Chris Huhne's successor faces clash as Tories attack wind farms spending

[martin]

from - http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/04/chris-huhne-green-agenda-menzies-campbell

"Demand for £400m subsidies to be slashed threatens claim to be the 'greenest government ever'
The challenge facing the new Liberal Democrat energy secretary, Ed Davey, has been laid bare by the revelation that 101 Tory MPs are demanding drastic cuts to the £400m-a-year government subsidies for wind farms.

The demands from Conservative MPs, made in a letter to David Cameron, came as a former Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, warned that there would be serious trouble from his party's activists if there was any rowing back from the coalition's commitment to run the "greenest government ever".

Policy on wind farms threatens to become a major fault line between the Tories, many of whom say they are expensive and inefficient, and the Lib Dems, who see the building of 4,500 more turbines as an essential part of the drive to cut carbon emissions.

In the letter, the Tory MPs tell the prime minister they are becoming "more and more concerned" about the commitment to "support for onshore wind energy production".

The letter is evidence of growing pressure from Conservatives to resist Liberal Democrat pressure to promote green policies which many Tories believe have no proved economic or environmental benefit. The warning came as Campbell said the Lib Dem grassroots would tolerate no rowing back from the green agenda that is central to their purpose in government following the resignation of Chris Huhne.

Huhne, one of the Lib Dems' toughest operators, resigned as energy secretary to mount a "robust defence" of claims that he persuaded his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, to take his penalty points for a speeding offence in 2003. The MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire, and his ex-wife, who faces a related charge, will appear before Westminster magistrates on 16 February. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Campbell told the Observer that the Lib Dems' credibility rested on the new energy secretary taking as tough a line on green issues as Huhne and not giving in to the demands of the Tory right.

"Liberal Democrat voters, and in particular Lib Dem activists, will not be content if there is any rowing back on the green agenda," he said. "Commitment to the environment has an iconic place in the Lib Dem approach and if we were seen to water that down, publicly and privately, things could get very tough."

Environmentalists expressed dismay at the loss of Huhne from the heart of government. Greenpeace said he had been "a vocal advocate for the green agenda in a government whose green credentials are looking more than a little tarnished".

Huhne was furious when the chancellor, George Osborne, suggested in his autumn statement last November that the government could not put green policies before the need to create jobs.

"We are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers," the chancellor said. "All we will be doing is exporting valuable jobs out of Britain."

Davey, 46, the former consumer affairs minister, , who has had a relatively low-profile career in the party until now, will join Nick Clegg at an event which officials insist will demonstrate the party's determination to keep green policies at the top of the government's agenda.

Clegg is due to give a major speech on the environment within weeks, before Osborne's budget next month. Lib Dem sources said Davey, Clegg and others would be working on ideas on how to raise money to pay for more tax cuts for low earners through pollution taxes, most probably on aviation.

On his promotion to the Cabinet, Davey said he was "particularly conscious of the impact on consumers' households across the country of high energy bills". He made clear he would continue with Huhne's plans to increase the number of wind farms and "a green economy where there's lots of green jobs to help growth in our economy".

He added: "I am determined to work to follow on Chris's priorities, the Liberal Democrats' priorities, the coalition government's priorities and make them my priorities."

[martin]

....following a concerted campaign by the anti-wind loonies, led by such towering intellects as Melanie "mad as a box of frogs" Philips........

I smell a shower of brown envelopes - kerrrrching!

[brackwell]

Are they saying cut the subsidy or cut the building of wind farms.  I would like to see their full argument.   Only one thing is cheaper than onshore wind and thats gas - for how long?  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14412189  .   After the good wind year we have been having their arguments will look a bit shaky - I expect they are based on last years bad results.

Ken

[martin]

Its all part of a concerted campaign by vested interest to put a spoke in the wheel of wind power in general - I heard on the news this morning that there are also moves afoot to "make it easier for people to object to planning for wind turbines" (but presumably not against Big Ag or the construction industry building on green belt land!)

There are no sane arguments against wind power, but lots of vested interests lobbying against it, and we get ludicrous statements such as "could not put green policies before the need to create jobs", whilst doing their utmost to scupper all green initiatives, which could give loads of useful jobs.............

[SimonHobson]

There are no sane arguments against wind power ...

Oh yes there are, but they would be wasted on you - you'd accuse anyone making them of either being a fossil fuel or nuclear industry shill, or simply a liar.

