Coalición Pro Bosque Seco Ventanas Verraco

March 21, 2010

Wind farms appear to offer a perfect solution to the twin problems of global warming and the depletion of hydrocarbon reserves. The wind will still be blowing long after the last petrol-engined car has been crunched into a lump of metal. Britain may be running out of North Sea oil, but you need only stand on our coastline to realise it will never lack wind.

As we report today, however, a detailed study of some of Britain’s onshore wind farms suggests they do not come remotely near providing an efficient and reliable source of supply. Worse, they are a blight on some of our most beautiful landscapes.

No wind farm can produce 100% of its maximum power output; the realistic operating maximum is about 50%. Many wind farms fall well below that. The norm for onshore farms is 25% to 30%, based on data from Ofgem, the energy regulator. More than 20 farms produce less than a fifth of their maximum output and some produce less than 10%.

This might not matter except that such low output adds to the already high cost of wind generation. More seriously than that, many of these wind farms got planning permission only because they had claimed levels of power output that have never been achieved. Communities have been left with the huge and noisy wind farms on their doorsteps, knowing they are producing little energy.

If onshore wind is disappointing, solar power is likely to be even more so, especially in Britain. A recent study by the Institute for Energy Research, based in Germany, found that the country’s renewable energy policy, including the so-called feed-in tariffs about to be introduced in the UK, resulted in “massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security”. Solar power was a particular culprit, with subsidies per worker exceeding average wages but with very little to show for it.

Even George Monbiot, the eco-warrior, has weighed in, warning of the “great green rip-off” of solar panels and the feed-in tariff. Solar panels may be middle-class status symbols but they are “perfectly useless”, he wrote.

This is the kind of problem that arises when renewable targets are set from on high, in this case from the European Union. It wants 20% of energy across Europe to be generated from renewable sources by 2020. This is folly of the highest order if the only way it can be done is inefficiently and expensively and at the cost of damaging our environment. Far better to push on with technologies we know can deliver, such as nuclear and clean coal. The answer, sadly, is not blowing in the wind.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article7069806.ece