By rejecting all the means by which renewable electricity can be generated, such as wind farms, tidal barrages, hydro elcric dams etc, the UK has set a very dangerous courseThis article titled “Support wind farms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts” was written by George Monbiot, for The Guardian on Monday 30th May 2011 20.00 UTCWhy do those who oppose wind power insist on spoiling their case with gibberish? In his column on Friday, Simon Jenkins claimed that onshore windfarms were being planned “with no concern for cost”. But the only reason for building them is a concern for cost. If it weren’t for this issue, they would be the last option governments would choose – God knows they cause enough trouble.As the government’s Committee on Climate Change reports, large onshore windfarms are “already close to competitive” with burning natural gas, and are likely to get there by 2020. They are the cheapest renewable sources in this country by a long way. Offshore wind costs roughly twice as much, and its costs have been escalating. After attacking the high cost of wind power, Jenkins argued that we should instead invest in “sun and waves”. The committee shows that while the expected price of electricity from onshore wind in 2030 is between 7 and 8.5 pence per kilowatt hour, solar power is expected to come in at between 11 and 25p, and wave between 15 and 31p. Talk about no concern for cost!Incidentally, the cheapest low carbon option, the committee says, is nuclear power, at 5-10p. But, because of public objections, new plants are likely to be confined to existing sites, which means a maximum of about 20 gigawatts (a quarter of our current power capacity). Planning objections also restrict the spread of onshore wind. The only viable means of getting carbon off the grid, the committee suggests, is a mixture of sources: renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage.But those who oppose wind power can’t help themselves. In parliament earlier this month, Glyn Davies, the MP who is leading the fight against windfarms in mid-Wales, insisted that “Welsh windfarms have a load factor of just 19% – the lowest ever recorded” and that “the carbon impact of the development can never be compensated for by any possible carbon benefit”. Rubbish again. The capacity factor for Welsh wind (the amount the turbines produce as a proportion of their idealised output) is 26%.Professor Gareth Harrison of Edinburgh University estimates that the carbon payback time for the wind developments in mid-Wales will be roughly 12 months (all references on my website). Davies, like Jenkins, also claimed that “so much more” could have been done with the same money had it been spent on wave and tidal power, offshore wind and solar photovoltaics. Should MPs not be obliged to do some research before they open their mouths in parliament?Anti-wind campaigners are also highly selective. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, obsessed by windfarms, says nothing about the opencast coalmines ripping south Wales apart. Nor do you hear a word about the destruction of the ecosystems of upland Wales (and England and Scotland) by sheep grazing. These champions of the countryside want to save it from only one threat.For all that, it’s a real one. While the windfarms themselves divide communities, everyone hates the new power lines required to connect them to the grid. Here in mid-Wales, I have yet to meet anyone who will speak up in favour of them. Because they have to march across so much countryside, their visual impact is greater per pound of investment than that of any other technology.Though you could see this issue coming as clearly as the pylons themselves, the green movement is completely unprepared. Greenpeace tells me “we haven’t done any work on pylons”. Hardly anyone seems to be aware of how perilous this situation is: how easily renewable energy could be killed by the power lines issue.This is about to become a national struggle, in which opponents of the new pylons will be cast as heroes. Promising direct action, reminding us of the great battles against the reservoirs supplying England, those who marched against the new lines in Wales last week will put us, unless we act quickly, in a dangerous position. Green activists will be outflanked by green activism. The same battle will then be fought all over the United Kingdom, wherever a new power line is planned.Many of the areas affected by proposals for new lines are either Tory constituencies or Lib Dem seats the Tories will hope to take (all of which are now contestable). It is hard to believe that the Conservative commitment to low-carbon energy could withstand a major rebellion within the party: Tory environmentalism is easily uprooted.The greens need to decide where they stand. The only position that makes sense to me is unequivocally to support the campaign against overhead lines. Where new powerlines are built they must go underground. If they can’t go underground, they shouldn’t be built. If we are not against pylons marching over stunning countryside, what are we for?But here too there’s a problem. Like the windfarms, overhead lines are favoured by the government because of its concern for cost. According to the National Grid, burying the lines connecting the turbines in mid-Wales to the rest of the system would cost 3.2 times as much as putting them on pylons (£562m vs £178m). But how much does that add to the cost of electricity?Calculating this is easy (there’s an explanation on my website) – as long as you know the capital costs of the whole project. But neither the National Grid nor anyone else I’ve spoken to is prepared to hazard a guess about the cost of the rest of the infrastructure, so I can’t yet tell you whether burying the power lines makes onshore wind here more expensive than competing technologies.In fact my efforts to obtain relevant data of all kinds from the government, the National Grid and the wind industry reveal that, like the environment movement, they are completely unprepared for this backlash. Dismayed by the collective failure to address the pylons issue, the campaign against windfarms now confidently tells the same story about this technology as others do about nuclear: the turbines are erected by big, greedy corporations; they are unfairly subsidised by the government; they will cause untold damage to human health. In view of the flack you get for supporting any power technology, I’m beginning to think it would be less controversial to argue in favour of blackouts.So this is where the United Kingdom stands. We cannot keep burning fossil fuels without cooking the biosphere. We don’t like nuclear power. We don’t like onshore wind. We won’t like the costs of the other technologies. We reject all the means by which electricity is generated. Yet no one is volunteering to stop using it.• A fully referenced version of this article can be found on George Monbiot’s website guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSupport wind farms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackoutsRelated posts:Architects worried by tower blocks and windPbwiki supportWild parakeets seen as a threat in the UK
