More turns in wide turbine debate
In my previous blog I investigated the claim by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond on Wednesday 1st March's Daily Politics that "onshore wind [turbines] doesn't need subsidy anymore, onshore wind can pay its way."
I wrote that:
"Onshore wind turbine generators don't necessarily get a direct subsidy to build or operate the turbines (though some might) but under the government's Renewables Obligation electricity companies must buy power generated by onshore turbines at twice the market rate.
"This 100% higher price is then passed on to the rest of us in higher electricity bills may conclude that is as much a subsidy as a straight taxpayers' grant."
I concluded that readers were likely to think that enjoying twice as much as the market price, mandated by law, is as much a subsidy as a straight taxpayers' grant.
But I invited the Transport Department and the Energy Department to comment and promised to publish whatever they sent us.
Well, we've heard nothing from Mr Hammond's department but this is what we've had from the Department for Energy and Climate Change:
“The current high oil price, and the increasingly clear evidence on climate change, underline the need to move away from fossil fuels.
"Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of low carbon energy and the UK has a massive natural resource to exploit.
"There is no direct public subsidy, but wind energy does benefit from the Renewables Obligation.”
The first sentence is irrelevant to Mr Hammond's claim.
The second would suggest that onshore wind is so cheap and so plentiful that there is no need to subsidise it.
The third sentence confirms that there is indeed a subsidy to onshore wind turbine operators via the legal obligation of electricity companies to buy electricity at artificially high rates (and then pass on the extra cost to us, the electricity consumers).
Note that the DECC does not deny that the Renewables Obligation is a subsidy by any other name.
And remember the context of Mr Hammond's remarks: he was seeking to differentiate between onshore wind (not subsidised, he said) and offshore (which he conceded was subsidised).
In fact they are both subsidised in the same way but to different degrees. Onshore wind gets to charge twice the market price, offshore three times (because it is much more expensive).
Incidentally, I was told by senior sources last week that the Treasury thought it "daft" to be adding to our energy bills in this way at a time of soaring energy prices and was biding its time to "open a second front" against the strong wind power lobby within and around the government.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~43~RS~)
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Let me have a think about this.
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Fuel cost makes up the bulk of fossil fuel net cost.
A subsidy or quota is required to correct market failure that would lead us in error, to ignore wind power despite it being cheaper in the long run.
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I agree, both types of wind power are heavily subsidised by the taxpayer, that much is clear.
What is not so clear, to me at least, is how useful wind power actually is. The National Grid needs to ensure continuity of the supply of electricity, so needs to keep a capacity on hot stand-by equivalent to the production of the wind-power industry, for those times when the wind does not blow, as the capacity of the National Grid to store energy is limited (or non-existent?).
What I think is inexcusable is raising of energy costs to the consumer, for example through the EU's carbon trading scheme, so much that old-age pensioners in UK prefer to die of cold rather than suffer the shame of not being able to pay their ever-increasing electricity or gas bills. Pass the sick-bag, Alice, I hope the green lobby is happy with its annual pensioner cull - representatives of lobbies that encourage ever-higher energy bills should be encouraged to attend the funerals of such people, just to make them think a little. (Just as Tony Blair should have attended the funerals of dead British soldiers, along with his wife and kids...)
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The wind-subsidy row is just one problem amongst many.
C4 Dispatches this evening (yes, I'm sorry Auntie, I know its the other side) have been talking about Directors of Private companies earning a fortune out of the taxpayer thanks to all the public sector work that has been outsourced to them.
And Prof Brian Cox said on "Start the week" this this morning, that he was at a loss to understand why Britain didn't invest more in Science. I can tell him why. Its because there's not a quick profit to be made out of Science.
There's something culturally very wrong in this country. The people at the top seem to have their priorities completely wrong, thinking short-term rather than long-term, looking after themselves and feathering their own nests whilst ignoring the greater good...
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Glyn:
How useful is wind?
Wind is a bit like nuclear in that it is capital intensive but fuel cheap. Previously, fossil fuels have had advantages in almost all ways, both capital cheap in plant, and fuel cheap.
