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27 October 2012

Coming soon, to a hilltop near you…

CRYSTAL RIG WIND FARM

I was musing this morning on how many wind farms we should expect to see, industrialising our countryside and wild land. The information is all there on the British Wind Energy Association’s (sorry, that should be “RenewableUK’s”) own website: LINK.

“RenewableUK” is the mouthpiece and lobbying arm of the wind energy businesses and it is they who disseminate all the crap about how many thousands of homes will be powered by this and that wind farm and how many tons of CO2 each turbine will be saving.

Anyway, here’s what the information looks like. I had to shrink it down to get it all on one page. (They obviously do not want the full horror to be viewed all at once.) If you click on the image you can blow it up, just so you can check that I haven’t fiddled anything in the next bit of this post! We certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of misrepresenting the truth on this blog, unlike Renewables UK’s frequent press statements…

Smile

RENEWABLES UK PAGE

Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that that is readily digestible, is it? No, of course not. It’s not supposed to be. It’s there just so RenewablesUK can refer to it and cherry pick the information they want to shove down the appreciative (for ‘appreciative, you could also read ‘lazy’) journalists’ throats, who can’t be arsed to get off their own fat backsides and actually check the stories they are being fed by this exceedingly well funded lobbying group. Yes, the figures are all there, but what do they show and what do they mean?

We can tabulate the figures readily enough and from it produce two simple graphs that show the deeply depressing reality:

WIND DATA

[CLICK TO ENLARGE & STUDY CAREFULLY!  Ooooh! There’ll be questions at the end of class]

For convenience’s sake, let’s assume that all the wind farms currently in planning get built (Some won’t, of course, but many more will spring up to take their place, so it’s not a bad proposal.) I won’t attempt to teach you to suck eggs, but I think there are a few things that leap out from the graphs:

  • Alec Salmond is determined to produce 100% equivalent of Scotland’s electricity from renewable sources, which will be largely from wind as there is limited scope to increase hydropower. You will note that he intends to produce 11.1GW from onshore wind and less than 1.5GW from offshore wind. England has the opposite approach: Building far more at sea.
  • Scotland currently has 4.5GW capacity onshore either built or under construction yet there is another 6.6GW consented and in planning. That means that Scotland can expect to see two and a half times the number of onshore wind turbines than there is presently scarring the landscape.
  • Wales has 0.5GW on shore either built or being built but has a whopping 1.7GW in planning or consented. There will be over four times what is already built.
  • England has 1.6GW built onshore and another 1.9GW to come. There will be over twice as many as there are now.
  • N Ireland has 0.5GW built onshore but another 1.2GW to come. That’s three and a half times as many as now.

***

So, the future of our British countryside looks to be pretty ghastly really. The pro-wind lobby always say that wind farms should be “sensitively sited”. I can’t for one moment even imagine a parcel of countryside in Britain where huge clusters of turbines 410 feet tall can be sensitively sited, can you?

Personally, I think we should site them up Alec Salmond’s and Tim Yeo’s backsides.

EDIT: SUNDAY 28th OCTOBER:

These two pieces were in today’s Sunday Times:

SIX THOUSAND more turbines to blight countryside

The Sunday Times: "Drop in wind speeds a blow to energy firms"

The future is looking incredibly bleak for our countryside and these turbines are becoming even less efficient as years go by.

26 comments:

  1. Well, I will be there to help.
    And....
    BLADES FIRST!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would imagine there would be a queue for this particular job...
      :-)

      Delete
  2. By the way, I think the start of your profile should now read...
    Nearly sixty beardy bloke with problem kidneys.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's true!
      Well - not the bit about nearly sixty, Gitface!
      I'm still mid fifties...
      But the belly has been gone for a while now.
      When I wrote the profile six years ago, the kidneys weren't too much of a problem. They went downhill a bit quickly, all of a sudden. (Latest results are 13.8% and falling...)
      Are you allowed to re-write your own profile?
      One to revisit with a large scotch...

