Saturday, December 5, 2009

Green mugging from the Tories.

Every time politicians mention renewable energy I feel my hackles rising, they like to point out that it's freely generated and that it's clean. They're lying of course, but that's what politicians seem to do these days in order to generate revenue schemes to pay off previous bad decisions on their part or simply to balance the books as welfare costs and public service pensions eat into budget that the government has to play with.
First off wind power is inefficient, no wind, no power. So far the government have spent billions of pounds on building just over 2,000 wind turbines - and yet they contribute barely one per cent of all the electricity that we need.
The combined output of all those 2,000 turbines put together, averaging 700 megawatts, is less than that of a single, medium-sized conventional power station! They're ugly, they kill and as for environmentally friendly has no-one noticed the huge concrete blocks that have to be dug out of the ground to stand one on? They're also a total bugger to service if they go wrong, you can't lower them to the ground and if their bearings go it costs about £1.5 million to replace them. Cheap energy? Don't make me laugh.
But despite its best efforts to conceal the fact that wind turbines expensively and unreliably generate only a derisory amount of electricity, the Government keeps on telling us of its green plans to build thousands more of them at a cost of up to £100billion!
The prime reason for this is that we are legally obliged by the European Union to generate 32 per cent of our electricity from 'renewable' sources by 2020.
The lunacy will continue under the Tories, except that they intend to saddle communities with the cost.

Telegraph.

Residents who allow wind farms to be built in their area would be given ownership of individual turbines and the profits from them under Conservative energy plans.

The Tory plan raises the prospect of residents owning a “village turbine” in the same way some have a community shop or parish hall.
The Copenhagen summit on a new global deal on climate change policies begins next week amid growing signs of popular scepticism about scientific and political claims that urgent action is needed to cut carbon emissions.
Greg Clark, the shadow energy secretary, told the Daily Telegraph, people should be given more incentives to adopt low-carbon technologies.
Labour is changing planning rules to allow the number of onshore wind turbines in Britain to rise from 2,500 to 6,000.
Many rural residents are hesitant about the turbines, which are often more than 100 feet high. The Tories say the final decision on each site should rest with residents, but would offer financial rewards for those backing new wind farms.
There are no profits to be made from wind turbines, the only reason they are economic now is because the government subsidise them! I wonder what will happen to any hamlet who does take up this fools offer when the government is finally forced to cut back? No subsidy and huge costs, the damn things don't pay for themselves, never have, never will!

This is all due to the EU and we see the idiot Tories falling right into line after Labour.

Sooner we're out the better, we're sitting on 300 years worth of coal, nuclear power works fine but we're running out of time and the EU stands in our path for our energy needs with it's carbon emission controls. But our politicians are convinced green power will meet our needs, any engineer will tell them differently, but ignoring inconvenient truths is what being a politician is all about.

1 annotations:

GoodnightVienna said...

I caught the end of a news item yesterday about a village which had its own wind turbine - they were thrilled that by selling on the electricity they had about £160k in the bank but seemed to have forgotten that it cost them £2m in the first place. The figures just don't add up.