“Sustainable energy” just isn’t …. well, sustainable

Posted on April 27, 2012

April 25th: At the Vaasa event with Romana Jordan MEP (Slovenia). Very sound on nuclear

I’ve just returned from a flying visit to Vaasa, Finland, with the European Energy Forum.  The delegation was led by Slovenian MEP Romana Jordan.  Vaasa boasts an “energy cluster” of cutting-edge companies in the energy field, and we spent a very solid day with Wärtsilä, a global Finnish company developing and making very large internal combustion engines.  These have been widely used in shipbuilding, where the company has a substantial market share, and has production and assembly operations around the world, including key ship-building nations like China and Korea.
But increasingly, engines of this type are also used for power generation, especially as back-up for wind.  I’d always assumed that conventional gas-fired generation was the natural back-up for wind, but it seems that these machines are also ideal for the purpose.  They can run on heavy or light fuel oil, or natural gas (think shale gas), and on bio-fuels and some oil wastes.  They ramp up rapidly as the wind drops, and can switch instantly — literally instantly, we saw it done — from gas to diesel.
Wärtsilä has made a rational commercial decision to market these machines as back-up for wind, given the commitment of European governments to renewables.  But the message I took away was that wind, as a significant contributor to power generation, absolutely requires back-up.  Otherwise, when the wind drops, the lights go out.  We were shown a series of graphs clearly demonstrating the need for additional conventional back-up capacity in the mix, given the typical pattern of wind speeds.  (We also saw a graph that destroyed the myth of the Greens, that intermittency can be solved with a European super-grid because “over such a big area, the wind is always blowing somewhere”.  No it isn’t.  We saw a graph of aggregate wind output over a month in Spain plus Denmark plus Germany, which showed massive variation day-by-day and hour-by-hour, absolutely requiring back-up).
We are hearing in the media that the cost of wind-generated electricity is coming down, and may reach parity with coal and nuclear (although not gas).  David Cameron, speaking on April 26^th, reaffirmed his faith in renewables and called for prices to come down.  “I really believe that renewables can be among our cheapest energy sources in years, not decades”, he said. I mean no disrespect to our Prime Minister, but the level of ignorance and complacency shown by his remarks is truly frightening.
Let’s get back to reality.  If you want wind to deliver, say, a megawatt, you need four megawatts of installed capacity (because the load factor is likely to be around 25%).  But you also need to build a megawatt of conventional back-up, either Wärtsilä’s internal combustion engines, or conventional gas.  You’ve paid the capital cost twice, for the same generating capacity.
But it gets worse.  Whichever back-up you use, it will run much less efficiently when it’s substituting variable wind, than if it ran continuously.  So its output will cost more, and create higher emissions.  A couple of recent reports indicated that the emissions saving of wind plus back-up might be trivial or zero.  We’re spending double the money, yet saving little or no CO2.  A Wärtsilä presenter put it well, and I wrote down his phrase: because the back-up would be run occasionally, not continuously, its output in relation to capital investment was “not investment feasible”.  In other words, you’ve got to pay way over the odds on the output of the back-up, because you’re not just buying electricity — you’re buying insurance against the wind dropping.  You’re paying a huge premium for continuity, to prevent black-outs.
Let me offer you an heretical idea: why not just build the back-up, and forget the wind?
Neither government planners nor those who calculate the relative costs of wind and other generating technologies seem to have got a grip on the back-up issue.  Estimates of the cost of wind generation make no allowance for double capital requirements, nor for the enhanced costs of intermittent running.  And our government, while planning that 30% of our generation by 2020 should come from wind, to meet the EU’s risible emissions targets, seems unaware of the back-up issue.
The best answer you get is that “We have lots of gas, so we can use that for balancing the grid”.  But with nuclear power stations phased out with age, and coal-fired power stations being banned by EU regulations, we’ll need all the gas we have just for base-load.  We’ll need 30% extra capacity for back-up, otherwise the lights will go out, and we’re not building it.  This is a disaster in the making.
The huge costs of capital, and excess production costs from conventional back-up run intermittently, will eventually be passed on to business and domestic consumers.  Meantime China and India build cheap coal-fired power stations (no EU regulations there), and America is enjoying a shale-gas bonanza.  Energy intensive industries will simply move out of Britain, and out of the EU, to lower-cost areas.  Renewables will ensure that the UK economy is no longer economically sustainable.  Sustainable energy is not sustainable in economic terms.
Coalition energy policy is a double-whammy.  It will destroy the competitiveness of the British economy, while ensuring that black-outs become commonplace by the end of the decade.  That’s what the Greens call “Sustainability”.

The winds of change

Matt Ridley

3 March 2012

  The government has finally seen through the wind-farm scam – but why did it take them so long?

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine — despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now. The people of Britain see this quite clearly, though politicians are often wilfully deaf. The good news though is that if you look closely, you can see David Cameron’s government coming to its senses about the whole fiasco. The biggest investors in offshore wind — Mitsubishi, Gamesa and Siemens — are starting to worry that the government’s heart is not in wind energy any more. Vestas, which has plans for a factory in Kent, wants reassurance from the Prime Minister that there is the political will to put up turbines before it builds its factory.
This forces a decision from Cameron — will he reassure the turbine magnates that he plans to keep subsidising wind energy, or will he retreat? The political wind has certainly changed direction. George Osborne is dead set against wind farms, because it has become all too clear to him how much they cost. The Chancellor’s team quietly encouraged MPs to sign a letter to No. 10 a few weeks ago saying that ‘in these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines’.
Putting the things offshore may avoid objections from the neighbours, but (Chancellor, beware!) it makes even less sense, because it costs you and me — the taxpayers — double. I have it on good authority from a marine engineer that keeping wind turbines upright in the gravel, tides and storms of the North Sea for 25 years is a near hopeless quest, so the repair bill is going to be horrific and the output disappointing. Already the grouting in the foundations of hundreds of turbines off Kent, Denmark and the Dogger Bank has failed, necessitating costly repairs.

