The Duke of Edinburgh has said just what we’re all thinking about our disgraceful wind farms, says Clive Aslet.
By Clive Aslet
You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea “a monstrous carbuncle”. Prince Philip chose “disgrace”. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.
Wind farms are Blairism incarnate. Wanting to look big on the international stage, he committed Britain to some preposterously over-ambitious targets for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. As ever, this was glittering, shop-window stuff, the bill for which would somehow be obfuscated by the dour Scot in accounts. After due nail-biting, Brown came up with a system so convoluted that most people have only just realised that the person who ultimately pays is the consumer.
We are all generously subsidising the wind farms which many of us hate through our electricity bills. Why? Because unlike other forms of renewable energy, which would have required the Treasury to build huge civil engineering projects, the cost could be met through a trade in Renewable Obligations Certificates (ROCs). It works like this. Power companies are required by law to provide a proportion of green energy and if they don’t meet the target, they are fined. But they can avoid the fine if they buy-in green energy credits, which are traded in the shape of ROCs.
The money from selling ROCs is far more attractive to the wind farm speculators than the value of the energy itself. The power companies simply pass on the cost to the poor sap who buys their electricity. It’s Machiavellian. Worse, it’s Brownian — and, as the Duke says, a disgrace. But from the Blairite shallows, it was much better than having to confront a decision that might have incurred short-term unpopularity, but is all but inevitable for our future energy security: the building of more nuclear power stations.
Of course, in the boom times, when the economy was growing, this green indulgence might have been like that extra chocolate you shouldn’t have; nobody would notice it when the suit had been let out. We have now found that the waist band isn’t infinitely elastic. But just as belts are being tightened, green energy has bloated our bills by, as Lord Marland from the Department of Energy and Climate Change revealed in the House of Lords last month, a whopping £7.1 billion. Think how many libraries that would keep open. It is due to get worse. According to the Renewable Energy Foundation, whose sums have so far proved accurate, that figure will have risen to some £40 billion by 2020 — that’s between £6 billion and £8 billion a year; nearly all of it taken by wind.
I’m not the first person to have noticed that wind farms only generate electricity when the wind is blowing. On a freezing day, when the country turns up its electric blanket, the ear hearkens to what Robert Bridges called “the stillness of the solemn air”. No wind. However many turbines bristle on Welsh mountain tops or pylons stride through the Great Glen, we’ll only be tickling the nose of our energy crisis. We’re missing those targets to reduce emissions by a country mile. Yet as the winter progresses, life for some of the poorest members of society will become more difficult because of it. Food and fuel are going up in price, fuel by more than it need do because of those wretched wind farms.
We all know about David Cameron’s green instincts: he paraded them before the election as part of the campaign to convince voters that the Tories weren’t simply driven by the bottom line. He even put a windmill on his London chimney, even though there is not enough wind in cities. Now he should go and see that Meryl Streep film, and remind himself of the great lesson that Mrs Thatcher taught us: subsidies for industry don’t work.
We need more research into renewables, to find technologies that will work. But no form of green energy except nuclear is ready to take over from present sources of production. As fossil fuel prices rise, entrepreneurs will find ways of producing energy more cheaply. Wind farms are the modern British Leyland; the Government tried to pick a winner, but picked wrong.
Throw them out. Throw out the windmonger in chief, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, and leave it to the money men. Green MP Caroline Lucas may instinctively defend the interests of people rich enough to put solar panels on their roofs against those of the lowly consumers who have to pay to subsidise them, but the Treasury is, quite rightly, reducing the feed-in tariff for solar panels.
Less attention has been attracted by the intention to reduce subsidies for wind. Not by very much, mind you, and not by enough; but sufficient to send a signal to would-be investors that this rash, fierce blaze of riot cannot last. We can’t go on wrecking the landscape and spending money we don’t have. As the Admiral would have said in Mary Poppins, heavy weather is brewing for wind farms. It can’t arrive a moment too soon.
Clive Aslet is Editor at Large of 'Country Life’
Monday, 21 November 2011
Gates pushes for green investment
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world, has called upon the US government to triple its research spending on clean-energy technology to ensure that America is not left behind in the search for alternatives to fossil fuels.
