Europe Is Falling Out Of Love With Renewables
The Danish government has announced a new proposal to resolve the problem of the renewable energy tax (PSO) which the EU believes to be illegal and which has become markedly more expensive for businesses and citizens than planned. Climate and Energy Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt will cancel all coastal wind turbines which were agreed to be built in 2012 and promises to replace them with a new offshore wind farm in 2025. “When I think back on the energy agreement from 2012, it was a mistake that agreed to build the coastal wind turbines,” he said. –Naja Dandanell and Marchen Neel Gjertsen, Jyllands-Posten, 7 June 2016
Denmark Cancels All Coastal Wind Farms, Delays New Built Until 2025
Naja Dandanell and Marchen Neel Gjertsen,
The Danish government has announced a new proposal to resolve the problem of the renewable energy tax (PSO) which the EU believes to be illegal and which has become markedly more expensive for businesses and citizens than planned.
Climate and Energy Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt will cancel all coastal wind turbines which were agreed to be built in 2012 and promises to replace them with a new offshore wind farm in 2025.
The cancellation of the coastal wind turbines will save the country around 7 billion Krones ($1 billion). And when the new offshore wind farm will be constructed from 2025 onwards there will be ample budgets then.
“For me there is no doubt that an offshore wind farm located far out at sea will be a much better solution,” says Lars Christian Lilleholt who also believes in the visual benefit of offshore wind turbines which cannot be seen from land.
The government has long sought to postpone the coastal wind turbines and the minister has now pulled the plug completely on the controversial projects.
“When I think back on the energy agreement from 2012, it was a mistake that agreed to build the coastal wind turbines,” he said. [….]
Translation GWPF
see also
Denmark Cuts Green Tax, Scaps Offshore Wind Farms
Denmark’s Liberal Government To Roll Back Renewable Energy Policy
h/t to Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF
In a similar action Nova Scotia has ended the ability of wind energy producers to charge 3X the market price to the utility NSP. Needless to say, nobody is building NEW wind turbines there anymore. The existing turbines continue to be parasitic to the residents of Nova Scotia wherein the kick-back is buried in their electrical charges.
It is very reminiscent of the cogen fad in Maine during the 1990s when Central Main Power had to take power generated by folks like International Paper produced by burning wood chips and then was unable to pass along the costs because they were just too high. Central Mail eventually filed for bankruptcy in order to avoid them. The press at the time was that the cogen stuff would make power so cheap that folks could use electricity for heating. Those that did got hot under the collar when they saw their bills.
No the Chinese are continuing to develope the largest turbine farm They also cancelled all new coal plants for 3 yearhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China
Not quite. China has about 100 or perhaps more large coal plants currently under construction but have suspended any further approvals for new plants for 3 years. The reason is the recession in China. The country has the capability to produce much more power than they need. Fortunately, perhaps, wind turbines only produce about 1/3 of their rated power so that must help.
The have a lot more important issues than carbon, such as a huge glut of power capacity. They literally can’t use any more power plants.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/china-puts-an-emergency-stop-on-coal-power-construction/
The fact that they aren’t stopping construction of the wind power is a political move, nothing more. The cynical would say that it means they don’t view it as actual power.
No, no, no. You are actually fool enough to believe anything the Chinese say. One wonders about your intelligence. Not even mentioning believing Wikipedia. One wonders some more.
Stan, the facts are true, but the spin is wrong. The halt in construction is due to the fact that due to the recession, the average Chinese power plant is being run less than half the time. In the west, the construction would have slowed years ago, but centrally planned economies don’t have the same feedbacks we do.
And Wikipedia is a half-decent source, so far as it goes. On non-controversial topics it serves well, and it is one of the best starting points for research. The problem only comes when it’s your finishing point as well.
How do observers even know if the turbines are generating or consuming energy (since they can’t be allowed to sit on their bearings for extended periods of time, apparently)?
I always look for a flag as an indicator of wind speed, while in the USA. When in Canada, since Canadians don’t like to put up flags (rainbow flags are the exception) it is a guess if the wind is blowing.
In the USA, they like flying Mexican flags and burning American flags.
