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.

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.

CFACT’s response: Let’s not go back to the dark ages.

CFACT has been participating in an energy debate sponsored by the National Journal.

Commissioner Hedegaard wrote, “Craig Rucker claims that had it not been for Denmark’s oil in the North Sea we could not afford “such feel good luxuries” as renewables like wind. Wrong. Back in 1973 Denmark experienced two oil crises and the last one, when Saudi Arabia cut off oil deliveries, was so bad that it was necessary to prohibit driving private cars on Sundays. I remember this from my childhood. Can you imagine that? That was at a time where we were 99 % dependent on imported energy. Today Denmark is self-sufficient in energy, and has been for many years already. Oil and gas supplies from the North Sea are part of the explanation but definitely also the fact that today around 30 % of Denmark’s electricity stems from wind energy. AND since putting up the first wind turbine back in the mid 70s Denmark has developed a world brand in wind technology. That means not only that the wind sector today creates thousands and thousands of jobs, often mainly in rural areas, but also that is one of our fastest growing export areas, earning billions for Denmark. The sector continued to grow its exports even in the crisis year 2009.”

Here’s Craig Rucker’s response to the Commissioner:

Commissioner Hedegaard reminded us of the restrictions we all faced during the Arab oil embargo of the 1970’s. This is a poignant reminder of the importance of developing our domestic energy resources and those of our allied democracies. Commissioner Hedegaard will surely concede that Denmark’s done quite a bit of offshore drilling during the last three decades and has benefited thereby. The United States should follow that example.

Denmark’s foot prints are not always ones, however, we can recommend others follow. Danish workers carry one of the highest tax burdens in the free world. When you include taxpayer subsidies for wind turbines, Danish families pay among the highest energy prices in Europe. According to the September 2009 study by the Danish Center for Political Studies (CEPOS), the intermittent nature of wind power has forced Denmark to export around half of its wind generated electricity to its neighbors at a loss and made up shortfalls by importing vast amounts of power from those same neighbors. The electricity Denmark exports saves no CO2 emissions as the power it replaces is generated by carbon neutral means. It’s a good thing the perils of CO2 have been exaggerated.

Danish wind power will not alter the climate. If Denmark scrapped its wind turbines tomorrow its power grid would quickly adapt. Its taxpayers, however, would breathe a lot easier. If Denmark cut off its oil and gas, it would find itself in a dark age of a different variety than that endured by the brave Danes of the Viking era.  Let’s not go back.

by Edgar L. Gärtner

“There is at present no other industry in Germany, which is torn up and directionless like the electricity industry. Reason is the dominance of environmental aspects in the energy and especially in the electricity politics.” Thus begins an analysis of the questionable developments on the German electricity market published in the business section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on 25th March 2010. Mind you, it concerns not experimentally provable environmental and health problems like ruining of landscapes through high voltage routes or through electrical smog, but the so-called climate protection politics, unable to define which climate is to be protected, i.e. pure, nihilistically motivated political arbitrariness. The FAZ article makes understandable that an energy concept from a single source, as demanded by the economy and promised still for the current year by the Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel will not be realised as long as the energy policy is determined by ideological reasons and in the interest of the parasitic wind and solar lobby with focus on carbon-dioxide-free solutions.

Apart from the high costs, wind and solar electricity are characterised by unsteadiness and unreliability. Frequent abrupt load changes make it more and more difficult to keep the high voltage frequency in the given range of tolerance and to avoid emergency shut-downs from generators. Above all wind energy is generated in high volumes when depressions with storms are rolling in, however, especially during this time the energy need is smallest. This is the reason why at the Leipzig Energy Exchange (EEX) power providers had to pay on the second Christmas day in 2009 up to 230 Euros per megawatt hour to clients in order to at least get rid of the power surplus due to strong wind. At the beginning of October 2009 the current providers had even to pay nearly 1,500 Euros per megawatt hour, in order to somewhere get rid of the exceeding wind power. Der Spiegel reported in its 10/2010 edition, that between the beginning of September 2009 and beginning of March 2010, the electricity tariffs have been turned in negatives on not less than 29 days because of the wind energy surplus. The Austrian operators of pumped storage hydro power stations, who use this electricity in order to pump water into mountain reservoirs, profit most of those negative prices. In case of peak demand they can lead the stored water through over gutter-pipes on turbines and sell the generated power on the EEX at top prices.

The construction of wind parks in the North See has already started. Energy generated in those wind parks will have to be transported further and further. The billion extensive power lines in north-south direction – a long-term construction – will become the needle eye of Germany’s power supply. Because the major power providers like RWE, E.ON and Vattenfall are forced to unbundle their distribution networks, a poker game has started. Concretely: International investors could try to influence the German electricity market to their favour and/or to sell cheap nuclear energy to the high prices in Germany after an acquisition of parts of the German high voltage transmission grid. This could explain why the Dutch grids company Tennet and the Belgian Elia offered twice more for E.ON’s and Vattenfall’s networks than German consortia.

