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.
None of this matters. Some very cunning and unprincipled idiots are running the asylum. Way back in the beginning it was obvious to any honest person with only an average IQ that wind power was a ridiculous option. The politicians went ahead with it anyway in the teeth of mountains of argument and evidence that it had no redeeming features at all.
But what wind policy did have in its favour, was that it would make many people very rich and give politicians something to ally themselves too that allegedly demonstrated they had good intentions if nothing else – though only the gullibles could be convinced of the latter. The politicians cannot have believed that it was a viable option and the moguls who went with it must have been at least as aware of the very serious and expensive shortcomings of energy from wind. And yet they all went with it.
The already incontrovertible case against gets stronger by the day and yet we still have businesses churning the gear out and making a fortune from it, politicians insulting voters while they defend it, and landowners also coining it. This fiasco is a potent symbol of how dishonest too many politicians, captains of industry and landowners have become (and probably always were). It illustrates how ineffective democracy can be and how parasitic capitalism can become.
Those on the right who’ll blame the politicians for corrupting the industrialists should ask themselves if they too would make and sell something that they knew was worthless but which sucked the end user and taxpayer dry? I hope not. These are not the kind of people that Rand would have held up as examples of the best we have within us, and they are not the kind of actions that exemplify the best of what capitalism makes possible.
@ur momisugly Tesla_x. Thanks for the good piece on life cycle environmental damage of Wind Turbines. Not just total CO2, but that sobering point about 2000 tons of mine tailings for the 1 ton of rare-earth magnets.
That would be worth a Photoshopped poster of a wind turbine next to a pyramid of its leavings. Let’s see, 2000 tons of tailings, about 1300 m^3. Volume of pyramid = LLH/3, 45 degree max angle of repose, so L = 2H, Therefore Volume = 4HHH/3. Height H = (1300*(3/4))^(1/3) = 10 meters, on a 20 x 20 meter base, posted “Radioactive”.
Parked next to that pyramid should be the tanker trucks holding all the oil-products used or consumed in the turbine’s manufacture, transport, and installation and maintenance. To finish it off, we need to show an estimate of the expected bird kill by species.
Actually, I would have guessed that the tailings would have been greater than 2000 to 1, but some rare earth ores are richer than I supposed.
With the politicians and their families and supporters benefiting from Windmills until there are rolling blackouts they will continue as long as their wallets thicken.
It is not the first time that politicians have had such a bad reputation – it is a pity that there is no ‘Oliver Cromwell’ around to sort out these politicians…
His speech at the dissolution of the ‘Long Parliament’ has significant echoes of truth even today – shows that politicians are always going to be the same..
Oliver Cromwell Speech – Dissolution of the Long Parliament
It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!
A pity that there is nobody around to make that kind of speech to congress/parliaments today.
It is without much doubt that the AGW effect of CO2 has been amplified for political effect by the alarmists but the quantum of amplification is still at issue. On the other hand, this report clearly quantifies the cost of responding to that alarmism. That the alarmists have been keen proponents of wind power goes without saying and their lack of real world perspective is now also quantified and the magnitude of it is truly astounding. That they have so easily been played by the eco-investment industry gives the rest of us a good metric on their child like naivete and and also the commercial cynicism of the merchant wankers and scum brokers who make their $alary plu$ bonu$’s from these eco ponzi $cams.
@Ian W Then perchance it is not an accident that the Price of Wales has the name Charles (with all due respect to that noted luminary of moderation known as CTM), who supports this rot. It is good that they no longer behead such people. The extraction of the head of the adulterous fool from between his cheeks in order to remove it would be a major operation.
The ratio between the promises made about wind power to its actual performance is one we can use as a yardstick to predict the performance of all other green promises.
Re: the Cromwell quote: The “green” bay tree.
You know how you’re supposed to ask the oposite question of the problem you’re trying to solve and you have to answer that question first.
So, with wind power, the main question to anwser wouldn’t be, “why is wind power good”, but, “why does wind power blow”. And you can’t answer why it’s good until you have answered the quesiton of why it blows. :p
The way I work it, this report is underestimating.