I guess Dylan was right, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Well by 2025 they will have figured out how to shrink those turbines to a much more manageable size so they don’t look such an eyesore. What we need is a Moore’s Law for wind turbines. Shrink them down so they aren’t so ugly.
After all, technology shrunk the transistor down. Do you realize how big and ugly the first transistor was. Now they are so small, you can’t even see them, unless you have a million of them close together.
g
Scaling down wind turbines doesn’t work. Power in the wind is proportional to the cross sectional area of the intercepted air column.
JB
I think George just forgot his /sarc tag.
Wow. The Great Awakening is sweeping Europe as governments begin to collapse due to all the manic things like letting in millions and millions of angry aliens, etc.
It’s more than that. When Britain leaves the EU, the two countries most likely to follow fairly close behind are Denmark and Sweden.
Bazzwe: May I suggest that some on here take a look at Pat Condell’s latest vid about the EU Referendum in the UK. Now, some may not like his politics, but on the EU, I believe he is dead right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFt-pRIvL9E
Harry, that is a really great Video, let’s hope it gets a wider viewing.
Indeed. Is has been total madness here. Aliens are getting free money from some governments whilst the elderly can rot and die from their minuscule pension (for which they worked 40 or more years). Unable to afford the rising power bill due to renewable energy.. /mad
emsnews — So true and, if anything, understated. — Eugene WR Gallun
We are entering a very serious Cold Cycle starting with a post-el Nino la Nina event from H*ll. Then the 30 year cycle will hammer us all. No one in the colder northern half of the hemisphere will believe in global warming in ten years! Anyone pushing that storyline will be shunned or stoned.
Except the ones who are already stoned, of course (Portland, LA, SF, Denver).
emsnews, 1105 am
I fear you are right.
Very right
We need a little judicious warmth.
Fewer older citizens [and older guests] will die from the cold, were it warmer, than will succumb from [marginally] elevated night-time temperatures, especially were the elevation in winter!
Yet our climatastrophists tell us that a rise of 0.8 C is ‘catastrophic’ . . . .
Auto
To be fair to the “angry aliens”, it was the anti-native European (and American) leaders that created the conditions for mass emigration, and government whoring provides an incentive for [class] diversity (e.g. racism, sexism) politics through catastrophic anthropogenic demographic change.
No it was isis killing everyone in sight. The middle east was a mess without the US
The US was one of the backers of ISIS and similar groups.
Weird seeing the penny finally starting to drop amongst the liberal elite.. Mind you, they will act as if they worked it all out by themselves, all those engineers and science literate plebs who have been having pointing out the reality of “renewables” are of course irrelevant. .
We need some of this to happen in Ontario Canada soon, before the province becomes bankrupt and I’m sitting in the dark.
Too late for that!:
https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/06/07/revealed-ontarios-climate-change-action-plan.html
Isn’t that just the “Ontarion” way. To get real intense about it just when the rest of the world is starting to get some sense. 🙁 Hopefully we will only have to endure the first two years of that five year plan. If not I’m moving.
oops, my bad.. should have realized the policy of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
No worry Scott. They are not going to start until 2025 so they probably won’t be built as the Global Warming scam will have died by then.
This is a classic NIMTO beloved of politicians. It has put the decision off for 10 years – i.e. Not In My Term of Office. He shall be out of power with a sinecure pension by then so who cares.
They selected 2025 because there will be “ample budgets” for them then. Of course, that must be based on economic models, which are the only models as pathetic as climate models, and the belief that future governments won’t find other ways to waste the money. I think I would wager a princely sum that those wind farms will never be built. There will still be millions to be made on feasibility studies, though (and the conclusions will be, not yet).
“Europe Is Falling Out Of Love With Renewables”
Perhaps that is a polite way of saying “Waking up to reality”?
Allegedly, EDF has a debt problem. (EDF, the owner of electric plants, not the enviro group.)
But the real issue has been kept hidden from the French people with the help of the complicit (should I say kollaborators?) medias: the huge “renewable energy” debt title owned by EDF, which should be paid by the French people! But nobody wants to see any energy price increase. Esp. not pre-election year, the year of gift with “free money”.
François Hollande once said: “c’est gratuit c’est l’Etat qui paye” = “it’s free, the State pays!”.