The FAZ agrees with the assumption, that the Belgian Electrabel, a subsidiary of the French utilities group Suez GDF, will ultimately sell its stake in Elia to the French grid operator RTE. RTE could then deliver unhindered French atomic energy to German networks. FAZ editor Werner Sturbeck concludes: “It seems quite clear that the influence of German players from politics and economics on the future organisation of the high voltage network has become less during the last months.”

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

For some carbon millionaires, lining their pockets legally through taxpayer subsidies and hand outs is not enough.  They choose to cheat even though they’re playing a game that’s already rigged.

The Financial Times reports that:

Oreste Vigorito, head of the IVPC energy company and president of Italy’s National Association of Wind Energy, was arrested on Tuesday in Naples. Vito Nicastri, a Sicilian business associate, was arrested in Alcamo, Sicily.

Two other men were arrested in Sicily and the Naples area, while 11 others were charged but not arrested.

Oreste Vigorito: Arrested Nov. 11

FT reports that these saviors of our planet were building wind farms that were “built with public subsidies but had never functioned.”

Vigorito had ties to Brian Caffyn, founder of the controversial “Cape Wind” project planned for Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound, which has been criticized as a poor investment for taxpayers for the energy it will produce.  Vigorito was not an investor in Cape Wind.

According to the Boston Herald:

“What we found was quite remarkable,” David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director, said at the time. “Cape Wind stands to receive subsidies worth $731 million, or 77 percent of the cost of installing the project and 48 percent of the revenues it would generate. The policy question that this amount of subsidy raises is whether the project’s benefit is worth the huge public subsidies that the developer gets.”

The Herald reports that Mr. Caffyn’s 2007 divorce records reveal that “he amassed an $82 million fortune building wind farms around the world.”

Wind power remains an interesting and potentially useful technology.  However, if taxpayers are forced to pay for it they must receive a viable return on their investment.  Conservationists should not be forced to endure wind farms spoiling undeveloped places of natural beauty.  We should not allow wind farms to ruin the habitats of birds and other wildlife in ways we would never permit to established efficient methods of power generation.

It’s time politicians require the “green” business people who will reap fortunes from wind power to bear the financial costs and risks.   It’s time government zoning and environmental regulators ban wind turbines where they threaten wildlife and spoil human enjoyment of natural beauty.

Wind yes, but only when economically viable and only with respect for the quality of life both human and wild.

This article was amended slightly in response to a request from the Cape Wind Project.

EDGAR L. GÄRTNER (Frankfurt)

Although the document released on Saturday, October 24th doesn’t mention it, the new German government coalition between Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Guido Westerwelle’s Liberals will be obliged to sooner or later reign in Germany’s high subsidies for photovoltaic power.  One of the main causes of high German power prices is the expanding role of “renewables” in power generation since the beginning of the 21st century. While wind power’s percentage now exceeds 6 percent, and biomass is approaching 4 percent, photovoltaic power has yet to reach one percent of total power production. This tiny portion of Germany’s energy supply is by far the most costly. Since feed-in prices for “renewable” power are guaranteed for 20 years,solar panels installed from the year 2000 to the present will cost German power consumers no less than 35 billion Euros.  Our export oriented economy can no longer support this luxury, particularly during a time of global recession.

Until the end of the 20th century, Germany enjoyed relatively low power prices due to the predominant use of coal-fired and nuclear generators.  Costs were particularly low in large traditional plants that burned lignite (brown coal).   Coal plants (well equipped with dust filters and desulfurization) and (largely forgotten) nuclear plants were employed by semi-public regional monopolies and produced very reliable electricity for about 2 cents/kWh.  Hard coal plants (using a mix of cheap imported and highly subsidized domestic coal) delivered nearly the same amount of power as lignite plants, but for more than twice the cost (5 ct/kWh) – comparable then to the costs of hydropower and natural gas.  For many years the contribution of hydropower to the German power mix has stagnated below 5 percent as nearly all available sites for dams are already occupied.  Natural gas generation also remained modest until the end of the 20th century.

When the German power market moved to competition in comliance with the EU’s power market policy, the mean power price for industrial consumers dropped to about 6 ct/kWh and the mean price for end consumers to 14 ct/kWh.  However, after 2000 consumer prices began a steady rise.  By 2008, industrial clients were already paying nearly 13 ct/kWh and private clients nearly 22 ct/kWh.  The main culprit behind the rise is the German law favoring investments in “renewable” energies (EEG) passed in March 2000. The EEG guarantees high subsidies for any quantity of power generated by wind turbines, biomass converters or photovoltaic panels for a period of 20 years.

The guarantee was the key motivation for the recent investment-boom in the German “renewables” sector, especially in wind power.  Today 22.000 wind turbines are generating 6,3 % of Germany’s total power supplies (639 TWh) for a guaranteed price of 9 ct/kWh.  The unreliable nature of wind turbines requires backup by gas turbines which can easily be turned on and off.  The proliferation of windmills is driving the power sector’s dependence on natural gas.  While Germany’s wind power production between 1990 and 2007 rose from zero to 40 TWh, Germany’s gas consumption for power generation more than doubled in the same period (from 36 to 75 TWh) and today represents approximately13% of the country’s total power generation (for 7 ct/kWh). The country imports 83% of its natural gas supplies. Last year, 42% of the total gas consumption came from Russia. Wind power is clearly not reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fuel, contrary to the frequent claims of its proponents. In fact Germany’s experience shows that it is increasing dependence on imported natural gas (see my analysis published in  the Wall Street Journal last year.  Although this is not true for gas and electricity generated by biomass converters, these are nevertheless strongly contributing to the rise of power prices in Germany for they deliver some 3,6 % of the total power supplies for 14 ct/kWh.