Now with rising price of fossil fuel it balances out.
Wind contribution does not stop and start, it changes quite smoothly with the weather at a rate much less than demand changes through the day. This means that the national grid can cope with the variability wind power imposes. Up to about 20% there is no problem. At the moment wind only nudges 5% of supply so there is no need to worry about back up power for some years.
But what of back up power? The addition cost of gas turbine back up is really rather small. Remember: Capital cost of fossil fuel is cheap, its the consumption of the fuel that is expensive. So adding on some additional spare capacity does not massively increase the total cost of a wind dominated power generation mix.
By raising prices now, we avoid accelerating prices in the future.
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'we've heard nothing from Mr Hammond's department '
And, having written directly to Mr. Hammond to clarify his views on this and educational matters he was equally 'comfortable' with, I have heard nothing either.
Good that the Government 'listens', I guess. But isn't it also, well, meant to respond... especially when not making much sense?
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ps:
'Readers will no doubt have plenty comments of their own to make.'
Maybe, in case a few readers/licence fee payers do have plenty of comments to make, leaving the thread open a wee while longer and without a double digit cut-off may be a plan. Especially for those who need to think about it a while.
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TGR
I completely agree with you, in that same programme the journalist said that she trained as an engineer and would be highly esteemed in India but in this country people looked on engineers as one step up from a mechanic, when engineering is really the appliance of science.
The same programme raised many good points in relation to our appetite for science - in particular the one that once a state has achieved a certain level of success the imperative to continue down the route of innovation gets dimmed as in Andrew Marr's words people go off writing poetry and plays.
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Andrew
I don't doubt your facts but in the light of events in Japan, surely renewables have to be looked on more favourably, as the nuclear option is going to be a hard if not impossible sell.
Regardless of the fact that the UK is not subject to the same seismology as Japan, who is going to want a Nuclear Power station in their back yard? - logic is unlikely to prevail in this instance.
I agree a Government minister should not wilfully mislead but so what if the wind power industry is initially subsidised, if it helps encourage more companies to make the initial capital investment - the present situation shows how precarious our reliance on imported fuel is and we should strive to be more self sufficient.
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Good morning each & Andrew.
Glyn @3 Too true.
TGRW @4 Your fourth paragraph strikes at the heart of things.
Mr. Dobbs, your fuel is dear your fuel is cheap. You should be in politics.
It is that this country of ours is run for the benefit of the few that befuddles and drags us back.
"Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of low carbon energy and the UK has a massive natural resource to exploit."
This is entirely meaningless also.
That we look to Japan for all advances in safety for Nuclear power production and that they have a monopoly on the production of the steel components for the industry makes for an odd future in all matters Nuclear, for them and for us.
The best way forward is to refocus efforts and investment to the direct and immediate benefit of the consumer. While energy production and delivery and mechanisms to combat Global Warming are set to enrich the few only, for the sake of the money market we are set for Firm Finance and a foggy and dimly lit future.
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...As it is never enough simply to moan and while plate-tectonics are very much in the news. Why not geo-thermal energy generation?
All power generation is the transfer of energy from one sort, usually heat, into another sort, usually electricity.
Say that heat transfer pipes were to be laid along a lava-spilling fault (whether deep sea or active volcanic source on land), these pipes then relay super heated water under pressure to a generator...hey presto-> electricity. There will be difficulty, but way less danger.
Might not then power generating plants be submerged or underground?
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What never ceases to amaze me is that we have tides around the coast of this island which are so regular and substantial (they even caught Julius Caesar unawares) that we have not invested in the development of electrical energy produced by these tides.
To me it is a no brainer so why have we invested in wind power which is so unreliable?
Is it because the politician can point to a windmill as a sign of good intent but nobody will ever see a turbine under the sea?
Also what happened to clean coal?
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'and the increasingly clear evidence on climate change'. It seems to me it's been increasingly muddled.