And we will have even more PV panels coming online and even more “free” solar energy coming in summer when we don’t need it (France is a big electric heating country, with the power spike in winter, not a big summer consumer, with most factories stopped in August).
Let the financial danse continu!
+1,000,000.
They simply could not afford more. Like Spanish solar subsidies two years ago.
Highest electricity cost in the EU. Germany is second.
And the ~40 percent Danish wind penetration is only possible by using Norwegian hydro as the intermittency buffer, a buy high sell low loser that further increases the wind cost burden.
More renewable chickens coming home to roost.
But Norway is making out like a bandit — they can take a huge amount of excess wind power just by shutting down some of their hydro generation. And then sell it back at a big markup when the wind isn’t blowing. It’s like running a bank where you can charge customers to deposit money and charge them again when they withdraw. There is a 700 MW HVDC link between Holland and Norway so the Dutch can pay the Norwegians to buffer their excess wind generation.
Yes the oversupply issue of renewable power that has a feed in tarrif seems to be occurring everywhere. I was discussing the situation in Western Australia with poor Griff, where we have death spiraled our electricity grid as we have so much renewable energy and nothing to do with it as other markets to dump it to are too far away.
The base and peak load generation providers are making bank because they have increased there prices and so the public electricity provider companies basically have to buy power they will never use or the base load providers won’t enter into an agreement. So every household electricity bill actually keeps rising.
The public electricity providers tried working a deal with big businesses that have there own generation and ask pay them a small fee to drop power draw and increase there own power station outputs. You can guess what happened when the agreements were up for renewal, the base load providers bought the power from those businesses as they could sell it at the inflated cost.
With all the smart interconnect technology the big fear is the base load providers and big industry producers/users will simply share power between themselves effectively freezing the public residential power grid out to have this intermittent chaotic supply situation. When the first two really big power generator/user companies directly connected to each other not via the grid the alarm bells started ringing that we could get this two tiered system. The industrial baseload system basically being the reliable one and developing around paying for power for exactly what it is worth with no feed in tarrif. The poor public left with this other increasingly expensive and unreliable supply and feed in tarrif for renewables.
The short term solution is the public power utilities have entered contracts to take power they will never use, passing the cost onto the residential market obviously.
hi LdB
Yes, what you are describing in Western Australia is fossil fuel electricity suppliers unable to compete with renewables… massive stranded fossil fuel power assets.
The oversupply is with fossil fuel power though!
The cost to domestic users will push them into solar + battery, making situation for power companies worse.
Like EON and RWE in Europe, Australian companies will need to split into fossil rump and new renewable companies.
This structural change in the power market is unstoppable.
That’s how its supposed to work in an European energy grid – renewables are shipped across it/hydro backs it up across borders.
Denmark does not have sufficient fossil fuel power palnt now to cover all demand (and that’s not a problem).
this is a budget issue, not a renewables issue.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peder-andreasen/denmark-powered-by-wind_b_8813012.html
You aren’t getting this are you Griff. Lets dumb this down you are a baseload provider and you are only really needed for 8 hrs of a 24 hrs day but you have a fixed amount of energy for every minute of every day. So a public electricity utility with large renewable energy approaches you and says I want X amount of power for 8 hrs please and I am willing to pay you X amount. What happens is the heavy industries that need the power approach the baseload provider and say I will pay you 2X for your power delivered all day, he is going to save 30% on his power cost even if the retailer doesn’t have a markup and the baseload provider will get double the return.
The public grid provider is forced to buy 8hrs of power to match the 2X price, he has no intention of ever using the extra 8hrs but he has to pay for it.
It’s called a renewable death spiral you keep paying a input tariff to build more renewable energy that isn’t needed because it is happening at the wrong time and makes the baseload provider position stronger and stronger.
As Alan said Norway who is playing baseload provider is making bank but they also have enormous power and can wield it demanding and setting prices. It is only a matter of time before Norway works out it can flex it’s muscle.
If you aren’t careful as almost happened in Western Australia the baseload provider and the heavy user exit the grid all together. Your residential customer utility is then left with the double effect they have to find baseload from somewhere else and they lost a big buying customer so they have no option but to increase the residential electricity price. The loser in all this is the residential user.
