Comment posted Developers target Scottish Government as easiest route to large windfarm consents by Lowry.
Money, money, money…
Lowry also commented
- http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2012/09/alex-salmond-is-betting-on-the-scots-subsidising-electricity-for-the-english/
- The problem is that we are never going to have just wind alone. We are always going to need thermal energy. Therefore wind energy requires a double impact.
- However, the footprint per MW produced is far less in all cases.
- I had thought that the oil, gas and nuclear energy all provided relatively high numbers of employment opportunities, both directly and indirectly, as well as energy that was reliable. Furthermore, development of sites were local and did not involved a large expanse of the rural landscape.
We have yet to find out the full impact of the wind industry on health – both human and other species.
The main questions must be:
Is wind energy good value for money?
Does it have any impact on climate change?
Will it decrease carbon emissions?
If we still need to provide fossil fuel energy for a base load why do we need to invest so much in an unreliable source of energy?
Would landowners still be eager to allow such development on their land if they did not receive incentives?
Why do wind turbines and windfarms have a negative impact on property prices?
What impact does wind energy have on fuel poverty? - How much money for 58 jobs??!! You’re kidding! Still doesn’t change the fact that it hasn’t done much to help the unemployment figures.
Recent comments by Lowry
- SNP meeting on Monday may be testing time for mega-coalition proposal
‘Buffoon’ – as suggested by Simon I believe – seems to fit both personae. - First Minister’s choice not to condemn mob behaviour proves Farage point
Agreed – I often find that some folk muddle UKIP with the BNP. - First Minister’s choice not to condemn mob behaviour proves Farage point
However, sometimes they do go a bit wonky – I’ve seen them add several at one time and then on a couple of occasions they have subtracted ticks. It did happen last night. To be honest, I only see it as a bit of fun so don’t feel it’s anything to get worked up about. - James Robb, as the cordite clears
So, you condone a protest that required the police to protect someone; that person had to stay in a place of safety until a police van could provide transport; a taxi driver was unable to provide transport because of potential damage to his vehicle; and where two people were arrested. What a strange person you are! - Walsh to lead all but Lib Dems, Conservatives and George Freeman
Hey ho – off we go. Feet up and pass the popcorn please.
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Money, money, money…
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A national spatial renewables policy is a good idea (indeed it is surprising we don’t already have one). This would do much to reduce the unnecessary and damaging friction that onshore wind development can generate.
Newsroom: I’m not sure3 what you mean by the subsidy regime being tighter south of the Border? As far as I am aware it is exactly the same. Would you like to elucidate your comment?
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You are technically right. This was unclear and has now been amended.
Many thanks.
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‘technically right’ or just right?
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To be fair to newsroom, I think she is right that the ATTITUDE to the subsidy regime, at least on the part of government, is indeed getting tighter in the south than in Scotland. The UK government has pledged to start an immediate review of the RO for wind, even though it has only just confirmed the 10% cut. This in response no doubt to considerable stresses within the Tory party on the issue.
The Scottish government continues to make much more positive noises about maintaining RO levels here.
Whether that makes any actual difference is moot – it seems to me that different levels of RO support in England and Scotland would produce such huge market distortions that Scotland is likely to have to follow where the UK govt leads…
Maybe that’s why the qualification ‘technically’?
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Owen Paterson, the new UK Environment Minister and new UK Energy Minister, John Hayes, are both known to be wind sceptics, which suggests that the shift in attitude south of the border may consolidate.
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“Good idea” Doc ! this governments energy policy, it’s drive to open the way to industrial scale commercial wind is… leading the legislation… this is absurd… cart before the horse management…
They are smothering democratic process at both a local and national level to suit overseas developer’s.
It’s fast becoming a national disgrace..
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I would also strongly agree with the need for some form of national overview of how wind farms should be sited to avoid any one area or landscape becoming ‘saturated’ with development. This needs to be balanced against the need to ensure that development takes place in areas where the return on investment we are effectively all making (as consumers) is highest.
More importantly, there also needs to be much greater attention paid to how the benefits of this energy revolution can be shared such that they genuinely boost the economies of the areas affected – regardless of the arguments over whether they do actually impact on e.g. tourism economies. It is natural to consider that developments of an economic nature in any area should at least provide opportunities for those who live there to benefit from them. Is it not also perhaps fair to suggest that there is some level of local common ownership of natural energy flows such as rainfall or wind?
This is particularly difficult in Scotland, given the tiny proportion of land over which communities have any ownership or rights, and it is thus intimately tied up with the land reform debate and process.
When the last energy revolution was getting under way in the Highlands with the development of the hydro schemes in the postwar decades, the Hydro Board’s founding constitution contained a ‘social clause’ requiring it to sell electricity at a profit to Lowland consumers, sufficient to fund the otherwise entirely uneconomic business of building power stations and (especially) distribution systems across the Highlands. The local population was thus provided with an electricity supply to the remotest glens at an affordable price. This could be regarded as a fair return to the area for hosting the dams, power stations and transmission lines which had to be built and which, interestingly enough, are now said to attract far more visitors than some people at the time supposed they would repel.
The point of the above is that the right of the resident population to benefit from the hydropower revolution was enshrined in the legislation which made it possible. No such rights or requirements exist within the current process of wind farm development, which arguably is one of the reasons why it is generating such a lot of ill feeling. Developers offer a patchwork of different ‘community benefit’ packages, some much better than others, but because they are voluntary, they are often seen as little more than bribes for planning support.
The specific mechanism by which the hydro benefits trickled down to the population cannot be repeated, but it would surely be a good thing for a debate to get under way to provide a new and preferably statutory mechanism to prevent vitually all of the income from ‘our’ wind leaving the area, or benefitting only large landowners as has happened with so many past economic opportunities in the Highlands. The importance of getting this issue right should equal or outweigh the need to meet the incredibly short timescale set by government for the otherwise commendable target of 100% renewable energy in Scotland. It should also ultimately outweigh the narrow interests of those small number who wish to preserve forever the ‘unspoilt’ wilderness which to the rest of us is where we live and have to make a living.
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Just because an application is made for a more than 50MW windfarm & approved by the Scottish Government it doesn’t mean to say that the Developer then HAS to install all the turbines or that they can’t use smaller ones if it wants to cut costs or the grid can’t handle the power. A sly way of circumventing local opinion and democracy and seemingly supported by a duplicitous government.
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Keith – far from wind farm developers not installing all their approved turbines, recent history in Kintyre suggests that they tend to play the ‘slowly slowly catchee monkey’ game with approvals. First punt something really ambitious, then tone it down a bit to placate the natives and throw in some sweeteners, get approval, build it, then propose extensions (that presumably have an irresistible ‘business case’ because the supporting infrastructure is largely built and paid for in the initial development).
Sorry if I sound cynical – I’ve no objection to wind farms if carefully located, particularly if they’re local enterprises – but I think in-your-face turbines being foisted on us by the non-resident ‘get rich quick’ suddenly green brigade are execrable.
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I agree Tim…however (and outwith the Argyll aka Tiree Array):
Two Questions : “The point of the above is that the right of the resident population to benefit from the hydropower revolution was enshrined in the legislation which made it possible.” do they/we still benifit from cheaper electricity in remote areas ?
“It should also ultimately outweigh the narrow interests of those small number who wish to preserve forever the ‘unspoilt’ wilderness which to the rest of us is where we live and have to make a living.” …Obvious clash here between commercialism and environmental protection…are we not switching to renewables (specifically wind) for environmental reasons ? if we follow your last comment we are in fact cutting off our nose to spite our face !
Other than the last sentence I would have given you a large thumbs up (for what thats worth)
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Karl – on your first question, you would have to ask SSE… but I would expect that we do. The cost of maintaining large and fragile networks of rural distribution lines seems to me very likely to be out of all proportion to the income those lines bring in by way of sales to rural customers – at least compared with the much smaller, mainly underground networks serving much larger numbers of urban consumers. Therefore there is always going to be an ongoing element of ‘subsidy’ in that respect.
On the second point, you may have misinterpreted what I was getting at. The EU, UK and Scottish governments have decided that we need renewable energy for environmental reasons – they may be persuaded to change their minds, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. That being the case, renewable energy represents an opportunity for areas like the Highlands & Islands. My concern was that the opportunity should be exploited for local benefit as far as possible. It should not solely benefit landowners and investors, but it should also not be shunned altogether because a few mountaineers don’t like to see wind turbines on their walks.
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Generally Accepted…cheers…I will do my best to look the other way next time I am on the hill…but still do my best to make sure that it doesn’t happen in the wrong place…. If it is forced to happen then the affected parties should be able to get regular substancial compensation…this should apply to any form of major change.
Sincerely, I feel generation of power by wind, by a community and at a community level can benifit all…and in most cases the aesthetic local impact in keeping with the type of turbine or turbines used…singular/two. can be mitigated.
The hypocricy and hidden agenda, sales speal and spin of the multi-national companies, and indeed the politicians is far removed from the fundemental reason for using the technology in the first place.
The profits are huge and as with any other huge commercial interest these profits go to a select few…
I really do think I am starting to see the rationale behind the ant-capitalist groups…If they were non-violent (dare say it’s an extreme few) I would have to put my backing behined their views.
Anyhow, seems like all and sundry are supporting the dropping of the Argyll Array on environmental grounds…I just hope Mr Salmond and his minions see why he and Iberdrola should not have pushed CE for the lease in the first place…a hell of a lot of anguish and misplaced hope (for a few) and cash has been spent on this white elephant.
Cheers
karl
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One way of benefiting the pockets of everyone in the country Tim would be to get rid of wind farms so that our every increasing fuel bills would at least be partially reduced – or is that too obvious ?
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To obvious !
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Malcolm – obvious, hypothetical, and oddly familiar as well… I’m sure you’ve suggested something similar before
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Wind power is unreliable so its a No to wind farms, however its a big YES to a Nuclear Power Station.
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its a big YES to a Nuclear Power Station
In your back yard?
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Yes in my back yard
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An analogous infrastructure development on the scale of bringing power the the Highlands and Islands is the rollout of high speed Internet. The ability to run small businesses and telecommute from any location would be massive boon for the rural economy, but the infrastructure for fibre optic broadband is monumentally expensive.
