 1854.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windpump
Alas, you were serious.
Nobody disputes that electricity can be produced by a wide range of means. Hell, the ancient Egyptians did it. The question has always been one of economics. Do you know why wind/solar/algae, etc. will always play 2nd fiddle to fossil fuels? Because Mother Nature busted her fine ass for a hundred million years to do all the hard work for us. 😉 Sorry, Charlie, there is no way we can replicate that economically.
Never mind the gas/coal powered backups for wind (aka “fools power”) but here in Ontario according to William Palmer (ex Ontario Power Generation employee) we are sacrificing/derating the output of our nuclear reactors to accommodate the power output of our wind farms (when the wind decides to blow at the optimum speed and direction of course).
Ref. http://www.masterresource.org/2012/03/ontario-windpower-case-study-ii/#more-18990
“These deratings are due to surplus baseload generation, largely driven by the policy of the IESO to accept all available wind generation, even if the system does not need it, and even when it requires selling the output at high negative cost to neighbouring utilities in order to prevent an excess generation situation which would make the system frequency rise above 60 Hz, generating instability.
Contractually, Bruce Power is required to derate Bruce B units on the demand of the system operator when the system is in this surplus baseload situation. To do this, some 300 kilograms per second of live steam at about 4,000 kilopascals (250 degrees C) is dumped into the steam turbine condensers of each unit. Even to non-technical readers, this can be seen to be a large amount of energy, and not a trifling matter.”
Stop the insanity…