Let’s say the 36Gw is needed power.
I’ve rarely seen wind get over 75% of plated capacity and have seen it get as low as 1% so you need effectively 100% backup, 25% of which will be running continuously. So that’s 9Gw of CCGT running continuously.
If wind drops out totally, you need the backup to be efficient, so that’s another 25Gw of CCGT.
The next bit depends on how reliable you think your forecasts for wind are.
OCGT & the 1st cycle of CCGT start in about 15 minutes and we have a Gw or so of pumped storage.
I think the OCGT need be only about 5Gw accounting for phased switch in of CCGT with pumped storage taking up the slack.
DaveE.
Kev-in-UK says:
March 7, 2012 at 10:06 am
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
In that audit, one should add: how many tons of CO2 emissions have been saved as a result of the construction and introduction of such wind generators. This should properly include all CO2 emitted in the construction, transportation, erection (including concrete base), wiring into the grid etc.
What do they mean with “expenisve”?
Cost of CO2 removal:
Wind- $300-450 per ton (simple calculation from data in recent studies)
Market- $ 10-50 per ton ( much lower cost solutions are nuclear, repowering old units with natural gas, fuel switching, etc)
Most studies don’t calculate the cost of CO2 removal….and one can see why. Policy makers should demand a cost of CO2 reduction metric.
, but some rare earth ores are richer than I supposed.
Ian W says:
March 7, 2012 at 1:29 pm
With the politicians and their families and supporters benefiting from Windmills until there are rolling blackouts they will continue as long as their wallets thicken.
It is not the first time that politicians have had such a bad reputation – it is a pity that there is no ‘Oliver Cromwell’ around to sort out these politicians…
———————-
Ah yes, Cromwell the self-elected dictator mass murderer as alternative – iirc, it’s still illegal to have mince pies at Christmas..
Maybe we should just agree to abolish governments. The Americans made the best go of it, but look how quickly that got screwed.
It’s worse than we thought!
Friends:
An explanation of the problems of windpower for electricity generation in the UK is provided in a Prestigious Lecture I had the honour to provide six years ago. It can be read at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Its synopsis says:
“The UK Energy White Paper was published by the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry
(DTI) in May 2003. It proposed the objective of a contribution to reduction of carbon dioxide
(CO2) emissions by use of ‘renewables’ mostly in the form of windfarms (i.e. local assemblies
of wind turbines) to provide 20% of UK electricity supply. This objective was endorsed by the
UK’s Energy Review that was published by the DTI on 11 July 2006. However, this paper
suggests the use of windfarms cannot make significant contribution to reducing the emissions
and suggests the construction of tidal coffer dams instead. Windfarms for power generation
provide intermittent power so they merely displace thermal power stations onto standby mode
or to operate at reduced efficiency while the thermal power stations wait for the wind to
change. They make no significant reduction to pollution because thermal power stations
continue to use their fuel and to produce their emissions while operating in standby mode or
with reduced efficiency that can increase their emissions at low output. And this need for
continuously operating backup means that windfarms can only provide negligible useful
electricity to electricity grid supply systems. But the large scale use of windfarms requires
upgrading of an electricity grid, more complex grid management, and operation of additional
thermal power stations to protect against power cuts in time of supply failure. These effects
increase the cost of electricity supplied by the grid in addition to the capital, maintenance and
operating costs of the windfarms themselves. And the windfarms cause significant
environmental damage. Tidal coffer dams would not have these problems and could provide
continuous and controllable power supply at similar cost to off-shore windfarms.”
I find it interesating that some above comments suggest Germany has discovered some of these problems (e.g. upgrading of an electricity grid) to be insurmountable.
Richard
Stephen Rasey says:March 7, 2012 at 12:56 pm
@ur momisugly Tesla_x. Thanks for the good piece on life cycle environmental damage of Wind Turbines. Not just total CO2, but that sobering point about 2000 tons of mine tailings for the 1 ton of rare-earth magnets.