If you wanted to pick a single project that could be tied to renewable development then this would be one option.
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Agreed…
Community based renewables are the way forward for communities…we have community based internet on Tiree now…and fairly fast too (faster than BT anyhow) this in part has been paid for by our community Turbine…other profits and hopefully one day electricity are fed back into the community…no middle man/no shareholders/no political agenda and minimal CO2 footprint…but most of all no BS
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The problem is that Tilly and others like her are never going to provide sufficient funds for rolling out fibre-optic broadband. I live close enough to Scarinish to get ADSL, without needing to go through Tiree Broadband, but my understanding is that, while better than dial-up by a long shot, the system is a little flakey.
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Likewise it is sadly true that wholly community-owned energy developments, whilst being of undoubted and enormous benefit to their communities, will never be enough on their own to make a significant contribution to displacing fossil-generated power in the country as a whole.
There has to be a place for large schemes, therefore – the important point being that the local economy and populace should have a genuine (and perhaps guaranteed) opportunity to participate and benefit from them.
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it is sadly true that wholly community-owned energy developments, whilst being of undoubted and enormous benefit to their communities, will never be enough on their own to make a significant contribution to displacing fossil-generated power in the country as a whole
Why it this written in stone? Certainly it is true under current policy, but it need not be so. A simple requirement for all new build low density housing to be energy neutral (i.e. to put as much or more into the grid than it takes out) would go a long way.
High density housing or existing build could then be encouraged wherever possible to aim for an energy-neutral target achieved through community schemes such as Tilley.
Industrial plants/factories could also be encouraged to become energy-neutral by installing sufficient capacity for their own requirements.
We are never likely to achieve 100% freedom from large generating plants or anything like it – but the potential to do a lot better than we are now is staring us in the face. I suspect that large energy companies are not wildy enthusiastic about such policies though, and they are a powerful lobby..
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Indeed, all the moaning about the cost of renewables will multiply tenfold if it is all done through microgeneration. There is a reason we generate power in one place and take it to where it is needed – it’s more efficient that way. Microgeneration has a place but it isn’t everywhere. Birmingham, for example, is always going to be reliant on external power, just as it is reliant on external food. Making all power generation local is no more sensible than everyone growing thier own food. It will work for some people on a small scale, but we have industrial agriculture because it is more efficient.
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Indeed, all the moaning about the cost of renewables will multiply tenfold if it is all done through microgeneration
Why? Take, for example, solar power. New roofing materials (eg solar slates) and solar films that can be used in windows mean that solar can be incorporated into modern buildings with no changes to the ascetics.
People need to accept that things have changed, are changing and are always going to change. The perennial foot-dragging of the self-appointed guardians of our heritage has been tolerable and even useful throughout most of history, but we are moving to the beat of a faster drum now..
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The following articulation,in 2009, by a Scottish Developer confirms that Scotland has become a ” soft touch”
From ESRC Seminar Series: WHERE NEXT FOR WIND?
Seminar 4:”Ownership and Stakeholding in the Wind Power Debate” Cardiff University 17th February 2009 ( SPR announced in Feb 2009 its proposed Tiree (Argyll) Array)
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In questions, Mr Martin Mather (Scottish Power) noted that the involvement of the community may not actually make much difference in terms of the scale of deployment, but it was important to the communities that host wind projects, so should not be discounted. Furthermore, it does relate to planning, as much wind power is backed by international investors and if they feel they can get a better and more certain return on their investment in a country with a quicker regulatory system, they are more likely to invest there.
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This is a concise statement of intent from a Scottish Developer.
Scottish Government (SG), meanwhile confirms the charade that has become of SG ‘consultation’ by excluding Argyll from SG/Marine Scotland’s ‘s current road show . This road-show is to offer ‘focus’on SG’s plans for offshore wind, wave and tidal energy. Notwithstanding Argyll has 45% of SG’s current off-shore proposals SG excluded Argyll from its road- show.
After a protest from NTA ,and possibly others, SG has relented with this advise to NTA:-
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Mr Lochhead has asked me to let you know that Marine Scotland will now be putting on an additional event in Oban, and will seek to publicise the event locally as widely as possible once the arrangements are
finalised.
Regards
John Davidson
Private Secretary to Richard Lochhead MSP
Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment
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This response is already being spun by SG that it “is committed to the widest possible consultation”
Why did it require NTA to protest to SG in the first place?
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Please enlighten me as to what these “undoubted and enormous benefits are”.
And what happens to communities that are unable to take advantage, or even choose not to take advantage, of all these huge sums of financial handouts. Will this result in an exaggeration of poor communities V wealthy communities in Argyll? Why isn’t the money distributed evenly across the whole area? Could it be that those communities who have to live with the awfulness of this rotten (in my view) industry are being paid in an attempt to encourage them to think it’s useful?
On my travel around Argyll I note a good deal of division within communities that follow such developments – pitching neighbours against neighbours.
Some self styled committee do-gooders believe that their views allow them to say they respresent the community. They believe it allows them to judge their neighbours and interfere in household activities. Just look at Easdale Island, arguably the best example of how not to run a community group. And well done to the rest of the community who have stood firm against it.
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Some self styled committee do-gooders believe that their views allow them to say they respresent the community.
This can be applied to anti-windfarm groups in many instances Lowry – a bit of a pot/kettle situation perhaps?
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Highland Council has been pursuing just such a policy Lowry: so that communities immediately impacted by a wind farm receive most benefit but that a proportion of the accruing benefits are paid to the wider community. I agree that windfall benefits (pun intended) should not be confined solely to the immediate communities.
As Tim was saying earlier, there is a need to ensure that our communities throughout Scotland receive direct benefits from new developments and it would be good to see more of a national steer on this rather than just relying on individual local councils.
Regarding community wind v “industrial” wind. I fall between both camps. I think we are all in favour of community wind projects (well, those of us who are in favour of wind anyway) and the Government has of course a target of 500MW of installed wind. The problem is raising the capital. Major multinational energy companies find it easier to raise capital than rural communities so the SG are relying on the former to be the source of most new renewable energy. The SG cannot fund it itself (the cupboard is bare) but institutions such as the Green Bank and the EIB could alter the balance by favouring community projects over commercial ones as the beneficiaries of their capital lending.
The other fly in the ointment though is that communities own so little of the land so that they not only have to find the capital for the wind farm but also the money to buy the land.
A last thought: surely the opposite of a do-gooder is a do-badder?
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Please offer a definition of “do-badder”.
Could some people who believe they are doing good been seen by other others as a “do badder”?
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More on the subject of community benefit fromwind farms:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/communities-to-benefit-from-green-energy.18884677
Personally, I would prefer the SG and the LAs to thrash out a minimum boiler plate agreement with wind farm developers that would apply throughout Scotland but this is at least a step in the right direction.
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I did not realise that FA was a committee, nor that it had any direct impact on communities. I had thought it allowed individuals to express their views and opinions.
Similarly anti-wind farm groups are expressing views and opinions. I have also been a member of the peace movement and anti-nuclear protests but I did not involve myself directly in other peoples’ lives including friends who were in the army.
Neither have I ever declared that I am perfect.
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Onshore windfarms are a temporary feature if our landscape. They will be redundant by other means of harnessing wind-power in short term.
Unlike the industrialisation of the Central Belt from Victorian’ time any blight will be short term and comparatively easy to erase.
Why should the planning test be greater in an area of scenic beauty than a post industrial landscape? Is that not the opposite of democracy?
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It depends on what one calls temporary! Assuming the towers are remooved when some better means of energy generation comes along, will they remove the concrete bases and access roads?
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When a windfarm receives planning permission, it is normally to operate for 25 years. At the end of this period the developer may apply for planning permission to re-power the site, or will decommission the windfarm, removing the turbines and infrastructure. Decommissioning is a legal obligation placed on developers, as a condition to receiving planning consent. Financial guarantees may also be required to be put in place.
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Onshore windfarms are a temporary feature if our landscape.
. . . which is why I object to the hypocrisy of NIMBYs who claim they are doing it to preserve the landscape for future generations
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SR – brave talk of hypocrisy and nimbys, but windfarms have a considerable design life, the planning permissions aren’t time limited, there’s an obvious possibility that towers & turbines could be renewed, and windfarms most certainly do increasingly have an impact on the landscape. So intolerant remarks from you do the cause of renewable energy no good at all.
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I agree entirely with your view SR.
I would suggest that second homes are a much bigger blight on our land and they hardly get a mention.
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This is a video of a talk given at a Public meeting recently by Stuart Young of Stuart Young Consulting. He is one of the most knowledgable people in Scotland on Wind Farms and their value to the Scottish people. He has made many contacts on both sides of the discussion over the 8 years he has been involved. To say he is pedantically exact and correct would be an understatement so you can believe what he says. However,I post this only for others to view and learn, and do not wish to enter into reams of discussions over it. The facts put forward demonstrate why some of us are concerned about the cost of wind farms. I do not expect that anyone pro wind will be converted by watching the video,but maybe it may help them to understand where we are coming from. The video is 21 minutes long but for anyone really interested in the subject it reveals a lot of information which should at least raise some concerns.
http://www.windfarms.me.uk/wind8.html
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I patiently watched it through but was left at the end feeling “well, so what?”.
Mr Stuart talked about an official figure being “true and at the same time a lie” but then does the same with his calculations on what the good people of Caithness would be paying for the ROCS relating to the turbines based in Caithness but of course the cost is borne throughout the UK and not just in Caithness.
It was a bit embarrassing when one of Mr Young’s slides mixed up kWh with MWh.
What it did show me was where many of your arguments come from Malcolm but neither you nor Mr Stuart are confronting either climate change or energy security. You can argue that renewables will be ineffective in relation to both of these problems (and time will tell) but that is the plan being followed not just by the Scottish Government, or just the UK Government or just the EU: it is being followed by pretty much all of the major economies round the globe and including the USA and China. These measures have popular support because most people aren’t stupid and recognise what the governments are trying to do, why this is important and why it means that electricity will be more expensive in the future than if we just continued to burn coal. The majority of people back this because we want there to be a future.
Is a few pence on our electricity bills so great a price to pay?
