Recycling renewables

Recycled wind turbine tower [image credit: inhabitat.com]

Like it or not, there are already industrial quantities of renewable installations and their hardware in many places around the world. Sooner or later the problem of what to do with hordes of obsolete wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and suchlike ‘green’ paraphernalia has to be addressed to prevent a massive pile-up of industrial waste.

Renewable energy has been hailed as the great salve for the world’s climate change woes, says Chemical & Engineering News.

Building massive infrastructure for solar and wind energy, and introducing electric vehicles, will help citizens in developing countries live the lifestyles they desire without the need to burn dirty fossil fuels.

But though these technologies have existed for decades, there’s no plan to make sure they remain green to the end.

Experts forecast hundreds of thousands of tons of old wind turbine blades, batteries, and solar modules will need to be disposed of or recycled in the next decade—and millions of tons by 2050.

Read on about the technologies evolving around the world to handle this unusual waste stream – here.

Climate policies blamed for rising UK electricity prices

Nothing new there perhaps but, like the boiling frog, the reality of an endless upward ratchet of climate charges on bills may still not have fully sunk in with some of the public yet.
H/T The GWPF

Any doubt that increases in UK electricity prices are the result of energy and climate policies, rather than underlying wholesale energy costs, is firmly set aside by the recent announcement from Opus Energy that it must increase its prices to consumers by 7.5% even to those on Fixed Term contracts because of sharply rising “pass through” costs, namely subsidies to renewables, grid management, and the Capacity Market.

Opus Energy, part of the Drax Group and winner of the British Small Business award for Energy Provider of the Year (2017), has written to customers in the last week announcing a 7.5% increase in electricity supply charges.

Climate-industrial complex wasting £100 billion and shutting down debate – warns Lilley

Credit: Fenbeagle

H/T The GWPF

Former Trade and Industry Minister, Peter Lilley warns that vested interests in the renewables industry, politicians of all parties, the bureaucracy and academia have together largely suppressed debate about their reckless waste of public money exposed by the government’s own Review of the Cost of Energy by Dieter Helm.

In a paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Peter Lilley highlights Professor Dieter Helm’s devastating critique, outlined in the Cost of Energy Review which was commissioned by the government.

“Helm shows that the Climate Change Act objective of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide could have been met for a fraction of the £100 billion so far committed, which has already raised the cost of energy by 20%.”

Firm gets £1.7M in green subsidies as its plant spews putrid gas

One local complained: ‘Residents used to be able to watch the sun setting over the sea at Blackpool. Now all they can see is a mountain of muck.’ Not to mention the foul smell.

Clayton Hall, a supposedly ‘green’ electricity plant in Lancashire, has been generating misery for months – by shrouding thousands of nearby homes in a stinking fog of poisonous gas, writes David Rose in The Mail on Sunday.

The owners of the plant at the Clayton Hall landfill site in Lancashire, sandwiched between the commuter towns of Leyland and Chorley, a golf course and pretty, rolling hills, have received about £1.7 million in green energy subsidies since it opened in 2010.

These levies are added directly to consumers’ household bills. The firm has made a further £1.7 million from selling power to the grid.

Green activists forced to withdraw false ‘50% off’ claim in wind power adverts

Greens playing propaganda tricks on the public? Probably not their first ‘offence’ of this kind…
H/T The GWPF

Environmental activists have withdrawn an advertising campaign after being accused of making false claims about the price of wind energy, says the Daily Mail.

The poster, launched in September by Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi and plastered around Westminster Tube station and across London’s transport network, claimed the price had fallen by 50 per cent over the past two years.

Britain starts dismantling wind farms after successful Lake District campaign

Kirkby Moor [image credit: Stephen Dawson / Wikipedia]

Let’s hope other scenic but corrupted areas take up the baton to get more of these ridiculous industrial eyesores removed from our natural environment.

A dozen 140ft wind turbines on the edge of the Lake District are due to be dismantled next summer after a decision which could result in many more being removed to restore views, reports the GWPF (from The Times).

The wind farm on Kirkby Moor on the Furness peninsula in Cumbria would be the first large one to be taken down since they began appearing around Britain in 1991.

South Lakeland district council refused an application by the wind farm operator to keep the turbines operating for another ten years until 2027.

Sir Ian Byatt: The economic consequences of UK climate change policies

We’re told Peter Lilley MP ‘calculates a cumulative cost of over £10,000 per household between 2014 and 2030’. Much pain, little gain, no sense of economic reality? Many electricity customers can’t afford these massive and largely avoidable extra costs mandated by the targets of the UK Climate Change Act, in the vain hope of altering the weather.

Sir Ian Byatt, British economist, former Government advisor and a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, is presenting a paper today at a climate conference organised by L’association des Climato-Réalistes in Paris, reports The GWPF.

Abstract: The climate change policy of successive British governments are damaging the UK economy.

The UK is unique in having ambitions (80% by 2050) targets for reducing emission of CO2 embedded in a Climate Change Act, and monitored by a Parliamentary committee.

