renewable energy

Looks like the message is getting through, Phil the Greek and his grand-so Harry have got with the program.

Prince Harry has voiced concerns about the visual impact of wind farms during his tour of America.

His comments came as he attended a reception in Denver on Friday night and his views are apparently shared by his father the Prince of Wales.   Read more »

Labour and The Greens are telling us that the solution in California is the one to look at. Except earlier I blogged about how fragile it is with planning for rolling blackouts.

Now we can look at why their power is cheap…simple economics.

Changes in California’s market have attracted lots of new generation; the state expects to have 44% more generating capacity than it needs next year. Grid officials say they expect the surplus to fall to 20% by 2022, though it will remain high for about a decade.

However, the surplus generating capacity doesn’t guarantee steady power flow. Even though California has a lot of plants, it doesn’t have the right mix: Many of the solar and wind sources added in recent years have actually made the system more fragile, because they provide power intermittently.

So once again the Labour and Green parties have lied about the solution. They have simply looked at California, seen they have a state control of the market and assumed that is the underlying reason for cheap power. Wrong. Simple economics is the underlying reason, and 10 years of enforcing building of extra capacity so much so that they now have 44% more capacity than is needed.  Read more »

The time of the climate change shills is coming to an end, but not before literally billions has been poured into their pockets. Stephen F. Hayward looks and the whole Climate Change debacle and the decline of the deception.

 [T]he climate change story has been overtaken by facts on the ground. Most significant: The pause in global warming​​—​​now going on 15 years​​—​​has become so obvious that many of the leading climate scientists are grudgingly admitting that global warming has stopped. James Hansen, who recently stepped down as NASA’s chief climate scientist to become a full-time private sector alarmist, is among those admitting that the recent temperature record has flatlined.

After two decades of steady and substantial global temperature increase from 1980 to 1998, the pause in warming is causing a crisis for the climate crusade. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The recent temperature record is falling distinctly to the very low end of the range predicted by the climate models and may soon fall out of it, which means the models are wrong, or, at the very least, something is going on that supposedly “settled” science hasn’t been able to settle. Equally problematic for the theory, one place where the warmth might be hiding​​—​​the oceans​​—​​is not cooperating with the story line. Recent data show that ocean warming has noticeably slowed, too.

These inconvenient data are causing the climate science community to reconsider the issue of climate sensitivity​​—​​that is, how much warming greenhouse gases actually cause​​—​​as I predicted would happen in these pages three years ago: “Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases?”  Read more »

Hippes can suffer. The evidence is mounting of the great success of fracking and the astonishing failure of hippie power projects:

Enter the Apollo Alliance, which is a project of the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Apollo forged a new labor/environmentalist that would both limit fossil fuel use and spend billions promoting green energy.

Since renamed the BlueGreen Alliance, the group launched with a report calling for $500 billion in spending to create a “New Apollo Program” for the U.S. economy. It included federal subsidies for green car companies and solar firms, cash to make existing buildings energy-efficient, new power line construction and billions for new mass transit systems.

The New Apollo Program called for a cap-and-trade plan designed to drive energy producers away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy like solar, wind and biomass. Apollo promised these new initiatives would create 5 million new jobs.

The Obama campaign fully embraced the Apollo vision, producing its own New Energy for America document that largely mirrored the Apollo report. The only real difference was that Obama’s plan created 5 million new green economy jobs for just $150 billion.  Read more »

The Green Taliban likes to talk about “renewables” like they are some sort of holy grail. Unfortunately they aren’t:

Although renewables remain the power source of choice for greens, they require such massive subsidies that their role in meeting soaring electricity demand will remain incidental. Spain is only one country that has decided that it can no longer afford the subsidies that renewables require, and only Obama’s antipathy to fossil fuels, his war on climate change, and the political clout of some of his donors keep subsidies flowing to uneconomic solar and wind companies.

Renewables are as fraudulent as their insistence that humans are warming the planet.

James Delingpole celebrates the collapse of a wind turbine:

Richard Dawkins you are WRONG. There IS definitely a God – and for proof, look no further than His decision to topple a ruddy great wind turbine at Bradworthy in Devon just a day before my first ever appearance on Question Time.

With luck, this will mean a wind turbine question pops up. I do hope so, for it will give me the perfect opportunity to the point out yet another of the myriad reasons why wind turbines are such a monstrous and utterly indefensible blight. Apart from being ugly, noisy, expensive, inefficient, destructive to wildlife and incapable of doing the one thing that notionally they’re supposed to do – “reduce CO2″ – they are also BLOODY DANGEROUS.  Read more »

The UK is being carpeted with windmills, promoted by the Green Taliban but with the cash being trousered by rich toffs (which is what with happening with all of the loony Green schemes).

Well there is one less of these monstrosities in the UK today.

The £250,000 tower, which stood as tall as a six storey building, was hit by gale force gusts of 50mph.

The structure then collapsed at a farm in Bradworth, Devon, leaving a “mangled wreck”.

Margaret Coles, Chairwoman of Bradworthy District Council, said hail storms and strong winds have hit the area and the turbine, installed just three years ago, simply could not withstand the wind.

“The bolts on the base could not withstand the wind and as we are a very windy part of the country they [the energy company] have egg on their face,” she said. “There are concerns about safety.”

The Bradworthy Parish Council, who opposed the turbine, expressed concern that there was “nothing exceptional” in the speed of the winds.

Installed by renewable energy company Dulas it was supposed to have a life expectancy of 25 years.

How long before Meridian’s bird-blenders start falling on the locals around here?

Regular readers of this blog know that I hate subsidies and even more I hate subsidising so-called green technologies. Wind power is one of those technologies.