In Britain the percentage of total energy that comes from wind is only 0.6 per cent. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, ‘policies intended to meet the EU Renewables Directive in 2020 will impose extra consumer costs of approximately £15 billion per annum’ or £670 per household. It is difficult to see what value will be got for this money. The total carbon emissions saved by the great wind rush is probably below 1 per cent, because of the need to keep fossil fuels burning as back-up when the wind does not blow. It may even be a negative number.
America is having far better luck. Carbon emissions in the United States fell by 7 per cent in 2009, according to a Harvard study. But the study concluded that this owes less to the recession that year than the falling price of natural gas — caused by the shale gas revolution. (Burning gas emits less than half as much carbon dioxide as coal for the same energy output.) The gas price has fallen even further since, making coal seem increasingly pricey by comparison. All over America, from Utah to West Virginia, coal mines are being closed and coal plants idled or cancelled. (The US Energy Information Administration calculates that every $4 spent on shale purchases the same energy as $25 spent on oil: at this rate, more and more vehicles will switch to gas.)

So even if you accept the most alarming predictions of climate change, those turbines that have ruined your favourite view are doing nothing to help. The shale gas revolution has not only shamed the wind industry by showing how to decarbonise for real, but has blown away its last feeble argument — that diminishing supplies of fossil fuels will cause their prices to rise so high that wind eventually becomes competitive even without a subsidy. Even if oil stays dear, cheap gas is now likely to last many decades.
Though they may not admit it for a while, most ministers have realised that the sums for wind power just don’t add up and never will. The discovery of shale gas near Blackpool has profound implications for the future of British energy supply, which the government has seemed sheepishly reluctant to explore. It has a massive subsidy programme in place for wind farms, which now seem obsolete both as a means of energy production and decarbonisation. It is almost impossible to see what function they serve, other than making a fortune from those who profit from the subsidy scam.

Even in a boom, wind farms would have been unaffordable — with their economic and ecological rationale blown away. In an era of austerity, the policy is doomed, though so many contracts have been signed that the expansion of wind farms may continue, for a while. But the scam has ended. And as we survey the economic and environmental damage, the obvious question is how the delusion was maintained for so long. There has been no mystery about wind’s futility as a source of affordable and abundant electricity — so how did the wind-farm scam fool so many policymakers?
One answer is money. There were too many people with snouts in the trough. Not just the manufacturers, operators and landlords of the wind farms, but financiers: wind-farm venture capital trusts were all the rage a few years ago — guaranteed income streams are what capitalists like best; they even get paid to switch the monsters off on very windy days so as not to overload the grid. Even the military took the money. Wind companies are paying for a new £20 million military radar at Brizlee Wood in Northumberland so as to enable the Ministry of Defence to lift its objection to the 48-turbine Fallago Rig wind farm in Berwickshire.

The big conservation organisations have been disgracefully silent on the subject, like the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which until last year took generous contributions from the wind industry through a venture called RSPB Energy. Even journalists: at a time when advertising is in short supply, British newspapers have been crammed full of specious but lucrative ‘debates’ and supplements on renewable energy sponsored by advertising from a cohort of interest groups.
And just as the scam dies, I find I am now part of it. A family trust has signed a deal to receive £8,500 a year from a wind company, which is building a turbine on land that once belonged to my grandfather. He was canny enough not to sell the mineral rights, and the foundations of the turbine disturbs those mineral rights, so the trustees are owed compensation. I will not get the money, because I am not a beneficiary of the trust. Nonetheless, the idea of any part of my family receiving ‘wind-gelt’ is so abhorrent that I have decided to act. The real enemy is not wind farms per se, but groupthink and hysteria which allowed such a flawed idea to progress — with a minimum of intellectual opposition. So I shall be writing a cheque for £8,500, which The Spectator will give as a prize to the best article devoted to rational, fact-based environmental journalism.
It will be called the Matt Ridley prize for environmental heresy. Barring bankruptcy, I shall donate the money as long as the wind-gelt flows — so the quicker Dave cancels the subsidy altogether, the sooner he will have me and the prizewinners off his back.

Entrants are invited forthwith, and a panel of judges will reward the most brilliant and rational argument — that uses reason and evidence — to gore a sacred cow of the environmental movement. There are many to choose from: the idea that wind power is good for the climate, or that biofuels are good for the rain forest, or that organic farming is good for the planet, or that climate change is a bigger extinction threat than invasive species, or that the most sustainable thing we can do is de-industrialise.
My donation, though significant for me, is a drop in the ocean compared with the money that pours into the green movement every hour. Jeremy Grantham, a hedge-fund plutocrat, wrote a cheque for £12 million to the London School of Economics to found an institute named after him, which has since become notorious for its aggressive stance and extreme green statements. Between them, Greenpeace and Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) spend nearly a billion a year. WWF spends $68 million a year on ‘public education’ alone. All of this is judged uncontroversial: a matter of education, not propaganda.
•••
By contrast, a storm of protest broke recently over the news that one small conservative think-tank called Heartland was proposing to spend just $200,000 in a year on influencing education against climate alarmism. A day later, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with assets of $7.2 billion, gave a grant of $100 million to something called the ClimateWorks Foundation, a pro-wind power organisation, on top of $481 million it gave to the same recipient in 2008. The deep green Sierra Club recently admitted that it took $26 million from the gas industry to lobby against coal. But money is not the only reason that the entire political establishment came to believe in wind fairies. Psychologists have a term for the wishful thinking by which we accept any means if the end seems virtuous: ‘noble-cause corruption’. The phrase was first used by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir John Woodcock in 1992 to explain miscarriages of justice. ‘It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned,’ said the late Lord Denning, referring to the Birmingham Six.

