Wind farms - ugly truths

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

A wind farm only needs the plinth and access roads. The remaining areas can still be used for whatever. Airplanes need huge separation distances and wide corridors, and they are noisy, but life continues below them. Motorways take up less space but you can't use them for anything else.


All moot because wind farms and nukes are put in areas of low population density and away from prime tourist areas.


And pretending that no land is used for uranium mining or processing or disposal.




Renewable prices are still falling , the UK has slashed subsidies yet again.
?

You need to get out more if thats your opinion of wind farm planning this country. Set back from housing is still a mere 500m despite the size of wind turbines nearly quadrupling since that regulation came. Wind developers in this country think nothing of chancing their arm when it comes to sticking wind farms here there and everywhere as the number of court cases and disputes around the country prove. Meath and Kildare are hardly low density rural areas and yet wind companies like Element want to build dozens of wind farms all over them. How can you faith in a system that allows this kind of thing on fragile peatlands - and its far from an isolated example

http://www.irelandaerialphotography.com/aerial_photos/f5_3035_keeper-hill-tipperary-landslide.html

As for the subsidy cut in the UK - the industry is of course up in arms about this attempt by the government there to reign in the spiralling cost of this pig in a poke

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-33227489

Plus its no accident that UK solar developers are putting pressure on the Irish government to extend REFIT to solar now that the days of easy money in the UK are coming to an end, therby threatening their business models.

PS: Solar panels are fine on roofs, I would have a problem with large solar farms sterilizing large tracts of farmland in this country. Raises a lot of question that apply to biofuels, like loss of food production and natural habitat. Plus solar would be even less usefull than wind when it comes to meeting peak power demands such as cold dark winter evenings

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Can you even see Fukushima from outside the exclusion zone ?


?

How many Fukushima type accidents have there been in Europe or even worldwide?? No body in France must get a wink of sleep with all the worry on that one!!:rolleyes: No evidence of any deaths from Fukishima in Japan either.

Just can't understand why everyone needs to find such complicated problems all the time - it's quite simple, just get the world to use less energy, problems solved!

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Germany is phasing out coal.

Most of the older 25% efficient plants have been shutdown. The newer ones are working at 45% or so. So more power for less fuel and less CO2 .

The real casualties from renewables have been pumped storage plants because renewables have reduced number of days they could command a price premium.

I thought pumped storage was the dream with renewables- I know it's only short term storage-
So are cheap gas turbines (something like open cycle ?) the main balance for renewables ?( that and smart meters ! )

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

How much land are we "sterilizing" with set-aside at present ? We already have enough un-productive land.
With renewables it could be used instead of having to be subsidised by city dwellers who rarely get to see the country side. *

*s.

Setaside no longer exists.

Jim Martin wrote: »

Just can't understand why everyone needs to find such complicated problems all the time - it's quite simple, just get the world to use less energy, problems solved!

Our energy polices are shaped by vested interests - simple as. REFIT money should be going on energy saving measures for business and households instead of into the pockets of developers and speculators.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Climate change IS destroying the environment, far more than any side of wind.
Wind turbines affect the scenery, in some peoples opinion.

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This assumes plastering the countryside with windfarms and pylons will significantly shape the worlds climate. Very little evidence for that as already discussed on here especcially when cheaper and more effective options and strategies are availiable in terms of energy effieciency etc. Plus you see the heavy ongoing reliance of the likes of Germany on coal despite a massive spend on wind power.

You talk about industrial landscapes, here in Ireland it's pretty much a case that if isn't oak forest it's an artificial landscape. Thousands of years of farming tales a huge toll on [/QUOTE]

Artificial landscape is not the same as industrial landscape.

I would not qualify Irish agriculture, forestry, and even at a stretch quarrying (in my area anyway !) as industrial.

The remaining areas can still be used for whatever.

Let's see, what can we use land occupied by windmills for.

Residential? No, people don't want to live near the things.
Tourism? No, for the same reason as the above - even though they have to be put in scenic areas (mountaintops, beaches etc).
Bird sanctuary? No, because wind mills kill birds by the million. Very green.
Bat sanctuary? No, because wind turbines are up there with White Nose Syndrome as an existential threat to world bat populations.
How about horse breeding grounds? Can't do that, the bloodstock industry warns it could be in existential danger if windmills are not kept away from their stables and horse roaming lands.
How about bank branches? Can't do that either because the locals would have to rob the banks to pay for subsidies.

