The captive state

A few of days ago I mentioned the extraordinary decision of the Scottish Government to proceed with windfarm developments by unlicensed operators, something Lady Clark in the Court of Session has ruled is illegal. I also mentioned that an amendment to the Energy Bill had been tabled with a view to waiving the licensing requirement.

The amendment by Lord Teverson (who is, incidentally a trustee of RegenSW, "a leading centre of sustainable energy expertise and pioneering project delivery") was discussed in the Lords a couple of days ago and there were some powerful interventions from former Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth and another from the legal giant Lord MacKay of Clashfern (Hansard link here). Forsyth was keen to draw attention to the implications for the rule of law, noting that Salmond et al seemed to think 'their renewable energy ambitions trounce the law of the land'. MacKay meanwhile seemed to offer unqualified support to the decision of the Court of Session:

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Greenery grubbery

Taxpayers might as well hand over their credit cardsThere have been some appalling shenanigans going on in the House of Lords during their examination of the Energy Bill. In order to understand what has been going on, one needs to wind back a few weeks to a ruling in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.  In that case, Lady Clark ruled that wind farm operators need an Ofgem license under the terms of the Electricity Act 1989 and since operators have never bothered themselves with actually going through these hoops, the decision seemed to force the SNP administration to slam on the brakes - at least temporarily - in their headlong rush to cover the country in wind turbines.

Remarkably, however, Mr Salmond and his colleagues decided that they would continue to rule on wind farm planning applications anyway, pending an appeal that will be heard next year. Their grounds for doing so were apparently "the national interest" (a position that seems to me to be of dubious legality, although I confess I am no expert on the law in this area).

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Energy gloom

Updated on Oct 10, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Oct 10, 2013 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Oct 10, 2013 by Bishop Hill

David Cameron had a vision of a greener life, lived closer to natureIt's hard not to lose heart sometimes. Looking around the news on the energy front this morning, the bad news is overwhelming.

It's not online, but the FT has apparently reported that the coalition is considering accelerating the retreat from fossil fuels, with coal-fired power stations only operating as load-balancing capacity. This is because the coalition is frightened that Lord Oxburgh's Energy Bill amendment in the House of Lords will win through and that a ruinous decarbonisation target will be put in place.

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Auditor general: 'You're having us on'

The Auditor General for Scotland has issued a report on the country's progress towards achieving its renewable energy targets. As ever with this kind of report, one has to read between the lines a little, but your humble host exists to help readers understand what is really going on.

Progress towards the 2020 targets has been, the report insists, 'steady', but actually meeting them will be 'challenging'. Translated from Sirhumphreyan (mandarin?) into English, I think this means 'fat chance'.

Similarly, the report notes the figures for job creation that are bandied about in Holyrood and declares that it is 'difficult' to identify the number of people actually employed in renewables businesses, for which readers might understand that they can't actually find any. Meanwhile, projections of future employment in the sector are described as 'optimistic', for which I think reasonable people would read 'concocted'.

The report is here.

Der energieshambles

Spiegel is reviewing Germany's alleged transition to green energy, which is proving just as disastrous as the one in the UK. The story is a familiar one:

If there is too much power coming from the grid, wind turbines have to be shut down. Nevertheless, consumers are still paying for the "phantom electricity" the turbines are theoretically generating. Occasionally, Germany has to pay fees to dump already subsidized green energy, creating what experts refer to as "negative electricity prices."

On the other hand, when the wind suddenly stops blowing, and in particular during the cold season, supply becomes scarce. That's when heavy oil and coal power plants have to be fired up to close the gap, which is why Germany's energy producers in 2012 actually released more climate-damaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than in 2011.

There needs to be a wholesale clearout of both the politicians and the civil servants who did this to us.

Official policy: put kids in mortal danger

The Telegraph reports on a wind turbine in the grounds of a school in Thurso was destroyed by a brisk breeze:

Two blades were ripped from the 18m high turbine in the Scottish Highlands and thrown up to 60 yards away after it was hit by 40mph gales. A third was left badly buckled.

The risk to the lives of children is obvious, although mercifully nobody was injured on this occasion.

Readers should be clear that putting wind turbines in school grounds is not something that is done willy-nilly. It is officially encouraged, part of the sustainable education strategy put in place in 2006 by the then Labour Education Secretary Alan Johnson.

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One turbine per kettle?

The Telegraph is on top form today, looking at the detailed wind power data and finding some horrific results:

The Telegraph examined a snapshot of RWE’s own figures on Thursday afternoon last week. One wind farm Trysglwyn, which is in Anglesey in Wales, was producing a total of 6 kilowatts (KW) - just enough to boil two kettles each with 3KW of power.