Now I guess in the perfect GREEN DREAM the residential users adjust there lifestyle but that doesn’t happen and so it is always the residential customer that gets hurt in the renewable death spiral. The baseload provider and the industry are usually quite happy and leave the residential customer to rot.
Now Griff is contradicting himself.
Previously he claimed that there was no need for any kind of backup for renewables.
Now he claims it’s ok to have a lot of renewables so long as someone else is providing the back up.
In the UK industries put in solar, to fix a percentage of their electricity costs. They may make this private wire soalr, which never touches the grid. Should deliver even more in Australia.
Its a fossil fuel death spiral.
Mark, you don’t need backup while wind is blowing… in the current state of the grid you need fossil fuel/hydro at some point. E.g Germany is only 33% renewable electricity… moving to 45% in 2030.
I say fossil fuel/hydro – you could equally take renewable electricity from outside the country
Griff,
The problem with most renewables, except hydro, is that they are completely unreliable. Especially wind: wind can drop from full blowing and producing to zero in less than 15 minutes over a whole country. That means that you need a fast backup which can respond at the same speed. That are only hydro and fast gasturbines. The latter have a bad yield compared to STEG and other combined cycle gas fired power plants.
In general, if you have a lot of conventional power plants, you need some 10-20% (fast) backup for cases that one of the power plants shuts down unexpected or for unexpected maintenance (regular maintenance is mostly planned in calm periods). For wind and solar you need anyway 100% backup for every MW installed.
Denmark has the possibility to use Swedish and Norwegian hydro as backup at a high price (but even so haven’t closed any of their coal plants). For The Netherlands and Belgium, which have no/little hydro, that simply doesn’t exist, or one should build new high voltage trunck lines with France’s hydro. Alternative: heavily subsidized fast gas turbines, as they need to stand in (hot) standby when the wind stops blowing (75% of the time over land, 65% over sea).
That all means that wind turbines not only need a lot of extra installation in equipment and lines, but also that the necessary backup has both a worse CO2 emissions yield as an economical burden, which should be attributed to the (not so) “green” wind power. But that is never taken into account…
Further, the current European storage capacity for power by hydro is far from sufficient to give the necessary backup. If you want 100% renewables, you need to increase it to 660 times current capacity… Or 800 Tesla batteries per household… To give you an impression of what is needed (study from the European Physical Society).
Frightening for those on fixed incomes with no superannuation, baby boomers i’m looking at you.
Should we put Griff on a suicide watch?
No.
Give assistance!
It’s all gone quiet, it’s all gone quiet, it’s all gone quiet over there!
You could send food parcels?
Cake, cookies and doughnuts?
Once Germany gave up on the whole renewables thing, the rest are all falling like dominoes. Not SE Asia this time around, but NW Europe.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/examples-will-have-to-be-made-germany/
Pointman
POstponement until 2025 means it will never happen, as I believe that new nuclear molten salt reactors will be sweeping away all other forms of power generation.
Show me where they’re any commercially operating MSRs. In the UK, we’re still pissing around with Hinckley Point and it’s antique French reactor. No Western country can get a nuclear power station designed, approved, built & operational within 9 years,
“antique French reactor”
WHAT???
Is it the general principle of PWR that you don’t like? Or the general concept of a water/water reactor, as the Russians say?
Or just the particular EPR design?
Actually the new design for Wylfa UK could be built in 5 years… built by 2021
The Chinese head of programme expects these no earlier than early 2030s – gave a speech at oak ridge a few months back which u can google for
No doubt when 2025 rolls around the usual suspects will have “forgotten” the commitment to build the offshore wind-farms. It seems clear they didn’t fight to hard to keep the status quo. Finally, someone acting like their children and grandchildren really matter.
Off shore, out of sight out of mind. Might have more to do with on shore resistance.
So to he’ll with the whales, birds, greenies are such a blood thirsty lot.
“The cancellation of the coastal wind turbines will save the country around 7 billion Krones ($1 billion).”
So let’s cancel all present and future wind farms and further boost the economies of the world! /sarc
Why the “/sarc” tag? I’d say that’s right on target. 😀
ditto
Bob,
I second that – and Barbara’s straight to the point comment.