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UK wind power generation reached a fresh all-time record this afternoon afternoon as it surged to highs of 3.36 GW, reducing gas-fired power generation to its lowest level for mid-afternoon weekday generation on record.
Total wind power generation outturned at 3.36 GW at 15.30 local time (1430 GMT) according to generation data from the country’s transmission system operator National Grid, falling slightly short of 3.8 GW forecasts predicted yesterday but still setting a new record high.
Generation levels have surpassed previous record output levels of 3.3 GW seen on August 27 this year, energy data provider Powervision said.
National Grid data showed that wind generation remained consistently above 1 GW Tuesday morning, climbing steadily to hit record highs and contribute 9% of the UK’s total generation mix.
As a result gas-fired power generation slumped to around 6.9 GW after 15.00, or just over 20% of the total energy mix.
Powervision analysts noted that CCGT generation levels for mid-afternoon weekday hours have not been lower since the company began compiling generation data in 2002.
The record wind generation levels come just days after the 500 MW Greater Gabbard Offshore wind project began commercial operations as the world’s largest offshore wind farm.
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‘Hud me back’ – after weeks, nay months of producing 1% of b….. all – wind farms have a good few hours – open a bottle of bubbly SR. I have frequently produced the calculation to work out what the subsidy on that lot will cost especially with double ROCs for offshore wind, so you can work it out for yourselves. Remember most calculators don’t go up to a billion,never mind over, so you will have to work it out longhand.
Incidentally this was a good read this morning – made my day:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9533614/Jim-Sillars-SNP-a-totalitarian-and-intellectually-dumb-party.html
I also thought this was quite good:- http://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=11625&article=www.thinkscotland.org
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With Summer Arctic sea ice on the verge of disappearing this short-term self-obsessed economic whinging seems somewhat narrow-minded to me.
Wind turbines ‘could supply half of the world’s energy with minimal damage to the environment’
Researchers at Stanford University’s School of Engineering and the University of Delaware developed the most sophisticated weather model available to show that not only is there plenty of wind over land and near to shore to provide half the world’s power, but there is enough to exceed the total demand by several times, even after accounting for reductions in wind speed caused by turbines.
Are you totally unable to see the bigger picture Malcolm?
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Just imagine it – no wind over UK – so long cable to South America where the wind happens to be blowing – Yea – get real.
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So that’s a yes?
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Have any of your subscribers recently driven down through the Borders on the M74? Windmills are springing up in their hundreds like mushrooms on a pile of dung. The lovely rolling hills have been denuded of trees to make way for these monstrosities to distract drivers – for they are a distraction – and spoil the countryside for the tourist entering Scotland by road. The Duke of Buccleuch the landowner has certainly jumped on the bandwagon and must be making a fortune at the expense of every sightseeing traveller and tourist. The situation there is disgracefully excessive.
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Not driven – passed by on the train; the Clyde windfarm, 152 turbines in several groups to both sides of the valley, apparently using Kintyre-built towers, with most of the ground works being constructed by the same contractor (Blackwell) that’s working on the 20-turbine wind farm at Carraig Gheal between Loch Avich and Loch Nant..
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I don’t remember those hills ever being covered with trees.
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My heart sinks everytime that I drive down the M74.
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So does mine… and then it lifts whenever I drive back up it
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Scots Renewables. I guess if you are ten years of age you wouldn’t
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The Wikipedia entry for the Clyde windfarm has a link to a detailed construction plan, which shows that only some southern parts of the site, near to Beattock summit, were forested.
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The Clyde wind farm is exactly the right area for a wind farm as the area is already highly impacted by having a motorway and a major rail-line through it. This is already an industrialised area so the wind farm is likely to have negligible environmental impact.
Reaction to the visual aspects of the turbines is likely to be mixed: I like them and find they break up the monotony of the drive on the M74 but I can undertsand that others who don’t like turbines might find them irritating.
As for forestry being replaced: I don’t remember any native woodlands there so it will just be non-native, commercial forestry that has been removed. I don’t know about Clyde but at Whitelee they removed a stand of Sitka and this is now being replaced by native broadleaf trees thus improving the habitat rather than degrading it. Interestingly you can make an argument that wind farms will increase the conservation value of an area precisely because it prevents commercial forestry from being planted in the area.
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I accept your argument but what is a native woodland and where are they in Scotland, SNH has spent a small fortune to have a type of beaver brought into Scotland and in a few months the Scottish Wild Cat will be no more. http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2012/09/13/scottish-wildcats-could-be-extinct-within-months/
Can you just hit the restart button like SNH by bring in beavers from abroad.
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I thought ‘native woodland’ is what you’re in if you go down the Taynish peninsula south of Tayvallich, or up the glen behind Strontian – and there’s lots of it tucked away in all the places not suited to grazing or commercial forestry.
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I’ve been driving up and down that road for over 40 years. It never struck me as a verdant paradise I’m afraid.
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SR: not a landscape ‘running with milk & honey’ right enough, and the forest areas were/are definitely commercial, but the open hills to the north of Beattock do have their own character, being a strong contrast with the incessant noise and activity of traffic on the M74 – and the relatively occasional train – in the valley.
These hills are now literally smothered with turbines, which will all soon be merrily whirling except in calm or very stormy weather – and to my mind that will change the character of the area.
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I agree it is changing and will change the character of the area, but hey, things change – and this is not the most scenic part of the country. There are worse places they could be built IMO.
In contrast we regularly drive from Seil to Oban, Fort William, Spean Bridge, Kingussie, Aviemore, Tomintoul, Strathdon and Ballater – a distance of around 180 miles right across the scenic heart of Scotland – and you can’t see a single turbine.
The truth is, there are large areas of spectacular scenery in Scotland where you just can’t see turbines no matter how hard you look. Unfortunately for the planners and developers, anywhere that has a windfarm planned instantly and mysteriously becomes an area of great scenic merit and’ iconic’ landscape.
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I am sure that wherever one lives, especially in rural areas, the environment and scenery is special to that person. Both environment and scenery can have an impact on health and wellbeing, therefore major changes can have a huge impact.
If you can drive along all the roads mentioned above without seeing windturbines I fear for your eyesight.
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Lowry,
Nothing wrong with my eyesight. Check out the latest windfarm location maps:
http://www.snh.gov.uk/docs/A763435.pdf
Draw a line across pretty much the widest part of Scotland – Oban to Aberdeen – and look North and South of it. No windfarms until you get to the Aberdeenshire coastal plain.
Turbophobes are so obsessed with the things that they imagine them where there are none and make outrageous claims about Scotland being ‘destroyed’. No such thing is happening.
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I guess it depends how far you can see.
I think it’s also reasonable to take into account all those wind sites at the proposal and planning stage, across all local authority areas. I understand that there are 100s.
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Lowry,
There are huge swathes of Scotland where there are no wind turbines and pretty massive areas (Cairngorms National Park, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park) where there never will be any windfarms.
This is nothing to do with how far I can see or what is in the planning pipeline, it is simple fact, as a fairly cursory glance at the maps in the document I linked to would have shown.
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Developers *have* to build their farms somewhere near a main road otherwise they’d never get the equipment delivered. For that reason, you will see them. The new farm near Moffat is clearly visible from the M74 and it is an unpleasant surprise; it’s your first view of Scotland travelling north across the border on the west and you worry that Scotland either by it’s lax planning laws or inadequate charges to developers for planning applications will come to regret this. The poster boy of the European wind industry, Denmark, hasn’t built a new farm since 2007; it appears that saturation point is reached quite quickly and, as in Spain, the aftermath is costly.
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Denmark, the poster boy . . . hasn,t built a new farm since 2007
Aye right.
Denmark is moving its wind effort offshore and is building farms like the 400MW Anholt Offshore Wind Farm due for completion next year.
No Mr. Blix, Denmark remains as committed to wind as ever:
Denmark aims to get 50% of all electricity from wind power
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1 400MW offshore farm doesn’t add up to much does it.
Interestingly Denmark is never likely or ever has generated 50% from wind power. Peak Denmark wind generation coincides with peak export. Denmark exports power to Norway’s hydro system at a modest price and then re-acquires it at a higher price. Its all simple facts.
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To date I have pretty much stayed out of the wind farm threads mainly because I don’t have the technical knowledge that some on here clearly do and also because I, at the moment, just don’t have the time to read through the mountain of stats, counter stats, reports and arguments which are out there. That isn’t meant as a criticism of people who do read them, just me stating that I personally don’t have the time to be able to do the topic proper justice.
However I have read through the various threads and arguments on FA and find myself with a foot in both camps.
Wind generated energy is of course never going to be a solution to all our energy needs – nobody in their right mind would ever claim that however we, as a country, in line with many other countries do have policies in place about climate change and the need to tackle it, and also a responsibility to look into the future and take steps to ensure that a energy provision is sustainable for the long term, across a number of different provision types. Wind farms can, and will play a part in delivering these policies and meeting these longer term responsibilities.
Does this mean I am in favour of wind farms appearing everywhere and anywhere? Of course not. I happen to be one of the few people (or so it would seem) who don’t find them an eyesore – in fact I actually like the look of them however I do so when they are intelligently situated, in a way that is respectful to the wider landscape. The Tiree Array is, in my mind, a preposterous idea purely from a visual perspective and that alone should have killed the project before we even needed to start debating issues around environmental impact. However that doesn’t mean I discount the possibility of a windfarm of a similar size being created in future at a different location.
There are so many points of argument about wind farms that it is hard to know where to start and I should again state that my points are really based on limited technical knowledge so I drare say can be shredded by anybody in either camp using a raft of figures, percentage signs and links to videos of Dr Marvin Monroe.
Are windfarms really environmentally friendly? Well the construction phase will obviously have a negative impact, not just in terms of impact on the land but also use of materials, transportation required and also the impact of ongoing maintenance over its life. However I would be gobsmacked if any kind of reasonable analysis of the amount of energy generated by a turbine over its life doesn’t dwarf the energy consumed in construction and maintenance. Arguments about environmental impact are surely nonsensical if we are comparing turbines to other energy production methods such as nuclear, coal etc. The environmental footprint of a nuclear plant must be a monster compared to renewable sources – the supply chain alone must have a pair of size 20s on!