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Support wind farms? It would be less controversial to argue for blackouts
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May 30 2011, 5:41pm | Comments »
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Zapatero says Spain safe from bailout
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/zapatero-says-spain-safe-from-bailout
‘Socialist‘ prime minister Zapatero of Spain defends the deficit reduction programme as unemployment rate remains at 20%
This article titled “Zapatero says Spain safe from bailout” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.00 UTC Spain’s beleaguered economy is out of the woods and will not need a Greek or Irish-style bailout despite the risk of contagion from troubled neighbour Portugal, according to its Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In an exclusive interview with the partner publications from the Guardian’s New Europe project, the continent’s most powerful leftwing prime minister insisted that reforms and an austerity programme designed to reverse a runaway deficit were bearing fruit. He refused to be drawn on his own plans, amid rumours that he will announce tomorrow that he will not stand for a third term at elections due early next year. His Socialist party currently trails the opposition conservative People’s party by 16 points in opinion polls. The comments, from a prime minister whom Spaniards describe as “anthropologically optimistic”, came as market pressure on the country’s sovereign debt showed signs of relaxing, despite growing problems in both Portugal and Ireland. “We now have economic growth. The debt risk has stabilised and is out of danger. And now we are close to creating jobs,” Zapatero said. Zapatero sees no conflict between being a deficit warrior and a socialist, but points to key differences between his cuts package and that of Britain’s coalition government. “There is a deep, deep difference between what our government has done on education during the crisis and what Cameron’s government has done,” he said, pointing to education spending that has risen to 15% of Spain’s GDP for the first time. “The fundamental difference between right and left is the capacity to redistribute spending and remove obstacles to equal opportunities,” he insisted. “We haven’t reduced spending on health. We’ve increased spending on unemployment. We’ve maintained spending on social care of the dependent. Why do we do it? To maintain social cohesion.” Instead Spain’s government had brought down its deficit by, among other things, cutting civil service pay and freezing pensions. Zapatero said that, having met last year’s deficit reduction target, Spain would also hit this year’s 6% goal. “Our priority measure is the strict meeting of the deficit target,” he said. Although he claimed jobs would be created soon, the timid growth that some critics blame precisely on spending cuts has had no impact on a startling 20% unemployment rate. “My main anguish is about those people who lose benefit payments but have trouble finding work,” he said. Reforms in the pipeline should bring more flexible collective bargaining, improved competitiveness and a law to limit deficit spending, he said. “It’s true that some reforms mean cuts, but others are simply changes,” he said. “No project can call itself leftwing unless it commits to a competitive economy … we are going to renew Spain’s economic structure.” He warned Portugal that if it wanted to escape a bailout it had no option but to adopt the austerity package that its parliament rejected last week, bringing down José Sócrates’ Socialist government and triggering a June election. “Carrying out the Sócrates austerity plan presented to parliament is fundamental,” Zapatero said. His comments came even before Portugal admitted that its 2010 deficit was €3bn (£2.6bn) higher than originally estimated. Zapatero, speaking before Ireland revealed that it needed a further €24bn to deal with its banks, said he favoured more aid to Greece and Ireland. “We should be ready to increase the aid if they need it,” he said. Like most Spanish politicians, he is an avowed pro-European and saw greater economic integration within the EU as an unexpected but welcome side-effect of the crisis. “Economic integration is being speeded up. That much is clear,” he said. “Integration in politics and security is going more slowly, but it will come. It may take five or 10 years, but the process is inevitable.” He admits that, like everyone else, he would have liked Europe to react faster to the economic crisis. “But it is obvious that, amongst democratic countries, there is something called a decision-making process,” he said. “The Spanish government is lucky because parliament is always very pro-European … but there are other parliaments in Europe that debate every last cent.” Even the Libya crisis was an example of Europe in action, he said. “Who brought a historic resolution to the [UN] security council to intervene in Libya? Two European countries: France and Britain,” he said. “It is Europe that has taken the lead.” The man who pulled Spain’s troops out of Iraq when first elected in 2004 said the UN resolution was a historic step for human rights. “It is the first time we have had a resolution based on a responsibility to protect people,” he said. “A huge amount of care and restraint is being exercised,” he said of the campaign. “We have not had that thing that is so heartrending – and which discredits these operations – which is civilian victims.” But Zapatero, who has sent aircraft and warships to join the Libya campaign, insisted that military means should not be used to oust Gadaffi. “The use of arms is for protecting the population,” he said. “For regime change we have our political and economic strength.” Europe’s task did not end, there, he insisted. “The north of Africa and the Mediterranean as a whole are going to look towards the north. They will look to Europe, and Europe must not look away.” Wind power became Spain’s biggest energy source for the first time in March, but events in Japan have not changed Zapatero’s policy of using nuclear energy, while refusing to build extra capacity. “When nuclear power stations come to the end of their lifespan they will be closed,” he said. “We don’t propose building new power stations and must guarantee the production of alternative sources to cover the closure of every nuclear power station.”
