Wind and Solar Renewables Farce Continues

[marchesarosa]

Christopher Booker
Proof that the Government is tilting at windmills

The policy on which our national energy strategy is now centred is a ludicrously expensive, self-defeating joke, says Christopher Booker.


In the week when it was reported that 20 per cent of the EU's fast-soaring, trillion-euro budget may soon be spent on "fighting climate change", it was timely that Britain's energy companies should have met with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to raise one of the best-hidden secrets of our Government's obsession with wind power.

Centrica and other energy companies last week told DECC that, if Britain is to spend £100 billion on building thousands of wind turbines, it will require the building of 17 new gas-fired power stations simply to provide back-up for all those times when the wind drops and the windmills produce even less power than usual.

We will thus be landed in the ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on "spinning reserve", 24 hours a day, just to make up for the fundamental problem of wind turbines. This is that their power continually fluctuates anywhere between full capacity to zero (where it often stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak). So unless back-up power is instantly available to match any shortfall, the lights will go out.

Two things make this even more absurd. One, as the energy companies pointed out to DECC, is that it will be amazingly costly and wildly uneconomical, since the dedicated power plants will often have to run at a low rate of efficiency, burning gas but not producing electricity. This will add billions more to our fuel bills for no practical purpose. The other absurdity, as recent detailed studies have confirmed, is that gas-fired power stations running on "spinning reserve" chuck out much more CO2 than when they are running at full efficiency – thus negating any savings in CO2 emissions supposedly achieved by the windmills themselves.

Is there no longer anyone around at DECC who is familiar with these very basic practical points? The policy on which our national energy strategy is now centred is a ludicrously expensive, self-defeating joke, which will achieve no benefits whatever – even if you are among the diminishing number of people who still believe that man-made CO2 is causing catastrophic climate change.

www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8612716/Proof-that-the-Government-is-tilting-at-windmills.html

[principled]

Marchesa
Did you know that renewable energy speculators are only trying to save the planet?
They are at one with the green movement and share the same FIVE laudable ideals....
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/8612846/Farmers-enouraged-to-cash-in-on-the-scramble-for-wind.html

... those ideals being in alphabetical order ...dosh, dough, lolly, readies, spondulicks

P

[marchesarosa]

4th July 2011

You mustn't believe the lies of the Green zealots. And I should know - I was one
By MIKE LYNAS


U-turn: Mark Lynas has changed his views about nuclear power

Finally the Government is seeing sense about nuclear power. Last week, Energy Secretary (and former nuclear sceptic) Chris Huhne made a spectacular U-turn and backed a new generation of nuclear power stations. Far from being a ‘failed technology’ (as he once described it), he said Britain needs nuclear electricity generation to get ‘off the oil hook’ and now reforms will be introduced to encourage businesses to invest in it.

As an environmental campaigner who has also performed a radical about-face on the issue of nuclear power, I believe Huhne is absolutely right. Atomic energy, while far from perfect, is an essential option to combat two looming problems: climate change, caused by man-made carbon emissions, and a growing ‘energy gap’ by which Britain generates far less electricity than it needs, sending fuel bills soaring.

Surprisingly, nuclear power may be more environmentally friendly than many types of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. Wind turbines can kill birds and bats, while solar power, if employed on a grand scale, will take up a lot of land space.

Also, as much as Greens are enthusiastic about solar electricity, in cloudy countries such as ours it is extremely inefficient and expensive. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is one of the cheapest ways of producing electricity, and it is much safer than many environmentalists would have us believe.

The objection of environmentalists to nuclear power — fears about the dangers of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning it — are overblown, which explains why many people don’t like the Greens.

And I can’t blame them. Because while Greens may be right about climate change, they stick their heads in the sand when it comes to one of the strongest solutions we have to this crisis — nuclear power.
Chris Huhne says we need a nuclear renaissance just to keep the lights on, and he’s quite correct.

A report from the Government’s Climate Change Committee last week outlined aims to get 40 per cent of our electricity from nuclear by 2030, producing an equivalent proportion of energy from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power. But for this to happen and for Britain to have any chance of meeting its ambitious carbon-reduction targets, Green groups need to stop scare- mongering about atomic power and blocking plans for nuclear plants.

Solving many of the world’s most critical environmental challenges will, in some cases, involve doing the exact opposite of what most environmentalists want. Rather than retreating into hair-shirt austerity, I believe that, just as technology got us into this mess, technology is vital to get us out of it. That means embracing some things that will make a lot of Green believers choke on their organic muesli.