On the subsidy issue I think the Doc has pretty much nailed this argument for me. There isn’t a single form of energy generation (on a large scale) that doesn’t receive state support in one guise or another. There are subsidies, there are grants (certainly capital but probably also revenue), tax allowances all of which need to be considered when making the ‘tax payers are subsidising wind farms’ argument. It is of course very easy to paint a direct impact on tax payers bills for wind farm costs as the assumption is made (and understandably so) that the electricity suppliers who are penalised for not buying enough ROCS are passing that cost on to the customer. The amount to which our bills are affected is open for debate however it is worth remembering that it is actually capped to limit the amount that can be passed on (or it used to be – maybe not anymore). But what of costs for electricity generated by nuclear or fossil fuels? Do people really believe that there are no costs associated with them which hit our pockets? When there are massive bills for fuel spills or to clean up pollution caused in the process of electricity generation, or the costs of health issues relating to the process do we not pick up that tab through taxation? Is that being accounted for when making the subsidy argument? True cost accounting is a difficult beast I will grant you and I wouldn’t even begin to try and put numbers to this as they would be wildly inaccurate however any claim that subsidies are a factor for wind farms and not more ‘traditional’ energy generation methods seems a tad naïve or, maybe worse, deliberately misleading.
The other argument is about when the wind doesn’t blow. Seems a reasonable argument on the face of it. Is it not the case that before a windfarm is built there needs to gathering of wind data over an extended period of time to properly evidence that the location is suitable? Of course there is uncertainty in the weather but there are areas where you can fairly safely say that, based on data gathered over say 18 months (or whatever the period is) it is, on average, pretty bloody windy and is likely to remain that way until hell freezes over! I appreciate that over simplifies the point a tad – I can appreciate that there are issues around the provision not being smooth due to fluxes in the weather and wind farm generated energy can’t be manually increased or decreased to meet demand the way other methods can be. Now this is clearly an area where a solution, or potential solution, is way above the punter on the street but you would like to think there are some big brains around that could come up with one! Demand for energy in the country fluctuates wildly at certain times of year so the grid itself has the capacity to deal with it meaning that levels of energy production must always be a fair bit below total capacity – if a thingy doesn’t exists to manage this problem of fluctuating wind related provision then a things should be invented!
Where I do have a problem with wind farms (and it isn’t actually a problem with the concept but more the delivery) is the trifling amount of money generated by them which gets invested into the community when compared to the amount that goes into the pocket of the developer. There is an excessive imbalance in the profit redistribution and this should be a major consideration in applications for new sites. Fully community owned and managed wind farms is the ideal solution to this but we have to acknowledge that such schemes are often out of the reach of a lot of communities, especially those in rural areas with small populaces. This is where full community engagement is important from the earliest stages of wind farm eve being an embryo of an idea. A community needs to know wnhat is being proposed, what benefits it might bring and also what the negative aspects are (and be allowed to raise what they feel the negative aspects are). A wind farm, with a fair profit distribution model, can make a massive difference to communities of a similar size to many of those we have in Argyll and Bute but one where the developers walk away with the notes and leave behind the small change are always going to leave behind a small number of wealthy landowners and a large collection of disgruntled locals.
As for arguments about dangers to birds – that for me is a red herring of the highest order, I would be willing to wager a slap up binge at Mrs Miggin’s pie shop that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is negligible compared to other things such as pesticides, and power lines – hell I bet cats are more of a threat to birds than wind turbines (but at least I don’t financially subsidise cats!)
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Cats kill an estimated 55 million birds in Britain every year.
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Never did like cats
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Just on your last point: buildings (of any sort) are the major anthropogenic cause of bird deaths with estimates suggesting that over a billion birds die annually from colliding with buildings. Cats are a big killer too. Interestingly, there has been a study suggesting that wind power results in lower bird deaths per GWh than either fossil fuel power stations or nuclear. I must confess, I think that is a surprising finding but for those who might be interested:
http://scitizen.com/future-energies/save-birds-by-promoting-wind-energy_a-14-2731.html
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You two are descending rapidly into men who know the price of everything with your bird deaths per GWhr and 55 million dead from cats, but the value of nothing.
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Funnily enough I was just thinking of the same phrase in relation to Malcolm.
Not quite sure of your point HB: the salient point is simply that birds do die because of wind turbines but not any more than they do in relation to other man made structures so it is a non-issue except for the case where turbines are wrongly placed on bird migratory routes or in the special case of large and rare raptors,
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It would be so much cheaper for consumers if we just paid money into communities and didn’t bother building useless wind farms.
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I’m not sure if this clip has already been posted here – apologies if so.
http://www.windfarms.me.uk/wind8.html
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Lowry – what good taste you have – I hope you watched the video all the way through and enjoyed it as much as the other 200 people who have viewed it in the last week.
As a matter of interest there has been a 15kw farm turbine installed nearby. We pay 4.5p for a KWh of electricity from a power station – we pay 120p for a KWh of electricity from this turbine. Can we believe in politicians who are prepared to pay £1.20 for something they could buy for 4.5p.
Of course, I forgot, we are saving the planet – yea !!!
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News to gladden Malcolm’s heart, involving his favourite subject and his favourite person: one of Europe’s largest offshore windfarms officially opened by Alex Salmond.
SSE’s Clyde wind farm officially opened by Scotland’s First Minister
You are fighting a bit of a Canute-esque rearguard action here Malcolm are you not, on both the technology and the political fronts?
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Shame it hasn’t done much to help the unemployment figures.
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At the peak of its construction around 400 people were employed on the site. We obviously need to build more
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Lowry – 58 permanent posts created on site, plus additional offsite O & M staff, according to the article. I would imagine those jobs would be pretty welcome in Lanarkshire.
Around 20% (£100m) of the capital cost spent with firms in Scotland, including Wind Towers in Argyll. It would be nice to see that percentage increase as more people in Scotland are encouraged to set up supply chain businesses. This will surely happen over time, as it did with the oil industry in the north east.
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How much money for 58 jobs??!! You’re kidding! Still doesn’t change the fact that it hasn’t done much to help the unemployment figures.
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Lowry – that’s rather an odd comment. Wind farms are not constructed primarily to create jobs but to generate electricity without producing CO2 or burning up irreplaceable fossil fuels.
Anyway, I still think 58 permanent engineering jobs in a rural part of southern Scotland are likely to be welcomed.
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And it’s a fair bet that fabricating 152 towers was good for the economic health of the Campbeltown area.
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Lowry – the annual subsidy will be £34,492,500 plus of course 100% profit on the £34 million they will also get from selling the electricity, so in the region of £69 million per annum. And of course the bulk of the millions will go abroad.
The overestimate of 400 people being employed included the erectors who are not local but move about Europe wherever the work is. So how many jobs was it again ? What only 58 !
Of course it was a good excuse for Napoleon Salmond to have his picture took !
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Would you mind showing us how your reach these figures Malcolm – both your original figure and how you reach 100% profit on the sale of the electricity that you reckon is £34 million? (full working please).
Regardless of the ownership of a company, any profits will be taxed in the UK.
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I have posted the workings so often that if you had not been so devoted to looking at yourself in the mirror you might have paid some attention and made a note for future use.
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Actually Malcolm, I have never seen any workings from you that I understood.
Perhaps you could humour us by showing us your workings again. If you don’t then I guess people will conclude that these latest figures are as reliable as some of your earlier pronouncements (ie gash).
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Get your 13 year old to give you a hand.
People will accept the figures because they are clear and precise and correct – unlike the hot air we have to put up with from you on these forums.
I am sure you can find recent forum contributions – you just have to look – so make the effort Napoleon.
PS. You claim to have viewed Stuart Young’s video mentioned by Lowry above but of course it was only to criticise as usual and indeed you found one slide in the 21 minute presentation with a misprint which Stuart acknowledged when he saw it on the screen. If you had paid attention you would have learned a lot, but of course, that’s beyond you.
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I think we would all like to see how you arrived at these figures Malcolm without recourse to trawling through your voluminous contributions. can’t be too difficult can it?
I suspect that others reading this will note your refusal to provide your working and your increasingly personal insults and will draw the appropriate conclusion about the veracity and accuracy of your figures.
You seem to labour under the misapprehension, Malcolm, that just because you say something the rest of us have to automatically believe it.
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Fantastic. I watched the video Lowry linked to when it was posted but I didn’t notice it was by someone called Stuart Young. I presume that is the same Stuart Young who was the ‘independent’ consultant who wrote that report you provided Malcolm.
I an now file it alongside these other cracking ‘independent’ reports:
Rangers vs The Taxman by Donald Findlay QC
Shredding Financial Document – Is it Cushty by the former global partner of Arthur Andersen
Rural Schools – a Drain on Urban Education? – by Cleland Sneddon
Bagpuss – scene stealer? – by Professor Yaffle
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SSE is a FTSE100 Scottish-registered company with its HQ in Perth and its roots in the old North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board. To assert that the bulk of its profits will go abroad sounds to me like unsubstantiated claptrap.
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Having been called and idiot and a liar etc on these forums by you – you have the cheek and temerity to accuse me of personal insults. Napoleon you are a disgrace to the title you carry. Remember only 24% of the Scottish people voted for the likes of you – and you prove on a daily basis why it is only 24% and reducing by the day. What I post here is for the other 76% who I leave to make up there own minds and who refuse to be dictated to by your Scottish version on the East German Stasi.
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First Napoleon and now the Stasi… what a weird mixture of historical metaphors Malcolm!
Your figure for subsidies at this wind farm look reasonable, maybe even a bit on the low side, but where you seem to be breaking new ground is in your claim that there is 100% profit to be made on electricity sales ON TOP of the subsidy.
I think that the Doc is entitled to ask you for clarification of this, and the increasing abusiveness of your responses is a poor attempt to deflect attention from this reasonable request.
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Malcolm: I have a suspicion that quite a large proportion of the ‘other 76%’ recognise an intemperate rant when they read one, so let’s hope you get a good night’s sleep and recover your senses tomorrow.
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Morning Robert – Had a good nights sleep and have a full working day ahead so on the ball early. My senses are absolutely fine and still tuned in to happily ‘pulling your plonkers’.
