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?
A retired insurance man, now there is someone to listen to on technical issues, or anything else as far as that is concerned. I guess it is still better than a lawyer or realtor. But then we are dealing with cilmate issues, so what the heck. Even a banker might be preferred to some of the climate scientists.
[REPLY: Jim, is there any other group that you have left off your list? You would be surprised at how many WUWT readers and commenters are bankers and lawyers and who do indeed have something to contribute. Your comment is a really good example of an ad hominem attack. De-construct the argument please. This is WUWT, the best science blog on the net, and we are not like many of those other sites, or the refugee commenters from those places who occasionally turn up, demanding to see resumes before they’ll condescend to discuss the science. Please don’t do that. -REP]
Know nukes!
I am currently involved in a battle to prevent the destruction of the last remaining unspoilt moorland in Cornwall by the installation of 15, 3mwe turbines, each standing over 400 feet high to the flail tip. This is not much of an area but it is our quiet place where we can walk and talk and watch the kestrels, view the murmurations of starlings. It is a designated “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”, one designation below a National Park. The USA has vast areas of unspoilt land (I have driven I 40 from Barstow eastward) but we have these tiny pockets of tranquility in England which are being progressively destroyed by the Carpetbaggers supported by the useful idiots in the greeny brigade. We have Companies prepared to throw millions at the Council to buy their planning permission because of the massive subsidies that these windflails will reap for them. We have a few home printers and an ability to write letters. This kind of posting and the comments are excellent for us as it brings together many of the references that we can use. Even the comments of Kum Dollison are useful as it shows the kind of strange twisted logic that the windys employ.
Ivor Ward
Stop Davidstow Windfarm
https://www.facebook.com/groups/161071526559/?bookmark_t=group
Disko Troop,
You make clear the stark distinction between ‘environmentalists’, who are simply big government NGO/QUANGO types with a far-Left agenda, and true conservationists, who work for conservation of nature [such as the conservation group Ducks Unlimited]. As Ronald Reagan said, conservatives are true conservationists. It is in our blood.
Disko Troop:
I, too, live in Cornwall.
I think you may be interested in an Annual Prestigious Lecture I provided in 2006. It can be read at e.g.
http://www.mininginstitute.org.uk/papers/courtney.html
Please let me know if I can help.
Richard
Smokey says:
August 7, 2012 at 11:23 am
Disko Troop,
You make clear the stark distinction between ‘environmentalists…
______________________
Actually it is not nearly that cut and dried. There are a lot of my friends on the left who are ‘conservationists’ (much better term) and are not swallowing the koolaid in huge gulps. There are also a lot of conservatives as you said. However both groups have large numbers of the wilfully blind.
I prefer the groupings:
The Regulating Class The funders of Astroturf aka NGOs.
The ‘Innocents’ Clubs The blind rank and file followers who join the Astroturf organizations thinking they are something entirely different than what they really are.
Those who realize: You are a slave
That is why we here at WUWT should not play into the hands of the ‘Puppet Masters’ and divide ourselves and fight ourselves at their direction. The main purpose of the MSM aside from reporting propaganda is to keep the “Left” and the “Right” rank and file fighting. Actually they elite will use what ever comes to had for controlling people. Right now it is their brand of ‘Socialism’ before that was ‘conservatives’ and the MSM rally cry rah rah the USA, lets fight a war.
Mario Lento says:
August 6, 2012 at 10:59 pm
It’s pretty simple. Wind power and PV solar have contributed to the increases in energy costs. It is intellectually dishonest to say that they are lower cost than coal, gas or nuclear.
Actually, it’s quite honest to say X source of energy is ‘cheaper’ in X set of circumstances.
The intellectual dishonesty appears with the ‘X’ circumstance gets dropped.
I.E. Wind can be a ‘hydro resource stretcher’ in those areas with substantial hydro. If you add too much wind then you end up either dumping your hydro or dumping your wind…either way you are throwing money away.
Even when gas cost more then twice as much as coal in the US…burning gas for ‘peak load’ was cheaper then building a coal fired plant that would only be used for ‘seasonal peaking’.
There are no ‘always better’ or ‘always worse’ energy technologies. There are only technologies that can be implemented ‘cost effectively’ in a ‘specific set of circumstances’. That holds true for coal, oil, natural gas, wind, solar and nuclear.
@MAK; You cannot look at the price you pay always. The Dutch subsidize the wind energy at about 18cents per kWh… so people may pay less, but taxpayers can not afford the subsidies on the other side. The truth is that wind power is much more costly. Wind power would make sense where there is no grid and you need localized power, albeit at a high cost.