Auto
PS – I can see local, very small scale wind [with solar and battery, and perhaps peat burning] as suitable for [very] isolated spots where a small current need is evident. A laptop and a small light after dark, say. But miles off grid . . . . obviously.
Make it three.
At last sanity has slowly bubbled to the surface. My prediction – the off shore wind farms will be delayed past 2025 or never built at all.
PS – Is there nothing more ugly than a mountain ridge or pastoral farm land blighted with these rotten ,noisy, expensive wind spinners!!!
Not to al gore and friends, they just see dollar signs
TG
Unfortunately, yes. That same ridge you refer to littered with broken down non-spinners.
Does anyone know Roger Sowell personally and can go check on him? I just heard a loud pop and am concerned that his head may have exploded.
“I just heard a loud pop and am concerned that his head may have exploded.”
Why concerned? What’s the downside?
Somebody will have to clean it up.
You folks are such a blood thirsty lot.
Barbara Skolaut June 7, 2016 at 9:59 am
Shrapnel
Innocent bystanders.
michael 😀
All good scams must come to an end.
Touting renewables has now become more politically harmful than useful.
The left wants both power and money but when they can no longer have both (unless they see no political future for themselves) they opt to retain power figuring that another scam will eventually come along.
What we are now beginning to see is a scramble to retain power — and global warming, climate change, renewables, etc. will all be tossed under the bus.
Eugene WR Gallun
Sadly, they’re going ahead here with the Rampion wind farm off the coast of Brighton and Hove. Around 116 turbines. If the average bird deaths each year for each turbine. That will be ten’s of thousands of gulls and migratory birds. I do hope the bodies wash up on the beach to prove the madness of it all.
“The 400MW project, being built by E.ON, the UK Green Investment Bank and Canadian energy company Enbridge”
http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2016/01/26/construction-of-wind-farm-off-brighton-coast-set-to-start-this-week/
Pointman, the german greens + their chancellor slightly beginn to realize the mess they’ve done. Environment is loosing track, the new hope is ‘Willkommenskultur’:
Welcome to 100.000s of migrants to get access to taxpayers and workers paid by social System.
You don’t think the greens are slow on new projects!
No – the siting of UK turbines demands over 1 year of bird surveys… won’t go ahead if danger to birds. RSPB keeps close watch – got extension London Array cancelled as would be in bird wintering area.
Most UK sea bird movement is inshore along coast… in areas where wind farms aren’t. Also, Danish studies on offshore wind using lidar (and their turbines are on a migration route) showed bird casualties less than 1 in 200,000
Reading the source articles, some other points are interesting to me…
The tax they refer to is what folks and businesses pay in to finance the wind farms, and was anticipated to be 7B Kroner each year for the next 10 years. That the EU thinks it illegal to levy this tax puts the whole scheme at risk as it is, and, it’s too expensive to boot! It puts Danish industry at a cost basis disadvantage, which IMO their (politicians) don’t want hanging over their heads during the next election cycles.
In other news Greenpeace Slapped with RICO Lawsuit.
There are two sides to that story. link
Resolute Forest Products used to be Abitibi. The whole thing is a mess. This little jewel made my brain explode.
My reaction to the RICO story is ‘a pox on both their houses’.
What I think you’re saying is we now get to watch watermelons (warmists, whatever) eat their own babies.
Ahhh…where’s Jonathan Swift when you need him?
The Danish greeen’s handwavium mine must have been exhausted.:-)
+1
Yes. We passed peak handwavium about a year ago. They mistakenly believed it was a renewable.
There was a strange portent of this earlier in the year when BBC (BBC!) put on ‘Follow The Money’ a Danish Scandi-noir TV series where the bicycling boss of ‘Energreen’ turned out to be running a huge Ponzi scheme based on fanciful claims of super efficient windmills using superconductors and much else besides. He got shot in the eye by a bearded Swedish hitman at the end. One of the more satisfying recent endings.
‘Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that’s done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.
Stop the presses! The EU believes a new tax is illegal? This is from the Onion, right?
According to the EIA (for what it’s worth), the levelized cost per megawatt-hour of onshore wind is $75.10; for offshore wind it’s $175.60. (2013 costs for plants entering service 2020). In other words, the cost of offshore wind is 2.33 times that of onshore wind. So if these figures are accurate, Denmark saves 7 billion Krones today by committing themselves to spend 16.3 billion Krones in 2025 (adjusted up by inflation).