Politicians are especially susceptible to this condition. In a wish to be seen as modern, they will embrace all manner of fashionable causes. When this sets in — groupthink grips political parties, and the media therefore decide there is no debate — the gravest of errors can take root. The subsidising of useless wind turbines was born of a deep intellectual error, one incubated by failure to challenge conventional wisdom.
It is precisely this consensus-worshipping, heretic-hunting environment where the greatest errors can be made. There are some 3,500 wind turbines in Britain, with hundreds more under construction. It would be a shame for them all to be dismantled. The biggest one should remain, like a crane on an abandoned quay, for future generations to marvel at. They will never be an efficient way to generate power. But there can be no better monument to the folly of mankind.

The Matt Ridley Prize for Environmental Heresy

Slowly the Penny Drops

Institute for the Study of Civil Society 6 January 2011 Media Information: EMBARGO: 00.01 hrs, Monday 9 January 2012 Wind-power: inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 emissions Energy experts warn that unwarranted support for wind-power is  hindering genuinely cleaner energy The focus on wind-power, driven by the renewables targets, is preventing Britain  from effectively reducing CO2 emissions, while crippling energy users with additional  costs, according to a new Civitas report. The report finds that wind-power is unreliable  and requires back-up power stations to be available in order to maintain a consistent  electricity supply to households and businesses. This means that energy users pay twice:  once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy  sector continues to rely on. Contrary to the implied message of the Government's approach,  the analysis shows that wind-power is not a low-cost way of reducing emissions. Electricity Costs: the folly of wind-power, by economist Ruth Lea, uses  Government-commissioned estimates of the costs of electricity generation  in the UK to calculate the most cost-effective technologies. When all costs  are included, gas-fired power is the most cost-efficient method of generating  electricity in the short-term, while nuclear power stations become the most  cost-efficient in the medium-term. All that wind takes a lot of gas Wind-power is acknowledged to cost more than traditional fossil fuel power stations . But estimates from Government-commissioned reports suggest that, when the cost  of CO2 emissions is included, onshore wind-power becomes one of the more  cost-effective means of generating electricity. Offshore wind does not however.  [See p. 12 - p. 23] Unfortunately, these estimates fail to factor in all the costs  of wind-power. These costs are due to the fact that energy output from wind  is unpredictable and rarely occurs in areas of most demand: ... wind-power is unreliable and requires conventional back-up generating  capacity when wind speeds are, for example, very low or rapidly varying... [p. 14] This means that wind farms need to be supported by conventional capacity  including gas-fired power stations that can be switched on whenever the  available wind fails to match demand for electricity. Lea cites research by  Colin Gibson, former Power Network Director at the National Grid Group,  who has produced some of the most comprehensive estimates for these 'add-on costs'. When these add-on costs are included, the resultant levelised generating costs  (£ per megawatt hour) for the main electricity generating technologies are, for medium-term projects: Nuclear pressurised water reactors (PWR): £67.8 per MWh. Gas-fired combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT): £96.5 per MWh. Gas CCGT with carbon capture and storage (CCS): £102.6 per MWh. Coal (ASC) with CCS: £111.9 per MWh. Advanced supercritical (ASC) coal-fired power plants: £133.2 per MWh. Onshore wind: £146.3 per MWh (including 'add-on costs' of £60 per MWh). Offshore wind: £179.4 per MWh (including 'add-on costs' of £67 per MWh). (Note: one megawatt hour can run approximately 1000 desktop computers for 8 hours) The most cost-effective technologies are nuclear and gas-fired. Onshore, and especially  offshore, wind technologies are inordinately expensive. Pumping out more CO2 Besides the prohibitive costs, the report shows that wind-power, backed by  conventional gas-fired generation, can emit more CO2 than the most efficient gas  turbines running alone: In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power,  Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on  "normal windy days" in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption,  rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high- efficiency gas turbines. Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore  actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined  cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. [p. 30] This means that the cost of having wind is not just carried by consumers but by the  environment as well. Caught in a cross-wind The report explains how two competing environmental policies have generated a  perverse set of priorities. The renewables targets have forced the energy sector to  focus on more expensive, less reliable power sources, rather than those most likely  to reduce emissions while keeping costs to the rest of economy competitive: The Climate Change Act 2008 requires that Britain's greenhouse gas (GHG)  emissions be cut by 80 per cent by 2050 compared with the 1990 level and  by 34% by around 2020. The EU's Renewables Directive (2009) commits the UK to sourcing 15% of  final energy consumption (FEC) from renewables by 2020. Renewable energy  sources include wind, hydro and biomass, but not nuclear power. [pp. 4-5] This means that UK legislation separately specifies an outcome (reduced CO2 emissions)  and a process, more renewable energy. The outcome itself is substantial and threatens many Britons' standard of life and  employment prospects if not achieved efficiently: ... consultants Redpoint Energy point out "…meeting these targets will mean a  radical change in the way the UK produces and consumes energy over the coming decades." [p. 4] Unfortunately, the legislated process is ineffective at reaching its supposed outcome.  The result of forcing unreliable renewables on the energy sector is higher costs to  consumers as well as more CO2 emissions than are necessary for maintaining the  electricity grid. One outcome of this micro-managed approach is that commercial and public sector  energy users are, paradoxically, charged under the Climate Change Levy for their  use of electricity generated by nuclear power stations (nuclear plants emit no CO2  after construction). The CCL is designed to encourage greater use of renewable  energy sources even though wind-power can result in higher CO2 emissions than  efficient gas turbines. [pp. 6-7] The report concludes: [Wind-power] is expensive and yet it is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions.  If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive,  wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating  electricity or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated  with the EU. [p. 30] For more information contact: Ruth Lea, Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project, 07800 608 674 Civitas on 0207 799 6677 Notes for Editors i. Ruth Lea is Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project at Civitas and an economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group. ii. Electricity Costs: The folly of wind-power is available to download here. iii. Civitas is an independent social policy think tank. It has no links to any  political party and its research programme receives no state funding.

