Good news for wildlife and energy bill payers from Mary Louis, of Kent Online:
A huge expansion of the London Array wind farm off the north Kent coast will not go ahead, it has been revealed today.
A statement from the consortium behind the world’s largest wind farm put the decision to halt the next stage of development down to various factors – including uncertainty over the potential impact on birds.
They included a review by consortium members of their portfolios, the technical challenges and environmental uncertainties surrounding the site. The latter demands a wait of at least three years until Phase 2′s potential impact on birds could be completely assessed.General manager Mike O’Hare said:
“Phase 2 has always been subject to a Grampian condition requiring London Array to demonstrate that any change caused by the additional turbines to the habitat of the red throated divers that overwinter in this part of the Thames Estuary would not compromise its status as a designated environmental Special Protection Area.
“We believe it will take until at least January 2017 for that data to be collected and although initial findings from the existing Phase 1 site look positive, there is no guarantee at the end of three years that we will be able to satisfy the authorities that any impact on the birds would be acceptable.”
Read the full story
Also, a good short video from Ben Acheson
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
The wind of political support for subsidies and mandates is shifting and dieing out. Their portfolio of profits is looking questionable. Time to reexamine their options. 😉 pg
A dense network of heavy duty industrial roads infesting a designated environmental Special Protection Area is not enough. Insane costs due to an unreliable power source with inherently low flux density which needs an equal amount of traditional backup capacity, part time idle, is not enough. Proven detrimental effect of wind turbine noise on human health is not enough. They need birdies, specifically red throated divers to stop them. Yeah, right, whatever.
The birds are an excuse.
_if_ correct wikipedia is revealing. Major is owned by the Danish government
Looks like they are in fiscal trouble, selling off. The political uncertainty in the UK and if they are awake wider worries make this a bad time to speculate.
“DONG sold a power cable accessing the world’s largest wind farm to its partners, E.ON and Masdar for around $728 million in September 2013.[4] As part of a restructuring plan — announced in 2013 — to cut costs, reduce debt, and bolster investments in wind farms and oil and gas exploration, Dong sold an 18% stake to the US investment bank Goldman Sachs. The sale was unpopular in the Denmark’s governing coalition and caused protest resignations of six cabinet ministers and the withdrawal of one party (Socialist People’s Party) from the government.[5]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONG_Energy
From 2013 annual report
“At the end of 2013, the key rating ratios did not meet Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s criteria for a continued BBB+/Baa1 rating. If the DKK 13 billion equity injection had been completed in 2013,
the criteria for the rating ratios would have been met for 2013.”
2013 “Divestment of onshore wind business in Poland”
2013 “Divestment of hydro power company in Sweden”
2013 “Divestment of onshore wind business in Denmark”
2013 “Divestment of the Mongstad power station in Norway”
2013 “Divestment of the Severn power station in the UK”
At the same time they are into other stuff. Company is shifting focus.
They are still bleeding money over various things.
——————————–2013 2012 2011 2010 2009
Profit (loss) for the year (993) (4,021) 2,882 4,499 1,492
Bad year 2012. Danish Kroner, pegged to euro
4021m is 539m euro, not really very much.
As if really knowing what organisations of that kind are really doing is possible.
Could it be that the Dane Socialists are running out of OPM (other peoples’ money). The greens are as red as their balance sheets. Too bad it is bankrupting US to prove that THEY are the fools. Every Liberal Progressive should be forced to wear a scarlet letter as it will take a generation of deprivation to replace the wealth that has wasted on their failed dreams of the Rainbow Mountain. This is the SECOND time that this has been proved to be a FAIL I am sure that they will shout that we need to double the effort and surely the third attempt will succeed. After all the wind is FREE. This has to work, you just have to believe stronger. 😦 pg
That’s several ofshore wind projects abandoned in the last few weeks. Now that is good news, for the country, for all electricity consumers and for the environment. The sooner the wind turbine scam ends, the better.
Comment left at the guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/19/migrating-birds-london-array-offshore-windfarm
How long it’ll stay visible I don’t know.
Leaving aside the monetary economics argument, which is surely lost given the EU,s plans to reduce subsidies, the real killer is the energy return.
These installations will never generate as much power as went into building them, providing the grid interconnection, and providing less than optimally efficient backup.
The environmental issues such as the bird kill onsite, the fish kill in poisoned chinese rivers where the rare earth’s are mined for the magnets, and the loss of amenity, are the nails in the coffin.
Learn the lessons, sack the incompetents and the profiteers, and look to viable solutions.
TB,
Sadly what seems to have happened is not a learning process regarding energy/climate, but rather a shifting and concentration of stupid from the EU/UK and into the US. It is as if there is a conservation of stupid and it gets moved around, not reduced over all.
“Various factors”, indeed. Picking the murder of birds was just one of many alternatives to justify closing the project. Any of them is actually sufficient, so they had a surplus, from economics to health to conservancy. Eroding political and economic favouritism is probably the real cause, of course.
Nice post and ample information. Thanks for sharing.