Some people may ooh and ahh over those hideous turbines junking up the view but I do not. Wind power is doomed in the UK and now it is looking increasingly doomed in the US as people find out that the billions in subsidies have done bugger all except line the pockets of the turbine salesmen.

With the fiscal cliff approaching it looks like wind subsidies are finally doomed:

Federal subsidies for new wind-power generation will end on Dec. 31 unless they are renewed by Congress. For the sake of our economy and the smooth operation of the energy market, Congress should let the subsidies lapse. They waste taxpayer money, subvert the allocation of capital, and generate a social cost many times the price tag of the subsides themselves.

Since 1992, the federal government has expended almost $24 billion to encourage investment in wind power through direct spending, tax breaks, R&D, loan guarantees and other federal support of electric power. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that a one-year extension of existing federal subsidies for wind power would cost taxpayers almost $12 billion.

The costs of wind subsidies are extraordinarily high—$52.48 per one million watt hours generated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By contrast, the subsidies for generating the same amount of electricity from nuclear power are $3.10, from hydropower 84 cents, from coal 64 cents, and from natural gas 63 cents.

Cost is only part of the problem:

Subsidized, wind-generated electricity is displacing other, much cheaper sources of power. The subsidies are so high that wind-power producers can pay utilities to take the electricity they produce and still make a profit. Such “negative pricing” has occurred for some time in the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and in Texas—and, according to the Energy Information Administration, it will likely grow.

But wind isn’t constant which means that costly redundant back up power generation capacity must be maintained.

Power grids that rely on wind-generated electricity have to maintain redundant, backup generating capacity in case the wind isn’t blowing and the demand for electricity is high. Many of these backup sources, such as coal and gas-fired plants, have to be kept up and running to be available when they are needed—even if they are not used. This partially offsets the environmental benefits of wind power.

Wind power proponents are having a lend.

In the 1990s, the federal government began subsidizing wind power based on the hope that, with a helping hand, the technology would improve rapidly, costs would decline, and the industry would become economically viable. Congressman Phil Sharp (D., Ind.), the original proponent of the subsidies, argued in 1991 for “a sunset provision to ensure that the temporary incentive does not become a permanent subsidy..

But the sun has never set. Again and again—on seven subsequent occasions in all—federal subsidies for wind were extended.

Yet wind power is less economically viable today than it was when the current subsidies started in 1992. After the expected gains in moving from one-off production to assembly-line production, no major technological breakthrough has occurred that would substantially lower the cost of wind-power electricity generation. The Department of Energy’s “2009 Wind Technology Market Report” finds average wind-power costs were higher in 2009 than they were in 1994, two years after the subsidies began. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu has observed on more than one occasion, wind energy is a “mature technology.”

Time to end the subsidies.

It is increasingly difficult to make a case that taxpayers should continue to subsidize wind-generated electricity. The end of the subsidy will not induce owners of existing windmills to shut them down, since so much of the cost is fixed in the original construction project and so little of their costs are entailed in operating the windmill once it is constructed. Under current law, billions of dollars in subsidies will continue to be paid out over the next decade on existing projects even if the subsidies for projects built in the future expire.

If unimpeded, the expanded use of cheap natural gas to generate electricity will raise living standards and attract millions of new industrial jobs back to our shores. A vote to stop wind subsidies from being extended is, therefore, a vote for cheaper, more reliable power, higher living standards, reindustrialization and fiscal sanity.

There is nothing better than watching supposed allies tear each other apart publicly. Witness the green on green bitch fight happening in the US over one of Google’s solar plants. This is a case of the Green Taliban taking on the Green Illuminati:

Aerial view north of Ivanpah Solar showing all three solar fields with heliostat installation complete in Solar Field One in the foreground, 27 October 2012

One big problem with renewable energy projects is that they have to go somewhere. They have to occupy a part of the very environment that their proponents are often trying to save.

Photographer Jamey Stillings beautifully captures this tension in his images of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Located in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, the plant aims to eventually be the largest solar thermal power plant in the world – making enough electricity to run 140,000 homes all by focusing the sun’s energy to create steam.

Problem is, the system is located smack in the middle of the threatened desert tortoise habitat and the companies that built the system have already had to allocate $56 million to care for and relocate these ground dwellers. At least one major environmental group has argued the plant should have never been built on its current location.

If it isn’t tortoises it is bloody snails. Guess how many tortoises have been saved for $56 million?

To date Hunter says 144 tortoises (77 adults, 67 juveniles) have been found on site and all 77 adults have been relocated.

“Caring for the tortoise is something we take very seriously,” she says.

FFS!

And they think they can work together?

The left scrapping continued yesterday… this time over deep sea oil drilling and the Petrobras decision to quit the East Coast.

Current Labour Leader David Shearer said:

“His party supported deep sea drilling as long as appropriate safeguards and criteria were met.  Deep sea drilling could help New Zealand’s economy.”

But Green Energy spokesman and anti-growth zealot Gareth Hughes issued this statement…

The Green Party welcomed news that Petrobras has abandoned its plans to conduct risky deep sea oil drilling in New Zealand and says it shows the Government’s plans for deep sea drilling are collapsing.

“The Government’s deep sea drilling plans have so far failed, and it’s just as well. Petroleum development, including deep sea drilling, is the wrong focus for our economy, said Green Party energy spokesperson Gareth Hughes.

…

“We can create a smart, green economy by moving away from risky extractive activities like deep sea oil drilling, and towards renewable energy and clean-tech jobs,” said Mr Hughes.

Good grief, imagine the boy MP as energy minister…he is so anti-progress he’d re-open buggy whip manufacturing as a clean-tech industry.

Green jobs are what happen when the liver excretes bright green bile into the small intestine…..if you think green jobs are good, you seriously need to be clubbed like baby seal.