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Good Afternoon Andrew,
down here in a very non wintry Exeter, home of the Met Office, or a branch of the MoD, there is still no wind, none, absolutely none.
Now the Met Office, where employees have to sign the Official Secrets Act, or whatever passes for it nowadays, really should issue the reported wind scales for this winter so far. Has it, as I suspect, been the least windiest winter on record.
With the traumatic events unfolding in Japan then surely there has to be a serious review of all the nuclear power plants, not only in the UK, but throughout Europe. As we learnt from Chyrnobyl nuclear clouds know no borders. I am not talking about closing them all down, as some are being closed in Germany, but one has to remember that there is an election coming up in that country.
We really should be looking at the siting of all power generating sites. For example, there are proposals to site a waste-to-energy plant on the banks of the river Exe, on a flood plain, and this is the sort of thing I mean. Also, there are proposals to site a decommissioning site for nuclear submarines down in Plymouth, an area of high unemployment, and surely it should not be in a City of over 250,ooo souls, so close to the disastrous events in Japan.
I think Andrew, that all the chickens are coming home to roost, and somebody is going to have to get a grip, before something seriously bad happens. Our predecessors always thought that they could create problems on the basis that somebody will come up with a solution, only trouble is we are the problem, and not the solution.
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Tom at 11 - yes, and domestic geothermal heat-exchange systems are already in use here and there in Europe and North America. It would be great to be able to dig a deep hole in my garden and get heat from it, though quite expensive I think, and I believe some rare metals are required, making it even more expensive. Another problem is that the rare minerals they need to operate efficiently are being monopolised by the Chinese.
I know your suggestion is different, for an industrial-sized effort to tap directly into the lava heat of the earth's crust, so maybe it could operate without these rare metals.
Each wind turbine (you can't say windmill) is grounded in a large concrete block, and the ones in the sea have even more massive concrete bases. Apparently this concrete gives off some Co2, so wind power is not 100% green.
Other suggestions for major engineering works include:
1. Building an array of millions of solar panels across north Africa (when they settle down) and linking it to Europe- the economies of scale would surely kick in; and
2. Building a barrage across the Congo River which would produce enough electricity to power all of Africa and much of Europe. Zambia is already self-sufficient in hydro-electricity, and exports it to Zimbabwe (or used to).
I still need convincing that the vanishingly small proportion of man-made Co2 in the atmosphere (.04%?) has a discernible effect on the world temperature. Even if it does, shouldn't we put more effort into adapting to possible higher temperatures? And what would be the economic effect of the next ice-age? Bad, so why is global warming all bad if it helps to stave off the next ice age? Christopher Booker mentions that many global warming scientists were originally convinced that the next ice age is the real threat.
Apparently millions of years ago there were elephants in Essex, and it was hot. Who's to say these are not natural cycles?
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Interesting take by George Monbiot on our dependence on oil and the states that supply it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/15/no-call-for-reform-saudi-oil
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Try again, this time without the relief charity URL (perhaps a Hamas or Greenpeace site would have been better? Or Comic Relief?)..
At least not all the BBC heavy hitters, all fluent in Japanese or savvy on half lives [not] seem to have decamped to Tokyo, to 'help'.
Though how that is achieved by consuming scare resources and comms links, whilst undermining the government with dark mutterings on not sparing the time for proper press briefings in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in a non-English speaking land, eludes me.
Especially when they seem to have gone there mainly to talk back to folk, on our behalf, who are still here.
And on but one subject. In addition to the nuke issue, there was an earthquake and tsunami too. Apparently.
I wonder if any need help, now, as a consequence of that, as opposed to pontificating on what 'might' happen and what it 'may' mean.
Here you go: [google tsunami relief donations]
In case the ratings distract from the carbon offset thing, which is now sooo last week.
One is sure Mssrs. Hammond, Huhne etc, are on hand to do a deal, mind.
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Were we not 'dependant' on whale oil at one time?
Surely the commercial imperatives would kick in with petroleum oil as they did with whale oil, especially if you add a green tax for polluting oils.
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