It has taken me a long time to reach this conclusion. I used to passionately oppose not only nuclear power but GM crops. I once even threw a pie in the face of a Danish scientist who dared to question the orthodox environmental line. So what changed?

Through research, I found that much of what I believed about environmental issues had little, if any, basis in science. Put simply, though my concerns were right, my solutions were wrong.

In my new book, I propose that there are several ‘planetary boundaries’, limits to the human interference with Earth that we can put real numbers on — including reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations below today’s levels and dramatically halting the decline in biodiversity, which is seeing many plant and animal species killed off, mostly due to habitat erosion.

However, we must address these problems rationally, without letting our thinking be clouded by ideology or preconceptions. Campaigning groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth insist climate change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, while doggedly refusing to reconsider their opposition to atomic power stations, which already provide massive amounts of zero-carbon electricity and could yield much more.

Everyone agrees nuclear stations need to be properly regulated and their waste strictly safeguarded. Yet Green objections to nuclear are so extraordinarily unscientific as to be little more than urban myths.

Greenpeace routinely inflates the death toll for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster by a factor of 1,000 (the true total is likely to have been less than 50) in order to stoke fears about atomic energy.

The German Greens have forced the country’s government to forswear nuclear after the Fukushima accident in Japan, which, while serious, has so far killed no one and is unlikely to do so.

Nuclear power does not harm the planet in any meaningful way. I continue to support renewables, too, especially offshore wind, which can produce a substantial percentage of Britain’s power, but wind is not the only answer.

Nuclear fission produces no CO2 and its overall carbon emissions (factoring in concrete and uranium mining, which are necessary to create nuclear power) are comparable to those of wind turbines and lower than solar. Of course, the alternative to nuclear as our primary source of electricity is coal, which is dirtier and more dangerous in every way.

Our environment and energy problems are solvable - but can be tackled only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking

Just compare the annual carbon emissions per person of coal-dependent Australia (18 tonnes) and nuclear-friendly France (6 tonnes) to see how environment-friendly atomic power really is in climate change terms.

Had the Green movement of the Seventies and Eighties supported nuclear power — instead of violently opposing plans for greater use of atomic energy, a move that led to more coal power plants being built — we would not be facing the climate crisis we are today.

And there is a financial element, too. According to the Committee on Climate Change, nuclear is also one of the cheapest options.
Chris Huhne cited this as one of the reasons for building new nuclear plants — comparing a 3 per cent rise in energy bills in France (where 77 per cent of energy comes from nuclear power stations) this year, with British price rises three times that.

One of the reasons the Green movement is failing to attract support is that it has too much cultural baggage and is too ideologically rigid. Any reconsideration of the orthodox position — even for the sake of the environment — is seen as a betrayal. Politically speaking, the Green Party is trapped in the irrelevance of the Far Left. Trendy lifestyle choices such as shopping at farmers’ markets don’t address the issues of climate change and diminishing biodiversity.

The Green demands that we should drive less, holiday at home, subsist on root vegetables and shiver in colder houses in order to use less energy are counter-productive as well as unnecessary. What we need to do is find a source of clean, green energy, which will provide the energy we need without radically altering the way we live.

Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. And the litmus test for that may well be the issue of nuclear power.


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010981/You-mustnt-believe-lies-Green-zealots-And-I-know--I-one.html#ixzz1R7mlXdHE

[principled]

Marchesa
We must be thankful for small "u" turns. I now await on him and all of his ilk to apologise to all those pensioners and poor families in fuel poverty, who are there precisely because the ideologically driven "green" movement pressurised our technologically challenged MPs to vote on disastrous renewable energy policies that only the most stupid would have accepted as assisting in any way to reduce CO2.

I am grateful that, at the last minute, Huhne has now "seen the light" just in time to prevent darkness descending on his office in 20 years.

Small crumbs of commonsense maybe, but one must have high hopes...
www.dailymotion.com/video/x58asx_sinatra-s-classic-song-high-hopes_music
P

[marchesarosa]

I would love to see the amount of the green subsidy itemised on our fuel bills, principled.

[rsmith7]

Jul 4, 2011 14:50:34 GMT 1 marchesarosa said:

I would love to see the amount of the green subsidy itemised on our fuel bills, principled.

The government are planning to force companies to itemise their bills in precisely this way.
That'll spell the end of popular support for renewables.

Here's a survey on renewables I think it's important for realists to complete:

edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/527664/Electricity-Survey

[marchesarosa]

Opinion of Professor Dr. Horst Malberg, the former director of the Meteorological Institute at the Free University of Berlin, on the generation of electricity by wind at the Gegenwind [Counter Wind] Conference at the German North Sea island of Sylt..




