Government Strategy for Renewable Energy 2012 - 2020

Packet wrote: »

Wind is already working and is a present day statistic. The oldest commercial wind plants in the world are over 30 years old. If anything the 20 year lifespan is an underestimate. Even the IAE acknowledges that the world is moving into the age of renewables. Our energy policy needs to be centred on the transition to them rather than on a high risk strategy of sticking with fossil fuels.

This is some kind of joke right? I'm sure as an advocate of renewable energy, you realise that wind power only works when the wind is blowing between certain speeds, too slow, no power, too fast, turbine has to have the brakes put on. So far, the number of conventional power stations that have been shut down because as a result of being replaced by wind turbines is in the region of 0.

Ireland has relatively little fossil fuel resources and fortunately we avoided the mistake of nuclear.

Mistake of nuclear? All we've had since the days of Carnsore Point is absolute dependence on filthy fossil fuels and industrial-scale bog cutting. I'm sure the enviornmental-left was spouting the same "windmills uber alles" bunkum then as it is today, and it's no more true today than it was all those years ago.

Being an on-line champion for legacy power special interests is incongruous with the country's economic interests.

Neither is advocating a massive waste of resources on unstable, expensive and environmentally damaging weather based "renewable" energy.

There was a case posted in Environmental Issues where a resident was able to scupper the planning permission of wind turbines because the impact on the extensive local bat population had not been properly studied or considered

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056618619

Likely to the dismay of the eco-whacko Left that normally populates that board.

One of the many disadvantages of wind turbines is that they're lethal to any bat that gets close, they screw up the air pressure in the immediate vicinity so when a bat gets anywhere near a wind turbine **KAPOW** its lungs explode due to barotrauma. On that basis a residents group in rural Co. Cork objected to a large wind turbines development, first to the County Council and then to An Bord Planeala, and got it struck out!

Aidan1 wrote: »

Leaving aside the fact that your 'little bats go boom!" story was debunked in the same thread,

I wouldn't exactly call it "debunking" the facts of barotrauma were never seriously challenged, but there was a lot of accusation throwing about "anti-wind bias".

you're also slightly off base with the story on the wind farm in Co Cork. Question, was the windfarm 'struck out' (really? out of what court?) because of an incomplete EIS/EIA, or because of a verified threat to the local bat population?

An Bord Pleanala. Now, perhaps "thrown out" would have been a better term, but if all you can do is play word games, that speaks voulmes about the strength of your argument.

Because in your own post you go from 'not properly studied' to the lethality issue being the cause of the failure to obtain planning permission. But if it wasn't properly studied, how did they know?

Read the materials that were posted, there was a large multi-species bat roost within 160 metres of the proposed turbine.

and it's extremely helpful in keeping our electricity prices down (helping to keep inflation in check).

Wind farms are subsidised by electricity bill payers by means of a P.S.O levy (public service obligation). In Germany, they've already spent tens if not hundreds of billions subsidising solar panels.

You have a hard on for nuclear, fine, nothing wrong with that in and of itself

If I were a member of Greenpeace or any of the world Green parties, being publically pro-nuclear would be heresy. It would be taken as the equivalent of yelling "Heil Hitler" in a synagogue or spray painting an upside down 5 point star on a church altar.

but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be anti wind. In fact, they two would work well together - baseload nuclear (1-1.4GW in our system - replacing Moneypoint), about 4GW of wind generation, and a load of gas CCGT/OCGT for midmerit/peaking.

That would be quite reasonable, the problem is no mainstream environmentalist will ever admit that this might be a good idea. Assuming you frequent the Environmental Issues board, you might have noticed that every time I point out that there's a choice to be made between fossil fuels and nuclear power (with renewables at best being an independent question) I get ignored, or someone spends 5 pages posting rubbish like Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, in one case.

That's because they don't like to talk about how the poster boy for anti-nuclear, pro-renewable claptrap, Germany, has been on a coal plant building spree since 2007, and now - post Fukushima - looking at deals with Gazprom for gas.

That is why I object so strongly to renewables being promoted as an "alternative," which is what most of the Environmental-left do as a matter of routine - promote renewables INSTEAD of coal, or nuclear, when as you say most people know it doesn't work like that.