Climate change policy could reduce average individual household income by more than £10,000 over a period from 2014 to 2030, or more if targets for electric cars are also to be met.

The True Cost Of The Climate Change Act

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Either the Arctic, or even hell itself, will have to freeze over before our current politicians change course on their barmy and futile so-called climate policies.

That or the electorate wakes up and tells them where to get off – unlikely while media climate brainwashing is in full swing.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/efo/economic-fiscal-outlook-march-2017/

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the cost of Environmental Levies and the RHI scheme, (all a consequence of the Climate Change Act), will have risen to £13.5bn by 2021/22.

All of this cost is borne by energy consumers, except for the RHI, which is taxpayer funded.

But what is likely to happen to these costs in the years after 2021/22? Dieter Helm in his recent report reckons the cumulative cost will be well over £100 billion by 2030, but this appears to be way under the mark, given the costs already identified up to 2021.

There has been an ongoing conspiracy between the Government and the Committee on Climate Change to conceal the true cost of their policies.

I have therefore now undertaken a detailed study of the real costs between now and 2030, and the results are truly horrifying.

By 2030, the…

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The Murmansk wind park that collapsed

Murmansk harbour [image credit: Martin Lie / Wikipedia]

Too much wind for these wind turbines near the north Russian coast to cope with. The solar panels at the same site also face technical problems. Back to diesel again.

It was an innovative project which was to power several local villages with green energy. Two years after it opened, the strong Arctic winds have knocked down the turbines, says The Barents Observer.

It was cheering and rejoice in Chavanga and Chapoma, the villages on the coast of the White Sea, as a unique small-scale power generating complex was officially opened in late summer 2015.

Wind turbine breaks apart at Australia Antarctic base

The head of a turbine is lying on the ground at Australia’s Mawson Antarctic base [image processed by CodeCarvings Piczard]

Flying turbines ahoy! Fossil fuel to the rescue as usual.

The blades of a wind turbine at an Australian Antarctic base broke off and narrowly missed a storage building as they crashed to the ground, reports Phys.org, forcing the icy outpost to switch to backup power.

The head of the turbine, one of two at Mawson station, plunged 30 metres (100 feet) on Tuesday evening, despite there being only moderate gusts of wind at the time.

All 13 members of the expedition at the station are safe, and were inside their living quarters at the time, said Rob Wooding, general manager of support and operations at the base.

The second turbine was deactivated as a precaution, with the base switching to its diesel generators.

German wind farms to be terminated as subsidies run out

The short working life of wind turbines compared to power stations, plus their lack of commercial viability, will likely put the brakes on German renewables expansion according to this GWPF report. Where do used wind farms go to die?

Wind power is the most important component of Germany’s green energy transition.

The end of subsidies for older turbines, however, threatens countless wind farms. By 2023, more than a quarter of Germany’s onshore wind farms may be gone.

Poorer homes could be exempted from paying green energy taxes

Energy costs on the rise

This is the official admission that ‘green energy’ costs due to ideologically-based policies are a significant portion of, and reason for, fast-rising UK domestic energy bills.

Poorer customers could be exempted from paying ‘green’ energy taxes included in bills and pay just for what they use under plans being drawn up by leading power firms, says the GWPF.

Energy regulator Ofgem is consulting consumer groups and power companies on proposals for a ‘safeguard’ tariff, which would protect 2.2 million customers.

This follows on from Prime Minister Theresa May’s pre-Election pledge to cut £100 from 17 million family energy bills.

SA’s Wind Power Disaster: Deluded, Potty-Mouthed Premier Brands Critics ‘Right-Wing Fu@%wits’

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This is a fun spectacle from a distance, but not so much for South Australia’s hard-pressed electricity consumers.

STOP THESE THINGS

What left wing fu%#wits can achieve…

South Australians must wake up each morning in the vain hope that it’s all just a very bad dream.

Alas, their sorry reality is one dictated by wind worshipping lunatics, not least its vapid Premier, Jay Weatherill.

Last week, Weatherill launched an astonishing tirade against Chris Kenny – a columnist with The Australian and The Advertiser – calling him a “right-wing fuckwit” for having the temerity to point out one or two fairly obvious facts about the unfolding disaster caused by Weatherill’s obsession with wind power.

With a grid on the brink of collapse (the coming summer promises more mass blackouts and load shedding, whenever wind power output collapses on a total and totally predictable basis) and the highest power prices in the world by a country mile, you might think that humility would be the order of the day among the leaders responsible…

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Tourists shun Scottish regions hit by wind turbine ‘blight’

Whitelee wind farm, Scotland [image credit: Bjmullan / Wikipedia]

Wherever onshore wind turbines are built there will also be networks of electricity pylons to carry the power away. Tourism is big business in windy Scotland.

A survey carried out on behalf of the John Muir Trust (JMT) found that 55% of respondents were “less likely” to venture into areas of the countryside industrialised by giant turbines, electricity pylons and super-quarries, reports The Times (via GWPF).