Mr Gates said that market incentives alone will not raise the amounts of money needed for the kind of long-term development of alternative sources of energy that will replace the need to burn vast quantities of oil, coal and natural gas. "I believe it is imperative that the government commit to clean energy innovation at a level similar to its research investments in health and defence," Mr Gates says in a guest editorial for the journal Science.
"There is really no other choice. Carbon-based fuels are prone to wild price gyrations and are causing the planet to overheat. The United States spends close to $1 billion (£640m) a day on foreign oil, while countries such as China, Germany, Japan and Korea are making huge investments in clean-energy technologies," said Mr Gates, who called on the US government to boost spending on energy research from $5bn to $16bn a year.
Mr Gates said that market incentives alone will not raise the amounts of money needed for the kind of long-term development of alternative sources of energy that will replace the need to burn vast quantities of oil, coal and natural gas. "I believe it is imperative that the government commit to clean energy innovation at a level similar to its research investments in health and defence," Mr Gates says in a guest editorial for the journal Science.
"There is really no other choice. Carbon-based fuels are prone to wild price gyrations and are causing the planet to overheat. The United States spends close to $1 billion (£640m) a day on foreign oil, while countries such as China, Germany, Japan and Korea are making huge investments in clean-energy technologies," said Mr Gates, who called on the US government to boost spending on energy research from $5bn to $16bn a year.
EPA Lists Cars with Best Fuel Economy, Past and Present
By Jonathan Welsh
The federal fueleconomy.gov site that carries information from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency about fuel economy, fuel prices and related topics released its annual list of cars with the best fuel economy.
One notable development is that all of the vehicles on the top-10 list for the 2012 model year have pure electric or hybrid powertrains. The results reflect the growing range of these vehicles available as well as their overall efficiency.
The site also named the top-10 cars in fuel-economy rankings dating to 1984. While half of the all-time greats on this year’s list are 2012 models, it is still worth noting that cars like a mid-1980s Chevy Sprint, a mid-1990s Honda Civic and the 2000 Honda Insight hybrid make the cut despite their advanced age. Older, relatively low-tech vehicles apparently still have a few lessons for modern automotive engineers.
The following charts show which cars lead the pack in fuel economy today, and which older models are still among the all-time leaders.
For charts see: http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/11/20/epa-lists-cars-with-best-fuel-economy-past-and-present/?KEYWORDS=environmental+news
The federal fueleconomy.gov site that carries information from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency about fuel economy, fuel prices and related topics released its annual list of cars with the best fuel economy.
One notable development is that all of the vehicles on the top-10 list for the 2012 model year have pure electric or hybrid powertrains. The results reflect the growing range of these vehicles available as well as their overall efficiency.
The site also named the top-10 cars in fuel-economy rankings dating to 1984. While half of the all-time greats on this year’s list are 2012 models, it is still worth noting that cars like a mid-1980s Chevy Sprint, a mid-1990s Honda Civic and the 2000 Honda Insight hybrid make the cut despite their advanced age. Older, relatively low-tech vehicles apparently still have a few lessons for modern automotive engineers.
The following charts show which cars lead the pack in fuel economy today, and which older models are still among the all-time leaders.
For charts see: http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/11/20/epa-lists-cars-with-best-fuel-economy-past-and-present/?KEYWORDS=environmental+news
China's green growth potential 'could create 9.5m new jobs'
Report urges China to replace dirty, energy intensive industries with renewable technology and other 'green' businesses
Jonathan Watts
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 10.40 GMT
China can make a net gain of 9.5m jobs over the next five years if it phases out its dirtiest, energy intensive industries and replaces them with renewable technology and other "green" businesses, according to an influential advisory body.
The potential for green growth was flagged up in a report that highlights the "Jeckyl and Hyde" nature of the environmental situation in China, which can claim both the world's biggest investment in new energy and the most dangerous levels of pollution. The report was released this week by the China Council of International Co-operation on Environment and Development, which is headed by Li Keqiang – widely tipped to become the next prime minister – and includes 200 domestic and overseas experts and leading figures in the United Nations and other world bodies.
On the economics of a shift to a more sustainable development path, it is brimful of ambition and optimism. The council advises the government to spend 5.8 trillion yuan (£61bn) on measures to save energy, protect the environment and replace polluting industries with hi-tech firms. It estimates this would create 10.6m jobs, boost GDP by 8 trillion yuan and result in energy savings worth another 1.4 trillion yuan. These gains, it says, would far exceed the costs of eliminating the dirtier sectors of the economy, which are calculated as a loss of 950,000 jobs and 100bn yuan in output.