The wind farm has 14 turbines and a theoretical capacity of 5.6 megawatts (MW). In other words, the wind farm was producing just 0.001 per cent of its maximum capacity.

And, even worse, some windfarms were withdrawing power from the grid:

According to RWE’s own data, three wind farms on Thursday afternoon appeared to be taking electricity from the National Grid rather than supplying it.

That the political establishment has imposed this kind of corruption on the country will not go unnoticed forever. It will haunt the big three political parties for generations.

Hiding the evidence

The Telegraph has a big story on windfarms this morning.

The newspaper has learnt that a new Government row over wind farms is blocking a report that could provide official confirmation that the controversial turbines can harm rural areas.

Sources have said that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) — run by Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat — wants to stop Owen Paterson, the Conservative Environment Secretary, publishing a major report that he has commissioned on renewable energy and the rural economy.

The report is apparently in its early stages, so it should provide us with months of fun. Lay in the popcorn supplies, I would say.

Today's energy prognostications

The shale gas story is still getting a fair amount of media play. In the Times (reproduced at GWPF), Matt Ridley looks at the most common scare stories put round by the green movement in their ceaseless struggle to find some mud that they can get to stick.

In the meantime, Zoe Williams in the Guardian looks at energy policy as a whole. This is interesting stuff, because it gets near to sensible at times, which is not something one finds oneself saying about that particular publication very often.

...all energy production causes environmental damage. Even the people who love the look of windfarms have to admit to the scenic damage caused by the roads and surrounding infrastructure they need. Coal mines, nuclear facilities … which of these things could you say looked pretty? An opposition whose fundamental principle is, "energy from anywhere, unless it's near me" is just individualism dressed up as environmentalism.

But it's not all good. Having admitted that renewables are not ready for prime time...

the lowest carbon fuels are renewables; they're not yet ready to supply all the country's energy;

...she then concludes that we should invest in them. In her view, we should spend money on gas to ensure that the lights stay on, and continue to throw money at wind power, which she admits doesn't deliver the goods.

Hearing rules against UK renewables programme

Pat Swords writes:

You will find the attached [files 1, 2] to be of interest. In summary success has been achieved in obtaining a ruling at an international legal tribunal that the UK is in non-compliance with its legal framework and international treaty arrangements with regard to the implementation of its renewable programme (15% renewable energy target and National Renewable Energy Action Plan).

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Public opinion on shale and energy

Yougov has published a poll of UK public opinion for the Sunday Times, which this time round includes a number of questions about shale gas exploitation and energy policy in general. These are the questions and main responses. The segmented responses can be seen in the original document here.

I'm not sure that it tells us very much, except that the public are a bit mixed up on these questions.

Shale gas is natural gas trapped under sedimentary rock, which is extracted using a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". There are large reserves of shale gas in parts of England. Some people think that using shale gas could be a solution to Britain's energy needs. Other people think that fracking is a dangerous technique that risks contaminating ground water and causing minor earthquakes. From what you have seen or heard about the issue, do you think Britain should or should not start extracting shale gas?

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Energy impact

I'm grateful to reader Mark for the image here (click for full size). It shows an area near Barenburg, Saxony in which there are both wind turbines and gas wells. Mark explains the importance:

I think it rather illustrates the point we have been making the last few years. There are 11 gas wells in the photo, but they are extremely difficult to spot due to their small size relative to the wind turbines (they can be located by the things that look like mobile phone masts).  In fact the gas is from sandstone, rather than shale rock, but I understand that they were hydrofractured in the 1970s to improve recovery (like the Wytch Farm wells in Poole Harbour).

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Sans raison - Josh 228

Andrew Simms hilariously titled article is here. It is so funny I have just repeated it. He seems to be worried that we might have too much prosperity, be able to keep the lights on for longer and generally ignore mad renewable schemes like Wind turbines for many many years. This sounds like great news to me. 

Cartoons by Josh

The low-down on windfarms

The Scottish Wild Land Group has published a special edition of its members magazine devoted to the desecration of the landscape by windfarms. This has been made available to everybody here.

It features articles by Pat Swords, Helen McDade from the John Muir Trust, and John Constable from the Renewable Energy Foundation, among many others.

Wind press

The Renewable Energy Foundation has been pressing the Scottish Government and its bureaucrats to explain some of the answers it has given in Parliament about the performance of windfarms. These seem to have been prompted by Gordon Hughes' report on the poor performance of UK windfarms compared to those in Denmark (see earlier BH post here). The new correspondence has been published at REF's website here.

It seems that Hughes' findings have been discounted by the bureaucrats on the grounds that the turbines installed prior to 2002 were "immature". Which is it bit odd when you think about it. Why would immature turbines be installed in the UK but mature ones in Denmark?

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