Madness on sea:

At last the damage to our coast is being noticed!  DAILY MAIL 18/06/2011

 

Madness on sea: A massive windfarm is being built off one of our most glorious coastlines and threatens an ecological disaster

By Richard Pendlebury

Last updated at 12:41 AM on 18th June 2011

A typical North Sea summer evening of alternate rain and sun and I am surging across the waves aboard a powerful launch, in the company of five Norwegians.
Three of them are teenage geography students from a high school outside Bergen. They are chaperoned by their teacher Jan; all here to witness their country's latest maritime engineering feat.
In the distance, long lines of yellow stumps emerge from the sea, giving the illusion that the earth really is flat and we are approaching a fence at the end of the world.

Vision of the future: Scroby Sands offshore wind farm in Norfolk, like the one planned for Sheringham Shoal

Up close, the stumps are revealed to be steel towers which loom more than 20 metres above our little craft, like the smoke stacks of so many sinking Titanics. Save, that is, for two of the towers which bear the globular, metallic, electricity substations on top of them weighing 1,000 tonnes each.
In the middle of this futuristic seascape sits a leviathan mother ship, the 14,000-tonne heavy crane vessel Oleg Strashnov, her boom raised more than 100 metres over the swell.
Our guide today is Einar Stromsvag, an affable beanpole of an engineer from a fishing town in the fjords of north-western Norway. Einar is the general manager of Scira Offshore Energy, a joint venture company formed by the global energy giants Statoil and Statkraft, both of which are majority-owned by the Norwegian Government.

What we are inspecting this evening is Einar's baby; Scira's £1 billion flagship project. Covering 14 square miles on completion, it will be the world's second-largest offshore windfarm.
Hundreds of men, mostly Scandinavian but also Dutch and Belgian, are working aboard the couple of dozen boats and ships of the windfarm's fleet. Some live on a converted Danish ferry, at anchor a mile from the construction site. It frees up the holiday season accommodation ashore 'and keeps the men out of the pubs there', remarks Einar.
Not everyone in the project has to live so monastically, however. Einar, for example, is living in a cottage in one of the prettiest coastal villages. And the previous night I had stayed in a nearby hotel, in which the rest of the windfarm management occupy a whole wing.
A member of staff told me that the hotel, the largest in this popular holiday town, is sometimes more than half full of Norse maritime engineers. Yet we are not off Bergen, Stavanger or Tromso. Nor even Northern Scotland. This is the Sheringham Shoal, and some 10 miles to the south, the coast of North Norfolk — granted heritage status — can be seen quite clearly.

Outstanding natural beauty: Sunrise on a misty morning at Holkham Bay on the North Norfolk Coast

What a transformation! This was the empty seascape of my childhood holidays, themselves a legacy of my grandfather's wartime service in RAF Coastal Command. Four generations of the family have fallen in love with this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: it is utterly English, wonderfully austere.
And for the moment it remains a precious environment; its many nature reserves are home to rare migrational sea birds and seals, as well as myriad flora along the sand dunes, pine woods and salt marshes.
But now, where the sea meets the sky there is no longer the seamless grey of old. Gargantuan machines are driving piles 30 metres into the seabed as 90 towers rise just below the horizon, as seen from the shore.
The turbines atop them — the first is due to be installed this week and will measure 130 metres high from the sea surface to the tip of one of its three 52-metre blades — will supposedly power our toasters, washing machines and other gadgets for decades to come.
Scira says the farm will power the equivalent of 220,000 average households and save almost 500,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. The first power will be produced later this summer, running through some 40 km of offshore and onshore cable to a sub-station in rural Norfolk. From there, it will enter the National Grid.
It will form part of the Coalition Government's forceful championing of renewable energy — David Cameron has committed the UK to producing 20 per cent of our energy from renewable resources by 2020. The electricity companies are obliged by law to work towards this goal — only we do not appear to have the technological know-how to do it for ourselves.
So the gusts that blow with such vigour off the Norfolk coast are now being harnessed by Norwegians, using German, Dutch and Danish machinery, then sold on to French electricity distribution giant EDF before finally being bought by the British consumer — at considerable mark-up, of course.
Scira has the lease on the seabed beneath or around here for the next 50 years and is looking to build an even bigger turbine field some miles to the north of Sheringham, along the Dogger Bank. The size of North Yorkshire, if approved, it is said. Several other companies or conglomerates are vying to build more windfarms round here. The Crown Estate, which owns the seabed off the UK coast, is considering leases for fields which would dwarf the one at Sheringham Shoal.

New Viking invasion: Villages in Norfolk - Cley Next the Sea, Blakeney and Holt are particularly pretty and popular