To start with, it's now nice and cold, and the windmills are producing ... 718 MW against an installed capacity of 4006 MW, though that's above the forecast of 508MW for the same period (Period 26 as I write this). The forecast for period 43 is is ... wait for it ...a whopping 224 MW.

Gas is currently doing 15951 MW (34.3%), coal 20112 MW (43.2%), and nuclear 7938 MW (17.1%). Wind trails at just 1.6%.

(Source http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm)

Given that most of our gas now comes from abroad - via two pipelines of which we are "the last stop", and where both either originate in or pass through countries we would probably rather not deal with - it cannot be assumed we'll always have access to the gas that is currently essential to making windmills viable. Given that for too long we've p***ed money at renewables (especially wind) and successive governments have used it as an excuse to put off making decisions - we are now in a position where we'd be in serious trouble if someone decides to turn our gas off. In a few years time, that would mean lights going out.

And, we'll have to wait and see - but I seriously doubt we'll be turning off the coal stations when they are supposed to. I reckon we'll still need them, apply to the EU for a derogation, pay the fines and burn more coal to keep the lights on. Not only will this scupper plans to cut CO2 emissions, but think of all that Uranium going up the chimneys - largely in part because of misguided campaigns to stop nuclear.


Put bluntly, in spite of all the cash (some of it my cash) thrown at it, wind is still as productive as p***ing in the ocean.


Steps back. Starts counting ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

[martin]

where's the "yawn" smiley when you need it...............

[SimonHobson]

where's the "yawn" smiley when you need it...............

QED
Thanks

[GavinA]

Given that most of our gas now comes from abroad - via two pipelines of which we are "the last stop", and where both either originate in or pass through countries we would probably rather not deal with - it cannot be assumed we'll always have access to the gas that is currently essential to making windmills viable.

erm most of our gas imports come either directly from the norwegian north sea gas fields, or from LNG. Obviously we're the last stop on those pipelines. What have you got against Norwegians?

Given that for too long we've p***ed money at renewables (especially wind) and successive governments have used it as an excuse to put off making decisions - we are now in a position where we'd be in serious trouble if someone decides to turn our gas off. In a few years time, that would mean lights going out..

But wind will greatly reduce our dependence upon imported gas. OK, so at certain specific points in time high levels of gas will still be needed when the wind's not blowing, but overall wind will (already is) significantly reduce the level of gas required for power production, leaving more available for heating etc. Same with all other renewable generation.

[SimonHobson]

But wind will greatly reduce our dependence upon imported gas. OK, so at certain specific points in time high levels of gas will still be needed when the wind's not blowing, but overall wind will (already is) significantly reduce the level of gas required for power production, leaving more available for heating etc. Same with all other renewable generation.

Or nuclear could eliminate the need to burn gas at all - seeing as a nuclear plant can produce it's rated output when asked*, not when the weather allows. So for 1GW of capacity, you need 1GW of windmills, plus 1GW of gas - and 600 to 700 GW of electricity (on average) is produced by gas. Or for 1 GW of capacity, you could have a 1GW nuclear plant (very small footprint) - with very nearly zero CO2 emissions and no dependence on imported gas.

So there's an argument that this fixation with wind is a detriment to actually achieving CO2 reductions since it's shifted the focus away from actually dealing with the problem in the mid term. Even some very anti-nuclear people have come round to the acceptance that nuclear is less bad than most of the alternatives
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/nuclear-power-yes-please-1629327.html

I know it's an unpopular opinion round here ...
Do you want to reduce CO2 emissions, or do you want to keep on burning coal and gas ? In my opinion, there's a big gap between what people currently use (and would be prepared to adapt to use) and what renewables can provide - at present (and for a good few years) that gap is going to be filled by burning gas and coal.

[martin]

"you need 1GW of windmills, plus 1GW of gas" - simplistic, inaccurate, misleading tosh, straight out of the "anti-wind" handbook.........

[GavinA]

but nuclear can't generate 1 GW when you want it, it generates between 900MW and 1GW all the time regardless of whether you need it or not.

So it would also need significant levels of gas or something similar to cover the evening peaks, and would also need significant amounts of additional pump storage, or a huge amount of additional night time demand if it were ever to actually replace gas and coal in the generation mix.

therefore your claims are basically misleading rubbish - you can not simply replace coal / gas with nuclear, attempting to do so would involve at least the level of additional storage, changes in the demand cycle and peaking capacity as for high levels of renewables.

