Government Environmental Subsidies are only Good for the Builders Who Make Them

Scrap These Expensive Environmental Targets – For Now

Date 29/09/2008

The Right Side

Garry White

Last time I wrote about this subject I got hate mail. Some of it was genuinely vile. But I’m going to write about it again anyway.

So, let’s talk wind power. Or, more to the point, let’s talk about why we should stop crazy subsidies that are making profiteers rich. All at your expense.

On Saturday I visited England’s largest wind farm.

It is called Scout Moor and can be found just behind the Morrison’s superstore used by my mother on the edge of Rochdale. It’s ugly as sin. And noisy.

It has completely ruined the beautiful area of moorland where I spent most of my childhood. I was appalled.

I accept that wind power has an essential part of our green energy plan, but I object to beautiful areas of our country being covered with these unsightly monsters.

The council didn’t want Scout Moor. The residents of the area didn’t want it. But the government forced it through.

Why? To meet European obligations - just like they did with biofuels.

Remember biofuels?

They were presented as environmentally safe new superfuels. Governments across the world subsidised their development. They ended up causing forests to be cut down and prompted a surge in the price of food. Governments rushed to be green and the consequences were dire. I fear the same is happening with wind.

Well actually no. Governments are starting to roll back targets. This trend will continue. The next "green energy saviour" that needs subsidies cut is the wind industry. And sooner rather than later.

The government (ie you) is subsiding wind farms to such a massive extent they are a cash cow for their builders. That’s why Scout Moor got built. It’s nothing to do with the builders wanting to be green. It’s all about a profit gravy train.

Money for old rope

Subsidies mean that operating a wind turbine can be shockingly profitable.

A typical 2 megawatt turbine can now generate power worth £200,000 on the wholesale markets PLUS another £300,000 of subsidy from taxpayers.

With the average turbine costing £2m to build and lasting for 20 or more years, it means they can pay for themselves in just 4-5 years and then produce nothing but profit for the operators. There’s no recession on the wind subsidy gravy train. Yet.

This means that we the taxpayer are subsidising the profits of City investors in the industry.

Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, calculates that it costs consumers up to £510 for each tonne of CO2 emissions avoided through wind energy.

Alternatively, industrialized nations could collectively offset 500 million tons carbon of dioxide emissions at roughly $2 per ton by protecting tropical rainforests. This is based on estimates by the US National Academy of Sciences.

This level of subsidy means that we are rushing to wind power at the expense of other alternatives such as solar.

In the case of Scout Moor, we are subsidising profits of Peel Holdings, owners of the Trafford Centre.

The owner of the largest shopping emporium in the North West decided to branch out into wind farms because they would have been mad not to. The cash is there for the taking - for anyone who wants to dip into the taxpayers’ wallet. This cannot continue.

But the fact that companies are profiteering form stupid subsidies is not the main problem I have with wind power. The big issue is that wind power is inefficient. Very inefficient.

Simply not enough

Wind power has a load factor of just 27.4%. This means it is generating electricity for just over a quarter of the time. The rest of the time it is useless. So, those 2 megawatt turbines near my home in Rochdale actually only generate 0.54 megawatts of electricity on average. That is shockingly inefficient.

They are also environmentally damaging. Around 50,000 tons of concrete and 1,250 tons of steel were used in the construction of Scout Moor. There are 141.2km of cable on site and 12km of new access road had to be built.

Today, it was revealed that an experimental tidal power scheme is to be launched in Scotland. Each site will have between 5 and 20 1-megawatt machines which could lead to a combined output of 60 megawatts. This is enough to meet the energy needs of 40,000 homes. It is exactly the same capacity as Scout Moor.

But yet again expense will be an issue. Tidal power also has a load factor of around 27%. It is incredibly inefficient - so the electricity it produces is very expensive.

So, I believe that until our nuclear power stations are up and running we are going to have to burn coal. We don’t have a choice.

We have to ignore European regulations. They are making companies that operate wind farms very rich - and they will not provide us with the energy that we need.

Once we have our nuclear power stations up and running, we will be as green as we can be. Until then, we have to accept that we are unable to achieve what we want in an ideal world.

The subsidies need to go.

To discover more about the opportunities uncovered in Smart Commodities UK click here.

Regards,

Garry White
Editor
Smart Commodities UK

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