The Daily Telegraph reports that thousands of pounds per day will be paid to compensate the wind  industry when the British national grid can not use the power.   The intermittent nature of wind power requires traditional efficient power generation to remain the mainstay of British power generation when the wind is light or not blowing at all resulting in too much power when the wind decides to blow.  Simply not accepting the unneeded power would cost wind investors to lose their subsidies.   We can’t imagine them welcoming that.

A recent report from the Danish Center for Political Studies  shows a similar problem for Denmark.  The Danes however have the good fortune of being able to dump their surplus wind energy into the power grids of their neighbors effectively using their neighboring countries as a storage battery for Danish wind.  This is greater fortune yet for Denmark’s neighboring countries as they receive the power inexpensively with Danish taxpayers and ratepayers  footing the bill.

In the United States Cape Cod homeowners still reeling from the prospect of the controversial Cape Wind project placing turbines in beautiful Nantucket sound were shocked to learn that Cape Wind’s electricity will cost more than twice what they are paying now.  They’ll certainly be shocked if the British idea of paying wind farms to sit idle catches on across the pond.

Alternative energy only makes sense if it produces reliable affordable power.  Wind profits should flow from power generation rather than grants and subsidies.  Until they do they will remain the totems of our times.

Spain’s government will cut the revenue of most existing solar-power plants by 30 percent, a move that may bankrupt hundreds of companies that produce electricity using photovoltaic panels, a local trade group said.

More at Business Week

Tremendous news: but where are the jobs and how much do they cost ?

At a conference organized recently by the Heartland Institute, our colleagues at the young Juan de Mariana Institute of Spain produced a devastating presentation of the green “bubble” economy, showing not only the true cost of renewable energy subsidies, but also how this hugely destructive policy is putting existing forms of energy at unsustainable risks.

As Gabriel Calzada put it, “where is the green worker?”  At the outset, workers are of course busily installing wind farms, solar panels and so on. In fact, some 60 per cent of jobs are dealing with the installation of such equipment.  The Spanish government boasted the creation of some 50,000 new jobs in 2008.  Yes, but each of them cost more than 500,000 euros (to be renewed ?).

The study produced by Juan de Mariana Institute showed that subsidies awarded to “green” technologies represented twice the electricity bill in 2008. In terms of unitary costs, these were more than three times as expensive as other energy sources.

Also, it turned out that Spanish solar panels were so efficient that they generated current even during the night. Claro que si ! Kudos to Gabriel and his colleagues for revealing these and other scams. Porqué pagar más ?

Photos: Freedigitalphotos

CFACT is reporting from the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany. Our display addresses issues of alternative energy and juxtaposes wind turbines with the famed Moai, the carved heads of Easter Island, stating that civilization can’t run for long on superstition or subsidies.

On Saturday and Sunday CFACT met with scientists and policy experts credentialed as members of our delegation in the nearby town of Hennef during a meeting organized by the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE).

CFACT is providing publications to every delegation, meeting delegates, briefing the press, raising questions and providing hard information.

Our press conference will be 10:30 AM (CET) Thursday, June 10 hosted by the UNFCCC in room Haydn at the Hotel Maritim.  There will be a live webcast and the video will be later available on demand.   Our press conference will begin with an introduction from CFACT’s Christina Wilson of the U.S.  Lord Christopher Monckton will serve as CFACT’s main press spokesman joined by CFACT Europe Associate Editor Einar Du Rietz of Sweden and Wolfgang Mueller of the German Free Market Institute.

Watch for CFACT’s updates from Bonn and maybe even a little creative fun.

Investing your money and savings for your pension in funds that advertise themselves as more “ethical” than others? Maybe it’s time to think again.

Environmental watchdogs are increasingly pointing out funds as dubious, because of investments in different energy companies. In a recent – undercover – study (Swedish) non of the four checked banks proved to offer the clean investments they advertise.

Fraud? Not really, but certainly hypocrisy.

The criteria change and the transparency should not be taken for granted. Funds that exclude energy companies naturally do not exclude wind and solar energy, and oil companies can be accepted as long as they claim to be investing in new technology. No one looks at what companies expropriate land with the help of government, only – sometimes – if they can be suspected of taking part in a downright military conflict. Well, even the latter can be discussed. What if the company are on the side of the god guys? Yes, who are the good guys…? Should the hotel chain to which the “Hotel Rwanda” belongs be excluded for involvement in a conflict? Or, for that matter, any company doing business in communist China?

In churches and help organisations, most often run like big corporations, the – typically professional – financial analysts are often furious over stricter criteria, simply because they may mean less revenue, and consequently less money for charitable work.