It’s a brilliant plan if (a) you don’t really mean to build the offshore windfarms, or (b) you expect to be out of office and comfortably retired on a cushy government pension by 2025.
The EIA is not accurate about onshore US wind. The correct numbers are CCGT $58/MWh, wind (with backup based on Texas’ ERCOT grid actual at 10% penetration) $146/MWh. The blatant EIA mistakes and corrected calculations are in guest post True Cost of Wind Electricity over at Climate Etc.
We did not even look at offshore, just assumed the EIA disparity could be more but not less.
Rud:
Thanks for the reference; your study is admirable. WUWT readers can access the post directly here. Very thorough. I plan to forward this to the local consumer advocate radio host — he’s really good but has swallowed the BS about wind power.
“We want to save the planet. We really do. Just not right now, because we can’t afford to. We had no idea it would be so expensive. But no worries – we will in ten years! Because just think how much money we’ll be saving by not building expensive, useless bird-chopping machines. Hey, they’re green and that’s what counts!”
CAGW like Lysekoism genetics, is falling of its own dead weight. It has proven that it’s a non-existing threat for two hundred years from now, is simply is no longer credible excuse to raise taxes and fleece the public, after a quarter century of minimal to non- existent temperature rise.
The fevered brow of Marxist imaginary ideology fails once again.
They could have assessed the value of each technology on its merits in context, but instead indulged and forced a climate (e.g. social, industrial, educational) consensus in order to create political and economic leverage.
The next crisis in “renewables” will be that long unused wind turbines are just dangerous eyesores that no wind power company has the reserves to decommission. So, government will be asked to provide the funds to “beautify” and “reclaim” the natural vista that was spoiled by wind turbines.
What an expensive folly.
Exactly so.
This is a result of the process that privatizes profits and socializes losses. Another way of saying it is ‘Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor’. link The shareholders lose whatever they have invested and they get to walk away otherwise scot-free. Everyone else has to clean up the mess, no matter how much it costs.
Might be interesting to recycle them as air conditioner fans…
What makes those who believe that burning fossil fuels affects the climate think that generating all our energy from wind or solar would not similarly affect the climate? After all, windmills slow down the wind, and solar panels change the reflectivity of the earth.
The whole premise of putting any energy system on or in saltwater is just insane. Just having a boat in a harbor slip and never going to sea requires constant upkeep. Wind turbines on land have enormous maintenance issues. Exposing all of that tech to ocean environment is certifiable.
and all those on board diesel generators have to be refilled.
For offshore that’s min. 1 boat, 7 man for 7 days a week :
2 elelectricians/mechanics for overhaule/repair
2 man general maintanence
3 man for the concrete base and for metal like stairs and railing decorroding + new paint.
After all it’s windparks in salt water!
Not forgetting bosun and mate
Gonzo,
for offshore that’s min. 1 boat, 7 man for 7 days a week :
2 elelectricians/mechanics for overhaule/repair
2 man general maintanence
3 man for the concrete base and for metal like stairs and railing decorroding + new paint.
After all it’s windPARKS in salt water!
These seem to work for extended periods completely submerged…
http://www.emec.org.uk/marine-energy/tidal-devices/
(elsewhere on that site see examples installed through winter on N Scottish sea bed)
I am staggered that any authority permits offshore windmills, and I see this idiot wants to build them so far out at see that they cannot be seen from the shore. I’m sure that will make members of the merchant marine happy – ever navigated in fog, even with modern navigation aids? The, of course, they will become obsolete, and who will remove their remains – right down to the original seabed? Madness, quite apart from the total lack of justification at the planning stage!
They’ve twigged that people don’t want these damned things cluttering up their countryside, just take a drive from Luxemburg to Germany, across the Hartz Mountains, to see how windmills have polluted the view. Since Governments have bought into CAGW & have to be seen to be “Doing Something” about it and nuclear power is an unpopular option, then the only way is to shove the things offshore.
I’m surprised no bulk cargo carrier hasn’t lost power/steering in a storm and blundered into one of these offshore wind subsidy farms yet.
