The headline “Offshore wind now cheaper than nuclear power” is very much in the UK news following the latest offshore wind auction in the UK where the lowest bids came in at £57.50 / MWh, well below the Hinkley C strike price of £92.50. But baseload nuclear, which delivers all the time, can’t be compared directly with intermittent wind, which delivers only when the wind blows. To make an apples-to-apples comparison we have to convert wind generation into baseload generation by storing the surpluses for re-use during deficit periods. Doing the math, offshore wind works out to be 6 times more expensive than nuclear power.
Two quotes are highlighted here:
“What the Guardian says is, of course, nonsense” and
“in the clean, green, environmentally-conscious, demand-managed, smart-meter-monitored, grid-interconnected, one-hundred-percent renewable world of the future the Guardian envisions we won’t need reliable baseload supplies anyway.”
To assume the latter is utter fantasy, that energy needs can somehow be supplied without using any fossil based fuel, all in the very near future. This goes along with the parallel fantasy that electric vehicles can be mandated for common usage and that consumers will gladly switch to them.
These beliefs defy common sense, yet almost daily we are reading similar articles in mainstream publications. Politicians sensing the wind are already planning for such a utopia, and what little opposition there is comes from blogs like this one. Not a good situation.
I posted this in Reader Tips yesterday but since it is relevant to this, I’ll repost it here. Matt Ridley has pointed out the utter futility of pursuing wind energy as a source of “renewable” energy.
Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy
Meanwhile, world energy demand has been growing at about 2 per cent a year for nearly 40 years. Between 2013 and 2014, again using International Energy Agency data, it grew by just under 2,000 terawatt-hours.
If wind turbines were to supply all of that growth but no more, how many would need to be built each year? The answer is nearly 350,000, since a two-megawatt turbine can produce about 0.005 terawatt-hours per annum. That’s one-and-a-half times as many as have been built in the world since governments started pouring consumer funds into this so-called industry in the early 2000s.
At a density of, very roughly, 50 acres per megawatt, typical for wind farms, that many turbines would require a land area greater than the British Isles, including Ireland. Every year. If we kept this up for 50 years, we would have covered every square mile of a land area the size of Russia with wind farms. Remember, this would be just to fulfil the new demand for energy, not to displace the vast existing supply of energy from fossil fuels, which currently supply 80 per cent of global energy needs.
“Green” Energy and the pursuit of “solving” Global Warming is the WORST regressive taxation of the poor and middle class in the history of the world. Artificially HIGH energy costs are a cynical TAX on the poor. As the “eco”-leftists shout TAX THE RICH!!!! … they quietly TAX the poor and middle class with each power bill and gasoline fill-up.
And … every fossil fuel and energy producer partners with the “eco”-leftist-elites. Their windfall PROFITS from government “green” policies have made them FILTHY RICH … on the backs of the poor and middle class. The people have spoken through President Trump … and they will (hopefully) continue to speak TRUTH to POWER. The very POWER they depend upon to stay alive.
BTW … when I told my “progressive” friends in my lunch group that Global Warming policies were the most regressive TAX on the middle class … I have never seen them so loud and angry in response. They squealed like stuck pigs … shouting me down as they fumbled to formulate a valid argument to my statement (of fact). They obviously recognized that I was right … but it flew in the face of their core ideology … so they flailed and cried in response.
the only good thing about offshore wind turbines is that when they fail and fall they go under water.