==========
There are ways:beyond rare earths:
“ENERCON WECs produce clean energy without neodymium
29.04. 2011
ENERCON wind energy converters (WECs) generate electricity in an environmentally friendly way without the use of the controversial element, neodymium. The gearless WEC design on which all WEC types – from the E-33/330 kW to the E-126/7.5 MW – are based includes a separately excited annular generator. The magnetic fields required by the generator to produce electricity are created electrically. By design, and unlike the majority of competing products, ENERCON WECs do without permanent magnets whose production requires neodymium.
…
ENERCON feels that these environmental and health aspects support its choice of WEC design. “We are a high-tech company that sets great store by environmental protection,” says ENERCON Managing Director Hans-Dieter Kettwig. “Our choice to rely on separately excited generators was the right one, not only from a technological but also from an environmental point of view.” According to Kettwig, renewable energies need to be viewed in their entirety in order to offer a convincing alternative. Producing clean energy is one thing; however, sustainability in production is just as important.”
I posted elswhere but I’ll repeat here
http://climateandstuff.blogspot.com/2011/05/efficiency-of-power-plant-operating.html
Hot start one hour cold start 3 hours.for a stag CCGT
“The LMS100 is the Right Solution:
Outstanding full- and part-power efficiency Low hot-day lapse rate
High availability – aero modular maintenance
Low maintenance cost
Designed for cycling applications
No cost penalty for starts and stops
Load-following capability
10 Minutes to full power
Improves average efficiency in cycling
Potential for spinning reserve credits
Reduced start-up emissions
Synchronous condenser capability”
not quite as efficient as a CCGT but 100% full power in 10mins.
So just how fast do Windturbine go from full to zero power.
Take a look at UK energy supplies in “real time”:
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html
Pick a rapid loss of windpower point and do the sums
2011/12/23 o3:00 2700MW
2011/12/23 07:00 1491MW
1209MW in 3 Hours
This compares to a scrammed nuclear station dropping 1000MW in less than a second.
Both these outages have to be handled and so it is obvious the nuclear poses greater problems.
The costly spinning reserve is required for scramms
but even a cold start STAG generator can reach full output in 3Hours!
So in conclusion CCGT can be used as backup for wind. These can stanby at cold srt consuming little gas until predicted wind loss requires them to be brought up to power.
As many have stated gas generators are dirt cheap so perhaps 10% of cost is tied up with cold gas generators but at least many Cu metres of gas have not been lost from future generations use.
Mike,
Your saying that even when wind is running efficiently, it is costing more because equivilent baseload is being dumped. Baseload that has to be there because wing is unpredictable.
m seward says:
March 7, 2012 at 1:48 pm
It is without much doubt that the AGW effect of CO2 has been amplified for political effect by the alarmists but the quantum of amplification is still at issue. On the other hand, this report clearly quantifies the cost of responding to that alarmism. That the alarmists have been keen proponents of wind power goes without saying and their lack of real world perspective is now also quantified and the magnitude of it is truly astounding. That they have so easily been played by the eco-investment industry gives the rest of us a good metric on their child like naivete and and also the commercial cynicism of the merchant wankers and scum brokers who make their $alary plu$ bonu$’s from these eco ponzi $cams.
——————–
They don’t mind. It’s not their money they’re spending to get contributions for their next election. It’s our tax dollars they’ve given away to ‘soon to be’ bankrupt companies.
From Stephen Rasey on March 7, 2012 at 12:19 pm:
Hey, just because it was real and “new” doesn’t mean I was totally serious.
I find it hard to believe that over the millenia of human innovation, including extracting wind energy, this wasn’t tried before. I know there’s a reason we prefer machines with continuous rotary motion, when the motion of solid mass is started or stopped there is wear, and reciprocating motion has great potential for wear. Likely dozens of inventive souls have tried this in the past, and quietly abandoned it. Well, maybe not that quietly, but likely not loudly in public.
But we have more durable materials nowadays, this looks cheaper to deploy than current wind turbines, since they can be deployed without a tower the maintenance should be cheaper and more practical. The economics of wind power are still inherently lousy, but this approach appears to make it somewhat more practical, on a small scale, thus it’s worthy of a mention and giving it a shot.
