Britain scrambles to avoid future blackouts
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October 17 2011
Image by DECCgovuk via Flickr
Chris Huhne, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change gambled the future of Britain’s energy generation on a massive expansion of giant bird shredders:
February 2007 [before Huhne was in government]:
Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: “The doubling of our electricity generation from wind in a little more than a year shows what renewables can do and gives the lie to the need for a new generation of nuclear power. “However, the incentives for wind need to be maintained while the Government is still far short of doing what is necessary to encourage tidal and wave power. “On a windy island surrounded by waves and tides, we should never be short of environmentally-friendly energy sources.”
Huhne expressed his excitement over the findings of a recent report into the value of Britain’s offshore resources. He is quoted saying: “It is right to point out, as that report did, that in due course we may once again be a net energy exporter, as we were during the peak of oil and gas in the North Sea, and that’s a very exciting prospect.”
The Energy Secretary said enabling Britain to be totally self-sufficient thanks to renewable sources – which also included wave power and harnessing tidal streams – would be an extraordinary prize.
I’m pleased that we’ve reached the point where 5GW of our energy comes from onshore and offshore wind – that’s enough electricity to power all the homes in Scotland.
cartoon by Josh
But wind power is a mirage.
If the promise of wind was real, the UK wouldn’t need to spend £5 billion on new undersea cables linking it to more reliable power from European nations like nuclear-powered France:
The Government plans to spend more than £5billion laying 11 undersea power cables to allow Britain to import electricity from neighbouring countries and prevent blackouts in the next decade. The giant cables would provide up to 10GW of electricity, enough to power 2.4 million homes a year. Ministers are said to be alarmed at Britain’s likely energy shortfall, made worse by the fact the country has less capacity to import power than any other in Europe.
Chris Huhne scattered the land and oceans with anti-avian monuments to stupidity, and all he has to show for it is millions of dead birds and people who can’t afford electricity. Turns out the green dream is more of a nightmare for Britons.
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Comments
Didn't think so.
It's great having SO MUCH MONEY we can piss it away like that. Britain is equally wealthy? Some future our leaders envision.
'bird choppers'
'millions of dead birds'
Interesting that you haven't linked to any articles on this. Any study using figures from any location in the world demonstrates that wind turbines are responsible for a tiny fraction of bird deaths in comparison to any of domestic cats, power lines or cars.
We do need to debate our energy options rather than just accepting government propaganda, but this has to be done using actual FACTS rather than just the equally as misleading anti-wind propaganda messages that have been stretching the truth to the point that it snaps. There are sensible anti-wind arguments that can be made without resorting to this ineffectual and misleading 'wind turbines kill millions of birds' myth. The more times that lie is trotted out, the weaker the rest of the arguments seem to become.
But then I'm just a card carrying member of the cat hating lobby.
Altamont's turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon's tanks, and they do so every year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm does not face the same threat of prosecution, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the mid-1990s." online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574376543308399048.html
2008 Wolfe Island 1,982 dead birds in 8 months. Watch for yourself the bird get killed at 1:19. You can audibly here the bird get hit and the sickening crunch as it plummets 400 feet to the ground. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofoxM-tqPew No environmentalist can call themselves such and remain silent.
The Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown is reporting the farm shut down the windmills overnight after the Indiana bat was found Sept. 26.
The farm in question was built by Gamesa Energy USA and covers parts of Portage, Washington, and Cresson Townships in Cambria County, and part of Blair County, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh.
A spokesman for Duke Energy, which now owns the wind farm, says it has a cooperative monitoring agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether bats are being harmed by the windmills.
The windmills will likely resume nighttime operation about Nov. 15, when the bats will hibernate until spring.
www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view/20111018windmills_stopped_at_night_after_bat_death/srvc=home%26position=recent
I've been searching the internet and jogging my memory, but I cannot ever recall the coal fired plant near me ever being shut down for any reason whatsoever. And no dead flappy things either! In fact, the birdies make nests on it. Huh.
Find a better way, and everyone will follow voluntarily.
Was talking with my former next door neighbor a couple nights ago. He has been a Drilling Consultant for over 40 years and is currently working in the Bakkan Field in North Dakota.
He has drilled wells all over the world and was saying when he drilled wells in northern England/Scotland and the North Sea they drilled through zones that had 800 meters of Coal to get at the oil and gas zones.
Shale gas is also huge in the UK, there is centuries worth of Coal and Coal Gas, but hey Ian better -you- start looking while -you- still have a choice.
Me i'll chose real energy because the "Alternative" is freezing in the dark.
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