Pretty useless and with enormous opportunity costs attached (wind farms, of course)
When the wind sucks, part deux
The UK has liberally sprinkled vast wind farms all over its green and pleasant land, but without much effect.
Gaia, it seems, is not without a sense of humor:
Onshore wind as a percentage was 1.9 per cent of all electricity in 2010, down from 2.0 per cent in 2009. This represents a six per cent fall in the amount of energy generated from onshore wind compared to last year. A DECC spokesman blamed the weather but insisted the UK is on track to meet targets, in large part thanks to a massive increase in the amount of energy generated by offshore wind.
Hundreds more giant bird shredders were erected in the past year, yet actual energy production was down 6%. That’s math only a government could love. (Daily Bayonet)
Windfarms or cancer treatment?
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne states that:
A low-carbon economy presents an opportunity, not a cost. Investment in our clean energy future should not be mistaken for a cost to the economy, or the public purse…Globally, the low-carbon goods and services industry is worth £3.2 trillion, and employs 28 million people.
In a withering response, Tim Worstall, takes Huhne’s arguments apart and shows, yet again, the idiocy of current climate and energy policy. In passing Worstall makes the comment that:
…an economist would point out those are costs. 28 million people not curing cancer but faffing about with windmills. This is a cost of getting windmills, for we get windmills not the cure for cancer.
Some would argue that a blog about cancer and cancer-research is not the place to be discussing either climate change, energy policy or economics. I strongly disagree. At every stage, from screening, to diagnosis to treatment, economic decisions are at play. And those decisions can be the difference between life and death. We live in a world where there are not endless resources, there is no bottomless pit of money, therefore decisions about where money is spent have to be made, no matter how distasteful or had those decisions are. (AntiCancer)
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The wind doesn’t start blowing just becsuae you turned on a switch so you’re gambling that wind energy would be available when you need it. There’s a capital investment in both land and in the generator itself, there’s maintenance, there’s transmission costs, basically it amounts to a high startup cost, a constant operational cost but results in a variable uncontrollable generation of energy. The risk is that you won’t have the power when you can sell the power and you may have too much power when you can’t sell the power.