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Bishop Hill Feb 24, 2013 Energy: wind Normal BH service will be resumed tomorrow. In the meantime Booker has a good, if thoroughly depressing, look at the UK's energy crisis.
Has anyone in the government said they think the lights will in fact stay on? Or should we accept their sullen silence as an admission that we are in trouble?
Bishop Hill Feb 15, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind Hat tip to Barry Woods for this story from World Environment News:
Foreign investors in renewable energy projects in Spain have hired lawyers to prepare potential international legal action against the Spanish government over new rules they say break their contracts.
It is unclear how much claims might be worth, but international funds have more than 13 billion euros ($17 billion) of renewable energy assets in Spain and say that the government has reneged on the terms of their investment.
The Spanish Parliament approved a law on Thursday that cuts subsidies for alternative energy technologies, backtracking on its push for green power.
One can hardly blame the businesses for trying, but for the hard-pressed poor in Spain's already ravaged economy, this will be a bitter pill to swallow. When the lights start going out in the UK, we might well see a similar retreat by UK politicians and similar attempts to prevent them in the courts.
Who'd want to be an environmentalist then?
Bishop Hill Feb 11, 2013 Energy: costs Energy: gas Energy: wind Greens Last week Bloomberg New Energy Finance had one of those silly "wind cheaper than everything else" articles that appear from time to time.
Unsubsidised renewable energy is now cheaper than electricity from new-build coal- and gas-fired power stations in Australia, according to new analysis from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
This new ranking of Australia’s energy resources is the product of BNEF’s Sydney analysis team, which comprehensively modelled the cost of generating electricity in Australia from different sources. The study shows that electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm at a cost of AUD 80/MWh (USD 83), compared to AUD 143/MWh from a new coal plant or AUD 116/MWh from a new baseload gas plant, including the cost of emissions under the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme. However even without a carbon price (the most efficient way to reduce economy-wide emissions) wind energy is 14% cheaper than new coal and 18% cheaper than new gas.
We now know from bitter experience that claims of this kind are usually feature one of a handful of magic ingredients that give the answer required:
Climate Spectator - a site that I believe is an upholder of the IPCC consensus - has rather taken the Bloomberg article apart showing that the second bullet is the favoured option:
In terms of wind being cheaper than combined cycle natural gas, the key assumption behind that conclusion is that new gas contract prices will rise from the $4 per GJ that most power plant are paying today, to $12 per GJ for new plant.
Bloomberg's baloney is so bad that even their allies are appalled.
Bishop Hill Feb 7, 2013 Energy: costs Energy: wind The Scottish Tories, armed with their bright and shiny new energy policy (which can be summarised as "we're not going to be quite as silly as the SNP"), have decided to let rip at the Holyrood powers that be accusing them of driving Scots into fuel poverty:
A Scots politician has claimed wind farm subsidies are plunging Scots into fuel poverty.
In a Scottish Government debate on fuel poverty, Mid-Scotland and Fife MSP Murdo Fraser attacked the SNP for its staunch backing of onshore wind projects.
Opponents of the Government policy have claimed the generous grants awarded to wind farm developers have pushed electricity costs through the roof, leaving Scotland with some of the highest energy bills in Europe.
The subsidies were introduced across the UK last year and are expected to have cost up to £1 billion.
They offer a huge benefit to the energy companies as they push ahead with wind power projects but their cost in added on to household bills.
All this is quite true, of course, but I think we have a long way to go before Holyrood sits up and takes notice. Fuel poverty and frozen pensioners are secondary concerns when there is the green vote to pursue.
Bishop Hill Feb 6, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind Guido reports that Charles Hendry, the former Energy Minister, has got a new job.
[Hendry has] just been announced as the chairman of the wind energy giants Forewind. The consortium comprising of four international companies -Scottish and Southern, RWE, Statoil and Statkraf – was awarded the contract in 2010 to build the huge “Dogger Bank” windfarm 125km off the Yorkshire coast.
Yeo, Deben, Hendry. There is no end to it.
Bishop Hill
And Huhne too. As the Mail reminds us, Huhne is a paid consultant to Nationwide Energy Services.
Bishop Hill
In the comments, we are reminded that the last chairman of Forewind was Lord Deben.
Bishop Hill Feb 3, 2013 Energy: coal Energy: wind Greens This is the unmistakeable conclusion of remarks from Richard Dixon, the head of Friends of the Earth Scotland in an interview on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday. The debate concerned Loch Fitty, not far from where I live, which is to be drained, the coal bed beneath mined. Discussion turned to the ongoing effects on the landscape, with a view put forward that a temporary opencast mine replaced with a relandscaped loch was infinitely preferable to a landscape permanently scarred with wind turbines.
Of course wind turbines do not have to be there permanently. Most of them will be there for 25 years. But if we decide to remove them then they are removed.
This strikes me as rather misleading.
The whole discussion is quite fun. Link below.
Bishop Hill Suzanne Goldenberg enjoys (if that's the right word) a certain reputation among BH readers and her latest offering will do nothing but enhance (if that's the right word) her position in our estimation.
America's carbon dioxide emissions last year fell to their lowest levels since 1994, according to a new report.
Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 13% in the past five years, because of new energy-saving technologies and a doubling in the take-up of renewable energy, the report compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) said.
