So sayeth the Duke;
In a withering assault on the onshore wind turbine industry, the [Duke of Edinburgh] said the farms were “a disgrace”.
He also criticised the industry’s reliance on subsidies from electricity customers, claimed wind farms would “never work” and accused people who support them of believing in a “fairy tale”.
No need to tell the Dutch;
[F]ve years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour — some 4.5 billion euros last year.
The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.
It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.
But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies — the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year — while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies[…]
When the money runs out – 14,000 abandoned wind turbines.
But not everyone involved in this scam is going broke: The growing James Hansen scandal. Of course, he’s one of the scam’s chief architects. That’s how scams work.
Has anyone asked Bill Boyd what newspapers he reads?
If the Dutch can’t make it work, what more proof do you need that it is a failed idea?
Not satisfied with getting union dues from employees collected by the employers, even though those who don’t want to join the union have no choice, bailouts that sustain the unions income level, no, the CAW want to get into the FIT program in Ontario and latch onto another taxpayer teat. The plan is to place a wind turbine in a residential area in the town of Port Elgin.
Details in this article which sums it up best;
http://www.windsorstar.com/business/spat+over+Port+Elgin+turbine+plan/5723506/story.html
Other great articles at Wind Concerns Ontario.
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/
If this proceeds, it’ll amount to a huge middle finger to the town of Saugeen Shores. We as residents are trying our best to stop this but as we know, the provincial gov’t has basically told the municipalities they have NO say as it pertains to the GEA. Even more so when it involves the CAW.
Paul Kuster
Socialism works only until you run out of other people’s money to spend.
Green energy works until you run out of other people’s money to consume.
Therefore green energy is socialism by other names/means.
The Duke has more up there than he gets credit for.
Lev: Right, I am mildly surprised at these comments, of course he is correct. His twit son, also seems to be against the whirlygigs, at least on land. This may have something to do with keeping them off the family’s vast estates. In this he would be in line with other enviro-nuts like Gore, Suzuki, McGuinty Kennedy, wind turbines where necessary but not necessarily next to my property.
Actually they make no economic sense on land, water or anywhere else, something our grandparents could have told us.
SO what’s to complain about? The wind turbines are as useful de-bladed as with blades, and they are kinder to wildlife. Oh yes – the money. Ah well.
The comment in the article on HRH the Duke of Edinburgh to the effect that
energy storage devices using pumped water can be constructed is typical of the wooly-mindedness of the average journalist.
Yes, of course it can be done. It hasn’t been done, because of cost and complexity.
One could also equip each wind turbine with a large shed full of lead batteries, too.
“Could” and “can” and “cost” are three words that always need reconciliation.
I had no idea Saskatchewan is a bilingual Province,but there at the link,Bill Boyd’s site has both official languages!
All the better to serve you Saskabushers better!
The Duke sounds like an embittered believer who’s had his eyes opened wide. Good,better late than never.
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/tinny.htm
Bet his son doesn’t agree with him.
Anyone who pushed the Kamaoa lie doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.
Most people in government, certainly in politics tend to be too lacking in numeracy skills or are otherwise unfit for honest work in the business world. When it comes to enabling the fantasies of green narratives they always think they can defy nature. This works well for their counterparts in the business world who prefer rent seeking to honest exchange, not so well for taxpayers. Eventually the malinvestment is written off by whoever ends up owning the scam and or the taxpayers once reality sets in.
In addition to the continuous spoon-feeding of green narratives instead of numeracy skills, children are taught that the above problems are a result of unregulated capitalism. Societies will not change by voting for alternative nature defying politicians but by changing what is taught in schools.
Battle of the blades
Innovation and energy saving technology is great but it has to work and provide a tangible benefit.
Note that the troll neglects to provide a reference to support his allegations of a “lie” about Kamaoa.
The impact of very cheap and, for all practical purposes, an infinite supply of natural gas is just now beginning to be felt. Gas turbines are on the drawing board almost everywhere. Wind has always been uneconomic and unusable as a source of baseload supply. The argument by many of wind power’s supporters was that once the capitial costs of the turbines had been paid for – by both power consumer and by governement subsidy they would be essentially a near free source of power. With cheap, limitless gas even that very weak argument (it ignores the massive capital costs to the public over time among other things) is destroyed. The general repair and renovation costs of these turbine will – within ten years of being built – be more than the cost of generating the same amount of power using NG. And NG is the perfect fuel source for both base and peak load supply.