The other problem being that high levels of nuclear would preclude high levels of renewables from being added to the grid, it's an either or situation.

[GavinA]

Or nuclear could eliminate the need to burn gas at all

Just to be clear, this is the statement I'm referring to as being misleading rubbish.

[billt]

From http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.html

"Nuclear power plants are essentially base-load generators, running continuously.  This is because their power output cannot readily be ramped up and down on a daily and weekly basis, and in this respect they are similar to most coal-fired plants.  (It is also uneconomic to run them at less than full capacity, since they are expensive to build but cheap to run.)  However, in some situations it is necessary to vary the output according to daily and weekly load cycles on a regular basis, for instance in France, where there is a very high reliance on nuclear power. "

Put another way, you can control the output of nuclear reactors, but it's not desirable to do so.

I see that, of the 46.5GW demand at the moment, coal is producing 20.5GW and nuclear 8GW with 15.5GW from gas - wind is at 0.5GW and PV at 0.

[GavinA]

the figures for PV are very misleading though because they don't include the impact of SSEG at all, only some of the megawatt scale solar farms that are directly grid connected. These make up less than 5% of installed PV capacity.

Not that PV will be contributing a vast amount at 16.41 in early February mind.

[SimonHobson]

"you need 1GW of windmills, plus 1GW of gas" - simplistic, inaccurate, misleading tosh, straight out of the "anti-wind" handbook.........

OK, so you have 1GW of windmill capacity - and the wind is too high or too low, where does the missing capacity come from then ? How about when (if ?) wind gets up to 40, 50, more GW of rating plate capacity ? Experience shows that wind output can, and does, fall to low levels (low enough that in practical terms it's not significant) over large areas.

At present I've seen no viable alternative to burning more gas to fill in the gaps. Certainly the policy at the moment seems to be that as other capacity is removed (eg nuclear and coal plants shut down at EOL or for politics), then we are relying more and more on gas capacity - a lot of which was (erroneously IMO) installed after deregulation when there was a massive rush to burn it as fast as possible (hence why we've got very little of our own left).

Now when these mythical "just around the corner" affordable and large scale storage technologies come on stream then things could be different. But I seem to recall having been hearing these "just around the corner" stories for a loooooong time.

I look forward to the stock answer "straight out of the 'pro-wind' handbook"

Or nuclear could eliminate the need to burn gas at all

Just to be clear, this is the statement I'm referring to as being misleading rubbish.

OK, fair comment.
At present it probably wouldn't totally eliminate burning gas - but I'm inclined to think it would reduce gas consumption more than wind. With wind, you have this fundamental problem that when the wind doesn't blow (or blows too much) - you get nothing out and so need something to fill in the gap. Given typical load factors, it seems that if we had enough wind capacity to meet peak demand, then we'd still be producing about 2/3 of our lecky from other sources. With that level of wind, it's highly unlikely that anything but gas would be very useful in accommodating the rapid changes in supply.

It is true that nuclear plant is generally run at relatively fixed load, as billt points out, that isn't entirely for technical reasons. But if you remove the variable supply from renewables, then the load changes are fairly well known and not that hard to predict - the generation industry has been doing it for decades. And we already have a mechanism in place to adding off-peak load - most of us will have heard of Economy 7.

So if you remove 1GW of <something> from the grid, and add 1GW to replace it. If that 1GW of new capacity is wind then it also needs to come with something else to cover the 2/3 load factor it won't provide - and in practical terms that is likely to come from gas (or coal). If you add 1GW of nuclear then you can have up to 1GW of nuclear by asking for it.

If we were considering adding a lot of nuclear, and needed to handle rapid changes in demand, then it could be done to allow rapid change in electrical output while "keeping the kettle boiling" - worst case would be to route steam direct to the cooling towers. Energy wise very inefficient, but not costly (apart from loss of income from electricity supply) since fuel is a tiny part of the overall cost of nuclear generation - ie small compared with construction (fixed), operation (largely fixed while the kettle is on), and an allowance for decommissioning (fixed). Obviously that is not (AFAIK) part of any current design - but then current designs are mostly predicated on being part of a mixed supply.
On that basis, I believe it would be technically possible to have near 100% nuclear and burn no gas. I wouldn't advocate that, and I don't think it would be a good mix.