Smart politics. Defer it well into the future, knowing that the average voter has a memory of 18 months or less, and promise to build it out of sight, so that very few people will know whether it is being built or not.
Mr. Lilleholt knows the windfarm will not and should not be built, but he is very much aware of the sentiments of a significant part those that voted him into office.
Next door, Mother Merkel has already backed off some promises to the LGP (Left Green Progressives) lemmings regarding closure of their nuclear plants. Once she has been disposed due to various recent indiscretions, most likely the new incumbent will back the reintroduction of Germany’s nuclear capacity into mainstream electric power planning.
They need to consider exactly where to put these things and how far in they need to carry the cable based on this very informative piece of work:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bor.12142/epdf
Or maybe this article is why Denmark decided to not to put them on the shoreline now in the hopes the current crop of idiots and their “Earth is gonna fry” thinking will be gone when 2025 roles round.
In the mean time, any power plants located further South should be protected and cared for like our life depended on it. Because it does.
No, I suspect it has a lot more to do with this. The chart shows persistently high deficits over the past eight years. In short, the money well is running dry.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/government-budget
Then look at this. Particularly the labour chart down just a bit. It shows all the worst symptoms: very high youth unemployment, stagnant wage growth and stagnant productivity.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/unemployment-rate
Then look at this. A slowly declining industrial production rate after the fiscal crisis of 2008-9.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/denmark/industrial-production
Now this:
https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html
Denmark has the highest electricity rates in Europe and pretty much the entire industrial world. And it’s slowly strangling their entire economy. They’re simply experiencing what happens to all socialists; the party music stops when the money runs out.
Meanwhile, in the US, nearly every state is still slowly ramping up their “net metering” requirements. Power generators have to have a certain percentage of “renewable” energy, or pay large fines. Al Gore and his carbon credits are doing quite well, thank you very little.
“…And when the new offshore wind farm will be constructed from 2025 onwards there will be ample budgets then….”
Sure thing, buddy.
We’ve all seen footage of terrible disasters involving ships, boats and oil rigs in the North Sea.
Meanwhile I’m always amazed by how many of these offshore wind farms have popped up there. Every time I’m at sea there or doing an overflight, it seems there has been a new one.
Wild seas, active weather, offshore windmill towers, heavy marine traffic – what could possibly go wrong? / sarc
save the country around 7 billion Krones. Where does a Scando country find so many Krones?
Not enough EU money to fund millions of illegals who speak only Arabic, and subsidize wind and solar as well.
Changes of public policy are hard to do, so they implement moratoriums instead, and then make them extended infinitely. 2025 means the end of wind subsidies for that country.
Wind might be better than the bird frying solar plant planned for Port Lincoln in SA , at least death will be quicker and because they will be fried i suggest they value add by opening a restaurant onsite .
Just keep repeating Thorium, Thorium, Thorium……… until energy producers take note…….
What’s the matter with coal ? Oz has it in abundance , it’s cheap as chips and keeps people employed both digging it up and because the electricity produced is so cheap we would have a manufacturing industry again .
Hell we may even be able to compete with China , nah never happen !
Wind power has been tried and has failed in the most advanced countries on earth. At this point, it is clear that with current technology, wind power can’t provide even its own local energy requirements for construction and maintenance. Since wind turbines kill endangered birds and bats, cause adverse health effects with their infra-sound, and despoil the landscape, they are both economic parasites and environmental disasters.
To add to the posting by CaligulaJones (11:59 am) re electric cars (sales in Ontario aided by up to $14,000 subsidy), what is going to happen when the highways on which they run have to be repaired? At the moment this work is supposedly paid for by the taxes on motor fuel. So, what will happen when this money is not pouring into government coffers when electricity is used to recharge batteries? Has anyone in the “progressive” Ontario government thought this far ahead?
