Two questions

The BBC's Five Live Drive programme yesterday interviewed a chap called Dale Vince from a company called Ecotricity. The segment is embedded below. During the show, he made the claim that government support for onshore wind only costs the consumer £5 per year.

Here are two questions:

1. What is the basis of this figure?

2. What is the cost to the consumer of the renewables obligation (which doesn't count as "support")

As an aside, it's interesting to note that Mr Vince makes £6m per year in subsidies on his windfarm empire. I think the BBC should probably have mentioned this.

Drive excerpt

Lost Horizons

Ben Pile's new film on windfarms has been released. Colour me very impressed. Phillip Bratby features early on.

Davey snaps back

Ed Davey has apparently snapped back at John Hayes' comments about wind farms:

A source said the minister had planned to make the remarks in a speech on Tuesday night but was instructed to remove them by Davey if he wanted to deliver a speech.

The source warned: "What he planned to say was not government policy; will not be government policy. It might be what the Tory party would like to be energy policy, but it is not. He is not in charge of renewable policies on his own, he has to follow the coalition agreement which is in favour of renewable energy, and meeting our legal EU targets for 2020.

"He has been very silly to give interviews to the Telegraph and the Mail on a speech he was not allowed to deliver.

The statement then continued:

"The only way we are going to meet our targets is if we include renewable energy which is ultimately a cheap form of energy, and in parts of Wales and Scotland is popular."

thus proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the "source" is on drugs.

It's hard to tell what this all means, but I imagine that wind energy investors are having something of a squeaky bum day.

***Did Hayes just kill the wind industry?***

Energy Minister John Hayes may just have killed the wind industry:

John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.

The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective”. The comments sparked speculation that Conservative ministers are planning to drop their support for wind farms — a move which would trigger a major Coalition rift.

Hughes bites back

The battle of wits and words between Robert Gross, the Imperial College PR guy turned policy wonk, and Gordon Hughes, the Edinburgh University economist continues apace, with Hughes issuing a pointed response to Gross's criticisms:

The story of wind power in Europe is one of consistent over-optimism about performance and costs reinforced by an apparent unwillingness to define clear policy options and then construct analyses based on concrete evidence. Modelling is not a substitute for evidence. In practice, the Imperial College/DECC claims about the costs of current policies rest upon the old story of “this time everything is going to be different”. Really? How could we test this?

I would propose a simple market test that bears directly on the subject of the original ECC hearing. If the proponents of the Imperial College/DECC view of this issue believe that my calculations of the costs of existing policies are wrong, why do they not endorse a major and continuing reduction in the level of subsidies? For example, the costs claimed would be consistent with a reduction to 0.5 ROCs per MWh immediately and to zero by 2020 for onshore wind and something equivalent for offshore wind.

Wind of not much change...

From £several billion.

From Today's Moderator: Davey and the DECC are at it again.

Adam Bruce has accepted the position of Chairman of the new Offshore Wind Programme Board. The Offshore Wind Programme Board has been established following the recommendations in the Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Task Force report. It will comprise a small number of senior representatives from industry (including developers and supply chain), Government and Statutory Nature Conservation advisors and is based on successful models used in other sectors such as the Oil and Gas PILOT group.

The Programme Board’s objective will be to treat the UK’s offshore wind sector as one business, proactively considering its risks and assigning the appropriate participants to work on solutions to the issues raised.

Secretary of State Edward Davey said:

“We need to get the economy moving again and a massive expansion in home grown, clean, renewable energy capacity is central to this.

“As well as being a clean, green, home-grown energy source offshore wind offers significant employment opportunities for industry across all areas of the UK. However we are clear that costs must come down. I am delighted that Adam Bruce has accepted the role of Chairman to take this challenge forward.

“I look forward to working closely with Adam and the other members of the Programme Board in my role as joint-Chair of the Offshore Wind Developers Forum”....

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn12_126/pn12_126.aspx

Don't miss the ...Notes for editors

As announced in the UK Renewable Energy Roadmap in July 2011, the Offshore Wind Cost Reduction was established to set out a path and action plan to reduce the costs of offshore wind to £100/MWh by 2020. It reported to DECC & Devolved Administration Ministers in June this year, with a number of recommendations for Government and industry to take forward.

Adam Bruce is currently the Global Head of Corporate Affairs at Mainstream Renewable Power. He is the former UK Chief Executive of Airtricity, which was sold in 2008 to SSE plc. Mr Bruce was Chairman of Renewable UK from 2007-2010. He spent 10 years with the law firm McGrigors, where he was a founding director of the firm’s Public Policy practice. He sits on the Boards of the Friends of the Supergrid, the European Wind Energy Association, and the Global Wind Energy Council. He is a Fellow of the RSA.

The OWPB will report initially to the Offshore Wind Developers Forum, which is jointly chaired by Keith Anderson of Scottish Power and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate change, Edward Davey. The Offshore Developers Forum is a forum which brings together Government and industry, through the offshore wind developers, to work on solutions to remove barriers that have the potential to impede the viability and deliverability of offshore wind in the UK.

Does this mean they will endeavour to discover how  to part the waves of the North Sea and abate the storms thereof?

Update 20.10.2012, 8.20am [TM]

I see that the Offshore Wind Developers appear to be under the aegis of The Crown Estate.