The reduction in climate pollution – even as Congress failed to act on climate change – brings America more than halfway towards Barack Obama's target of cutting emissions by 17% from 2005 levels over the next decade, the Bloomberg analysts said.
The Bloomberg report is here. It actually says little about emissions, but as far as I can see it says nothing like what Ms Goldenberg suggests it does on the subject of renewables. try this for example:
The reductions in coal generation, ascendancy of gas, influx of renewables, expansion of CHP and other distributed power forms, adoption of demand-side efficiency technologies, rise of dispatchable demand response, and deployment of advanced vehicles are all contributing to the decline in carbon emissions from the energy sector (including transport), which peaked in 2007 at 6.02Gt and have dropped by an estimated 13% since.
And as the report also makes clear, the big change in the energy mix has been the rise of gas:
Total US installed capacity of natural gas (442GW) plus renewables (187GW) is now at 629GW (58% of the total power generating mix) – up from 605GW (56%) in 2011 and 548GW (54%) in 2007. Between 2008 and 2012, the US nearly doubled its renewables capacity from 44GW to 86GW (excluding hydropower, which itself is the single largest source of renewable power, at 101GW as of 2012).
Bishop Hill Jan 29, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind This is my interview today on Newsdrive, the BBC Radio Scotland afternoon show, discussing energy and climate. I am preceded by Patrick Harvie of the Green Party.
Bishop Hill Jan 29, 2013 Energy: gas Energy: nuclear Energy: wind The Scottish Conservatives have announced their new energy policy, which seems, on the face of it, to be not quite as foolish as what has gone before.
Wind farms should be substantially cut and fossil fuels such as shale gas should be exploited, according to a review of Scottish Conservative energy policy.
The shake-up calls for councils to be given the power to halt all wind farm applications for a year and suggests homeowners should be compensated for loss value because of turbines.
They are also advocating construction of new nuclear power stations. However, belying their reputation as a party of small government and free markets they still intend to pump money into renewables.
Could do better.
Bishop Hill Jan 21, 2013 Energy: wind Bryony Worthington, the environmental campaigner who was ennobled by the last government and then proceeded to run amok through UK energy policy, has penned a critique of Dieter Helm's book on solving the UK's energy problems. Helm's objective is to do this without actually trashing the economy or killing off too many old folk.
Worthington's approach is rather different of course. She notoriously favours only hair-shirt policies on energy - if objectives are achieved without any pain they don't count in her book (see here). It's therefore hard to take her views on anything terribly seriously. For those who want a laugh, she seems to think that subsidising technologies that don't work is the way forward.
Strewth.
Bishop Hill Jan 16, 2013 Energy: wind Pat Swords sends this report on the most recent hearing in his case to halt the Irish government's renewables policy in its tracks.
Went in this morning and the state of play was reviewed between myself and the Barrister for the State, as it was set for preliminary review with both Parties before the High Court. We are now adjourned until the 13th March; they want to submit a written defense that there was undue delay, which I then have to prepare a written reply to before the 13th March. It's their only out of the case, so they are going to prepare it in writing, i.e. that Justice Peart should not have granted me leave back in November 2012 for the case to be heard. Their only hope is to get it thrown out on a technicality, i.e. they knowingly bypassed the necessary steps of assessment and democratic accountability back in 2010 and as nobody went straight into the High Court within a narrow timeframe (where access to justice procedures had not been implemented), then de facto it is legitimate to continue to implement the programme. This naturally ignores the later ruling now achieved in the UN that this whole process was non-compliant.
Bishop Hill Jan 12, 2013 Energy: wind A legal challenge to the Scottish government's green energy policy could kill off Alex Salmond's dream of utterly destroying the Scottish countryside. In a move that parallel's Pat Swords' challenge to Irish policy, Christine Metcalfe's challenge to Holyrood policy was recently given a hearing by the Compliance Committee at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe:
The question of the Scottish Government’s Renewables Routemap came up. The committee was shocked to discover that, despite the pronouncements of Fergus Ewing MSP and First Minister Alex Salmond, the Scottish Government’s Renewables Routemap 2020 and Energy Policy Statement are still officially only drafts.
So officials have relied on these drafts in giving the go-ahead for more than 3,500 wind turbines, granting planning without proper scientific justification based on a draft.
Bishop Hill Jan 8, 2013 BBC Energy: biomass Energy: wind The Archers, the BBC's ultra-long-running farming soap opera covered renewables subsidies in one of its story lines the other day (H/T Guy). The writers were somewhat off message (link below).
I wonder if this signifies anything.
Bishop Hill Jan 3, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: wind UKIP The Telegraph claims to have a splash on Conservative ministers' attitudes to windfarms - in particular those of planning minister Nick Boles and DECC's John Hayes.
The Daily Telegraph has been told that Mr Boles warned Mr Hayes in the letter that people “bitterly resented” having onshore wind farm developments imposed on them by planners after an inquiry.
It is also the first evidence of a Tory ministerial alliance against Liberal Democrat attempts to introduce more onshore wind turbines.
The intervention will be a major boost for communities which are fighting the construction of turbines near their homes.
The Conservatives, as we know, can do little or nothing about energy policy in the UK, since the coalition agreement awards this to the LibDems. This announcement therefore reeks of the blue half of the government reacting to the continuing rise of UKIP in the polls by trying to tickle the tummies of some disgruntled rural voters with a view to slowing the exodus of their voters to Farage's team.
;)