At their annual meeting, the council emphasised the need to shift track – a process that the government has tried to promote in its latest five-year plan. "The industrial sector is still the prime energy consumer and a major cause of pollution, so greening the sector is key for China's green transformation," Li Ganjie, vice minister of environmental protection and the council's secretary general was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
On the environmental situation, however, the report painted a far bleaker picture for the next 10 years of worsening levels of toxic waste, ecological degradation and water shortages. At the release of the report, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, praised China's $49bn (£31bn) investment last year in renewable energy, but said the country is also paying an alarming health cost for the past three decades of dirty growth. "They are paying a price first of all individually by premature deaths ... Respiratory diseases and premature deaths in the hundreds of thousands," he said.
The report - which was three years in the making - placed much of the blame on an obsession with GDP expansion, particularly at a local government level, which has resulted in lax implementation of environmental goals. "The blind pursuit of economic growth has now become a huge obstacle for China's green growth," it says.
It suggests the introduction of a carbon tax and new pricing mechanisms that would encourage more efficient use of scarce resources such as water. The central government says it is also trying to rebalance environmental quality with economic quantity, partly by setting new goals to reduce pollution.
In the latest promise of improvement, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said it will tighten air quality monitoring and include PM2.5 small particulate matter in the index for the first time. Zhou Shengxian, the environment minister, told the council that China would move towards international standards of monitoring, but warned that there was still a long way to go. "It will be a gradual process, and won't be achieved all at once," Zhou said while outside Beijing was shrouded in a thick haze.
Jonathan Watts
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 10.40 GMT
China can make a net gain of 9.5m jobs over the next five years if it phases out its dirtiest, energy intensive industries and replaces them with renewable technology and other "green" businesses, according to an influential advisory body.
The potential for green growth was flagged up in a report that highlights the "Jeckyl and Hyde" nature of the environmental situation in China, which can claim both the world's biggest investment in new energy and the most dangerous levels of pollution. The report was released this week by the China Council of International Co-operation on Environment and Development, which is headed by Li Keqiang – widely tipped to become the next prime minister – and includes 200 domestic and overseas experts and leading figures in the United Nations and other world bodies.
On the economics of a shift to a more sustainable development path, it is brimful of ambition and optimism. The council advises the government to spend 5.8 trillion yuan (£61bn) on measures to save energy, protect the environment and replace polluting industries with hi-tech firms. It estimates this would create 10.6m jobs, boost GDP by 8 trillion yuan and result in energy savings worth another 1.4 trillion yuan. These gains, it says, would far exceed the costs of eliminating the dirtier sectors of the economy, which are calculated as a loss of 950,000 jobs and 100bn yuan in output.
At their annual meeting, the council emphasised the need to shift track – a process that the government has tried to promote in its latest five-year plan. "The industrial sector is still the prime energy consumer and a major cause of pollution, so greening the sector is key for China's green transformation," Li Ganjie, vice minister of environmental protection and the council's secretary general was quoted as saying by the China Daily.
On the environmental situation, however, the report painted a far bleaker picture for the next 10 years of worsening levels of toxic waste, ecological degradation and water shortages. At the release of the report, Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, praised China's $49bn (£31bn) investment last year in renewable energy, but said the country is also paying an alarming health cost for the past three decades of dirty growth. "They are paying a price first of all individually by premature deaths ... Respiratory diseases and premature deaths in the hundreds of thousands," he said.
The report - which was three years in the making - placed much of the blame on an obsession with GDP expansion, particularly at a local government level, which has resulted in lax implementation of environmental goals. "The blind pursuit of economic growth has now become a huge obstacle for China's green growth," it says.
It suggests the introduction of a carbon tax and new pricing mechanisms that would encourage more efficient use of scarce resources such as water. The central government says it is also trying to rebalance environmental quality with economic quantity, partly by setting new goals to reduce pollution.
In the latest promise of improvement, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said it will tighten air quality monitoring and include PM2.5 small particulate matter in the index for the first time. Zhou Shengxian, the environment minister, told the council that China would move towards international standards of monitoring, but warned that there was still a long way to go. "It will be a gradual process, and won't be achieved all at once," Zhou said while outside Beijing was shrouded in a thick haze.