Press Release
London, 6 August: The Global Warming Policy Foundations has warned policy makers that wind energy is an extraordinarily expensive and inefficient way of reducing CO2 emissions. In fact, there is a significant likelihood that annual CO2 emissions could be greater under the Government’s current wind strategy than under an alternative Gas scenario.
Professor Gordon Hughes (University of Edinburgh), on behalf of the GWPF, has also assessed the likely impact of wind power on household energy bills.
In his economic analysis, submitted by the GWPF to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, Prof Hughes concludes that meeting the Government’s target for renewable generation would increase households electricity bills by 40-60% by 2020.
The necessary investment for this Wind scenario would amount to about £124 billion. The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a capital cost of £13 billion – the latter option is cheaper by an order of magnitude.
According to Professor Hughes, “the average household electricity bill would increase from £528 per year at 2010 prices to a range from £730 to £840 in 2020 under the Mixed Wind scenario. These figures amount to increases of 38% to 58% in the average household bill relative to the baseline under the Gas scenario. The equivalent ranges for the other scenarios are 29-46% for the More Onshore Wind scenario and 40-62% for the Future Offshore Wind scenario.”
“The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment 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 GWPF’s submission to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change public evidence session on the Economics of Wind Power Committee is available here: Gordon Hughes: The Impact of Wind Power On Household Energy Bills.
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 reports The Myth of Green Jobs and Why is wind power so expensive?
The wind lobby will go to extraordinary lengths to dupe the public. There’s a ton of money to be made. http://nzwindfarms.wordpress.com/
I bet you anything that MSM will ignore this.
Great, another report concluding what we have known for years. How many reports are needed to end this non-sense is the thing I want to know.
At last someone talks sense but will the politicians listen? I doubt it
kayelsea
I hate windmills, not only for the obvious economic and aesthetic reasons, but even more because anyone living near them is going to suffer all kinds of mental stress related illnesses, depressions etc, and have a great risk of going deaf.
I hope they get out of the picture for good.
Just what I said three years ago. Wind will be a huge mistake with lasting environmental consequences. Another “good” idea that does incredible damage until people wake up.
As a Swede I must say, this article is pure bullshit! 😉
Here in Sweden the costs for wind energy is very low, as most of the wind power plants are built besides, or very close to, where we already have water power plants. So, most of all around costs are already covered by that. It would be very stupid not to build wind energy plants here. Give me a good reason why Sweden should pay a lot of money to other countries for gas, when we can have cheap energy from our own resources? No, I thought so, you couldn’t. So, my bullshit comment was correct.
Maybe this will help them stop the wind farm scheduled for Long Island sound. Teddy Kennedy would be happy. The people in Nantuckette don’t want it either. Not in their backyard policy @ur momisugly work in the North East. How hypocritical of those N.E. liberals though.
Subsidies for wind farms are currently being vigorously debated in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9453986/Clegg-confirms-Coalition-rift-over-green-policies.html
Just get Al Gore and switch steam engine–Gore has enough hot air to power the entire earth for centuries.
And the “herding” of the Sheeple continues.
Put that article in perspective.
As one commenter stated Natural gas was discovered under the North Sea in the 1960’s and Fracking technology is also about that old.
Shell Oil wants to push natural gas. Ged Davis, the Shell Oil VP who wrote the Sustainability Scenarios for the IPCC shows this in the “Sustainable Development (B1)” part of the February, 1998 Climategate e-mail which asks for comments on the attachment: “Draft Paper for the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios” by Ged Davis
To quote from the Sustainable Development (B1) section:
Drakvag:
Nice try, but you inadvertently proved the point of the article. First, define “expensive”. Are you counting how much money it takes to build and maintain the turbines which is covered by the government? In Sweden, does “paid by taxes” mean “free” like it does in the US? Important thing to know. Second, you are already using a renewable energy–we call it hydro. We don’t call it renewable here in the states because we can’t get government subsidies for it like we can for wind and solar. So your necessary backup for wind power is already a renewable. I suppose you really don’t understand that you just paid for two types of renewable power instead of one since you never actually see what it costs. So the wind covers when the water runs out??? If not, you are indeed buying two sources of energy where one was fine. Lastly, your assumption that people who oppose wind are all for coal and gas power is completely wrong and shows how little understanding you have of this issue. Opponents of wind do not believe there are no alternatives to gas and oil, only that wind and solar are such such alternatives.
DARN, my computer is STILL dropping packets so to close
Drakvag – you really should catch up on your reading and understanding of how the windmills of our time is financed. And yes, I’m also from Sweden.
