Ten years too late, it’s good riddance to wind farms

dailymail.co.uk ^ | Christopher Booker

[Iam1ru1-2]

One of the most dangerous delusions of our age

The significance of yesterday’s shock announce-ment by our Energy Minister John Hayes that the Government plans to put a firm limit on the building of any more onshore windfarms is hard to exaggerate.

On the face of it, this promises to be the beginning of an end to one of the greatest and most dangerous political delusions of our time.

For years now, the plan to cover hundreds of square miles of the British countryside with ever more wind turbines has been the centrepiece of Britain’s energy policy — and one supported by all three major political parties.

Back in 2008, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his wish to see the country spend £100 billion on windfarms, the only response from the Tory leader David Cameron was to say that he should have done it sooner.

It was the only way, they all agreed, Britain could meet our commitment to the EU that, by 2020, we must produce nearly a third of our electricity from ‘renewables’ — with the largest part provided by tens of thousands more wind turbines.

Yet now, out of the blue, has come this announcement by the Coalition Energy Minister that from now on there is to be a moratorium on building onshore turbines other than those for which consent has already been given. Bonanza

What made this even more piquant was the fact that Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hours before attending a conference in Glasgow staged by RenewableUK, the professional lobby group for Britain’s wind industry.

These are the very people who for years have been making fortunes out of the greatest public subsidy bonanza of modern times. Now Mr Hayes is to stop their gravy train in its tracks.

[gorush]

[cicero2k]

The only way the industry managed to fool politicians into accepting this crazy deal was by subterfuge — referring to turbines only in terms of their ‘capacity’ (i.e. what they could produce if the wind was blowing at optimum speeds 24 hours of every day). The truth is that their average actual output is barely a quarter of that figure.

Yep. Barely 25% a capacity factor when your average coal-gas-nuclear plant gets 90%

How no one warned on this, I have no idea.

We had to wait for the numbers to come on a large scale for this collapse to happen.

[trappedincanuckistan]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9559656/Germanys-wind-power-chaos-should-be-a-warning-to-the-UK.html

[Chode]

one destroys itself

[Vince Ferrer]

How no one warned on this, I have no idea.

On projects like this, the anti-wind people would just never be invited to meetings or to give testimony.

[dennisw]

Many or most of these wind farms have been put up by foreign corporations that snagged the subsidies and tax breaks. A totally ridiculous state of affairs. So now despite EU green energy mandates UK is stopping them, they should have done it years ago

[SierraWasp]

Are you saying they should’ve just passed wind???

[Cold Heart]

Sometimes FR is too funny to take the world seriously.
LOL

[353FMG]

Butt-ugly structures.

[GeronL]

subsidizing inefficiency is not very cost-effective

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The only way the industry managed to fool politicians into accepting this crazy deal was by subterfuge — referring to turbines only in terms of their ‘capacity’ (i.e. what they could produce if the wind was blowing at optimum speeds 24 hours of every day). The truth is that their average actual output is barely a quarter of that figure. Yet it was on this deception that the industry managed to fool pretty well everyone that windfarms could make a contribution to Britain’s energy needs four times larger than reality — and thus was ‘the great wind scam’ launched on its way.

Not to mention all the required fossil fuel plants running in spin mode for standby power when the winds are not blowing.

This is what happens when a majority of your politicians are lawyers.

This was obvious to any engineer worth his salt.

[353FMG]

It was VERY cost effective to charlatans like Al Gore and those that invested in these deceptive “green” projects.

You can be sure that plenty of congresscritters got a piece of that pie.

[GeronL]

Yes, I think I remember news stories of big Democrats investing into Abound Solar or something