As I have come to expect from the Telegraph Business Section Damian Reece here analyses with perception the economics of Miliband's mad rush for Wind Farms. AND what’s more he has noticed what nobody else seems to have done that Britain’s only major wind turbine manufacturer is closing its factory! (So much for Green Jobs! And will that not drive up the price of such installations bought elsewhere?)
But he starts from the basis that the whole Climate Change religion is true, when patently it is no such thing as increasing numbers of scientists are pointing out (though alas not the politicians). There IS a case for alternative energy for getting security of supply against shortages and political blackmail. But the panic urgency of the Climate Change fanatics is hugely expensive and unnecessary.
He also appears to have missed one important point. This year we had a cold spell in February and a heatwave in June. This is not totally unheard of!. They were both caused by stationary high pressure centred over the British Isles. Such conditions go with a dearth of - er - wind! The result was that the wind farms we have produced virtually no electricity on either occasion and heigh-ho it was back to coal, gas, nuclear and oil - fossil fuels all.
So according to the mad boy Miliband we can have electricity when the wind blows - but not so strongly that the turbines have to be shut down! There may be plenty at night some days or on mild winter days. It’s madhouse stuff.
Long term our best bet is not wind farms, nor wave energy but tidal flow. We have around Britain the strongest tides of any major country and they are regular and - importantly - spaced around the coastline and the clock. Such generation is environmentally neutral to wildlife and amenities and is dependable. It is alsoi instant in that as the base load shoots up the units can be switched on. Experimental plants are working now and one I know of is visited by politicians from Hawaii to assess the future.
In the 21st century why are we reverting to the 17th century windmills . Why reinvent the dinosaur?
Christina
TELEGRAPH
16.7.09
Green energy is great, but we need investment to keep the lights on
Transforming Britain into a low-carbon nation is an exciting prospect. Ed Miliband's White Paper could deliver ecologically as well as economically, given the boost to jobs and investment that a transition on this scale requires. [It will also COST jobs! -cs]
By Damian Reece
But such a change in the way our most important piece of national infrastructure works will require vast sums of capital. Those sums need to be committed very soon if we are to make a start in building the wind farms, nuclear power stations and clean coal plants needed to meet Labour's environmental targets – while still keeping the lights on.
I've been reading a very interesting document produced by Ofgem, the regulator, which describes the UK's energy needs and our position in the national and international energy markets that might satisfy them. Its evidence is shaping Ofgem's Project Discovery, a major piece of work looking ahead at the challenges to our energy supplies on behalf of consumers.
In the document it refers to the "2016 cliff face" – the point when 35pc of our traditional oil and coal-fired power stations will be closed under the EU's Large Combustion Plant Directive. So, seven years to go. If this race against time were depicted in an admittedly hackneyed television drama, you'd start to hear a clock ticking at this point. [So in 7 years time, we can’t switch them off! Nobody else will! -cs]
Eye-catching measures such as green energy makeovers for 7m homes address the demand side of the energy equation. But it's the supply side I'm worried about. Wind power was highlighted on Wednesday as a significant contributor to providing the green energy desired by Government. I've no doubt, technically, enough wind turbines could be erected. But at what price and by when?
The London Array is a case in point. It will be the world's biggest offshore wind farm if both phases of the 1,000 megawatt (MW) site, 12 miles off the South-East coast, are built – for the uninitiated, 1,000 MW equals one gigawatt (GW). But until May even the 630MW first phase looked a dream. However, a German, Danish and Abu Dhabi-backed consortium has finally given the go-ahead for work to start on phase one and the £1.97bn investment programme is under way.
Sounds impressive. But here's a bit of context. At the moment we generate 75GW of power in the UK, of which wind accounts for about 2.2GW. The Government wants us to generate 33GW from wind [when it blows at the right speed -cs] by 2020. The 630MW to be generated by the London Array first comes on stream only in 2012. You can see the enormous investment still needed, and needed very soon, if wind power is going to hit its target. Is it just me or is that ticking clock getting louder?
New nuclear stations, which the Government is right to back, won't appear until 2017 at the earliest. And as for clean coal technology, we'll only have demonstration sites by 2014. So we'd better get spending or we risk closing the old power stations without the new, clean ones being up and running.
Except we are in the mother of all credit crunches. The Government hasn't got the money to pay for the capital expenditure itself, so needs the markets to deliver the cash.
No chance, is my considered opinion. The economics of the wind power business, for instance, is fragile to say the least. The UK's only large-scale manufacturer of wind turbines, Vestas, is closing its Isle of Wight factory. One large energy company after another has announced a scaling back in wind investment over the past 12 months including British Gas-owner Centrica. So hitting environmental targets and ensuring a secure supply of energy isn't merely a challenge but a crisis in the making.
You heard of the credit crunch, and its devastating effects, after the event. We can't afford to wait that long to discover the energy crunch. The disruption to society of even brown-outs, never mind black-outs, could be far worse than rising unemployment.
Which is why I was slightly puzzled by Miliband's decision to skate over security of supply in Wednesday's White Paper. The Government believes the threat to electricity supply is "low". It might be today but by 2012, for instance, it could easily be much higher. I suppose presentationally, highlighting security of supply as the most important short-term issue would have distracted from the green energy makeovers.
Malcom Wicks, Gordon Brown's international energy specialist, is due to deliver a report on the topic and Ofgem will be addressing it in September. Intriguingly, Wednesday's White Paper proposes altering the regulator's remit to include both ensuring security of supply but also allows it to use measures "other than competition" to protect consumers interests.
This clearly raises the prospect of the state intervening more directly in energy markets including the strategic ownership (nationalisation) of assets such as our gas storage facilities.
These will become increasingly important as we compete for natural gas, globally, which remains the one obvious way to help plug the energy gap. Is the sound of that clock really loud now? It should be.
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