No wonder it is being described as the New Klondike. But the question is: should it be there at all?
The journey to the heart of New Klondike takes you from the seaside town of Sheringham, with its famous steam railway and 'afternoon tea dances', along one of the most exquisite coastal roads in England.
You pass by the picturesque but obsolete wooden windmill at Weybourne, below which the windfarm cable comes ashore, through Stiffkey on the creek-ridden salt marshes and into the town of Wells-next-the-Sea. Horatio Nelson's birthplace, the village of Burnham Thorpe, is a few miles beyond.
In my childhood, Wells was the charming, if ever-so-slightly-shabby, town in a genteel coast dotted with flint cottages and stately homes. Wells lifeboat station sits at the end of the narrow channel which winds through sand bars from the open sea to the town's small inner harbour. I remember during my childhood trudging past it lugging windbreakers for family picnics on the beach.
Recently the landscape has been radically altered. Scira has dredged a new 'Outer Harbour' by the lifeboat station. Its fleet of 12 staff transfer vessels, supply and survey boats are moored alongside new pontoons.
The centre of operations for this activity is to be found in a former school house in the centre of Wells.
On a large electronic wall screen in the control room, 29 vessels and 535 Scira workers are being plotted by a Viking-haired man called Bjorn.
His computer mouse flicks on to a shape that represents one Scira boat. Immediately it shows there are three people on board. Another click gives their names, blood groups, next of kin etc. Very impressive.
Bjorn is a maritime engineer. He would like to drive 'a bloody great dredger' through the notorious sandbar at the end of Wells harbour, but that wouldn't be very popular — Scira is careful to keep in with the locals.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds is being thrown at various community projects along the Heritage Coast; the latest tranche of largesse is some £7,000 to be divided among a community centre in the pretty Georgian town of Holt, near to which the onshore cable trench is being dug, a nursery in Sheringham and a National Coastwatch Station at Mundesley.
Forty local jobs will also, eventually, be created by the Norwegian project. But much of the work is being done elsewhere.
The German engineering giant Siemens not only built the turbines, blades and towers at its facilities in Denmark, but also has the contract for their maintenance. The offshore cables are Norwegian manufactured. The piles for the towers come from Germany, Holland and Belgium. At least the two 1,000-tonne offshore substations were manufactured in Hartlepool.
What we do have to offer in Britain, as an island in the North Atlantic, is a lot of wind and sea.
Scira says the UK coastal waters have around 40 per cent of Europe's entire wind resources. Indeed, we apparently possess the largest shallow-water offshore wind resource in the world. The seabed is easy to drill off Norfolk. The waters are so shallow that even even 10 miles offshore the water is only 20 metres deep.
'If you went that far off Stavanger in Norway, you would find yourself at a depth of 300 metres,' says Einar. 'Then you would be looking at much more complex platforms like oil rigs and not monopiles that we can use here. It would be just too expensive.'
In other words, the windfarms are springing up close to the nature reserves of the east coast because it is the cheapest place to put them.
The higher cost of wind-power electricity compared to that from conventional energy sources is one of the main reservations of those who oppose the New Klondike.

Ecological risks: Seals at Blakeney Point nature reserve on the North Norfolk coast. Some have washed ashore dead since work on the windfarm started

This point is argued by Heritage Coast resident Peter Comins, author of a local newsletter. 'The public is now beginning to realise the considerable amount of infrastructure that is required on land,' he recently wrote. 'All this capital investment has to be paid for. The higher cost is passed to the consumers ... and will become increasingly onerous as we move closer to the 20 per cent target set for 2020.'
In the study of his home, a few miles from where the cables come ashore at Weybourne Hope, he puts it more bluntly: 'The economics don't make sense.' Yet the biggest fear along the coast is the effect the wind turbines' construction and operation will have on its delicate ecosystem.
Scira is treading very carefully. Under the terms of its lease, it is obliged to monitor marine and bird life around the shoal. While many conservation groups support renewable energy, it is a different matter when it is placed in areas like this.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds initially objected to Sheringham Shoal, claiming that it would have a devastating effect on the internationally important nesting colonies at nearby Blakeney Point and Scolt Head. It withdrew its opposition having received assurances from Scira, but is now facing a proliferation of windfarms nearby.
Toby Gethin, an RSPB casework officer, said: 'We support renewable energy and windfarms. However, they must not be sited in areas where they have an adverse impact on threatened species.

'We support renewable energy and windfarms. However, they must not be sited in areas where they have an adverse impact on threatened species'

RSPB casework officer Toby Gethin

'We have outstanding objections and concerns regarding four further offshore windfarm proposals planned for the Greater Wash because cumulatively they could result in an adverse impact on wildlife.'
Seals have been found dead, perhaps killed by construction boats but no one knows.
Local fishermen, who worked the Sheringham Shoal and are paid 'disruption compensation' during construction, are similarly wary. The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations said: 'We have not got much choice but to live with the fact the Government has decided to issue licences to build such windfarms and instead try to focus on mitigating the impact of them.
'Only time will tell and that is very worrying.'
Who really knows? Norwegians like Einar can offer experience in oil and gas. But they are windfarm pioneers. They cannot say what impact their turbines will have on the ecosystem, or indeed on our power supplies.
Only this week, it was revealed that windfarms may have to be shut down for 38 days of the year when it gets too windy, because the National Grid cannot cope with a surge in power. And if the wind drops too far, they do not work at all.
But why should the Norwegians who are building the Sheringham Shoal windfarm care about that? Or indeed French giant EDF that will sell the electricity it produces? After all, they're not the ones who live here.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004971/Madness-sea-A-massive-windfarm-built-glorious-coastlines-threatens-ecological-disaster.html#ixzz1PiCssnnL

The Answer Isn't Blowing in the Wind

Because of its enthusiasm to sign up to poorly thought out climate change policies Britain is now on course to have the most expensive electricity in the developed world.  By 2020 one third of our electricity bills will be made up of green tariffs, (money taken from us and given almost entirely to wind farm constructors). Industry and commerce will pay an even higher price.

These costs, as you may have noticed from your recent electricity bills, have already begun.  Between 2002 and 2010 the UK electricity consumer paid a premium of £5bn over and above the wholesale price of electricity, almost all of that went to wind farm developers.  According to calculations made by the Renewable Energy Foundation the subsidy will grow to a still increasing 6bn by 2020 if the policies we have at the moment are not changed.  Most of this will go to offshore and on-shore wind energy companies.

A wind farm enthusiast recently told me that we have no right to inflict the legacy of nuclear waste on our grandchildren, but I guess its OK to bankrupt them and sabotage their economic competitiveness.

The REF calculate that, from 2002 to 2020 the scheme will cost around £35bn and that even if these policies were cancelled in 2020, the legal obligation for continued support for the wind farms already built would add a further £65bn in the following decade. All of that will be taken from us.

These costs are not obvious like VAT or income tax because the are hidden in our electricity bills, these charges are levied on private households regardless of income which suggests to me that they will present a disproportionately large burden for the less well off in our society.  It also of course adds hugely to the cost of everything else that is manufactured or transported.

