The k2p blog

Wind power has its place and, especially in small isolated circumstances, can even be a useful additional source of energy.

It is not a universal panacea and it is expensive. It is intermittent and when the wind will blow within the minimum and maximum limits for a wind turbine to operate is unpredicatable. Wind power capacity must be backed up by other capacity. In large electrical grid systems it is fundamentally flawed in meeting the requirements to have a continuous and instantaneous balance between electricity supply and demand. Electricity cannot be stored  – except in some few cases in the form of pumped water into reservoirs to be later recovered as hydro-power.

The Duke of Edinburgh is known for often being politically incorrect and not always for his wisdom. But the mirage that is wind power owes much to political correctness. And this time he gets it right:

Clive Aslet writes in The Telegraph:

You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal Family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.

Wind farms are Blairism incarnate. Wanting to look big on the international stage, he committed Britain to some preposterously over-ambitious targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. As ever, this was glittering, shop-window stuff, the bill for which would somehow be obfuscated by the dour Scot in accounts. After due nail-biting, Brown came up with a system so convoluted that most people have only just realised that the person who ultimately pays is the consumer.

We are all generously subsidising the wind farms which many of us hate through our electricity bills. Why? Because unlike other forms of renewable energy, which would have required the Treasury to build huge civil engineering projects, the cost could be met through a trade in Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs). It works like this. Power companies are required by law to provide a proportion of green energy and if they don’t meet the target, they are fined. But they can avoid the fine if they buy-in green energy credits, which are traded in the shape of ROCs.

The money from selling ROCs is far more attractive to the wind farm speculators than the value of the energy itself. The power companies simply pass on the cost to the poor sap who buys their electricity. It’s Machiavellian. Worse, it’s Brownian — and, as the Duke says, a disgrace. But from the Blairite shallows, it was much better than having to confront a decision that might have incurred short-term unpopularity, but is all but inevitable for our future energy security: the building of more nuclear power stations.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2011 at 9:48 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.