In response to Drakvag, I can see your point and Sweden’s geography may be very wind friendly. In most other places that is not the case, wind plants are built in remote areas well removed from other energy infrastructure so a lot of additional infrastructure must also be built in remote/rural areas.That is the case in Australia and the overall capital cost is ridiculous. Wind power requires a lot more capital per KW capacity than Gas/Coal/Nuclear/Hydro and that capital is sucked away from other uses.
There are only 92 (I think) water power plants in Sweden and the majority of those are found in the north situated on the large rivers, so what you say isn’t true at all. Here you have a list of the energy producing municipalities (2011) in order of produced effect. Numbers are number of plants.
Gotland, 181,4 MW, 177 st
Strömsund, 121,4 MW, 62 st
Malmö 114,4 MW, 50 st
Åsele 89,4 MW, 46 st
Dorotea, 68,0 MW, 34 st
Laholm, 66,4 MW, 63 st
Eslöv, 62,0 MW, 47 st
Mjölby, 61,9 MW, 60 st
Piteå, 60,3 MW, 28 st
Falkenberg, 59,3 MW, 48 st
Borgholm, 57,1 MW, 39 st
Vara, 56,4 MW, 43 st
Mellerud, 55,9 MW, 41 st
Malå, 52,6 MW, 27 st
Dals-Ed, 48,3 MW, 21 st
Nordmaling, 46,7 MW, 21 st
Tanum, 45,6 MW, 37 st
Falköping, 43,5 MW, 41 st
Krokom 42,7 MW, 21 st
Mönsterås, 41,4 MW, 20 st
A Dutch study criticizes the energy models that sold wind power to the Netherlands because the models neglected factors that increase fossil fuel consumption and C02 emissions.
http://www.clepair.net/windSchiphol.html
One factor is the process of ‘cycling’ or ramping up conventional plants connected to stand in when the wind isn’t blowing, and ramping down when it is. Both processes increase fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The study included an analysis of wind data at Schiphol Airport on an average windy day, 28/08/11, and found that back up ramping over 21.5 hours of low winds, increased gas imput by 47,150 m3, adding 117,9ton of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
Addendum to my previous post. The energy comes from wind turbines only and the numbers are the amount of wind turbines.
Drakvag says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:23 am
As a Swede I must say, this article is pure bullshit! 😉
I believe the report is in regards to the UK energy market. In the UK the strongest, most reliable winds are in areas of natural beauty such as the mountains of Wales and the coastal regions. These are mostly a long way from where the power is needed, so expensive power grids need to be built across some of our greatest natural treasures. The Swedes can do what they like to power their own country, just don’t try forcing me to have expensive wind power blot the country I love.
Drakvag, you should do your home work before calling other peoples’ work bullshit.
You probably live in Sweden, where almost half of all electricity is produced with hydro and where less than 10% is generated using fossil fuels. There are few countries in the whole world, where the situation is that good. In Sweden you can basically build wind energy as much as you want and use hydro as backup.
However, even in Sweden it’s not economically viable. According to a report written by PWC (SKGS Vad kostar kraften?” April 29th 2010), wind energy in Sweden costs 65% more than hydro and 50% more than nuclear power. There’s no point in building more expensive wind power and pollute the beautiful countryside of Sweden.
And that’s not even considering the full costs. With wind and solar we’ll need backup plants for the case when the weather will tell us to sod off. That, too, will add a significant amount to the costs.
OK I admit it’s just Wiki, but tjust google Sweden Electricity and you can see Drakvag’s bogocity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Sweden
21. On this basis the average household electricity bill would increase
from £528 per year at 2010 prices to a range from £730 to £840 in 2020
under the Mixed Wind scenario. These figures amount to increases of 38%
to 58% in the average household bill relative to the baseline under the
Gas scenario. The equivalent ranges for the other scenarios are 29-46%
for the More Onshore Wind scenario and 40-62% for the Future Offshore
Wind scenario.
Now read the report!
All still based on the silly nonsense that increasing CO2 is either bad or that we can/should do anything about it.
Drakvag says:
August 6, 2012 at 6:23 am
As a Swede I must say, this article is pure bullshit! 😉
Here in Sweden the costs for wind energy is very low, as most of the wind power plants are built besides, or very close to, where we already have water power plants. So, most of all around costs are already covered by that. It would be very stupid not to build wind energy plants here. Give me a good reason why Sweden should pay a lot of money to other countries for gas, when we can have cheap energy from our own resources? No, I thought so, you couldn’t. So, my bullshit comment was correct.
Now read the report!