More and more funds are even putting global warming into their names. They should be free to do that, but to expect to fall in the the category of ethical funds because of an asserted ambivalence towards CO2, in a debate where it’s not at all certain that any global warming is going on, and especially not if it then would be caused by human activity, is more than pretentious.

Anyone should be free to select investments based on convictions, and anyone should have the right to proper information. As this dubious market looks today, my recommendation would be to simply go for the most prosperous investments, in the more solid belief that prosperity and growth is and will be the best antidote against humanitarian and environmental problems.

CRAIG RUCKER

EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard today posed the question, “can the U.S. afford not to have ambitious legislation that paves the way for a more energy-efficient future?”

CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker responded that if the US Congress fails, America wins.

Commissioner Hedegaard’s Denmark may have surrounded itself with wind turbines, but could not afford such feel good luxuries if it were not for the vast income and energy it derives from Danish North Sea oil and gas.  READ MORE

The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez is a most innovative man. With his peculiar combination of home made socialism, populist nationalism and impulsive despotism, you never can tell what the next brilliant idea will be.

He decided to change his country’s time zone with half an hour, presumably just for fun. He managed to create a shortage of coffee, in one of the major coffee producing countries in the world, by introducing price controls. And he has managed to stay in power.

He now has noticed that there is a risk of electricity shortage, and that the consumption is far too high compared to other countries in the region. Wonder why. Counter measures now include cutting of power entirely for, presumably randomly selected, institutions, like restaurants, office buildings and others, for 24 hours at a time. A bit like taking the Earth Hour a couple of steps further, and skip that voluntary part.

Moreover, the Easter holidays will be extended by three days, to halt energy consumption in production. Again, most likely creating new deficits in new areas.

As exciting as always. Watch out, maybe in half a year he will decide to cancel Christmas.

The campaign is on again with expensive ad’s for Earth Hour, and local politicians have been forced for months to defend their decisions on shutting of the lights on central buildings, or not.

In the midst of the IPCC debacle, the activists and politicians pretend that shutting out the lights for one hour from 8:30 pm will, if not save the climate, at least send a signal to those in charge. Whoever they are. To do what?

It is, indeed, an impressive campaign.

And possibly dangerous. I’m convinced even the organizers have realised that street lamps, hospitals and airports should not mind, but how about other things? It’s quite possible to live in the dark for an hour, but if you live in a city, or a house filled with lamps, the sudden change can be devastating. Now, where’s that land mark (which incidentally neither at sea, nor on land has to be a light house or a traffic sign)? Should the gas station get dark? The Eiffel Tower? The city lights below your trekking rout on a narrow path?

But above all, it’s an insult to all the people living without electricity, or desperatly trying to use the last light bulb in the smartest way. There is a reason why some years ago, the most energy efficient refrigerator in the world was produced in China, and not even by a Chinese company. The leading manufacturers of hospital equipment are desperate to find new solutions to handle electricity shortage in developing countries.

Low energy and low cost laptops are also being developed and distributed, but those who can read this, most likely have either chosen, or being forced by the EU to switch to low energy light bulbs, in homes where the energy efficiency of the well stocked freezer consumes half as much energy as the last one did.

Will the next campaign be to abstain from caviar and champagne for an hour?

If only there was some meaningful electricity to be had from these machines to compensate for the harm they cause.

Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Maldives and the Cook Islands will all disappear soon, say shortly after Christmas according to delegates. (Hence probably today’s pledge by the Danish government to receive some of the 20 million (!) people supposedly left homeless in 2008 by the disastrous effects of climate change; no scientific reference or source was given to back this number up however.)

Professor Nils-Axel Mörner, a Swedish expert on sea level change and in 1999 an expert reviewer to the IPCC, begs to differ. He has extensive experience in field work in most of the areas that are allegedly under threat of becoming the new Atlantis. In a presentation this week, he stated:

“(For the year 2100) our best estimate was + 10 cm (…) significantly lower than the estimates by IPCC (2001). (…) There are physical limits for how fast ice can melt. The maximum rates recorded were those related to the melting glaciers of the last Ice Age. The corresponding sea level rise amounted to (…) 1 meter per century. Consequently, all claims of a sea level rise by 2100 exceeding 1m can directly be discarded as physically impossible.”

Further, no change has been observed in the concerned areas including Bangladesh. Even Venice, once thought to be condemned, is not threatened by chronic “aqua alta” as sometimes thought; a significant deceleration since 1970 has even been recorded.

The conclusion seems obvious: let’s consider the facts and forget about the models, lest we get swamped by science fiction.