RE zealots tout rapidly increasing wind power capacity as ‘success’. Except, in Europe a dozen countries haven’t erected a single turbine during 2018, and that coincides with a massive slowdown in construction elsewhere.
As you tread your way through the following article, be sure to ignore the usual rubbish about this wind farm ‘powering’ hundreds of thousands of homes. What they meant to say, of course, is that – on those rare occasions when wind conditions are perfect – and the turbines are actually operable, heavily subsidised wind power will knock conventionally generated electricity out of the market, for a few hours at a stretch. Until calm weather sets in and coal, gas, hydro and nuclear picks up the tab, once again.
Propaganda aside, the message from the article is pretty clear: with an almost total collapse in new construction, the wind industry has had its heyday in Europe.
Wind energy suffers tough year in Europe with 12 nations failing to install a single turbine
CNBC
Anmar Frangoul
21 February 2019
Twelve countries in the European Union (EU) failed to install “a single wind turbine” last year, the CEO of industry body WindEurope said Thursday.
Giles Dickson said that while more and more people and businesses were benefiting from wind power, many things were “not right” beneath the surface.
Dickson added that growth in onshore wind fell by more than half in Germany last year and “collapsed in the U.K.”, stating that, in the EU, 2018 was “the worst year for new wind energy installations since 2011.” The latter figure reflected regulatory changes undertaken by EU member states following a review of state-aid guidelines.
In Germany’s onshore sector, the group explained that “lengthy permitting processes” and projects with “longer build-out periods” had resulted in a “significant decrease” in installations, which fell from 5,334 megawatts in 2017 to 2,402 megawatts (MW) in 2018.
While investments for future capacity were deemed to be “quite good” in 2018 thanks to the U.K., Spain and Sweden as well as expansion in offshore wind, Dickson said that the outlook for new investments remained uncertain.
“There are structural problems in permitting, especially in Germany and France,” he added. “And with the noble exception of Lithuania and despite improvements in Poland, there’s a lack of ambition in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Overall, Europe installed 11.7 gigawatts (GW) of gross wind power capacity in 2018. While this represents a drop of more than 30 percent compared to installations in 2017, the sector still installed more capacity than any other type of power generation in the EU last year, WindEurope said.
Breaking the figures for 2018 down further, 9 GW of installations in Europe took place onshore, with 2.65 GW coming offshore and 0.4 GW of capacity decommissioned.
Wind energy covered 14 percent of the European Union’s electricity demand in 2018, WindEurope said, representing an increase from 12 percent in 2017.
Europe boasts several large-scale wind energy projects. In the offshore sector, it is home to the world’s biggest offshore wind facility, Walney Extension, which is located in the Irish Sea and capable of powering almost 600,000 homes, according to Danish energy firm Orsted.
Walney will soon be superseded by another vast project, Hornsea One. A joint venture between Orsted and Global Infrastructure Partners, Hornsea One will have a capacity of 1.2 GW and be able to power more than 1 million homes in the U.K. It was announced last week that the first turbine at Hornsea One had started to generate power.
CNBC
Another fatality, never to be replaced…
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Reblogged this on "Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising….
Unfortunately, in Australia the lunatics are running the asylum. As markets dry up in the EU watch the wind industry launch an all out assault here. We’re simply too lazy and stupid to learn from the rest of the world’s mistakes, never have, never will.
‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
“Human Caused Global Warming”, ‘The Biggest Deception in History’.
https://www.technocracy.news/dr-tim-ball-on-climate-lies-wrapped-in-deception-smothered-with-delusion/
http://www.drtimball.com
“Hornsea One will have a capacity of 1.2 GW and be able to power more than 1 million homes in the U.K”
They should have added…when the wind is blowing at the correct speed necessary for optimum efficiency, otherwise we really don’t know how much power will be generated at any given time!
The renewables sector always seem to be given the benefit of any doubt by the media even though we have seen the failures that occur when put in practice.
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak and commented:
RE zealots tout rapidly increasing wind power capacity as ‘success’. Except, in Europe a dozen countries haven’t erected a single turbine during 2018, and that coincides with a massive slowdown in construction elsewhere.
As you tread your way through the following article, be sure to ignore the usual rubbish about this wind farm ‘powering’ hundreds of thousands of homes. What they meant to say, of course, is that – on those rare occasions when wind conditions are perfect – and the turbines are actually operable, heavily subsidised wind power will knock conventionally generated electricity out of the market, for a few hours at a stretch. Until calm weather sets in and coal, gas, hydro and nuclear picks up the tab, once again.
Propaganda aside, the message from the article is pretty clear: with an almost total collapse in new construction, the wind industry has had its heyday in Europe.
“. . . heavily subsidized wind power will knock conventionally generated electricity out of the market, for a few hours at a stretch. Until calm weather sets in and coal, gas, hydro and nuclear picks up the tab, once again.”
“Twelve countries in the European Union (EU) failed to install “a single wind turbine” last year, the CEO of industry body WindEurope said Thursday.”
It´s a sad thing that we in Sweden don’t have hydro and nuclear like other European countries…
If we had 16GW hydro and 10GW nuclear we should be pretty good……
BUT WAIT our establishment is forcing us from this stable situation into a mess of expensive intermittent alternatives and as a consequence we are forced to use fossil and pseudo renewables at the added cost of the cost of wind that up front is double the cost of nuclear…
In Sweden, the tax on electricity is 50% hence the federal gets a triple tax income from this thing and as we by far imports more immigrants et. al. as any other country with a very low establishment in whole year work (even so the subsidized work, as well as part-time, are frequent)
What could possibly go wrong (yearly 150 000 permits on a population of 10 million and increasing)
bjornwiklund You obviously don’t know a lot about your own countries electricity generation. “””Sweden has three operational nuclear power plants, with ten operational nuclear reactors, which produce about 35-40% of the country’s electricity. The nation’s largest power station, Ringhals Nuclear Power Plant, has four reactors and generates about 15 percent of Sweden’s annual electricity consumption.”””
One thing is what we had yesterday, what we have curren and what´s planned…. If we had 16GW hydro and 10GW nuclear we should be pretty good…… is my statement but it has to be persistent…… today we may have 10GW installed BUT there are several early shutdown´s in the plan….