The true, tragic cost of British wind power

Optimism

Probably related to the same public servants who predict huge returns on investments in pensions... don't top up the pension fund now, the returns are so big we can even siphon some money off. Pay for some wind turbines maybe. It's a win-win situation!

Seriously, go the website, look up the list of its members and trustees.

[Dr.] Benny [Peiser] is a social scientist and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Buckingham. His research focuses on the effects of environmental change and catastrophic events on contemporary thought and societal evolution.

Not a physicist, not an engineer.

As for the rest of em:

Trustees:

Secretary of State for Energy and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Vice-Chairman of the BBC, Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister, (Assistant) (Deputy) Private Secretary to the Queen, Bishop of Chester, Deputy Chairman of Barclays Bank and Director of the Bank of England, Economist, MP for Devon West and Torridge, Permanent Secretary - Environment Department (Ooo! Half a hit!) and Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service.

Academic Advisory Council:

Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Consulting editor (science), Economic commentator for the Financial Times, Chairman of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland, Research Professor (Almost a hit: palaeontologist, stratigrapher, marine geologist and environmental scientist), Professor of geophysics (Yeah, I'll concede this one), Theoretical physicist, Leading transport policy expert and past President of the French Federation of Motor Clubs, independent scholar and member of the US delegation that established the IPCC (Actually qualified for the job!), Physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy, Medical biochemist, Metallurgical scientist, British development economist and Professor of International Development Studies, Professor of Meteorology (Bingo!), Canadian economist specialising in environmental economics, Professor of Economics, Professor of Economics, Professor of Mining Geology, Professor at the London School of Economics, Geologist, Professor of Medical Entomology, Science writer, Electrical engineer, Professor Emeritus of Biogeography, Research Professor responsible the research areas energy and environment, and an astrophysicist and BBC Science Correspondent.

One, two, three....

Pols: Six, seven?

Economists: Ten?

Scientists: Thirteen, minus the five who make you wonder "why?", eight.

If you must read this report, get drunk first, this way you won't remember any of it.

Not an unbiased report

Not too far into the article and here's this gem "mix of gas and nuclear "

I knew it - this is just another episode of the nuclear lobby trying to nix the alternatives.

I remember when nuclear was being touted as the greatest invention ever - the papers were full of stories that we'd all be getting free electricity for life, even maybe getting paid for using it, when we built lots of nuclear power stations. Seriously, that was the propaganda back in the 60's.

And that was not so long after Windscale (google it if you don't know). The governement and nuclear industry changed the name of that plant quickly, hoping the public would forget if it had a different name.

Nuclear gets lots of subsidy that we don't talk about. And then there's the elephant in the big white globe - decommissioning, and storage of waste that could obliterate civilisation.

Dounreay will take about as long to decommission as it was in production. A huge amount of money being spent there. There's a big hole in the ground which seems to be "bottomless" where the early days contractors just chucked their rubbish - of course it's radioactive, and has to be cleaned out and taken somewhere else. Incredibly vast quantities of waste that will still be lethal thousands of years after all of us and all of our known history have long been forgotten.

Nuclear waste cannot be safely kept for ever. It is criminal of our generations to burden the future with the costs and responsibility of dealing with our garbage.

All that gas was wasted

Then of course when the North Sea fields were first discovered, Westminster wanted to cream off as much cash as it could , as fast as it could. Oil was the cash cow. So there was the ludicrous situation of the burn off - all the gas being burned off into the atmosphere at the rigs, because the powers that were didn't want to build a gas pipeline over to the coast.

Night turned into day all across the North Sea for such a long time.

The Norwegians didn't do that - and see how much money they've got in the bank now, compared to this bankrupt excuse for a country.

The money that has poured form the North Sea over the last forty years is too big to comprehend - see the McCrone Report for the projections. Part of that should have been used in the good years to build good renewables infrastructure. It's not too late, but it's certainly not in the psyche of the Westminster mob to do the sensible thing.

Perhaps one of the 'wind experts' fighting a gallant (but ultimately suicidal) rearguard action here could explain to me something about the reliability of land-based turbines.

See http://www.quietrevolution.com/roof-mounted-turbine.htm. These 8 units mounted on top of a building in Croydon have not turned productively (as far as I know) for at least the last several months. There WAS an admitted generic problem with bearings on this type of machine, that the manufacturer said it had fixed. But that was at least a year ago and these machines are still stationary.

Given the high profile of these particular units, if whatever problem they have was easily fixed, it would be. Leaving them as thinly-disguised White Elephants must be a PR disaster.

There was also the brake-failure incident in Scotland, leading to fire, explosion and total loss of a much bigger, very expensive turbine.)

If the likely frequency of mechanical defects on turbines is combined with lack of wind, what is the actual availability of wind-power then??

Only a right charlie would invest in wind farms, probably why Prince Charles is doing so to try to bring him some income from the crown estate (which includes the sea around the UK).