Ian M
Nobody seems to have told the UK offshore wind is over – 4 new wind farms announced (and 1 not going ahead) in last month…
http://renewables.seenews.com/news/edf-starts-work-at-blyth-offshore-wind-farm-in-uk-527780
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/statoil-cleared-to-begin-work-on-europes-largest-floating-wind-farm-34717564.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-36357539
http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/masdar-secures-backing-for-uk-offshore-wind-plant
Also I noted:
“Eleven energy and technology firms said on Monday offshore wind can be as cheap as gas and coal within a decade”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-europe-energy-wind-idUKKCN0YS14R
Griff, this is all nonsense, and you know it. Britain announced it was canceling ON-shore wind subsidies in 2014. The result was the immediate termination of about 250 applications for new wind siting. And you want to boast about four OFF-shore projects which are still going ahead? Any future off-shore applications will get terminated as well should the British government decide it can’t use any more of that either and terminate their subsidization. And if you imagine that off-shore is cheaper than on-shore, let alone coal, gas or nuclear, you really are dreaming in technicolour.
The offshore wind farms are much bigger and have a much higher capacity.
Its the difference between a Cessna and a 747.
and the price of offshore is dropping to the same as gas (UK nuclear from Hinkley will produce electricity costing 3 times current rate: no one has priced other reactor schemes yet)
Bigger and higher capacity maybe, but they’re still losing out.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/after-years-of-growth-green-energy-investors-pull-back-from-europe-1454591209
Investment rate in Europe is running half of what it was in 2011.
Griff, I love the last link do you just believe every random press release from companies on the internet because they never lie. Mr Rossi has invented an E-Cat cold fusion generator that can generate the same energy as Eleven energy for next to nothing and he probably wants you to invest less than Eleven Energy, it’s all in his press release.
Tell you what Griff, I will write a press release that says I can produce all the energy you want for nothing from my perpetual energy machine all you need to do is send me a couple of million dollars …. Do we have a deal?
Anyhow go to bed safe in the knowledge Eleven Energy, Mr Rossi and I have the problem all solved just make sure you send the money.
I’ll swap shares in your new power company for some Florida beachfront property…
I’m just using links to easily accessible news items summarising trends. If you can be bothered to google it, you’ll find shedloads of checkable hard data.
Oh – this might interest you:
http://cleantechnica.com/2016/06/09/nsw-wind-farms-deliver-record-output-last-month/
Europe Is Falling Out Of Love With Renewables ???
Maybe, Anthony… I don’t follow the situations in GB nor in Denmark, and it is even not true for France, as it it never felt in.
{ I can only underline the following in GWPF’s translation of Jyllands-Posten’s article:
Climate and Energy Minister Lars Christian Lilleholt will cancel all coastal wind turbines which were agreed to be built in 2012 and promises to replace them with a new offshore wind farm in 2025. }
But as a person living in Germany I know a bit more of what happens in that land.
Even if in Europe Germany is considered as the most harmful CO2 emitter (with 0.9 Gt/y it is 6th or 7th in the world’s emitter ranking list), it is a fact that the country nevertheless is pushing hard in increasing the renewable rate in electricity production.
If we consider the period 2013-2015, we can see that the mix in electricity production (stats in delivered TWh, internal consumption excluded) reflets the push:
2013: fossile + nuke = 387 i.e. 73% / renew = 146 i.e. 27%
2014: 367 i.e. 70% / 156 i.e. 30%
2015: 360 i.e. 65% / 198 i.e. 35%
Here is the source for checking these stats:
https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/renewable-energy-data?set_language=en
The biggest increase (over 50% from 2014 to 2015) has been reached in the wind corner: Germany has, after years of tergiversation, prototyping and planning, now really started offshore wind power, and, if politics doesn’t suddenly change, 44 GW of that shall be installed by 2020 in german waters (i.e. more than the onshore farms alltogether).
French EDF is complaining about the 5 B€ missing in the “CSPE” ecoloon energy tax, and the State should use other taxes money to pay EDF. (I don’t know how this will end.)
But the medias are making a big deal with EDF money problems, and debt problems (*), without mentioning the 5 B€ missing that should have been paid as tax on electric energy. (The general tune is that nuclear is causing EDF problems or nuclear is too expensive, when the exact opposite is true.)
It’s clear now that the government isn’t ready to close any nuclear plant. The ecoloonatic electoral promises will stay as promises for the undetermined future.
(*) usually mixing liquidity issues and long term debt problem, I don’t even know if “economic” journalists understand that it isn’t exactly the same thing