Only nine years after the EEG, the structure of Germany’s energy supply has already changed considerably. The mean power generation costs rose from 3,5 ct/kWh in 2003 to 5,61 ct/kWh in 2008. One reason of this evolution was the nuclear phase out which was also decided in 2000. The new government coalition in Berlin has promised to revise this decision. Another reason is the start of the European carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) which has caused power from lignite plants to begin to lose its advantage.  The main cost driver in years to come will probably be the growing generation of solar power which is directly subsidized by all power consumers via guaranteed feed in prices. From 2004 on private producers of photovoltaic power received 57,4 ct/kWh. Since the beginning of this year the price guarantee was lowered to 43 ct/kWh in order to take into account some cost decrease. This is still nearly eight times higher than the mean generation costs and double the price that end consumers must pay.

Until now, the role of solar power in total German power supplies (some 0,8 % in 2008) has remained rather modest. But if you consider high price guarantees, over the next 20 years German power consumers will have to pay 45 billion Euros for a tiny quantity of power!  This means € 563 for every German citizen. Since the photovoltaic capacity in Germany is rapidly growing (an additional 2,5 Gigawatts are expected to come online this year as the price of photovoltaic modules has dropped faster than expected due to the financial crisis.  The cumulative costs of solar power will already exceed € 70 bn in 2010, then largely cross  the € 100 bn threshold in 2015, with estimated of € 133 to 169 bn and finally attain between € 180 and 300 bn in 2020 – or some € 3,000.- additional energy costs for every German citizen, babies included.  In spite of this gigantic cost, the contribution of solar energy to the German power supply mix will still not exceed 8 to 19,8 percent.

Dieter Damian, a Bonn based economist has produced a realistic model.  Damian reports that it is a popular trick of government propaganda to comsider only the annual costs of “renewable” energies with some 30,000 jobs allegedly created in this sector of the economy (out of a total of some 280,000 “green” jobs claimed by German government in March 2009) and to hide the total amount of money which must be spent by all power consumers over 20 years. Damian’s unpublished calculations are confirmed by Manuel Frondel and colleagues from the  Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI Essen). They have found that by the end of 2015 subsidies for solar power in Germany will reach € 120 bn. The price decrease introduced last year would lower this sum only to € 105 bn. Every job in the solar industry was subsidized, already in 2006, with € 153,000. Frondel underlines that as the photovoltaic modules installed in Germany are mostly assembled in countries with lower labor costs, the German EEG is better at creating jobs in China than Germany.

Given the influence of powerful lobby organizations, it would be unrealistic to expect the new German government to simply abolish the EEG.  However it does seem certain that the feed-in prices for solar power will be sensibly lowered. German consumer organizations are proposing a 30 percent reduction in solar subsidies starting in 2010.  The German mainstream press, for instance DER SPIEGEL which enthused over solar power for years has recently taken to reporting the findings of Manuel Frondel and others, preparing public opinion for deep cuts in solar subsidies.

The Golden Plover is one of the species the RSPB found was harmed by wind turbines.

The Daily Telegraph reports windfarms, “can reduce bird numbers by up to half” citing a study by Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

The idea of generating electricity from the wind always seems attractive at first glance.  However, wind continues to generate only one percent of world power.  Increasing that percentage requires adding thousands upon thousands of new turbines.  Many people, such as those who left in protest when the RSPB endorsed British turbine plans and organizations such as Wind Watch, question whether wind power can truly be considered friendly to the environment if it takes a major toll on wildlife.  They oppose planting industrial towers midst previously unspoiled coastal and rural vistas.

In the U.S., most would have expected the late Senator Ted Kennedy (a fixture of the American left) to back wind power, yet he fought fiercely against a proposal to place turbines in Nantucket Sound, spoiling the view of his boyhood sailing waters.

Can wind power become efficient enough to operate without subsidies?  Will it be required to live up to the same conservation standards followed by other energy producers?

Let’s hope we can find a place for wind power, but let’s remember the hen harriers, golden plovers, snipes, curlews, wheatears, meadow pipitbirds and even the buzzards and not allow these turbines to blight the very environments taxpayers have subsidized wind so generously to protect.

The Albanian coast

Albania’s government risks wrecking one of Europe’s last unspoiled environments ( and breaking its own laws) by allowing an Albanian subsidiary of an Italian company to build a wind farm on a coastal nature reserve and on part of a national park.

The government has transferred more than 97 hectares of land to Italy’s Moncada Energy Group, which through its Albanian subsidiary, Enpower Albania, aims to build a 500 megawatt wind farm in the south of the country….. Complete Story at Wind Watch.