User Zeke on the Comments page has highlighted a dire situation over be-spoiling the English and Welsh landscape/seascape.
Zeke quotes…
“Massive threat to North Devon & South Wales coasts
UKIP stands opposed to monstrous and ineffective wind farms blighting our countryside nationwide. But the threat is not just on land.
One of the world’s largest offshore windfarms – the ‘Atlantic Array’ – is proposed to be built between the North Devon and South Wales coasts. It would consist of between 188 and 278 turbines, up to 720 feet high.
It would be less than 9 miles from the North Devon coast, 8 miles from Lundy Island and 14 miles from Gower. It would cover 92 square miles of the Bristol Channel.
These coastlines are some of the most unspoilt natural landscapes and seascapes in the country. They are Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and include a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the UK’s first Marine Conservation Zone and huge swathes of National Trust protected land.
Both North Devon and Gower are fragile economies, heavily dependent on landscape-based tourism. The Bristol Channel is a unique marine environment containing rare and protected species. We need hundreds of objectors to write to the developer before Friday.
If you want to help, you must do so in the next few days. You can find out how to help the ‘Slay the Array’ campaign here. We require people to write and get across their objections by Friday. Please also pass on this email to those you think may also be interested.”
(from
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/suggestions-2/#comment-31067
)
[added, Given there is a long standing nuclear station on the north Somerset coast which defacto has done little harm, many years later with much better knowledge, building a much higher output station there must be feasible. Do that and no wind or barrage is needed. And no they do not in reality cost what some claim. Tallbloke might think differently, people vary. --Tim]
Post pinned at top as one of the ways of forcing varied blog content above the surface stations posts.
Posted by co-moderator
Attn: cost of back-up plants for wind turbines, vs. cost of gas plants alone to provide the same power, approximately 38,000MW
“The latest attempt to get them to face reality is by Prof Gordon Hughes, a former senior adviser on energy to the World Bank, now a professor of economics at Edinburgh, whose evidence to the Commons committee on energy and climate change has now been published on the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. His most shocking finding is that the pursuit of our Climate Change Act target – to reduce Britain’s CO2 emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 – would cost us all £124 billion by 2020, or £5,000 for every household in the land: not just to build tens of thousands of absurdly subsidised wind turbines, but also for the open-cycle gas-fired power stations needed to provide back-up. To guarantee the same amount of power from combined-cycle gas-fired plants would cost £13 billion, barely a tenth as much.”
“and include a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve”
Anyone else see the humor in the UN’s IPCC pushing the solutions that are overriding their own UNESCO dictats?!?!?!
And not a word about it on the AGW pushing BBC.
We live in south Wales and only heard about this yesterday- and that complaints must be in by Aug 31.
We’ve spread the word around locally and contacted our AM and MP as well as alerting the local press.
thanks for the timely reminder – I’ve done the sign-up/e-mailings now.
I cannot understand why so much money will be spent on something so useless, which will not just destroy the marine environment, but wherever the ‘energy’ will ‘land’, or the necessary back-up plants will be build, a most remarkable and unique prehistoric landscape will be destroyed.
I’ll be ‘spreading’ this link around …
Perhaps this may throw a spanner in the works!
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/27/un-ruling-eu-must-reassess-renewables-policy.html
The great Albion humiliated! Will be the joke of the world. What a pitiful situation.
From WUWT’s new article today:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/28/germanys-new-renewable-energy-policy/
Due to the inherent intermittent nature of wind, their wind power system was designed for an assumed 30% load factor in the first place. That means that they hoped to get a mere 30% of the installed capacity – versus some 85-90% for coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric facilities. That means that, when they build 3,000MW of wind power, they expect to actually get merely 900MW, because the wind does not always blow at the required speeds. But in reality, after ten years, they have discovered that they are actually getting only half of what they had optimistically, and irrationally, hoped for: a measly 16.3 percent.
Even worse, after spending billions of Euros on subsidies, Germany’s total combined solar facilities have contributed a miserly, imperceptible 0.084% of Germany’s electricity over the last 22 years. That is not even one-tenth of one percent.
-Kelvin Kemm-
Just ONE moving part of a hydraulic electric power generation plant can produce 100 MW, while to achieve the same with wind, thousands of moving parts (if they luckily move, of course) are needed.
It appears that the building of the giant offshore windfarm is part of the figleaf HMG is using to claim they are doing something about co2 emissions from heavy industry:-
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/488/488.pdf
“we are working to
make sure that our energy intensive industries remain in the UK and become part of the
green economy – for example, providing steel for offshore wind farms”
It will be interesting to see what, if any, repercussions follow from the verdict in the Pat Swords case:
http://www.epaw.org/press/EPAW_WCFN_media_release_26August2012.pdf
- Says Pat Swords, author of the complaint to the UN: “the Compliance Committee has
shown that the EU’s renewable energy programme is proceeding without ‘proper
authority’.”
TB,
Is their a plot to bankrupt the UK?
It does seem absurd to be spending billions on power that is weak and intermittent at best.
Making these offshore will also make maintenance of these a nightmare.