To:REP
I was, at one time, a banker and a real estate/aquisition/developer, so should have put the”humor” tag so often used on this site though I WAS taking a shot at the retired real estate gentleman with all the eroneous info on wind economics. Sorry, but since I have no problem laughing at myself I always forget that others many times fail to see the humor in their own situation. Was only really taking a shot at the realtor, of which I once was one, but thought I’d spice it up a bit. And yes, there are plenty of other groups but I shall refrain. I would also note that there are some posters on this site who regularly call others intelligence into question when they simply disagree with them, and do it in a much more derogatory and demeaning manner than my litle quip. So, please use your same criteria when dealing with some of those, even if they are in that group of highly thought of scientists on this site.
[REPLY: Thank you for the clarification. It is often better to use the /SARC tag since it seems to be getting harder and harder to tell satire from sincere invective. At the same time, your comment did give me an opportunity to ask commenters to engage substantively. Perhaps I could make such requests more often, but sometimes it feels like SSATT and the only result is carpal tunnel. On the other hand, I am often impressed with our commenters and appreciate their contributions. -REP]
What is a “hydro resource stretcher”? Seems to me that this is using two renewable resources at a much higher cost than one resource. I do agree that technologies should be used where they are actually cost effective, including long term costs. Wind and solar are very expensive due to maintenance and the need for backup power, while nuclear is very expensive due to regulations and building costs. We need to carefully consider what works, especially what works 24 hours a day at a moment’s notice. Climate change rhetoric adds to all the costs.
@Reality check: Good points! Truth is truth… PV solar and wind will have their place when we run out of fossil fuels in a few hundred years… and well before then, innovation will make them work. We cannot successfully base energy policy on lies and deception. I wonder why the left always wants there to be crisis when there is not one! AGW is for useful idiots… and they have gone far believing in the altruistic cause… even though AGW is pure nonsense.
Joel Mackey says:
August 7, 2012 at 7:20 am
I’m not “anti-wind”; I just don’t see it as a viable large-scale energy source. The fundamental problem is it is unreliable and low density; all the technology in the world can’t make the wind blow stronger or more often. It takes a lot of land to support a 2 MW (nameplate) wind turbine, many times more than gas, coal or nuclear. We need to develop higher density energy sources to support increasing populations with reliable power without consuming the entire landsacpe. Wind is moving in the wrong direction. Accepting as given that we simply have to make do with less is abandoning the possibility of further progress.
Call it faith if you will, but to me the undeniable lesson from the industrial age is each new generation can somehow find solutions to problems the previous generation could not imagine. I believe the well of human creativity is not dry and the limitations we currently perceive on our ability to expand power production to support a better life for more people on this planet can all be overcome.
Reality check says:
August 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
…. We need to carefully consider what works, especially what works 24 hours a day at a moment’s notice. Climate change rhetoric adds to all the costs….
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You forgot to add the Astroturf “protestors” such as those paid $10/hr to protest th Seabrook Nuclear plant costing rate payers massive cost over runs.
U.S.PIRG: Jobs & Opportunities
This is a funny utube I ran across on the subject of paid astroturf protestors by CAL:PIRG [CAUTION: Very Politically Uncorrect]
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.
Yes the cost of proposed off shore wind in the UK deserves scrutiny and criticism. But c’mon, that does not at the same time grant natural gas proposals leave to happy talk. That cost of that 21 GW fleet of gas power plants does end after the capital is spent! Gas in the UK is not cheap, as they pay nearly three times what the US pays, almost $8/mmbtu wholesale. Running 21 GWe of gas power CC 24/7 would likely burn 1.2 billion mmbtu per year, or another £6-7 billion in gas costs every year, IF the price of gas holds in Europe.
richardscourtney says:
August 7, 2012 at 11:54 am
Thank you for the link Richard. Much appreciated.
Gail Combs says:
August 7, 2012 at 12:00 pm
I too hate labels. If I were to be labelled, it would be as both environmentalist and conservationist having helped form a local preservation society in the 70’s and “done my bit” with the tiny car, the wood burning stove from coppiced wood, the compost bins, recycling and all the other little measures to stop pollution. What infuriates me is that until this CAGW scam came along the human race was making good progress towards a better environment for all with some good use of legislation to reign in the bad boys and some good education to show people what they could do to help if they wanted; now all the money is being thrown into subsidies for these wind follies and there is nothing left to pay for genuine improvements to our way of life. Instead of getting together with black bin bags and picking up rubbish they are camping outside St Pauls occupying something. The stupidity of it all burns into my soul.
Ivor Ward
Cold Fusion or LENR has been discovered by Fleishmann and Pons at the university of Utah back in 1989.
Plasma physicists have sabotaged the discovery.