Offshore Wind Developers Forum

Together with the Government and senior executives from the 17 developers working on offshore wind projects, we have established the Offshore Wind Developers Forum.

UK offshore wind vision

"The UK to be the centre of offshore wind technology and deployment, with a competitive supply chain in the UK, providing over 50 per cent of the content of offshore wind farm projects."

Presumably  the other 50% is from overseas manufacturers.

http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/energy/offshore-wind-energy/working-with-us/offshore-wind-developers-forum/

Click to read more ...

Talking sense

Wind power is a folly for which businesses and, let us not forget, domestic consumers pay dearly.

Click to read more ...

Renewable money

A £103m fund to help boost investment in renewable energy has been launched

Click to read more ...

Paterson on renewables

[Owen Paterson at the Conservative Party conference] warned renewable developments can upset communities and promised to make sure this is taken into account when subsidies for wind farms are put up for review.

Click to read more ...

Subsidy junkies threaten to leave

Green energy companies are threatening to leave the UK if we don't roll out the subsidies to the promised schedule. This story comes to us via the front page of the Times, which can just about be seen here.

And this is a problem why?

Update on Oct 8, 2012 by Bishop Hill

The Telegraph's take on the story is here.

Perth protest

There is a protest against Scottish Government wind farm policy in Perth on 20th October.

Details here.

Ouch

The defence of windfarms put forward by Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall, which was discussed a couple of days ago, has now had a response from Gordon Hughes. Hughes is less than impressed with the two greens' table manners:

A final note on civility. After my GWPF report on the economics of wind power, Mark Lynas contacted me by email with a substantial number of requests for elucidation and additional data. I replied promptly and at considerable length. He is entitled to take a different view of the evidence and to reach different conclusions about the impact of further investment in wind power on future emissions of CO2. However, it is neither courteous nor constructive in the broader context to create a straw man that is supposed to represent my position when I have provided detailed analysis and arguments that are clearly different. It is an elementary precept of both journalism and academic enquiry to check whether the views presented are accurate. No attempt has been made to carry out such checks in this case.

He seems even less impressed with their analysis of the electricity grid:

[T]he Goodall-Lynas evidence is incomplete. It relies upon data about the plants which are supplying electricity to the grid. It takes no account of the CO2 emissions of plants that are operating as spinning reserve. For simplicity, let us suppose that all spinning reserve is provided by gas combined cycle plants (CCGTs). If changes in wind output are balanced by changes in the level of spinning reserve, then the total amount of gas that is burned – and, thus, CO2 emissions – is completely independent of change in wind output. In terms of the Goodall-Lynas evidence, higher levels of wind generation displace gas generation one-for-one. But, there is absolutely no saving in CO2 emissions because the gas plants carry on running as before but they are just feeding less electricity into the grid. The reason for the error is that their figures take no account of what is happening in the parts of the electricity system that they have ignored.

There's much more in this vein. Read the whole thing - it will cheer you up no end.

Missing the point?

There is lots of excitement among greens this morning over an article by Mark Lynas, which purports to show that wind farms do not increase carbon emissions.

From analysing National Grid data of more than 4,000 half-hour periods over the last three months, a strong correlation between windiness and a reduction in gas-fired generation becomes clear. The exchange rate is about one for one: a megawatt hour of wind typically meant the UK grid used one less megawatt hour of gas-derived electricity. This means that actual CO2 savings can be calculated from the data with a high degree of accuracy – these are not guesstimates from models, but observations of real-world data.

Click to read more ...

Grinding to a halt

Readers will remember the UN ruling that Ireland's energy policies were non-compliant with the Aarhus Convention, a point that was somewhat moot since Ireland had not actually ratified the convention anyway.

However, the implications of the ruling were clear for the EU. Nation states are not able to plough on with policies that are alleged to deal with climate change without the consultations that are mandated by the convention. A test case, put before them by Christine Metcalfe, a community councillor from Taynuilt in Argyll, has now been accepted by UNECE. Her "communication", the questions that UNECE require her and the UK government to answer, together with her response can be seen on the UNECE website. The UK government reponse is due in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, the government and planning authorities around the country are in a quandary. The earlier ruling would appear to mean that the UK's headlong rush for wind power is illegal. Would responsible public authorities give the go-ahead to any more wind farms until the UNECE has ruled on the Metcalfe case? We will have to see. Judgement is expected in the middle of next year.

Spiral of subsidy

One of the points I made in my Spectator speech was the effect of wind power on the rest of the electricity system - a familiar subject to readers here. Assuming we have no coal-fired generation in the future, the baseload power generation market will have to be divided between wind and nuclear. However, with ministers declaring that there will be an expansion of the subsidised wind sector, that marketplace does not look ripe for investment in new nuclear. Generators in that sector are therefore holding out for generous incentives of their own.

Last month, EDF told the Telegraph that they wanted a guaranteed price of £140/MWh roughly double what gas might cost us. The chief executive of Scottish and Southern today argues that a line should be drawn in the sand at £65/MWh and that nuclear generators should get their costs down.

You can see where this is heading: each generator will demand more and more support to keep them in the marketplace. A guaranteed price for nukes will have to be met by an increase in support for wind. We will end up with a disastrous spiral: subsidy after bung after price floor after graft after corruption. All paid for by you.

So here's a novel idea. How about we do away with the rules and regulations and see who is really the cheapest?