The Daily Telegraph Reports

We’re not making this up.

This is part of an astonishing £523 million in subsidy payments British ratepayers sent to foreign wind corporations.

Foreign oil was not enough?  Foreign wind?

_____

UPDATE:

Telegraph Editorial:  Wind power: a policy spinning out of control

1,000 land-based wind turbines stand to be scrapped if government follows through and slashes millions of pounds in subsidies.  A report commissioned by ScottishPower concludes that reducing subsidies 25 percent will render the turbines a loss maker for investors instead of just rate and taxpayers.

CFACT continues to conclude that alternative energy sources such as wind and solar should only be deployed when they can compete effectively with other sources of energy.  Locking in inefficient power generation and the subsidies and guarantees that goes with it will have a terrible long term impact on industry as well as family finances.  Sadly, under current policy, wind turbines are more efficient at generating handouts from working people than electricity.

Scotland is plagued with unemployment numbers that keep rising to the north side of eight percent.  Industry continues to bypass regions like Scotland seeking out places to produce where costs and regulatory burdens are less.  Unfortunately, scrapping these land-based turbines could lead to relocating them offshore, where the subsidy pot is still full, at great cost to rate and taxpayers.  Scotland should instead lead the way, drop the subsidies and schemes and enable all forms of power generation to compete in the marketplace.  Efficiency and low cost is how to keep Scotland working.  The prosperity that results will green the environment more than top down mandates ever will.

The Telegraph reports that British nobles, including Dukes and a cousin of the Queen are cashing in on tax and ratepayer subsidies to erect wind farms on their country estates.  Each turbine can net a noble £20,000 a year or more.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s father-in-law is a baronet who is pulling in “as much as £350,000 a year from eight turbines on his estate at Bagmoor in Lincolnshire.”  This may give Cameron’s un-torylike policy surrender to radical green interests some perspective.

For generations the UK could count on its aristocrats’ selfless noblesse oblige.  Country estates have traditionally been havens of bucolic green space and conservation.  Today’s gentle folk appear ready to abandon the needs of the land and bring industrial turbines to glen, wood, hillside and moor.  We’ve entered a brave new millennium of selfish noblesse spolio.

Sadly, many of these turbines end up situated in inland areas where there isn’t even much wind.  They generate not electricity, but subsidies.

The Telegraph quoted “Sir Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust but speaking in a personal capacity [who] said: “The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape.”

This may well be the worst example of regressive redistribution of wealth in Britain since the Sheriff of Nottingham shook down the peasants for Prince John.

Reuters reports that with half of major energy suppliers in the UK announcing double digit price increases for electricity and gas the British public has had enough.  75 percent now favor abandoning Britain’s green agenda if it means higher prices.

The problem of course is after you thwart efficient nuclear, coal and gas generation and lock in guarantees, subsidies and high prices for alternative energy profiteers it is almost impossible to go back.

Developed nations like the UK already price their labor out of the marketplace with the high costs of their social welfare states.   Affordable energy is one area in which developed nations should have the edge, yet they toss that advantage away in the name of useless carbon initiatives.   A government study predicts energy costs for British business will rise 58 percent by 2030.  Who will be able to afford to work or produce in such a wasteful environment?

CFACT has consistently pointed out that this combination of high energy prices, inefficient generation and massive transfers of wealth from taxpayers to corporations cashing in on alternative energy is unsustainable.

Will nations which have not yet locked themselves into the same energy cage as Britain wake up in time to avoid a similar trap?  Will China, India and Brazil generously grant work visas to workers from (one-time) developed nations who need a job?

The EU Structural Funds are enormous. Maybe they contribute to something good, but mostly – slightly admitted by everyone in the game – they are a feast for vested interests.

One of the pet projects for the distributors is renewable energy projects, something the journalist Angus Stickler sheds some light on:

“The most strikingcase is that the development of wind power stations on the Mediterranean island of Sicily, home of the notorious mafia clan Cosa Nostra.  A few weeks ago the Italian authorities seized the assets of the record sum of 1.5 billion euros. The police had uncovered an elaborate case of embezzlement and money laundering by an EU-funded project on renewable energy sources. A crime boss who recently defected described it as ‘easy pennies’ or ‘comfortable money’.”

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with any form of energy production, be it fossil, nuclear, solar, wind or whatever you can come up with. As long as you follow the rules. These, hopefully most people would agree on, are that you don’t pollute (or at least ask first), take proper precautions and don’t steel any form of property. And that includes the money the Europeans pay in taxes.

As far as I’m concerned, you can try to pedal your house warm. But please don’t ask me to sponsor your bike.

It ought to be added that the fight against the mob on Cicily has been rather successful in recent years. The entire island is a dream of marvelous views and meals that, literally, tempts you to stay at the table from lunch until bedtime. Sounds like a waste to send in “comfortable money” to the bad guys.

EDGAR L. GAERTNER

Thousands of bureaucrats are preparing for another cushy climate confab in Cancun — while U.S. Senators Bignaman, Brownback and Reid are contemplating how to ram renewable energy standards through a lame-duck session of Congress.  If they’re wise, American voters and congressmen will pay extra careful attention to the awful dilemma of German climate and energy policy, as exemplified by recent events and make sure their country doesn’t make the same “green” mistakes Germany did.

Barely two months after the inauguration ceremony for Germany’s first pilot offshore wind farm, “Alpha Ventus” in the North Sea, all six of the newly installed wind turbines were completely idle due to gearbox damage.  Two turbines must be replaced entirely, the other four repaired.

Friends of the project, especially Germany’s environment minister, Norbert Roettgen, talked of “teething problems.”  The problem is far more serious than that, for wind turbines in the high seas are extremely expensive for power consumers, even when they run smoothly.  When they don’t the problem intensifies.  Germany could face blackouts — a new dark age.