These costs were imposed on us by the last government in its eagerness to conform to the EU’s Renewable Electricity Directive, which was to obtain 10% of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Despite the £5bn subsidy we have significantly failed to do this, managing just 6.5% in 2010, which suggests that the 2020 targets are wildly optimistic.

Wind farm developers and their supporters continually blame what they call ‘Nimbys’ for creating delays through the planning system, but when you are operating in a world that is insulated from the normal constraints of finance and competition I guess democracy might also seem like something you can circumvent; there is however, much more to it than that.  With such vast quantities of easy money available to throw at these schemes and the eagerness of these people to get their hands on as much of it as possible, they are not being thoroughly thought through. Take Sheringham Shoal for example, at the beginning of 2010 after the initial explorations were complete they arrived to begin construction with the Svanen, a floating crane used to construct the Øresund bridge that links Sweden to Copenhagen.

 Apart from possibly being the main culprit in the deaths of many grey and common seals it was also the wrong piece of equipment for the job, as it was only able to operate in seas with a wave height of a 1mtr or less.  Which meant that it spent considerably more time in Yarmouth then it did off Sheringham killing seals.  I guess it’s an ill wind that blows no good at all.

Decades of oil exploration in the North Sea mean that more research has been carried out here in respect of wave height and wave/tide effect than on any other body of water on earth, yet still they got it wrong.  The upshot of this was that they had to cease operations last autumn, take the Svanen away and begin construction of a completely new lift platform in Norway to complete the job. As yet this hasn't appeared and another larger floating crane has arrived on site. Look out for more seal carcasses.

Grid connection problems also cause wind farm delays as I guess does the reluctance of bankers to invest money in schemes that are only sustainable through subsidy. Low wind conditions, particularly through the very cold weather periods we have had during recent winters also contributed to their failing to achieve the required 10% reductions.

Work done by the Renewable Energy Foundation shows that the 2010 targets would have been missed even if wind speeds had exceeded the highest annual average over the last ten years. The optimism that thought them attainable in the first place seems to be pretty much of the kind we get with most wind farm generation predictions.

Wind farm propagandists make much of the job creation that comes with wind farm development; apparently the wind farms off north Norfolk have so far created 65 new jobs.   However, an EU Commission paper released in 2009 showed that the wider economic effects of these targets entailed net job losses for the UK.  Not difficult to understand, when all the wind farms are completed off the north Norfolk coast I believe the job losses in the tourism industry here will far outweigh anything that wind farms might temporarily create.

I have not invented this scenario, the facts are out there, they are neither difficult to find or to understand, yet their significance is completely lost (the REF excepted) on the Green lobby and wind energy supporters.  Such facts are obviously unpalatable to the government, who cannot be seen to be making  U turns. Somehow the truth of all this must become more widely known. I  believe that there is an increasing resistance to wind energy as a solution to reducing our reliance on finite resources, but I seriously doubt it will gain enough momentum to so slow this money-making gravy train unless there is a sudden and dramatic sea change in public opinion..

Our future like our landscape is being sacrificed. I sometimes think that the greater the value of what is being sacrificed the more heroic these fanatics believe they are!

Godfrey Sayers            07/05/2011

Not the Only ones

  Scira Offshore Energy Limited have been set back many months as a consequence of selecting the wrong   equipment for the construction of Sheringham Shoal wind farm, what their losses are is anybody's guess.  It would seem however, that they are not the only ones to catch a cold in this mad rush for easy money.
 

Fluor

Learns costly EPC lessons

from Greater Gabbard

Long delays and heavy cost overruns at the 504MW Greater Gabbard offshore wind project have taught an “expensive lesson” to engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) giant Fluor, and developers Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) and RWE Npower Renewables.

US engineering giant Fluor Corporation says third quarter results will take a hit of $163m, or $0.90 a share, because of estimated cost increases on the Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Project in the UK.

In a statement, Fluor says its full-year earnings will now be between $2.20 and $2.50 a share, versus an earlier estimate of $2.90 to $3.20 a share. It expects to release Q3 results by 4 November.

“During the third quarter, the project experienced a variety of execution challenges, including material and equipment delivery issues, primarily relating to the installation of wind turbine generators and subsea cabling,” the company says in a statement.

Fluor says it revised estimates to include substantial costs for additional marine vessels and other subcontractor costs associated with equipment installation, equipment repairs and the estimated schedule impact which has been exacerbated by weather-related delays.

“The company has taken a number of remedial actions to mitigate further cost escalation and delays to the schedule,” it adds.

Fluor is the main contractor for the 504MW Greater Gabbard scheme located 23km off the Suffolk coast. Developer Scottish and Southern Energy is the developer in the 50-50 joint venture with RWE.

In 2008, Fluor was awarded a $1.8bn fixed price contract to construct the wind farm. To date, all 140 monopiles and tower transition pieces have been installed and 53 of 140 wind turbine generators are in place.

Installation and commissioning of the remaining wind turbine generators, subsea inter-array cabling and grid substations are expected to continue through the latter part of 2011. The overall project is expected to be completed in early 2012, according to Fluor.

The project has experienced a number of challenges since construction began in late 2008. Through the second quarter of 2010, the company had recorded $202m in claim revenue relating to costs incurred on a dispute with the joint venture regarding specifications for monopiles and transition pieces required under the contract, says Fluor.

Additional costs arising from this dispute are expected to be incurred in future quarters. Fluor continues to pursue claims for costs recoverable under the contract, it says.

Richard A. Kessler (richard.kessler@rechargenews.com) 

Godfrey Sayers  05/05/2011

BBC Bias

Why is it that the BBC can give extensive and exaggerated coverage of extreme weather events that 'might' be considered to be the result of climate change i.e. the floods and cyclone in Australia whilst totally ignoring this.

  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41365053/ns/weather/

 The BBC is supposed give us unbiased and accurate news, thats what we pay them to do. Instead all we get for our money is sensationalism and propaganda!