Plus don’t forget all the videos of squirrels and chipmunks catching a ride on those flat blades. Maybe even some cats. That’ll make it all worthwhile, don’t you think?
Is this the modern-age equivalent of being sentenced to ‘wander in the desert for 40 years’, in this case for attempting to build the ultimate ‘Golden Calf of renewable energy’ by following false ethos (ginned-up authorities/authoritative figures fostering untruths), twisting/playing with and on the public’s pathos (emotions; smiles, and instilling fear if necessary), while excluding logos (economics, engineering, science)?
.
Transalta wind farm in southern Alberta shut down for at least 2 weeks for inspection after and 18 year old tower collapses: http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/03/07/cowley-ridge-wind-farm-shut-down/
JuergenK says:
March 7, 2012 at 10:30 am
“OT
An appeal to german readers. Please visit http://goo.gl/QgSx5 for a poll on climate change at the University of Hamburg.”
I went through it until they requested detailed information about the persons I communicate with. I aborted it there. Looks like a typical von Storch “bringing in the social sciences” type of thing. Exploring the communication networks of skeptics and all that.
Notice this: von Storch is a strong proponent of Climate Science as a post-normal science. He also parroted Revkin’s attitude on the Gleick affair. Don’t trust the people behind that survey, would be my advice.
From jjthoms on March 7, 2012 at 4:34 pm:
This wins my personal notice as the most stupid thing I’ve read this week.
A nuclear plant suddenly shutting down electricity production, especially a core shutdown “scram” (only one “m”), is incredibly rare. You’ll be lucky to see a nuke plant do that even once a year. The only instances I can recall in the US offhand involved a glitch in the power grid elsewhere registering as a surge causing an automatic shutdown. They don’t need spinning reserve.
A wind turbine will naturally shut down perhaps several times a day, and even get shut down due to too high wind speeds. They need reserve. Spinning is optional, depending on how fast generation can be added elsewhere in the grid. But the wind could have a lull of a half hour or less that shuts down wind turbines, this is saying said STAG generator is up and running in three hours from cold. And as also mentioned, one hour from hot, and there are generators that can be running in ten minutes. So you’ll have pricey reserve for that quick ten minute response, which will be shutting down after twenty minutes of generation when the wind picks up again, which might not be needed again all day, or for another week. Yup, that’s sure a smart way to spend money, when it’s Other People’s Money and you’ll be getting a piece of the action.
So it’s a bad comparison, with a false premise thrown in for additional justification. Stupid, most stupid thing I’ve read this week so far, and that’s even with this being election season.
Call me cynical but I’ve always said windfarms are great for the purposes of making lots of money for landowners.
You see windfarms convert greenfield sites (where you can’t get permission to build houses) into brownfield sites. Complete with power cables and nice new roads and a stated Goverment policy to build new housing on brownfield sites which aren’t flood plains.
There aren’t that many places like that in the UK.
Exclusive housing with great views (just below the rim of a hill) is worth a lot more than sheep-grazing land.
Well certainly better than the Stern Report which was good mix of stupidity and ignorance.
It should be pretty obvious to even the most oblivious politician that the Wind Power Scam has run its course. It might have had a much longer run except for the internet. With wind turbines earning the reputation of bird choppers and eye sores Politicians could still sweep the negatives under the rug and continued to push wind power onto the public which they did. However when you add in recent lawsuits by people suffering adverse effects from the sound of wind turbines, turbine fires and blade accidents (1,500 reported accidents/‘incidents’ in the UK in 5 years), the NIMBYs now have real ammunition without even resorting to the economics of the situation.
SO what is a savvy political party to do? Why get to the front of the pack and look like they are leading the way. That is what this article is about. It is a power play to make sure the political party now in power STAYS in power.
So do not hold your breath, the watermelons are not about to give up their stranglehold on power and the taxpayers purse they will just morph into something else. They are very good at re-inventing themselves, they have been doing it since long before any of us were born.
Just remember Professor Stephen Schneider who was screaming about the coming Ice Age in the 1970s before converting to promoting of man-made global warming fears more recently.