      Delete
  3. Its a pity China, India and Russia are not really interested. But it doesn't matter as we will be saving the planet after all.
    We are going to be skint, cold and some homeless but it's nice to know we did the right thing.
    And then i woke up! Am i alone.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We'll be "skint, cold and some homeless" first Alan. We Scots are so much better at this turbine business.

      Delete
    2. And it does get very cold up in Scotland, especially when the wind isn't blowing...

      Delete
  4. ..just a mere child.
    Ghastly - now, there's a word.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I haven't worn very well though...
      I always smile at OM's start to his profile: "I'm old and not very well. If I had known I was going to live to this age, I would have taken better care of myself"

      I suppose there are a few of us in that category.
      :-)

      Delete
  5. No worries. Most politicians have big houses. Usually more than one. So they can house us when we are all destitute, out of the kindness of their own incompetence.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, Andy...

      But did you just infer that politicians were "kind?"
      Kind of insane, you mean?

      Delete
    2. THIS ARTICLE should be read. It shows how the wind busniness is tightening the screws in their effort to destroy Scotland's wild land.

      Delete
  6. You know I am with you on this one Alan so I won't waffle on.

    Simply to point out that Alex Salmond's masterplan (sorry, just had to stifle a snigger then) is to raise colossal revenues for an independent Scotland by selling the energy from wind to the dreaded English.

    I am no economist but how much revenue can you raise from fuck all ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Peter
      :-)
      And... where will Salmond be getting his electricity from when the wind isn't blowing?

      The interconnectors being built between England & Scotland aren't there just to export power. We should charge him for this electricity at the same rate that we pay the wind farm operators not to produce power - about ten times the going rate.

      :-)

      Delete
  7. If all the wind farms are built and all the turbines turn at the same time, will that blow the UK into our friends across the channel.

    Thismay bring forward a law to ban the b----y things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have read somewhere that with the increase in numbers of wind farms there will be an increase in drag on the airflow over the country, thus slowing it down.
      This will of course have an affect on the weather downstream of the wind farms.
      Would Holland, and Denmark and Norway complain with this change in their weather? What would the changes be, I wonder?

      However, if it means that Britain is accidentally rammed into the land of Johnny Foreigner, then I'm not in favour of that at all!

      Harrumph!

      Delete
    2. "However, if it means that Britain is accidentally rammed into the land of Johnny Foreigner, then I'm not in favour of that at all!"

      It's all happening right now Alan. Today I saw three British cars on OUR right side of the road :)

      Delete
    3. The Dutch speak our language so very well - I am dismayed to learn that they don't want to drive on the left as well.

      If you want us to join the Euro, it may well become compulsory.
      :-)

      Delete
  8. I need to ask a question. It's probably a daft one but, as I have form in that regard, I'll ask it anyway.

    Does anyone - and by that I mean Ofgem, The Department for Energy and Climate Change, some other appropriate body - accumulate the 'green' units generated by each provider and compare them with those actually charged out to consumers? Just as a check that they are not effectively charging users for fictitious units?

    It wouldn't be beyond the capabilities of modern technology to perform those calculations; I've just never heard anyone say that they do.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Dave
      From what I understand Elexon are the people responsible for the trades within the supply companies.
      It is an interesting point you make though...

      It's not an area I have ever looked at before...

      Delete
  9. Hi Alan,

    I have 2 turbines being planned for about a mile away from my house.... :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We have 10 blighting many local views now, despite the local resistance, so nothing new there. But I believe the land owners might have a nice new Rangerover so it is ok.

      Delete
    2. That sounds like bad news, Dave. Where are they geographically, compared to your place? Will they be positioned above you or on the same level?

      Delete
    3. Mr Walker.
      They built them just because you live nearby. You *do* know that, don't you?
      :-)

      Delete
    4. It's ok, I cannot see them from inside the house :-(

      Delete

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