 This picture shows the Northern Hemisphere as it is at the moment. Click to enlarge

At first glance this image looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel programme about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today - with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice. The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm. The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force. That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353073/Winter-storm-Map-shows-Northern-Hemisphere-covered-snow-ice.html#ixzz1CvSav0JD.     

The Stitch Up

An investigative journalist with a reputation for uncovering and disseminating the truths and deceits that lie behind western governance has had the good fortune to be handed, what can only be described as a scoop. As any good journalist would he has put it into the public arena, in this case with the collusion of the Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. While it is questionable whether or not his source Mr. Manning has committed a crime it is fairly clear that he has not.

 Had these revelations been about the inner workings of the new coalition and had been leaked to the opposition, they would, as all political parties do, have pounced on them with glee? There are undoubtedly quite legitimate questions as to where the line should be drawn in respect of national security but Mr. Julian Assange, be he the hero or the villain of this piece is being made to pay a heavy price for thinking that Western countries really mean it when they claim that they are committed to press freedom.

 All he has done is publish information that the United States of America does not like. Yet we are constantly led to believe that the US is the embodiment of all the fundamental human rights in the UN Charter, including freedom of the press.

 Any reasonable person must think that the coincidence of the rape charges and the leaks is suspicious; entrapment is used by many governments to control or smear those they don’t like or want to discredit. Both of the women who Assange is alleged to have raped, publically rejoiced in their relationships with him after the alleged rapes occurred but have subsequently tried to remove those statements from the internet, why?

 Both encounters began with their consent and both women claimed that only included the use of condoms because they were worried about the possibility of sexually transmitted disease. Therefore, if they have not been infected and I am sure they will have checked, then they do not have much of a case to bring. Although a high enough financial inducement might persuade them that a small dose of the clap could be a good investment.

 It might also occur to some that there is a high probability that intelligence officers (Swedish perhaps, in conjunction with the CIA) might have identified and perhaps approached these women after their encounters and before they made the complaints against Assange.

 That the US could do all this is underlined by statements made by some of their leading political figures, Sarah Palin, has called for Mr. Assange to “be hunted down like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”. US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman has called for him to be arrested for treason. Bill O'Reilly, a US political commentator has called for him to be executed. When last week, Mr. Assange was arrested in London to face extradition charges, the US Secretary of Defence, Mr. Robert Gates, called it “good news”.

 None of us are likely to be much concerned by anything Sarah Palin says, because its for sure she wouldn’t be able to find Julian Assange if he were painted fluorescent pink and blown up to ten times his size, he’s outside Alaska, after all. Mr. Gates however, is another matter, as he is one of the US’s two top defence officials.

 What really concerns me however, is how blatantly obvious all of this is, anyone with an IQ above 26 can see what the US are doing and even while they themselves are clearly aware that this is the case they are not being deterred. Up until now most western democracies have, when acting underhandedly, made strenuous efforts to cover their tracks, that the US are not doing so now I find very frightening, its as if they know that the illusion of clean governance is shattered but also realise that it doesn’t matter because there is nothing any of us (except perhaps Julian Assange) can do about it.

 Just imagine if anything remotely similar had happened in Iran or China, or Zimbabwe: the US and Europe would have awarded the leaker the Nobel Prize. Just last week, the nations who are chasing Mr. Assange were awarding the Nobel Price to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who has been imprisoned in China for inciting subversion. Only when it comes to nuclear weapons are double standards and hypocrisy as blatant as this.

 Every nation that subscribes to justice and open democracy will inevitably be judged on their own track record, the USA’s suffered quite a knock with Guantanamo Bay, but this has the potential to be very much worse.

 It seems very simple to me (although I have to admit that my IQ is only 38) either we support human rights or we don't; there is no middle way! Such double standards should not go un-challenged.

Godfrey Sayers 16/12/2010
.

WikiLeaks Intimidation

Dear friends,


The chilling intimidation campaign against WikiLeaks (when they have broken no laws) is an attack on freedom of the press and democracy. We urgently need a massive public outcry to stop the crackdown -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!


The massive campaign of intimidation against WikiLeaks is sending a chill through free press advocates everywhere.

Legal experts say WikiLeaks has likely broken no laws. Yet top US politicians have called it a terrorist group and commentators have urged assassination of its staff. The organization has come under massive government and corporate attack, but WikiLeaks is only publishing information provided by a whistleblower. And it has partnered with the world's leading newspapers (NYT, Guardian, Spiegel etc) to carefully vet the information it publishes.

The massive extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks is an attack on democracy. We urgently need a public outcry for freedom of the press and expression. Sign the petition to stop the crackdown and forward this email to everyone -- let's get to 1 million voices and take out full page ads in US newspapers this week!

To access these URL s copy and paste into your browser.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

WikiLeaks isn't acting alone -- it's partnered with the top newspapers in the world (New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc) to carefully review 250,000 US diplomatic cables and remove any information that it is irresponsible to publish. Only 800 cables have been published so far. Past WikiLeaks publications have exposed government-backed torture, the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and corporate corruption.

The US government is currently pursuing all legal avenues to stop WikiLeaks from publishing more cables, but the laws of democracies protect freedom of the press. The US and other governments may not like the laws that protect our freedom of expression, but that's exactly why it's so important that we have them, and why only a democratic process can change them.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether WikiLeaks and the leading newspapers it's partnered with are releasing more information than the public should see. Whether the releases undermine diplomatic confidentiality and whether that's a good thing. Whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the personal character of a hero or a villain. But none of this justifies a vicious campaign of intimidation to silence a legal media outlet by governments and corporations. Click below to join the call to stop the crackdown:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/?vl

Ever wonder why the media so rarely gives the full story of what happens behind the scenes? This is why - because when they do, governments can be vicious in their response. And when that happens, it's up to the public to stand up for our democratic rights to a free press and freedom of expression. Never has there been a more vital time for us to do so.