Just 3% said they were “more likely” to visit such areas, while 26% said such large-scale developments would make “no difference”. The poll has rekindled calls for Scottish ministers to increase protection for wild and scenic areas that, it is argued, will protect rural tourism businesses.

At last: Britain preparing to scrap EU renewables targets after Brexit

Enthusiasm fading for renewables targets?

This could put a bit of sanity back into UK electricity generation policy, if it happens.

Britain is preparing to scrap EU green energy targets which will add more than £100 to the average energy bill as part of a bonfire of red tape after Brexit, says the GWPF.
 
Government sources told The Daily Telegraph that the target, under the EU Renewable Energy Directive, is likely to be scrapped after Brexit.

The UK is currently committed to getting 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2020. Ministers have long been critical of the targets because they exclude nuclear power, carbon capture or gains from energy efficiency.

The UK is currently on course to miss the target and incur millions of pounds in fines from the European Union.

The Great Folly Of Our Age–Booker

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Booker describes how fortunes are being wasted on so-called ‘green’ schemes, while achieving little except loss of reliability in the national electricity supply.

NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4392220/Green-initiatives-disasters-says-Christopher-Booker.html

Booker with a hard hitting piece about the Climate Change Act in the Mail:

What a parable for our times the great diesel scandal has been, as councils vie to see which can devise the heaviest taxes on nearly half the cars in Britain because they are powered by nasty, polluting diesel.

This week, it was announced many diesel drivers will soon have to pay fully £24 a day to drive into Central London, while 35 towns across the country are thinking of following suit. Already some councils charge up to £90 more for a permit to park a diesel car.

The roots of this debacle go back to the heyday of Tony Blair’s government, when his chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, became obsessed with the need to fight global warming.

Although he was an expert in ‘surface chemistry’ — roughly speaking, the study…

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Idaho’s $4.3 million solar road generates enough power to run ONE microwave

Credit: citymetric.com

And that’s on a good day. To call it a failed experiment would be an understatement.

An expensive solar road project in Idaho can’t even power a microwave most days, according to the project’s energy data.

The Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways project generated an average of 0.62 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per day since it began publicly posting power data in late March, reports The Daily Caller. To put that in perspective, the average microwave or blow drier consumes about 1 kWh per day.

On March 29th, the solar road panels generated 0.26 kWh, or less electricity than a single plasma television consumes. On March 31st, the panels generated 1.06 kWh, enough to barely power a single microwave.

James Delingpole Dumps on the Great Wind Power Fraud

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The tide is starting to turn, in America at least.

STOP THESE THINGS

James Delingpole has been slugging it out with lunatics from the Greenblob for more than a decade. Now, as the world wakes up to the scale and scope of the great wind power fraud, Slim Jim finds himself on the right side of history. Here he is letting the world know about it.

Why Renewables Are Doomed and Fossil Fuels Are the Future
Breitbart
James Delingpole
9 February 2017

We’re on the verge of a new energy revolution. Except it’s the exact opposite of the one the “experts” at places like BP, the International Energy Agency and – ahem – the Guardian are predicting.

For years we’ve been assured by politicians, energy industry specialists and green advocates that renewables such as wind and solar are getting more and more cost-competitive while dirty fossil fuels are so discredited and wrong and evil we’ll soon have to leave them in the ground.

But…

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Reality Bites: ‘Green’ Dreamers Struggling to Spin Away South Australia’s Failed Wind Power Experiment

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Reality is catching up with wind power dreamers in South Australia as the public wake up to the truth – via power failures.

STOP THESE THINGS

Fantastic in theory, but reality is another place.

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It’s been barely 5 months since South Australia experienced a state wide blackout on 28 September, when a typically vigorous spring storm delivered wind speeds in excess of 90km/h, causing the majority of turbines operating at its 18 wind farms to automatically shutdown to avoid self-destruction. The ensuing collapse in wind power output overloaded the interconnectors with Victoria, which tripped automatically; and thereafter South Australia suffered what is now known as a ‘system black’ (see our post here).

With a string of blackouts during December (see our post here) and mass load shedding during a heat wave when, yet again, wind power output plummeted (see our post here), humour among South Australians is now a rare and treasured commodity.

Inversely related to South Australians’ fury at their power pricing and supply calamity, is the battle that the wind…

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Government meddling makes energy costlier, peers say

Note the output from the cooling towers is NOT black – no trick photography here.

For some reason (‘de-carbonisation’) the UK government’s actions on electricity supply are usually opposite to its stated policy of ‘secure, affordable’ energy. Expensive and often unreliable power sources are given priority most of the time, apparently in pursuit of climate illusions.

Interventions in the energy market by successive governments have pushed up prices, but not secured supplies, peers found. A House of Lords committee said the interventions have led to an opaque, complicated and uncompetitive market, reports BBC News.

The peers blame “poorly designed government interventions in pursuit of decarbonisation” that they say have put pressure on energy supply and bills. The government said its priority was ensuring secure, affordable energy.