The Alpha Ventus failures created intense pressure for Areva Multibrid, a subsidiary of the semi-public French nuclear power company Areva.  Every “standstill day,” with the expensive turbines standing idle and not generating a single kilowatt hour of electricity causes lost revenue.  Environmental economist and meteorologist Thomas Heinzow of the University of Hamburg estimated the operator’s revenue shortfall at almost $6,500 (5,000 euro) per turbine per standstill day.  Giving greater pause to Areva was the certainly not unreasonable fear that the already skittish investors could get cold feet and wander off in search of less risky ventures.

Actually Areva, Areva Multibrid and the construction engineers can consider themselves lucky that the North Sea was relatively calm, thanks to the hot summer.  Installing turbine blades is done via jack-up platforms and is a tricky business under the best circumstances.  With anything above Beaufort Wind Force 3 (an 8-10 mph “gentle breeze”), the work becomes downright risky.

The six Areva Multibrid wind turbines stand 280 feet (85 meters) above the waves at  the gearbox and turbine hub.  Their heavy blades are 380 feet (116 meters) in diameter.  Each turbine weighs 1,000 metric tons (2.2 million pounds), including the tripod base, which rises up from the sea floor 100 feet (30 meters) beneath the surface of these notoriously rough and frigid North Sea waters.

Imagine trying to disassemble and then rebuild these monsters in anything other than calm seas.  Thankfully, “Alpha Ventus” also includes six even bigger wind turbines supplied by the formerly German company REpower, which now belongs to India’s Suzlon Corporation.  These turbines have thus far been running faultlessly.  However, there are enough other issues associated with operating offshore turbines to send additional shivers up the spine.  Monster turbines rated at 5 megawatt maximum power generation impose high costs even when — perhaps especially when — they are running full blast.  As each turbine costs $5,200 (4,000 euro) per kilowatt  in upfront investment, European legislators have decreed that turbine operators must be rewarded with 20 cents in incentives for every kWh generated at sea.

Europe’s energy consumers must pay 20 cents per kWh generated, plus an additional 5 cents per kWh for transmission costs.  They must pay this regardless of whether they need the electricity at the moment and despite the fact that a kWh of wind electricity is worth less than 3 cents on the Leipzig Power Exchange due to the intermittent and highly variable nature of wind.

Even crazier, when high winds generate huge quantities of electricity, but power consumption is low, the Power Exchanges must then sell the electricity at a loss to persuade purchasers to buy the excess electricity.  At the moment the most common purchasers are Austrian pumped storage operators who use wind turbine power to pump water into mountain lakes, so they can later used the water to run hydroelectric generators during peak demand periods — and sell that power at premium prices.  Heinzow calculates that water equivalent to Lake Constance (13 cubic miles or 55 cubic kilometers) must be pumped 1,1665 feet (350 meters) high, just to buffer the supply-demand discontinuity caused by the thousands of wind turbines that are already planned for the North and Baltic seas.

There are only two alternatives to this.  One is using gas turbines as backup generators that can supply power whenever winds are not blowing at usable speeds.  But unless shale gas development proceeds apace, this would increase Europe’s dependence on Russian gas supplies.  It would also result in inefficient gas use and higher carbon emissions as generators ramp up and down every time wind turbine output changes.

The other is nuclear plants.  High performance nuclear plants can adjust their electricity to replace the highly variable output from wind farms, but that reduces efficiency and caused irregular burn-up of fuel rods.  This is a serious concern as high efficiency is the primary way nuclear plants recoup their high capital costs.  A bigger concern is that the German government has reversed only partly its decision to phase out all nuclear plants.

However, the lack of suitable backup power generation may still be a relatively small problem.  Billion dollar investments in transmission lines are needed to bring expensive wind power from offshore sites north of Germany to big industrial consumers hundreds of miles south.   Resistance to new high voltage lines in urban and recreational areas is high and rising.

A Lower Saxony law already requires the use of ground cables in certain areas, however, those are ten times more expensive than above-ground lines and less reliable due to constant assault by water, salt and subterranean animal life.

The bottom line is this:  Germans will have to prepare for significantly higher electricity tariffs and more frequent blackouts.  “If all German wind power projects are realized as planned, the country will incur economic losses well over 100 billion Euros by 2010,”  Heinzow reports.  “The only word that describes this ‘world improvement’ strategy is suicidal.”

Does America really want to follow Europe down this suicidal path?

Sweden: Tomorrow, Sunday, it’s time for general election in my country of birth. Though I somehow feel that the simultaneous process in Kabul would be more important, it’s hard not to follow the debate. If it is a debate.

Customary televised exchange between the leading players singles out the most crucial issues, and the auction starts, on education, taxes, employment. The usual. And the usual nonsense. 

And then it comes, the Climate!

Government: (carefully avoiding using the word Copenhagen) – We have spent and will spend 300 millions, what do you intend to do?

Opposition: We intend to spend 400 million. The government obviously doesn’t take this crucial issue seriously.

Government: – Oh yes we do. We are building windmills to the moon.

Opposition: – We will build more windmills than you will.

Something is seriously wrong here, not just with my rather free summary of this strange exchange.

Facts are:

Even if you believe in climate change being caused by human CO2-emissions, this particular country is 97% “climate neutral”, as the wording goes (human breathing not included). The reason is the relative enormity – given the country’s size – of water power, and of use of nuclear energy. The car park and the airlines are just getting more and more efficient.

At the same time, the partly state owned energy company expropriates land in other countries for coal mines and burning. Both sides now somehow agree that maybe this villain of a company, at least partly should be sold of.

But who is supposed to pay these 300 or 400 millions? And for what purpose? Until I get a solid answer, my voting card will remain in a safe place. And that’s not the voting booth.

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.