Seems like a terrible waste of 250,000 (or 130,000 with solar panels) acres just to avoid a single nuclear power reactor.

By contrast, the entire Chernobyl exclusion zone is only 642,560 acres across three countries, and foliage and wildlife is making good use of it. Still this is less than the land needed to build enough windmills to avoid 3 Hinkley Cs. Bats are probably safer in Pripyat than they are in Southern Germany.

And pretending that no land is used for uranium mining or processing or disposal.

Nothing like the infographic I showed of the massive waste of land. You are of course also ignoring the land take of various fossil fuel plant types (and their associated mining etc) especially natural gas which the environmental movement seems to tacitly approve of. 250,000 acres of windmills or 130,000 acres wasted on solar panels to replace one nuclear reactor is just a down payment, especially if farmed energy crops are the backup. Though you could use the land between the turbines for energy crops ...

Renewable prices are still falling , the UK has slashed subsidies yet again. ?

According to the Guardian, it's an attempt to "totally kill" the solar panel industry and "lead us all to fracking hell". Aparently, the Tories slashed the solar subsidies because they're evil, greedy money-grubbing monsters that want to kill the planet, for kicks and giggles. Or something. Nothing whatsoever to do with the technology being cost-effective. Oh and the big winners, supposidly, will be the gas (and nuclear) industry. Who the environmental-leftists on here have been tacitly cheerleading as renewables backups. Still, more likely I think they just saw the cost and thought "this is not justifiable".

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Germany is phasing out coal.

Despite driving their energy costs into terms comparable with Niue and the Solomon Islands and other tiny island chains so miniscule and out in the middle of nowhere that most have ever heard of them, Germany has also singularly failed to put more than a dent in its fossil fuel use. As shown previously by another poster, coal still makes up more electricity use than all the renewables combined. Heck even nuclear makes up a goodly portion still.

France meanwhile has 90+% non-fossil energy supply. And 1/3 the electricity prices.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

remind us all how the Finnish EPR is getting on.

So no body count? It was wise of you to duck the question, because like everything else, the facts are not in your favour. By Terawatt Hour, nuclear power is the safest form of energy. Nukes kill 0.04 persons per TW/H produced. By contrast, solar kills 0.4, and coal, 161 persons per TW/H.


The death toll from the catastrophe at Fukushima remains at 2: the crane operators that died when the earthquake shook their crane. You are literally 10 times more likely to die falling off a roof installing a solar panel than you are to die because of the production of the same quantity of nuclear electricity.

And that's including the monumental clusterf*** that was the Soviet nuclear programme.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Climate change IS destroying the environment,

So you keep telling us, while you simultaneously object to the only form power generation that can ameliorate climate change and help any compentently run country kick its addiction to fossil fuels. I don't dispute Anthrophogenic Climate Change, but the constant cheerleading for fossil fuels, gas, etc makes me think the people shouting the loudest about Anthorpogenic Climate Change don't really believe it.

I cannot in good conciense get behind a mainstream environmental anti-ACC campaign while said environmental movements continue to oppose useful anti-ACC technologies they should support, for the same baseless, supersitious, agenda-driven non-reasons as they've been doing since the 1950s. I cannot in good conciense support something that's going to needlessly damage human life styles for no good reason, nor support a strategy that is doomed to blow up in our faces in the most spectacular fashion, causing far more damage to our world than the problem it's trying and failing to solve.

Wind turbines affect the scenery,

People don't want to live around wind turbines. Birds die hitting the damn things, and bats just have to get into the general vicinity for their lungs to explode because of barotrauma. BOOM. Another dead bat. They effect more than just the "scenery" in the areas they infest. Oh and they also need hundreds of miles of HV transmission line.

Nuclear isn't a solution to climate change. Construction takes too long.

Bet the environmental movement was saying the same thing 10 years ago. Thing is, if Western Europe had started a nuclear programme in 2000-2005, we'd be reaping the benefits by now at the latest.

Payback of the enonomic, energy and carbon investment won't happen for a very long time, if ever.

France. 90%+ non-fossil. 7th cheapest electricity in Europe. Sounds like the payoff is there for the taking.

Germany meanwhile has only 42% non-fossil power, 38% of which is nuclear that they want to decommission. They also have among the most expensive electricity in the world. And the least stable power grid.