SOURCES:

Law experts say WikiLeaks in the clear (ABC)
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3086781.htm

WikiLeaks are a bunch of terrorists, says leading U.S. congressman (Mail Online)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333879/WikiLeaks-terrorists-says-leading-US-congressman-Peter-King.html

Cyber guerrillas can help US (Financial Times)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15-11df-956b-00144feab49a.html#axzz17QvQ4Ht5

Amazon drops WikiLeaks under political pressure (Yahoo)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101201/tc_afp/usdiplomacyinternetwikileakscongressamazon

"WikiLeaks avenged by hacktivists" (PC World):
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212701/operation_payback_wikileaks_avenged_by_hacktivists.html

US Gov shows true control over Internet with WikiLeaks containment (Tippett.org)
http://www.tippett.org/2010/12/us-gov-shows-true-control-over-internet-with-wikileaks-containment/

US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee

WikiLeaks ditched by MasterCard, Visa. Who's next? (The Christian Science Monitor)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/1207/WikiLeaks-ditched-by-MasterCard-Visa.-Who-s-next

Assange's Interpol Warrant Is for Having Sex Without a Condom (The Slatest)
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2276690/

SABLE ISLAND

More on the Greenland Sharks Story.

 1.

      BBC Wildlife Magazine Article

          

     Mysterious seal deaths

Share

There was a big reaction from BBC Wildlife readers following the publication of a story in the October issue on the mysterious, fatal ‘corkscrew’ injuries that have been inflicted on British seals in the past two years.

This was followed by the transmission of a programme on Channel 5 about grey seals off Sable Island (a 44km sandbar about 150km off the coast of mainland Novia Scotia) that were also dying from mysterious ‘corkscrew’ wounds.

The programme, eventually, fingered the Greenland shark, better known as a cold-water Arctic scavenger than a hot-blooded predator.

Were the two cases related? Could Greenland sharks be taking out British seals?

Well, a bit of digging has revealed some interesting facts. First of all, British scientists do not consider the Greenland shark to be a credible answer to the mystery of our seal deaths.

They are only largely found under the polar ice cap, so a migration to the North Sea would take one well out of its usual range.

Second, not everyone agrees that Greenland sharks are behind the Sable Island seal deaths. BBC Wildlife has contacted two scientists who appeared in the Channel 5 film and who are two of the world’s experts on Greenland sharks.

In brief, they don’t believe that Greenland sharks are found around Sable Island, and they don’t see why they should attack and mutilate the seals without then eating them.

But according to Zoe Lucas, a naturalist who lives on Sable Island and the person who has done more than anyone to investigate this issue, Greenland sharks are still top of her agenda, and she and other scientists working on the issue have eliminated ships’ propellers as a possible cause.

You would have thought that it would be easy to determine how such extraordinary wounds are inflicted, but it appears not. In the meantime, BBC Wildlife will keep you up-to-date with any developments.

2.  Zoe Lucas

Claims to be a biologist and went to Sable Island to study the horses that live there. In an interview on her work by CBC Television she was asked what she did for a living ( how she sustained herself in such a remote place) clearly she was not funded by a grant from any research establishment. Her reply was as follows.

‘I work as a biologist conducting research and monitoring programs. If by "living" you mean what do I do for income, I conduct environmental monitoring programs for the offshore energy industry’

The offshore industry in question is as follows.

ExxonMobil. 

Shell Canada Ltd.

Esso Imperial Oil.

Pengrowth Energy Trust.

Mosbacher Operating Ltd.

These companies form a consortium that operate several gas platforms just offshore from Sable Island ( I didn’t see them in the channel 5 Program did you?)  Here is an extract from their web site.

‘The Sable Project is the largest construction project ever undertaken in Nova Scotia. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. We’ve established an infrastructure that will be the basis of our production efforts for the future. Those efforts are changing the face of the Nova Scotia economy, and providing an alternative energy resource to consumers throughout the Maritimes and the Eastern United States.

‘The Sable Offshore Energy Project is divided into two 'tiers' of offshore development. The first tier was completed in December 1999 and involved the development of the The baud, North Triumph, and Venture fields, as well as the construction of three offshore platforms, an onshore gas plant and an onshore fractionation plant. Gas production commenced on December 31, 1999. Alma, the first Tier II platform came on stream in late 2003 while production from South Venture, the second field began late in 2004.’

3.  Finally an extract from this web site. 

 These scientists were involved in and clearly misrepresented by the Channel 5 program.

 The actual cause of the corkscrew wound is probably mechanical. If this is the case, the culprits are almost certainly dynamic positioning thrusters used by vessels associated with offshore drilling or construction. Such operations are present off all sites reporting corkscrew wounds. Seals are curious creatures often seen diving near shipwrecks and other man-made objects. The powerful suction effect produced by a thruster would easily overpower a seal that got too close. Unlike regular ship propellers that run continuously while a ship is at sea, thrusters operate on a need-only basis and thus turn on and off sporadically.

A curious seal inspecting the intake side of this odd tunnel-like object would have no chance if the power were suddenly turned on. Being sucked into the blades would either slice the hapless seal to death or produce the horrific wounds witnessed at Sable Island and in the UK. Some of the butchered seals may even survive and swim back to the beach to die.

The Greenland shark does leave a trademark wound on its victims but this most certainly isn't it. We therefore believe that corkscrew fatalities at Sable Island and in the UK are in fact unrelated to the Greenland shark.

Human activity is yet again the likely cause for these needless deaths. Who knows how many lifeless bodies didn’t actually make it to shore? Life is dangerous enough for seals without having to deal with giant underwater food processors. If I were a seal, I'd choose the shark. I would at least have a fighting chance to survive, and if I were defeated, my death would serve to sustain a fellow creature of the sea.


Godfrey Sayers  12/10/2010