The post you are all too lazy to look up is No 33 dated 17th Aug @10.48.
Tim – I am happy to be wrong if you would only justify your statement that the profit on the leccy is not 100%.
And just to make a Monday morning worthwhile I give you :- http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-independence-no-sign-of-surge-in-scots-support-1-2530359
The important thing here is to take in the figures on the English backlash. I and others have always maintained that an independent Scotland would be left with the hundreds of millions of annual debt attached to wind farms because out of bloody mindedness and the high purchase price, nobody south of the border would want our electricity.
Anyway – onwards and upwards – and as my mate Donald would say – ‘have a nice day’
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Malcolm – I think you once said you ran a hotel, so surely you know the basics of business economics?
In the case of a wind farm, there is no expenditure on fuel, but a huge cost of servicing the capital used to build it, plus a day-to-day cost of maintenance etc. On current unit electricity prices, the profit after covering these is negative (i.e. a loss) – hence the subsidy needed to make wind power a commercial proposition at the moment.
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The subsidy covers all the costs – thats why they get it – a rough estimate is that they can make about 25% profit off the subsidy alone after all expenses.
Where are the overheads on the electricity they sell ? They don’t even have to distribute it – we pay for that separately plus we pay for the massive expansion of the Grid network uphill and down dale to connect them – ludicrous !
Yes – I have had several businesses – but never one where I could go to a Bank and say I want £1 million with virtually no colateral – and the Bank to say ‘Ah a Wind Turbine – yes of course Mr Kirk – are you sure one million is enough ” The usual question is’ how do you intend to repay this loan Mr Kirk ‘ Oh! to be able to answer ‘ everyone in the UK is obligated to guarantee to buy my goods for the next 20 years whether they like it or not ‘
Look at 23/2 above – £1.20 for 4.5p worth of electricty – do you think that owner had a problem raising the funds from his Bank ?
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Malcolm,
I can understand your complaint about subsidy but where it starts to falter is the lack of recognition (or seeming lack of recognition – if I have missed a post in amongst the many then I apologise and please do point me toward it) that this is no different than the development of any other power generating technology. Oil, gas and nuclear all received massive backing from the public purse to get themselves up and running and without that initial support they may have never developed into the beasts of generation we see today. We are talking hundreds and hundreds of billions of pounds in subsidy for these fuel types, far more than has been spent on the renewable energy sector to date. I also return to my point in my earlier post that these figures exclude the massive amounts of money incurred paying for health issues (such as black lung disease which is reported to have cost the US somewhere upwards of $30 billion) and pollution clean up etc. As I said before I am not going to begin to claim actual figures for these things nor am I going to start quoting from one source or another as I appreciate that the neutrality of sources is somewhat iffy (for both sides of the argument). It is more of a general point that any accusations of subsidy thrown at wind are surely comfortably equally thrown at all fossil fuel.
Is it just that you don’t want to pay it but don’t care that others in the past did to provide what you use today?
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Not much time – only interested in our own country – other forms of energy not subsidised – read this – it doesn’t take long:
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/Coal%20gas%20and%20oil%20subsidy.pdf
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Malcolm: your friend Mr Young “disproves” the subsidy argument by the simple mechanism of disagreeing with the definition of subsidy. He is also disingenuous on the question of VAT as he argues that this should be dismissed as an argument as it also applies to wind. However, this fails to address the vast difference in scale between fossil fuel usage in the UK and wind so fossil fuels have a much larger degree of subsidy than does wind even though the same subsidy applies to both of them.
Besides, Integrity’s point is that fossil fuel and nuclear technologies received huge subsidies in the past. This has enabled them to become mature technologies that are not, in theory, supposed to need further subsidies. Direct subsidies are supposed to be illegal in the EU for mature technologies hence the need for governments to be more ingenious in how they structure subsidy structures for fossil fuel and nuclear technologies.
As I have argued before, subsidies are not necessarily a bad thing as they are intended to ensure markets work for the benefit of consumers and society in general (insulation, for instance, is heavily subsidised at present). It is perverse to attack wind power on the subsidies it receives without an acknowledgement of how other alternatives have been and still are subsidised.
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Deary deary me Malcolm – as a piece of evidence the very quality of that report makes it ‘throw out of the windowable’ – if I paid a consultant good money to come up with a report and I was handed something as badly written as that I would be demanding a refund! The consultant doesn’t even begin to sound like he has approached it with a neutral mind and the language used in the report confirms it!
The point that the report totally (and conveniently) misses, as you seem to be doing as well, is more about the timing of subsidies. The subsidies to renewable energy are being given at a very early stage in the ‘product’s’ life cycle – it seems a bit daft to compare subsidies for wind today with subsidies for coal/oil/gas/nuclear now as you are comparing apples and pears
Quite how appallingly written, and limited in scope, that report is is exactly why I didn’t bother linking to anything in my earlier posts. I am sure I could use google to find a 1000 reports written by an equally (but opposite) bias view point which would preach an entirely different story with different numbers and a different conclusion – and that report could equally be ridiculed by deliberately avoiding the bigger picture.
I am more than happy to consider facts and arguments from both sides but please don’t waste anyone’s time with a report with as little credibility as that one – no wonder it doesn’t take long to read, it has sod all substance!
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Malcolm – ‘The subsidy covers all the costs – that’s why they get it’ – are you suggesting the subsidy is designed to enable developers to build wind farms for free? Surely the subsidy covers only some of the costs?
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Everybody please read this – how many times do I have to post it ?
http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/support/agriculture/wind_economics_aberdeenshire.pdf
Robert I would appreciate your comments.
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Malcolm – I skimmed through the SAC document and nowhere did I see a clear statement the ‘the subsidy covers all the costs’. But it does mention the high capital cost, and the risk factor.
Obviously, in the long run the idea is that the income from selling wind generated electricity is greater than the costs of producing it, but it would have to be otherwise no-one would build wind farms, would they? (unless they attracted tax benefits for high earners, in the same way that commercial forestry has).
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Robert: If you want to understand how the subsidy regime works for smaller turbine installations, I recommend this presentation:
http://www.renewable-uk.com/events/small-wind-conference/pdfs/Newton.pdf
As the guys are trying to sell their services, the projections are optimistic and don’t reflect the costs to service the capital (interest), tax or (I think) insurance but it is a good guide nevertheless to why small turbine installations can be attractive to farmers and other land owners.
Large scale installations are covered by the much less generous ROCS – I’ll see if I can find something similar in relation to large scale wind farms but you are right to point to the relatively high capital risks in these projects: particularly in the early stages (planning and construction). Once these have been overcome it is a relatively good investment but you need access to the capital and be able to hedge the risk. ROI at under 5 years isn’t too bad.
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I had thought that the oil, gas and nuclear energy all provided relatively high numbers of employment opportunities, both directly and indirectly, as well as energy that was reliable. Furthermore, development of sites were local and did not involved a large expanse of the rural landscape.
We have yet to find out the full impact of the wind industry on health – both human and other species.
The main questions must be:
Is wind energy good value for money?
Does it have any impact on climate change?
Will it decrease carbon emissions?
If we still need to provide fossil fuel energy for a base load why do we need to invest so much in an unreliable source of energy?
Would landowners still be eager to allow such development on their land if they did not receive incentives?
Why do wind turbines and windfarms have a negative impact on property prices?
What impact does wind energy have on fuel poverty?
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Lowry: your point about oil, gas & nuclear power sites being local and not involving a large expanse of the rural landscape is fair comment on compact gas turbine power plants, but surely less true of oil fired power stations (Inverkip was no tiddler) and I’ve yet to see a nuclear power plant that didn’t lord it over a wide expanse of countryside.
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All new Nuclear Power Stations, to my knowledge, are being built on the same sites as the one it’s replacing.
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Correction – next to the one it’s replacing – don’t even think about flattening a nuclear reactor to build another on the same site, Malcolm.
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Pedantic – or what ? The site I was referring to is the site where several buildings are built within a perimeter.
And if you could not see the figures of profitability in Big Big Writing on that pdf then you need new glasses or maybe just you need get out a bit more.
But tell me Robert – what are the other expenses that owners will have to pay for from the money they rake in on the sale of their electricity. I think Tim’s still to answer this one as well.
PS – have you noticed that Napoleon’s been a bit quiet lately ?
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However, the footprint per MW produced is far less in all cases.
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Lowry: depends on how you define the footprint and you are ignoring the space dedicated to fuel acquisition. All fossil fuels require large areas to be dedicated to digging up or drilling for the fuel. Central Scotland is a warren of abandoned mines, bings and open cast fields. A huge area of the North Sea is dominated by oil and gas platforms as well as pipelines, shore stations and refineries. Grangemouth I would suggest creates a much larger (and scarier) visual and environmental footprint than even the largest wind farm.
As for nuclear, in the UK we have areas that are off limits to the public due to radio-active contamination and Robert is correct, removal of defunct nuclear reactors is no straightforward task so new nuclear stations are built alongside, not over, existing plants. We have no uranium mining in the UK so don’t suffer any direct impact from it but have a look at this for an example of the issues in Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-24/fears-over-kakadu-uranium-mine-pollution/838488
I also find it ironic that the Westminster Government thinks that gas fracking is a suitable alternative to wind turbines in terms of preserving rural GB. I don’t think it will ever happen but if it did then expect a rash of very obviously industrial facilities all over the UK
http://www.mlive.com/business/mid-michigan/index.ssf/2012/09/michigans_natural_gas_industry.html.
All energy generating technologies have an impact but one of the attractions of wind is that its impact is relatively minor except in terms of visual impact and easily rectified if we can establish an alternative generating mix that can deliver fuel security and emission reductions superior than wind.
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Central Scotland is a warren of etc – what nonsense – of course there were mine workings and bings but to compare them in the readers mind to rabbit warrens or badger warrens where whole hillsides are inundated with excavations is exaggeration in the extreme.
The definition of site has already been explained.
So several drilling rigs at normal ground level and several miles apart are going to look worse that dozens and dozens of 150 metre high wind turbines scattered about every hillside in sight no matter which way you turn ? Yea !
The last paragraph is sheer gobbledigook and needs detailed clarification Napoleon.
