Green Energy

The reality of green energy is often at odds with the political rhetoric. To the extent that the ideology of central planners ignores the wisdom of the market, people will continue to suffer.

From a recent column in the U.K. Telegraph...

In the week when it was reported that 20 percent of the EU's fast-soaring, trillion-euro [US $1.4 Trillion] 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 Pounds [US $162 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 Pounds [US $16.2 Billion] on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept 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 between full capacity to zero (where it stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak).   [Many people, particularly in Scotland were without power for many days in the depth of one of worst winters in history]

Two things make this even more absurd.  One, as the electric 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 recently 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.

The policy on which our national energy strategy is now centered is a ludicrously expensive, self-defeating joke, which will achieve no benefits whatsoever -- even if you are among the diminishing number of people who still believe that man-made CO2 is causing catastrophic climate change.