The coronavirus has delivered a global recession, now RE rent seekers want to deliver a truly Great Depression, with desperate calls for even more subsidies for chaotically intermittent wind and solar.
Since Britain launched into its wind power obsession in 2002, retail power prices have more than doubled. Which tends to run against the mantra that wind power is ‘free’ and getting cheaper all the time.
The principal reason for Britain’s rocketing power prices is that there is simply no equivalence between a wholly weather-dependent ‘system’ of power generation – which delivers in unpredictable fits and spurts – with the conventional, stand-alone generation systems – coal, gas and nuclear.
Britain could carpet its entire landmass and cover its waters from coast to horizon with these things and it would still need conventional generators with a total capacity equal to its entire wind power fleet, for those numerous occasions when calm weather sets in, and wind power output drops to nothing.
Having power as and when power consumers demand it means that power that can be delivered on those terms has inherent commercial value. Power that can’t (eg wind and solar) has no such commercial value. Hence, the massive and seemingly endless subsidies.
Andrew Montford and Gordon Hughes dissect another claim by Britain’s wind industry that now is the hour for more unreliable power generation. The rent-seeking Sam Hall’s pitch about the urgent need to spear more of these things across and around the UK, includes the usual internal inconsistency; viz, that wind power is cheap and getting cheaper all the time and, because it’s so cheap, it needs even bigger subsidies which will last even longer than the last round. Go figure!
Subsidising renewables is not the way to boost the UK economy
CapX
Andrew Montford and Gordon Hughes
4 May 2020
As we start to glimpse a chink of light at the end of the coronavirus tunnel, thoughts are starting to turn to the economic crisis that is now upon us, and a recovery plan that will deliver quickly.
One idea was put forward on this site a few days ago. Sam Hall, the director of the Conservative Environment Network, says that renewables are cheap, and getting cheaper, and that the way to bring about recovery is therefore to keep building windfarms just as fast as we possibly can. He cites in his support a recent report by the trade body for the global renewables industry, IRENA, which claims that there are big economic gains to be had by buying from their members. The benefits, they say, will far outweigh the costs.
It is easy enough to dismiss these claims in Mandy Rice-Davies style: they would say that, wouldn’t they? But it is worth looking at the claims in more detail.
We have been pointing out for some years that hard data shows that offshore windfarms in the UK are only achieving small cost reductions and only rather slowly. A recent academic review of the accounts of UK offshore windfarms confirmed this, finding that the costs are still many times those of gas-fired power stations, even without considering the costs of dealing with their intermittent output and getting the electricity to where it is needed.
Further work using similar data shows that operating costs for onshore and offshore wind farms are increasing at 3–5% per year in real terms, which means that they will be uneconomic once the generous prices guaranteed under the Contracts for Difference regime expire. Hall is keen on what he calls the “promising” technology of floating offshore turbines, but the harsh reality is that they have much higher capital and operating costs.
He also raises the spectre of peak oil as another reason why our future should be renewables-driven. But the insinuation that we are going to run out of oil in a world that is awash with it does not hold water. Moreover, it is gas that is the chief competitor to renewables, both for electricity generation and for heating. Gas is abundant, cheap and has low carbon emissions. And with gas prices having fallen, the effective subsidy to renewables has become even more pronounced.
It’s small wonder then that the government has tried to “socialise” (for which, read “hide”) many of the costs that renewables impose on the grid. To take a very recent example: SSE has just been given permission to build a subsea interconnector from Shetland to the mainland costing over £600 million. This is solely for the benefit of a large wind project in Shetland. Once built, the capital and operating costs of the link will be pooled with all transmission costs and charged to consumers in, say, Oxford and Southampton, who will gain nothing from it. This is pure subsidy to a Scottish project paid by English electricity users.
All this means that electricity prices, which have doubled since green policies started to be introduced in 2002, will continue to rise inexorably. This, it is fair to say, is not a recipe for a rapid recovery from the virus. In fact it is a clear plan for long-term decline.
The argument that there will be significant benefits from a headlong drive for renewables is equally unconvincing. “Green jobs”, or indeed any argument that policy should be built around job creation is not serious economics. Jobs are a cost of a project, not a benefit.
If the Government is foolish enough to continue with the green agenda and to subsidise renewable energy, the effects will be disastrous. They will be penalising everyone who has to compete in world markets against producers who do not have to bear the costs of such misguided policies, so they will destroy jobs rather than create them. And in the process they will be taking money out of the pockets of energy consumers and taxpayers and handing it to overseas manufacturers and investors who free-ride on UK renewables subsidies.
CapX
STOP THESE THINGS 
Oh how fed up I am at hearing all the bumf talked about how many jobs will be created and how having these things in your area will bring wealth and prosperity to your community.
Please could the industry and its followers show us even ONE community that has gained anything other than pain and loss from having these things thrust into their environment.
These things are a blot on the landscape and a countries pocket, they constantly want to draw more and more from a countries National purse as well as from the poor long suffering end users.
What taxes do they pay, do they contribute to any Governments finances?
If so does that contribution break even with what they are given and/or does it out way the cost to the people in the areas such as job losses, loss of land and in some cases housing and tourism, as well as the environment AND a Nations health system that looks after all those who become ill after finding themselves medically damaged from noise, vibration and toxicity from these machines.
What about when they have to be removed from a site, do the companies pay the true value of removal and safe disposal of these things, or does the community where they dump them end up have to pay for the loss of their environment and health?
When a society is faced with the truth will any of them be willing to accept these things into their lives?
Truth will out – well we hope it will before too many more have their lives and societies damaged beyond repair.
What would the reaction of Governments be if they considered these companies as an invasion force wanting to destroy their peoples way of life, placing their people in the position of being nothing more than fodder to be chopped and diced (metaphorically speaking) by these massive blades?
Maybe our Governments need to start opening their eyes and minds to judge the worthiness of something which provides nothing of true worth for their people now or into the future.
We do have enough evidence now for them to be able to judge the worthiness of these things to a modern society – if they could only see clearly through the fog of indoctrination.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
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I recall the US had big political push a while back to be independent of foreign oil. ‘Drill baby drill’ was Sarah Palin’s buzz line. Maybe we could suggest to the fake clean energy crowd some terms for them to use that would help countries get off foreign wind since it is a commodity that can cause such havoc when depending on other countries for such energy sources. Come to think of it maybe they need to drop the term “renewables” as it’s like renewing is doing the same thing over and over expecting to get a different result which some say is how insanity is defining how leaders now wage wars on things they cannot see thus with such approaches are sending it’s economies into the toilet on purpose “to fix things” and to “protect us”, a strategy that never works. To the energy gods we pray.
There goes any of the promotional tourism benefits from the wonderful TV Drama series ‘Shetland’. The ‘Viking’ wind farm will be a monster of a project and is set to be constructed down the spine of the island. You can see from the video below that the islanders will be like lambs to the slaughter. Shetland was going to be one of my post COVID travel destinations. Not if this project goes ahead. The islanders are going to have to channel their inner Viking to run this mob off shore, and scuttle their plans.
Good luck Shetland.
You’re going to need it!
Video published by Promote Shetland.
Ann Cleeves’ Shetland.
RE is so popular because sex sells, and the public is sure being screwed.
Reblogged this on uwerolandgross.