PS http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/9547011/Biofuel-target-will-add-35-every-year-to-the-cost-of-running-a-car.html
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Why exactly are you so unprepared to pay a paltry £35 a year to help attain climate change targets? That’s the price of about half a tank of fuel. Anyone would think you couldn’t care less about the environment your grandchildren will inherit.
I have to say that your total contempt for climate change issues sits uncomfortably alongside your espoused concern for the rural environment.
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.. and probably only a small component of the total rise in fuel costs by changes in oil prices
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19620962
As I have said oft before, I have no problems with people objecting to wind power on the grounds of visual impact or querying whether or not the subsidy regime is cost effective but I find myself completely aghast that there are people who will advocate increasing fossil fuel use.
Easter island should be a lesson to all of us but, sadly, we are looking at revisiting the folly of the Easter islanders but on a global scale.
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Have you ever lived in Lanarkshire Malcolm? I have and I can assure you that “warren” is an accurate term. I used to explore old mine workings as a kid (I break into a sweat remembering that now). Subsidence due to mine workings is a common hazard to property owners, pollution of rivers due to mine waste is still a problem decades after the mines themselves were closed down and we have of course had recent tradgedies with people falling into old mine workings. Most of the bings have gone now (ironically turned into roads mostly) but the red bings near Edinburgh have been preserved as examples of our industrial heritage.
My last paragraph is perfectly clear: the environmental legacy of a wind farm is considerably less than a nuclear power station or mining activity. Are you wanting to say that this is not the case?
(PS If I am Napoleon, does that make you Louis Bourbon?)
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So I’m a biscuit maker now – am I ? Well that’s an improvement on the other things you have called me.
If you want a ‘ who got the dirtiest face’ competition you would loose. I come from the Lothians and indeed have been out many miles under the Forth in mine workings.
The red bings are left over from the shale oil business at Pumpherston and thereabouts. So extracting gas from shale will leave much less of a visual legacy.
You doom and gloom people are forever scaremongering about nuclear power stations as if they were bombs – they are not. Yes, disposing of their waste and eventual decommissioning is specialised and expensive but we can already deal with that. And remember we will have been using decade upon decade of clean CO2 free power before that situation is reached. It is also arrogant to believe that we know best – when in fact coming generations will be much more knowledgable, experienced and probably capable.
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Malcolm
Your last statement is quite remarkable. Are you really saying that although there is a problem now which will affect the future (assuming you do actually acknowledge climate change as a problem – not sure if you do) we should say ‘Bugger it, chances are someone further down the line will probably come up with a solution so we shouldn’t bother ourselves about it.’ Never mind the fact that further down the line the problem may well have escalated and the time available to take long term corrective action has reduced.
I think it is quite probably true that somewhere down the line technology will have advanced to the point where there are alternative and potentially better solutions but using that as an excuse to do nothing is a high risk strategy that has a real stench of self serving about it.
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Malcolm: I’m not really aware of having called you many names: maybe you are just a bit tetchy because I query your opinions and numbers and sort of equate this with me being rude to you in your mind?
I wasn’t trying a reverse snobbery contest. I was merely pointing out that your objection to the term “warren” in relation to old coal workings doesn’t bear scrutiny. You can find all the areas in Scotland where you need to do a search for coal mining activity in relation to property in the gazetteer of Scotland. It is a long list:
http://coal.decc.gov.uk/en/coal/cms/services/reports/scotland_gazet/scot_search/scot_search.aspx
Not sure why you think the red bings have anything to do with gas fracking (other than they both involve shales) but you are wrong if you think that gas fracking has little environmental impact. Most fracking techniques use immense amounts of water that becomes polluted and must be treated. It is a very industrial process: here’s a video showing the sort of site and noise associated with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPE2RU5099U
Not quite sure either why you say that I’ve been describing nuclear power as a bomb. I’ve reluctantly concluded that nuclear power must be part of the electricity supply mix because of the need for thermal base load in Scotland and the UK and the improbability that CCS will prove attractive.
However, this is not to ignore the very real problems that the technology brings in the shape of nuclear waste. To simply shrug off these problems as something future generations can deal with is breath takingly selfish. However, it does seem to encapsulate your entire philosophical outlook on energy Malcolm.
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The problem is that we are never going to have just wind alone. We are always going to need thermal energy. Therefore wind energy requires a double impact.
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Lowry: very quick answer as I have to pick my daughter up from school. Yes, wind requires some sort of thermal back up (which doesn’t have to be fossil – can be nuclear or biomass) or a lot of hydro. But wind reduces the need to burn fossil even if it doesn’t remove the need for the actual plants. Wind is all about reducing fuel costs and CO2 emissions but it cannot be the sole solution. This doesn’t make it worthless: nuclear cannot be 100% either for the opposite reason that wind cannot be 100%: you cannot easily (or cheaply) vary the output of nuclear to meet daily demand needs so you need other technologies to deal with peak loadings. In the UK we are a long way off needing any ADDITIONAL thermal plant to be added to the mix to provide backup for wind (and indeed we will probably never reach it at the UK level though we may in Scotland).
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I notice that none of you have gone back, although I have pointed you in the right direction,
to confirm or otherwise my indisputable statements on the massive income / huge profitability of rip off wind farms. Says everything really ! Hot air against hard facts. Well,I suspect actually some of you have gone back and now feel embarrassed for questioning the figures in the first place.
Robert – have you re-read http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/support/agriculture/wind_economics_aberdeenshire.pdf because I really think you should.
Integrity – I do wonder how twisted you guys are when someone suggests a new way of thinking – I made it clear that we are presently dealing with nuclear waste ( the backbone of our electricity supply ) at the moment – no one is at risk. Wasn’t it Sellafield where the workers said ‘ bring it on’ more local employment = wages = quality of life ! So to state that I don’t care is just sad propaganda on your part hoping it will be believed by the few readers left on this Forum.
Just looked up the definition of’ Integrity’ having read one of your Napoleon type retorts above against the Stuart Young presentations and find that it means :-candor:goodness:honesty:principle:purity:rectitude:righteousness:sincerity:virtue.
But Antonyms: corruption:disgrace:dishonesty:dishonour:
So are you Jesus returned to earth or are you an SNP supporter.
Napoleon – the first time we have agreed – you state above ‘we are a long way off needing and ADDITIONAL thermal plants’ Yes ! Well done ! It’s because we have an ample supply of electricity for all our needs without renewables.
Thought I had mentioned it earlier – apparently not – Japan are closing all their Nuclear Plants over the next 20 years and going back to Coal, Gas and Oil.
Does this mean that Salmond is going to take on more responsibility for the world’s ills and build even more wind farms ?
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Err, no. Just haven’t been able to find your figures yet (saying which thread they were in would have been at least a bit more helpful and actually providing your working in the current thread as I requested you to do would have been courteous). However, I suspect the figures will turn out to be the same ones that myself, SR, Tim and Uncle Tom Cobbley et al. have already queried and you never properly responded to but I will withhold judgement until I have actually managed to find them and digest them.
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I don’t know where you get the idea from that we are currently dealing with nuclear waste in any satisfactory form. The USA have abandoned new nuclear builds for the foreseeable future because precisely the problem of how to deal with nuclear waste; http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/09/news/economy/nuclear-plants-waste/index.htm
In the UK we have the problems around Dounreay where the seas and beaches around the plant have been contaminated to the extent that it is unsafe for people to access these areas: http://www.sepa.org.uk/radioactive_substances/publications/dounreay_reports.aspx
Globally we are estimated to have produced some 250,000 tonnes of high level radioactive waste (which will kill you if you are exposed to it for any great length of time. Some of this material will remain “hot” for the next 100,000 years – which is a not dissimilar length of time that we have existed as a species so far:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-09/20/into-eternity-nuclear-waste-finland
Looks as if your knowledge of nuclear power is at a similar level to your knowledge of wind. Go read more and take the blinkers off Malcolm.
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Malcolm – I have read (again) the Aberdeenshire report, and all I can see is financial projections showing modest returns on capital – they may well be attractive in relation to other investments (e.g. new farm machinery) or they may not – depends on economic circumstances.
You quoted an income above for a 15kW turbine of £1.20 per kWh – can you explain that please? The highest FIT rate for this size of turbine seems to be about 29p/kWh, plus a generation tariff of maybe around 5 or 6p/kWh. You’re not by any chance engaging in deliberate scaremongering are you?
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Handily here is a worked example of the profitability of a 15kW turbine that is eligible for FITS
http://www.enviko.com/technology/wind-turbines/wind-turbine-costs-and-outputs
To save people having to follow the link here are the salient figures:
average electricity output: 25,000 kWh
Income : FITS: £6,675
Export payment: £1,250
Total income ~£8,000
minus operating costs of £750 PA + insurance costs of £1000 (not covered in the example but estimates are 2% annually of capital costs for all risks)
so operating profit (EBITDA) of ~ £6250
Cost of turbine and installation £50,000
Depreciation (20 years) £2.5K per annum
Assuming capital is borrowed at 3% PA then initial interest is £1500 (which will reduce annually as the loan is paid back)
This gives a bottom line profit of £2,250.
This isn’t a bad return given that it is relatively risk free and guaranteed for 20 years (it will become better as the interest is paid).
Depreciation is of course not “real” money so if you look at cash flow then you have a bit less than 5K a year positive cash flow coming in and so it will take ten years to pay off the loan. This is more than the worked example but that is because they haven’t taken into account the cost of the capital or insurance.
It would actually make more sense for the owner to forgo the export income and instead use all of the electricity themselves. This means that they lose the £1250 PA income but would save more than double that amount (£2,500) in their electricity bills. This makes the owner more money but costs the consumers less.
These calculations don’t take into account bank charges and legals relating to the loan (which would be secured on the land not the turbine). That might be another £1000 up front cost.
So all in all, the 15kW turbine might be expected to have operatings costs of £48,500 over its twenty year operating life, an installation cost of £50,000 and an income of £160,000: so a cash profit of around £60,000 over twenty years: £3,000 PA.
An OK return but not the sort amount that would get your average City banker out of bed for.
You can increase the profit by having more and larger turbines (though your income per kWh goes down and your capital requirement and thus capital risks increase.