In Italy they continued to do the research and Rossi found that instead of Paladium and Deuterium one could use Nickel and Hydrogen Now the US Navy is already using his e-cats. See http://www.e-catworld.com/
US media continue to ignore the revolution.
Corporate US has this week a conference in Austin, the world conference on cold fusion is in two weeks in Korea and in the beginning of September, e-cats are the subject of a convention in Zurich.
Windmills were never efficient and now with LENR are going to become completely obsolete.
E-cat returns. I’m surprised it took so long to make this blog. Humans are just hardwired to believe in fairy tales, I guess. However, as noted in my own writings, the US government bought into the fantasy about “free wind and solar” so I suppose a lot of internet readers buying into cold fusion and conspiracy theories is not surprising. No mention of the Tesla machine I have gotten hundreds of emails about. Is there anyone out there that does not believe the holy grail has been found by “group X” and then stolen by “group Y” under nefarious circumstances. I am not being sarcastic here–I sincerely want to know if everyone believes there’s a huge conspiracy to hide water cars and cold fusion, etc. It seems every blog I read eventually has comments along that line.
Two things to say….
It’s pointless to compare the cost of wind energy to gas, coal, nuclear etc because it’s a comparison of apples to oranges. If I want to take a guaranteed delivery of 500 MW for say 24 straight hours say next Tuesday morning at 7 am, then no one who generates power via solar or wind could bid on that contract. If a wind generator did want to bid on that contract, they would have to team up with a full capacity gas generator…hence a more realistic apples to apples comparison of sources who can actually deliver the goods. Since natural gas would appear to be the ‘supplement of choice’ for those geographical locations considering wind, the proper comparison would be to take wind as supplemented by open loop gas (say 40% peak efficiency) against combined cycle gas (say 60% peak efficiency). Why the lower efficiency gas teamed with wind? It’s because wind fluctuates so quickly that the much higher efficiency combined cycle gas can’t be used. And what one quickly finds out is that if the full comparison was made of the tandem of wind and open loop gas against combined cycle gas, just about the same amount of gas is used for an equivalent amount of delivered electrical power and energy . This makes the wind component absolutely useless as a power source. The document from Professor Hughes or the information on MasterResource by Kent Hawkins is very interesting to read in this regard.
The second thing is that all the constant fluctuations associated with wind are hard on power plant operations and a system that has to accommodate them will have far more maintenance and reliability issues to deal with. Think about what causes fatigue.
All in all, wind is an absolute loser.
Well I never. Today The (Glasgow) Herald covered this.
I wonder if now they will cover the rebuttal of Dr. Hansens paper. I’ve sent them a copy to see what happens.
Very interesting post. I do agree with you that wind energy is extraordinarily expensive and inefficient. Thanks Anthony
The primary problem I have with a report like this, even though exposing the inadequacy of wind-power, the GWPF statement seems to perpetuate the myth that the reduction of CO2 emissions is an urgent necessity even though the average global temperature increase since 1880 has been about 0.8 degrees C and it is not at all clear that the 41% increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, presumably caused by man, is responsible for all that increase.
Of course, I suspect that many are afraid that we have had a global warming effect on the order of 8 degrees F in order to be responsible for the recent ‘unprecedented’ heatwave and the melting of ‘all’ the ice in Greenland.
Reality check says:
August 7, 2012 at 4:01 pm
“E-cat returns. I’m surprised it took so long to make this blog. Humans are just hardwired to believe in fairy tales, I guess. However, as noted in my own writings, the US government bought into the fantasy about “free wind and solar” so I suppose a lot of internet readers buying into cold fusion and conspiracy theories is not surprising.”
It has nothing to do with conspiracy. Your false analogy sounds like the warmists equating climate skepticism with believing that the Earth is flat.
Watch this and explain to me how these guys got everything they did wrong, I dare ya.
The SPAWAR guys:
Frank E Gordon
Twenty-Year History of Lattice-Enabled Nuclear Reactions (LENR) – Hiding in Plain Sight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VymhJCcNBBc
Wuwt: I don’t know if this is acceptable practice but I am trying to solicit Richards help in combating another wind farm. Please delete if it is not and accept my apologies. Ivor Ward.
richardscourtney says:
August 7, 2012 at 11:54 am
Disko Troop:
I, too, live in Cornwall.
I think you may be interested in an Annual Prestigious Lecture I provided in 2006. It can be read at e.g.
http://www.mininginstitute.org.uk/papers/courtney.html
Please let me know if I can help.
Richard
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Richard, would you mind contacting us at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/161071526559/10150967369146560/?comment_id=10150967412146560¬if_t=group_comment
Ivor Ward