TRANSLATION

Mueller: We are here on the island of Sylt at the conference “Gegenwind” and I have with me Professor Dr. Malberg from Berlin. Professor Malberg, what do you say about wind power with regards to the climate discussion?

Prof. Malberg: Wind power plants cannot be justified by the climate issue. I examined in detail what drives the climate and I looked at all the available data, from Europe, from USA, from Japan – all data were evaluated, and naturally the global data. It clearly shows that the climate is dominated by the sun, and then on top of that by the oceans, and then a little bit by the CO2 effect. I would estimate it has a magnitude of 10%, for Co2, and not more. More than 80% of the climate change is driven by the sun. That means relative to natural climate change, the influence by CO2 is very small, and so it does not justify any action for climate protection, where wind parks are built in order to save CO2. Sure you can do it, but it won’t have any impact on our climate, at least no real impact.

Mueller (1:33): Germany is a leader in installing wind-parks, and so are the German efforts sensible?

Prof. Malberg: It’s naturally a political decision, that’s clear. But it is also an economic decision because we know it is very expensive. And when we have to transmit the power from wind parks at the coast and into the country all the way to south Germany, then it is going to be a very expensive transmission. Here at the conference we have seen that it is much cheaper to transport coal or oil than it is to transport electricity. And I believe one day there’s going to be an ugly awakening when we realize how expensive electricity has become.

Mueller (2:25): One reason we should expand wind energy, as you mentioned, is climate change. How true is it that yes, there always has been climate change, but the increase over the last years is especially frightening?

Prof. Malberg: That is in no way based on anything. That is really a huge myth. During the last 13 years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen more than at any time since the last Ice Age, especially since the start of the Industrial Revolution. But since the last 10 to 12 years, we have not had any more global warming. The temperature has reached a plateau and has even shown a slight declining trend. That means that while CO2 has increased strongly, the temperature has not reacted at all.

Mueller (3:24): And what do you say to politicians and media who tell us every day to be active for the climate?

Prof. Malberg: My conclusion is one that is completely different: I say it is a basic human right to have clean air, clean water, uncontaminated soil and an ecological system that is intact. That means the highest priority is environmental protection. But humans do not have “a right to a stable climate”. That just does not exist. It never has existed. What is natural about the climate system is that it is not constant, it always changes. When people speak so often about species dying, then one has to address environmental protection, and not assign everything to climate protection, and to blame it all on a phantom. The temperature increase we have had over the last 150 years of about 0.7°C has occurred multiple times since the last Ice Age, and nature repeatedly withstood it. Today there would be no polar bears if nature was unable to cope in balancing out the natural temperature fluctuations.

Mueller (4:50): What can you take home [from this conference] here in Sylt?

Prof. Malberg: We’ve had an interesting spectrum here. We discussed the climate behaviour. We’ve discussed the clearly measured non-acceleration of sea level. Of course there is a natural sea level rise, but it has not accelerated. We’ve discussed legal topics here at this conference. And finally we have learned from an energy expert that if we go ahead with wind and solar energy, then we have to understand that these two forms of energy depend on the weather. The wind doesn’t always blow, and very often the sun doesn’t shine here. And building solar plants in the desert would mean huge losses of energy because of the long transmission distances. That means we looked at a very broad spectrum of issues that absolutely belong in the public debate.

Mueller (6:00): Professor Mahlberg, thank you for the discussion.

- End -

[marchesarosa]

BRITISH GAS HAS JUST ANNOUNCED AN INCREASE IN GAS PRICES OF 16%.

[StuartG]

The reason they can do this now is because they have gas pipelines to Europe. Most people think that's so we can import gas to this country. That is so. The pipes can work the other way, so we export gas from here. So here's the 'Weeze'... Lets export all our gas. Lets import all their gas. What's the point in that? Simples, the euro gas can be price fixed. So all our gas is now a higher euro price.