Want to query these figures Malcolm? And would please tell me what thread your earlier calculations are in as I’ve spent an age hunting for the post.
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Malcolm: you say so many things that are wrong that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with them. Japan is indeed closing its nuclear capacity but you forgot to mention their dash for renewables including a heavy component of wind to replace their nuclear component. They are aiming at having 35% of their generating mix coming from renewables by 2040.
And just while I’m here can I quickly correct another thing you said that was false: electricity generators in Scotland have to pay for upgrades to the grid to accommodate their electricity. The cost is borne by the generator and not the consumer via the Transmission Use of System charges which incidentally subsidises electricity production in the South of England.
http://www.utility-exchange.co.uk/ofgem-review-into-transmission-charges-15649/
This was in the news today over marine energy costs:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19628178
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This whole forum is dumber than dumb. I see nothing but ignorance.
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Hey, I resemble that remark!
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You need a sense of humour henri – then it becomes much more fun !
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Educate us then Henri (humorously).
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How come the European International Conference on Island renewables on Mull is not getting any publicity on here? Don’t tell me For Argyll’s fingers are so far off the pulse they don’t even know this is on?
Grid connection, EU policy for islands and the use of marine algae as a fuel source are just some of the issues and developments that will be addressed by this major energy conference. Organised by The Scottish Islands Federation ‘Resilience and Innovation: The Islands Challenge’ will take place at Craignure Hall on Friday 21st September.
Anyone else going?
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It’s this Friday.
More info HERE
I’m not going to be able to make it . . . if anyone is attending and would like to write a guest article for Scots Renewables afterwards that would be much appreciated.
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Simon: this was covered in an article a week or two back.
I’m hoping that either myself or the wife will be there.
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Sorry homie – I musta missed that.
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How to make 3 million quid out of hard pressed electricity consumers – easy peesy – get a wind turbine
http://www.g2energy.co.uk/case_studies/PDF%20101106%20Enercon%20E33%20Flyer.pdf
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Sounds like a good investment – wish I had the windy site and the three-quarter million quid needed. I suppose, given that it’s a sales leaflet, there may be an element of optimism built into the figures…
Anyhoo, did you find the answer to my question above, under no. 33?
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Good to see that you are admitting that your earlier claims about FITs being worth over £1 a kWh were bogus.
As for this, well so what? The estimated profits are over 20 years, so £150K per annum but this doesn’t include the costs of the capital or the land itself which would bring that down to about £100K – £120K per annum. That’s not a bad return but it is quite high risk capital. As this is sales blurb you can expect that this represents the best return rather than the average return.
How much profit do you expect that new gas plant to make over its 25 year life time?
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Good News:- Today – Wednesday -RWE will open a £1bn new efficient gas-fired power station in Pembroke. The stations has a 2,000 megawatt capacity – enough to power 3.5m homes. And when they say 3.5m homes they mean it – day and night – month in, month out for decades to come – totally reliable electricity – hooraaaaaa !
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In the past the optimum life span of a gas-fired power station was 25 years and normal maintenance done through the summer, the reliability I have been told is very high as long as there is gas. The down side is the turning on and off, there’s a time delay.
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/de/683570/smart-country/
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Ah Malcolm, you do make me laugh. If you watch the little video on the BBC (link below) you will see that Mr Volker Beckers of RWE (one of those foreigners who you don’t approve of when they are building wind farms but you presumably do approve of when they are building new fossil plants) makes the argument for this plant on the basis that it is hugely flexible and able to ramp its power output up and down quickly. They have no intention of running this plant flat out, instead it will act as a top up plant, selling electricity at a premium into the grid when it is most needed.
As Mr Beckers makes clear, RWE are the largest investor in renewables in the UK (or was that Europe) and they see having an energy mix as vital.
Note also that this plant is entirely supplied with foreign gas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-19645664
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As long as I make you laugh then life is worthwhile.
The plant has to be prepared to run flat out when the wind doth not blow – remember – the problem with windmills – nay wind – nay juice !!!
Tim – I’ve been very busy so missed your request above – shock / horror to have to admit but I have made an error in my calculations of the 15kw earnings – 71p would be nearer the mark than the 120p I said. So the argument remains the same – what responsible government would buy goods on behalf of its people for 71p when they could but the same thing for 4.5p.
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LOL! I’ll beat Tim to it: how do you come up with 71p (when the real answer is somewhere between 26p and 35p depending on how the electricity is used and when the turbine was installed).
As the video makes clear, the gas plant will flat run out when there is a spike in the demand (they give the example of people putting the kettle on after a major sporting event). Daily fluctuations in demand are approximately 50% at its largest – about 20 GW. This dwarves the contribution of wind (though it did manage a very credible 4 GW on the 13th of this month and is averaging about 2GW pretty much all this month – coincidentally the same as this new gas plant -which is the largest of its type in Europe).
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I have just discovered what ‘ self flagellation’ really is – Ouch! that hurts !
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I have long suspected that you are in to flagellation, bestiality and necrophilia Malcolm: ie you have been flogging a dead horse.
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Well you offered yourself up !
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Nothing to do, Malcolm, with today’s news that the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that a regional advertising campaign by the Trump organisation and CATS misrepresented the facts about windfarms?
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I have tried to find a copy of the advert Robert – even CATS don’t have one – but from what I understand ‘me old pal Donald’ just got the material the towers were made of wrong !
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It was more than that – the ASA upheld the complaint on all three points raised:-
http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/9/The-Trump-Organization-LLC/SHP_ADJ_195478.aspx
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Good News:
Spectator debate in Edinburgh last night ‘ Scotland’s energy policy is just hot air’
chaired by Andrew Neil.
Report from Struan Stevenson:- VICTORY! They took a vote from each member of the audience as they arrived at the venue this evening. Andrew Neil announced that it was 66 for the proposition,36 against and 74 don’t knows. They took a vote again at the end of the debate and I won by 126 for,50 against and zero don’t knows. Niall Stuart spent most of his speech on personal attacks on me, based on stuff he had read on my website. It backfired horribly. By the end of the debate, the audience were becoming increasingly hostile to Nial Stuart and Prof Stuart Haszeldine (Scottish Power)
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Prof Stuart Haszeldine is from Edinburgh University and not Scottish Power. He is an expert on CCS (pretty much invented this field in the UK. His presence obviously indicates that the debate wasn’t just about wind power: I wonder what the motion actually was?
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Ticket prices £30 and a motion whose wording was heavily skewed to say the least . . . this debate was never going to attract a typical cross-section of the population, was it?
Montford and Stevenson must have been pretty good though as the ‘before’ and ‘after’ votes do show a significant swing.
The motion was ‘Scotland’s energy policy is just hot air’
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That isn’t much of a motion – I could find myself voting yes or no to that depending on how the speakers actually framed their positions. Wouldn’t do for the referendum!
The swing is more from the don’t knows than those against the motion so perhaps at the beginning of the debate many of the audience just didn’t know what the motion was actually getting at.
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Maybe the ticket price reflects the cost of having Andrew Neil chair the event.
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Malcolm – if your debating ‘style’ was similar to how you come across sometimes on here, I wonder if Mr Stuart’s ‘personal attacks’ on you could be considered entirely unprovoked
Who knows, perhaps you persuaded some of the more gullible members of the audience to vote for the motion by saying that your local turbine owner is being paid £1.20 (or is it 71p?) a unit for his electricity…
Going back to the ASA ruling on the CATS/Trump ad. mentioned above, and in the interests of balance, the ASA has also partially upheld (2 out of 6 issues) a complaint against an organisation called British Wind – the adjudication makes quite interesting reading:-
http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2012/9/British-Wind/SHP_ADJ_192760.aspx
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Donald Trump anti-wind power fundraiser fails to get off the ground
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/20/donald-trump-anti-wind-power-fundraiser?INTCMP=SRCH
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I would have thought that politicians would by now be very wary of associating themselves with the Donald Trump bandwagon.
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Robert – perhaps you could give a clear explanation as to the reason you show such ill will towards Mr Trump. I suspect you have worked for a government dept of some sort most of your life.
As for ‘ bandwagon’ he always seems to me to be fronting everything himself not hiding behind others. No ?
I think what you have got to understand is that Mr Trump has to be wary of associating with politicians otherwise he would get nothing done – not the other way round.
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Thanks for making me laugh again Malcolm:
“Mr Trump has to be wary of associating with politicians”
This is the same Mr Trump who was being being touted as a potential Republican Presidential candidate for 2012? And the Mr Trump who has since the 1990 U.S. elections, made contributions to campaigns of both Republican Party and Democratic Party candidates, including Republicans John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush[128] and Democrats Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Charles Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Charles Rangel. (Source Wikipedia).
Now back to work for me.
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Napoleon ! You make my point – who’s the Main Man – who’s leading the way – who’s the one that gets things done – not the politicians but obviously Donald Trump Esq. He employs 22,500 people all contributing to the economy by working hard and paying their taxes.
From the Herald – about your Lord and Master:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/revealed-salmonds-forest-wind-farm-plans.18951533
And if that wasn’t enough – nothing to do with wind farms but interesting:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/msps-claim-committees-no-longer-fit-for-purpose.18943922
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“In an episode early in Donald Trump’s career, his New York real estate company was sued by the federal government for discriminating against potential black renters. After a lengthy legal battle, it ultimately agreed to wide-ranging steps to offer rentals to nonwhites.”
http://www.politicsandcurrentaffairs.co.uk/us-politics-forum/107326-donald-trumps-racial-discrimination.html
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You will note that the article states that the organisers only had 2 weeks to organise this event and from my limited knowledge of very wealthy people their diaries are fairly full months ahead, never mind weeks. You had to read to the bottom of the page to find this info !
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http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2012/09/alex-salmond-is-betting-on-the-scots-subsidising-electricity-for-the-english/
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Andrew Montford.
’nuff said.
Unless of course you are a GW denier Lowry . . .
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Please read on SR – actually I could write exactly what you are about to say – you will denigrate and mock the writer,but thankfully there are sensible people out there who can read, and therefore make up their own minds.
http://scef.org.uk/news/1-latest-news/295-the-end-of-kyoto-a-perfect-storm-for-scotland#.UF3SiC6oeQY.facebook
PS – why aren’t you parading round Edinburgh with Napoleon ?
