{"id":13954,"date":"2012-03-07T10:20:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=13954"},"modified":"2012-03-10T13:33:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-10T18:33:32","slug":"wind-turbines-are-a-technology-that-isnt-ready-for-prime-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/07\/wind-turbines-are-a-technology-that-isnt-ready-for-prime-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Wind turbines are “a technology that isn’t ready for prime time”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Orlowski on the bad economic and technological decision by the British government to put so much reliance on wind power<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain’s go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs.<\/p>\n

Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that favour wind technology; the true cost, critics could argue, will be higher in each set of calculations. One study reckons that the UK can still meet its carbon dioxide emissions targets and save \u00a3140bn — but only if it dumps today’s inefficient hippie technology. The other puts the potential saving at \u00a3120bn — pointing out that the same amount of electricity could be generated using open cycle gas plants at one-tenth<\/em> the cost of using wind turbines.<\/p>\n

“There is nothing inherently good or bad about investing in renewable energy and green technology,” writes economist Professor Gordon Hughes — formerly of the World Bank and now at the University of Edinburgh. “The problem is that the government has decided to back a technology that isn’t ready for prime time, thus distorting the market.”<\/p>\n

Hughes’ study — Why is Wind power so expensive? An economic analysis<\/em> — is published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation today, and simply looks at the costs. The other study, by technical consulting group AF-Mercados, specifically looks at how to reduce CO2 in the cheapest manner — by incurring the least collateral economic damage. It’s called Powerful Targets: Exploring the relative cost of meeting decarbonisation and renewables targets in the British power sector<\/em>. KPMG originally commissioned the study, but then got cold feet. Both come to similar conclusions: wind is astronomically expensive compared to other sources of energy — and consumers and businesses must pay a high price for the privilege of subsidising such an inefficient technology.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Update, 10 March<\/b>: A lovely little cartoon from Watts Up With That<\/a> on this topic:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Orlowski on the bad economic and technological decision by the British government to put so much reliance on wind power: Two studies published this week calculate the astounding cost of Britain’s go-it-alone obsession with using wind turbines to generate so much of the electricity the nation needs. Both studies make remarkably generous concessions that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25,65,15],"tags":[640,497],"class_list":["post-13954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-economics","category-environment","category-technology","tag-alternativeenergy","tag-electricity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3D4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13954"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13956,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13954\/revisions\/13956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}