StuartG

[StuartG]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Fergus_Gas_Plant
www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/pointfortin/
-----
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil
This sounds a bit odd at first reading, but put Your 'cynical hat' on and read it again.
"Natural gas production was nearly 280×109 m³ (10 trillion cubic feet) in 2001 and continues to increase, although British gas production is in sharp decline"

"The British and Norwegian sections hold most of the remainder of the large oil reserves. It is estimated that the Norwegian section alone contains 54% of the sea's oil reserves and 45% of its gas reserves.[10] More than half of the North Sea oil reserves have been extracted, according to official sources in both Norway and the UK."

www.npd.no/Global/Engelsk/3%20-%20Publications/Facts/Facts2011/Figures/Chapter%2007/Fig-7-4.pdf

[StuartG]

www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-07/u-k-natural-gas-falls-as-norway-export-plants-return-to-full-capacity.html
Feb 7, 2011

"Norway is the biggest foreign gas supplier to the U.K."
---
U.K. Belgium Pipeline

"Interconnector (U.K.) Ltd., owner of a reversible pipeline between Britain and Belgium, switched flow direction to U.K. exports on Feb. 4, according to information on its website. "

IF You've read most of the above, even just skimmed it, do You now get the impression that the sums don't add up?

Look at this picture of the areas concerned, Norway's field is contigious with ours, does that say anything to You? [hint:the gas doesn't know which side of the demarkation it's sitting.]

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/North_sea_eez.PNG/517px-North_sea_eez.PNG
-----
www.nohotair.co.uk/component/content/article/137-lng/1949-gazprom-exports-lng-to-the-uk.html
Sunday, 08 May 2011
"The commercial logic is impeccable. In effect Gazprom, the company that the UK's Ofgem fears has the UK consumers at their throats, but which in reality exports absolutely not a single molecule to the UK,actually gets to import some gas to the UK."

Элементарный дорогим Уотсоном

СтюартG

[StuartG]

Interconnector (U.K.) Ltd, as mentioned above, well guess who one of the owners are?

"In December 1994, JSC Gazprom became a shareholder in the Interconnector (UK) company, which operates the Interconnector gas pipeline connecting the European continent to Britain. Today, Gazprom owns two billion cubic meters per year of this pipeline’s direct flow capacities (which flow toward the continent). The reverse flow capacities (flowing back to Great Britain) owned by Gazprom stand at six billion cubic meters per year. "

www.gazpromexport.ru/en/partners/gb/

and, just to come back on thread GazProm and renewable energy
temp.gazprom-mt.com/WhatWeSay/Lists/PublicationsList/GMT-Clean%20Energy.pdf

[principled]

Marchesa

BRITISH GAS HAS JUST ANNOUNCED AN INCREASE IN GAS PRICES OF 16%

Have a look at this gas futures price page. On the price graph click on 5 years. Interesting isn't it.

www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=+natural+gas+prices

But we're in this recession together, aren't we?

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8344526/Centrica-profits-rise-to-1.9bn-as-British-Gas-benefits-from-cold-snap.html

It disgusts me when the company spokesman says that British Gas is losing money. BG is part of Centrica, how a company divides its internal structures is down to it. In all companies there are essential departments that lose money, what is important is that overall the company makes a profit.

BTW: UK price per therm for natural gas is $9.50/million BTUs vs $4 paid by the US.

If one looks deeper into gas use, it becomes clear how the fear of CO2 and climate change, which caused the rush to gas in the early 90s, is now coming back to bite those of us who rely on gas to heat our homes (the most energy efficient way of heating BTW with energy conversion from well head to house heating in excess of 85%)

In 1980 we produced and used around 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas per year.
In 1990 we were using 1.8 and producing 2.1.
Then came the "rush to gas" to reduce CO2. Our production rose to 3.7 and our usage soured to 3.3.
Unfortunately, whilst usage is now similar to 2000 our consumption (because of the insane gas power station policy) is now just 2.6, meaning we have to import 5x10^11 cu ft/year.

This is why one can't divorce science from politics.
Imagine this scenario:
Mines kept producing coal in the 90s to power our generating stations. Instead of the rush for gas we decided on nuclear. By now we would have nuclear generation on a par with France. Our CO2 would be 40% less/capita (as per France), and best of all we would be using only 2 trillion cubic ft of gas and would therefore be fully independent in terms of gas consumption, with a guarantee of another 40 years of reserves at this lower usage rate
Two other bonuses would be: 1) Less social deprivation in the old mining communities with time for them to diversify. 2) We wouldn't have produced CO2 transporting huge quantities of coal halfway round the world.

Sometimes I really do feel like banging my head against a wall!
P

[marchesarosa]

Have a look at this gas futures price page. On the price graph click on 5 years. Interesting isn't it.

yes, principled.

The UK is indeed "Treasure Island" for the multinational energy providers because of the government's total abrogation of regulation of energy price since privatisation.

It cannot even be argued that we have a "market price". The companies just think of a number and treble it! Plain, state sanctioned extortion.

[marchesarosa]

Perhaps the increase in gas supply from shale deposits will lower the price. But I doubt it, somehow!