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I have great difficulty bringing myself to read anything on SCEF as – content aside – the website is so badly designed . . . however . . .
Scotland is in for a storm: historical accident; impending solar minimum; a government heavily committed to wind subsidies, needing to prove its economic credibility as oil runs out; these will make energy & climate a critical issue in the independence debate
Well, what a crock . . . . firstly, the ‘impending solar minimum’ has no bearing whatsoever on the need to reduce CO2 emissions. Secondly, North Sea oil has fifty years left in it.
The only bit I agree with is that energy & climate WILL be a a critical issue in the independence debate. With an El Nino event setting in we are going to see all sorts of extreme weather events – including two more arctic ice minima – in the run-up to the referendum, with the Scottish government the only ones prepared to step up and do something about it.
I think climate change issues will play very nicely in the YES campaign’s favour.
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‘Secondly, North Sea oil has fifty years left in it.’
Funny how it’s stayed about that since the first oil was produced by the Forties field in 1975? Could it be oil companies don’t bother with detailed quantitative surveying beyond what they can extract in the next 2 decades?
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db: nothing mysterious about this, it merely reflects how the improvement in the recovery rate over 40 years of innovation has enabled the steady increase in recoverable reserves to keep pace with the depletion rate.
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That “article” has so many mistruths, lies, poor science, complacencies and distortions in it that I would hardly know where to start in debunking it.
I find it amusing how there is a concerted attempt to portray the First Minister as some sort of eco-nut pursuing an ego trip (as well as being a Stalinist). Truth is that Mr Salmond is actually pretty much middle of the road when it comes to clean energy – for instance, coal is forecast to be providing as much of Scotland’s electricity in 2020 as it does now. Hardly agreen agenda. If you were looking for a genuine delusion of Mr Salmond I would say that it is his faith that we can square the circle of no new nuclear, same amount of coal, reduced CO2 emissions. This crucially depends on CCS technology which is not only untried but undeveloped and looking as if it is hugely expensive.
Scotland’s renewable targets look ambitious but they can be because our electricity demand as a nation is quite modest (a maximum of 40,000 GWh per annum) set against our renewable potential (which is very high by global standards). It’s a very analogous situation to Iceland which generates much of its power through geothermal. If Mr Salmond was to say that Scotland was to generate a high proportion of electricity from geothermal then he would rightly be derided as we have little of that but generating a high proportion from wind, hydro and (eventually) wave and tidal is reasonable as we have a lot of these.
We currently generate a surplus in Scotland of about 10,000 GWh over demand which is exported to England. We already had a good installed base of renewables (5GW) and with about 60 GW of renewable potential (against a total current capacity of around 13 GW for all fuel types). There is thus plenty of available renewable capacity for Scotland to meet its target for renewable electricity production though there is a question of whether or not the target will actually be met by 2020 due to supply side constraints.
Building beyond our targets only makes sense if there is a market for the electricity. Treating Scotland as an independent electricity market is a bit of fool’s errand as Scotland will always be part of the British Isles Grid even after Independence and increasingly tied into the Northern European grids. If there is no demand for exported electricity from Scotland then the extra renewable capacity beyond Scotland’s needs won’t be built. There is absolutely no reason, however, to believe that England and other neighbouring countries won’t want or require electricity generated in Scotland given the looming generating gap caused by the retirement of older coal and nuclear stations in the UK. There is thus the market potential for Scotland to increase its electricity production on the back of its export potential to rUK and Europe. But if that is illusionary then we won’t build the capacity. It is important to differentiate between these two models: Scotland building renewable capacity for its own needs and for export.
It’s not all plain sailing. Wind and wave energy both require a higher installed capacity than conventional fuel types because of intermittency, which means there will be times that they will be supplying more electricity than is required. In one sense this is fine: the fuel is free and has no emissions so generating surplus electricity has no immediate downside (but see below). What would be great is if this surplus electricity could be stored and this should be a strategic technical objective for Scotland’s universities. Pumped storage is a proven possibility, if expensive, but liquid fuel production (particularly hydrogen) is probably the best technical solution.
The downside is not on the renewable generation but on the other fuel types. Nuclear goes all the time as base load so can be ignored but gas and coal are used to balance up the grid. As more and more renewable electricity comes on stream, gas and coal is needed less and less and in an increasingly intermittent way. This might be OK if there is strong demand furth of Scotland for non renewable electricity as the gas and coal plants can be operated at a high percentage of capacity and the electricity exported when not required within Scotland itself. If, however, there is weak demand furth of Scotland then the coal and gas plants operate at a low percentage of capacity and become uneconomic to run. This will happen eventually at a European scale – though the withdrawal of nuclear power from the German generating mix muddies the waters a bit. Again, good storage capacity would remove this as an issue.
So, the SG’s vision of Scotland as the Saudi Arabia of renewables is hyperbole but not entirely a fantasy. Scotland can easily reach its targets of supplying 100% of its consumption through renewables – its a question of when rather than if. Because of its existing and future hydro base coupled with a continuing thermal base load capacity similar to what is already installed it should be able to do this without too many technical difficulties in adjusting the grid (beyond the grid strengthening already underway).
Going beyond this target and really biting into the remaining two thirds of potential Scottish renewable capacity crucially depends on there being an external market for that electricity. The probability is that there will not just be a market for but an increased demand for clean energy from Scotland as other nation’s struggle to meet their legally binding carbon reduction targets and bridge the generating gaps.
And just a final word on on the distraction that is shale gas: recent studies suggest that the optimistic potential for shale gas in Europe is modest but potentially able to meet the reduction in gas supplies as the North Sea fields become depleted. The lower end forecasts suggest it will not manage to do this.
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm?id=1410&dt_code=NWS&obj_id=15260&ori=RSS
Anyone saying that shale gas obviates our need for a diversified generating mix really is talking hot air.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19688358
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Good Morning !
db / Robert above – this is relevant:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19685165
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Malcolm: why do you think this is relevant?
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Malcolm: no, I doubt whether it’s even slightly relevant.
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“Ignorance is bliss”
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You are probably speaking from a position of authority there Malcolm (sorry! couldn’t resist).
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At last- Napoleon – somebody who knows what he is talking about :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQPm528T4Fs&feature=context-gfa
And if you have time and an open mind:-
http://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=11627&article=www.thinkscotland.org
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New article today demonstrates – with rather convincing real-world figures – that it’s a myth that wind turbines don’t reduce carbon emissions
Conclusive figures show that the sceptics who lobby against wind power simply have their facts wrong. Who’d a thunk it?
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Interesting results on the UK electricity generation stats: for much of the past couple of days wind generation has been providing 3.75-4.0 GW and has at times been providing more power than CCGT (gas). If you zoom in on the graph at the link below you can see how wind tends to ramp up and down quite smoothly.
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html
Clearly, when the wind blows, wind is supplanting the need to burn gas thus lowering our emissions.
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SR – “Data, not assertions, are what must win the argument over wind – and the data is very clear.”
Just about sums it up.
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Morning !
Another Guardian report – probably as screwed as their much quoted ‘ all electricity producers receive subsidies” article, which has been proved to be a load of old cods.
The graph clearly shows how the wind may go up and down as is rightly asserted above, but all at the wrong times – and of course sometimes it doesn’t go up at all.
Facts Tim – On the much quoted 14th Sept the wind peaked at 10pm and blew fairly continuously over that 24 hour period. Because nobody wanted the overnight electricity Scottish wind farms were paid £580,000 to reduce output.
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Malcolm: but what about the nuclear generated electricity that was being generated at that moment (at about 2 x wind): it was “wanted” and Wind “wasn’t”? Truth is that wind is much easier to constrain than nuclear so is prioritised for constraint when the generation exceeds demand. Much cheaper than shutting down nuclear.
(all that said, I’ll be having a look at the generating stats for the 14th and report back).
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“Scottish wind farm operators received more than £14 million in 2010 and 2011 in “constraint payments”. However,
all electricity generators receive “constraint payments” when the National Grid is overloaded or there is lower than expected demand. Payments to all types of UK generators, including fossil fuels, totalled £708m for the financial year 2010-11. The payments made to renewable energy generators across 2010 and 2011 were therefore equivalent to a mere 2% of overall payments for one year.”
http://www.orbit-comms.co.uk/dont-single-out-wind-farms-when-discussing-constraint-payments/
I’ve looked at the 14th – gas, coal and nuclear were all providing more power to the grid at the times you mentioned. Why is it that wind is surplus but everything else is necessary? I did read that it was Scottish generation that was the problem but again why was this not Torness or Longannet’s “problem”?
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100GW now installed in the EU.
Don’t be a dinosaur all your life Malcolm . . .
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A good read:- http://www.habitat21.co.uk/energy122.html
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Cheer up, Malcolm – the first turbine’s whirling above Ardrishaig – rejoice!
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I am afraid that Struan Stevenson’s logical processes are as flawed as yours Malcolm.
:
In 2004, there were 12 operational wind farms in the UK and average annual energy bills stood at £522. Today, 355 operational wind farms dot our countryside and we pay around £1,252 for energy each year.
Correlation does not imply causality. If you think it does then check out this graph, which shows conclusively that global warming is caused by a lack of pirates.
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I meant to make a similar point to one of Malcolm’s earlier posts (but eventually couldn’t be bothered). We drum into science undergraduates that correlation is not the same as causation. One example I could show would be that prostate cancer rates are rising at the same time as mobile phone use. This might lead me to advise people not to keep their mobile phones in their trouser pockets but the rising rate of prostate cancer is actually just down to men living longer so more of them living long enough to develop the cancer.
In this case, the real cause of increasing fuel bills is almost entirely down to the three fold increase in gas prices over the same period. I don’t believe that the people trying to push these false correlations are either stupid or lacking the actual facts. This leads one to conclude that repetition of this sort of argument is a deliberate attempt to deceive.
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In response to complaints from Aberdeenshire and other councils that they are being overwhelmed by the number of wind farm applications the Scottish government has announced a £300,000 fund to help them cope with the extra workload.
Seems like an eminently sensible and pragmatic response.
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