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April 2 2011, 11:31am | Comments »
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Spain’s financial crisis claims another victim: the solar power industry
The Spanish government has slashed its solar power subsidies because of the financial crisis.
This article titled “Spain’s financial crisis claims another victim: the solar power industry” was written by Tim Webb in Madrid, for The Guardian on Wednesday 30th March 2011 17.37 UTC Spain had one of the world’s most ambitious – and generous – plans to boost the amount of electricity it generates from the sun. That dream, for the solar industry at least, has turned sour. Just days before Christmas, the government slashed the level of subsidies that all new and existing photovoltaic (pv) solar projects will receive. But even the powerful utility companies, who opposed the solar industry, are now warning that the fallout could be long-lasting and reach far beyond the energy sector. The row has pitted the renewable lobby against Spain’s three biggest utilities – Iberdrola, Endesa and Gas Natural – which have been urging the government to take action to stem the wave of subsidised renewable projects being built, particularly solar ones. Carlos Salle, Iberdrola’s director for regulation, told the Guardian that divisions between the renewable lobby and the rest of the energy industry are even deeper in Spain than elsewhere as a result. “We have more controversy here in Spain with renewables against non-renewables … this is an aspect of our system – it provokes problems.” Another Madrid-based businessman, from one of Spain’s leading companies, was franker, likening relations, only half-jokingly, as a “war”. The Asociación de la Industria Fotovoltaica (Asif), Spain’s solar industry body, accuses politicians of telling lies, exaggerating the costs of generating electricity using solar pv to justify the cut in subsidies. It is more than just bragging rights between rival generators at stake. The solar pv industry alone received subsidies last year of €2.6bn (£2.28bn), a sum neither the country – nor the utilities – can afford. The utilities have paid out €20bn to subsidise solar and wind projects, and are still waiting for the government to pay them back. Credit rating agencies threatened to downgrade the companies if something was not done to address the “tariff deficit”. Salle recalled: “The situation was horrible a year ago – €20bn for three companies was an amount comparable to an entire budget for some countries.” The utilities also complain that their coal and gas plants, which the government wanted them to build a decade ago after several black-outs, are losing money because they are now only needed for half the time. But the Spanish regulator forces the firms to keep them on standby for times when the wind stops blowing or at night when solar does not generate. Asif argues that solar projects, which last summer provided a maximum of 4% of the country’s electricity, have been sacrificed to keep profits from dirty coal and gas plants high. The solar industry had enjoyed phenomenal growth due to a subsidy regime which, even Asif admits, was too generous. Companies were able to cut costs too quickly – 70% since the original subsidies were introduced in 2004. Investors poured in and about two-thirds of the current capacity was installed in 2008 alone, before a planned tariff cut came into force the following year. This has left Spain with 10 times the amount of solar pv capacity the government had planned for by 2010 – and a much bigger bill than it had envisioned. Javier Anta, Asif’s president, said that the industry will challenge the cut in the courts, but admitted that this would take years, by which time many solar project owners could have gone to the wall. He added that some investors will not back new projects because they fear the tariff could be cut again retrospectively. “There are some people who say this is not a one-off. They do not trust the government,” he said. This is one point on which both the renewable lobby and the power industry agree: by taking the unprecedented step of retrospectively cutting subsidies promised to projects which have already been built, the government risks scaring off investors of all kinds. Salle says that “even if we recognise that the situation is better than a month or a year ago, the problem is [a lack of] confidence. The uncertainty and [risk] premium does not apply only to that sector [solar pv] but to the whole industry and the rest of the country in some cases. Everyone appreciates the relevance of having regulation which does not make any retroactive decisions because you will have to attract new people [to invest]. The new people will say ‘hey, in the history of this country and this sector these people who have been new in the past and have invested, the government has changed the rules’.” Reflecting change Abengoa, a Spanish engineering firm celebrating its 70th year, is pushing ahead with solar-thermal projects. Unlike the schemes involving reflectors heating a salt water mixture running through pipes, Abengoa has developed towers of pipes that look like mini skyscrapers. It employs 23,000 workers in its solar unit, which had a turnover of more than €3bn (£2.6bn). The firm has conducted sustainability audits of its business for several years and says projects that can’t meet sustainability criteria are modified or abandoned. Controversially, it has championed the refining of biofuels, something anti-poverty campaigners have cited as denying food sources to poor people in the developing world. Carlos Bousoño, director of corporate social responsibility, said the debate had moved on after technology allowed for seeds and fruit to be separated from plants before processing. He said only the stalk and waste material was used in second generation biofuels fermentation, allowing corn, soya or other foodstuff to be saved for making food.
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April 1 2011, 9:35am | Comments »
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