Thus within the next decade almost all of these turbines will have to be decommissioned. The question is: Who’s going to pay for it? I doubt the current owners have been required to post a bond to fund that cost.
Is this a sincere realization of the futility of a major part of the ecotard arsenal or merely a Royal deathbed recantation?
Quote: – “He was President of WWF International from 1981 until 1996 and continues to hold the title of President Emeritus. Upon his retirement from its presidency, the WWF issued a press release stating:
“Prince Philip was never a mere figurehead. WWF has been the prime focus of his working life. He has spent more time on his work on this organization than on any of his other interests. As International President, His Royal Highness was Chairman of both board and Executive Committees which set WWF world wide policy and approved its international budgets.” ”
http://www.ecofascism.com/article3.html
ALL OF YOUR WIND ARE BELONG TO US!!!!!
(since…we’ll be paying for it)
There is a lot of neat stuff in this one posting.
I knew that Chuckie was an environmental nut job but thought I’d read that daddy was nearly as bad. As suggested perhaps this comment has more to do with the “not next door to me” idea
Interesting idea that the Dutch government has. We will force our citizens to use green energy but we don’t want to look bad by raising everyone’s taxes to pay for it so we’ll just bill the citizens directly and then they can’t get angry with us.
Gee if Hansen is willing to fudge financial details do you think he might also be willing to fudge scientific data? Naw….he wouldn’t lie, he’s a respected scientist….NOT!
*
“kate says… No need to tell the Dutch”
or, indeed, toronto city council…
Toronto’s iconic wind turbine on the edge of Lake Ontario has been brought to a grinding halt by a
combination of a bearing failure and, ironically, high winds.
The lazily spinning, three-bladed turbine at the Exhibition grounds has been frozen since mid-March.
It’s the latest hiccup for the project which was launched in 2002 when 427 investors raised
$800,000 to buy 8,000 shares in the 750-kilowatt generator.
Compounding the issue was the bankruptcy of the Dutch windmill manufacturer, Lagerwey, which
rendered the maintenance contract and warranty useless, said Ms. Saxe.
Gord brings up a good point.
Years ago I was told that any landowners considering allowing windmills to be constructed on their land should demand binding bonds be posted in case the wind farm is abandoned. The bonds would cover all costs of decommission. Dismantling cost are huge, including concrete base break up and excavation.
Now of course, in the hay-day of wind power and climate alarmism, who would have ever envisioned a gore or a Suzuki lying to or misleading anyone.
Climate alarmism – the biggest scam the world has ever seen.
Gord Tulk:
You refer to shale gas. Abundant, yes. Infinite, in a way, if you look at a typical human lifespan. Cheap? No. If you dig deeper, you’ll see that shale gas is a lot of hype, but the reality is not so rosy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26gas.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
We talk a lot about subsidies to ‘green’ energy without mentioning all energy is subsidized one way or another. Just look at all the tax breaks for oil exploration. And all electricity production facilities need overhaul after 20-30 years, not just wind turbines. Here in Ontario, the nuclear reactors were refurbished at a cost of several billions. Energy may have been cheap in the past, it’s not anymore.
Also, the article should have mentioned a new wind farm has been built at the Kamaoa site to replace the ‘abandoned’ one.
Otherwise I agree with you – wind is no good for baseline power.
Phil the Greek always could cut through the BS. Actually, as it says in the article, Chucky agrees with him. They are an eyesore on the environment, kill bats and birds, and generally drive people insane from the noise. Add to that the need for 100 % redunancy for wind power. Pure BS.
Gord,apparently the McGuinty government has finally shut down work on the Mississauga gas turbine power plant,as they promised they’d do before the election.
I suppose the windmill option will have to be escalated to make up for it.
Ontarians must be masochists.
GreenNeck
“Just look at all the tax breaks for oil exploration.”
What frickin tax breaks? Please be specific and provide sources. Amuse me.
nice to see one can still comment here without jumping through hoops. as an old guy who has to look at the “wind mills” on wolfe island, the so called green energy people are just plain nuts. i have been on the waterfront when the temp was close to minus 20 not a single blade was turning. zero electricity being produced. the gas plant up the lake was running like hell. good thing something was generating power because i would have been real cold in my all electric condo.
With the cost of electricity about 4 or 5 times higher than what I was paying when I lived in Alberta in 2008, I really can’t get out of Ontario fast enough. I’m glad I’ll be moving back in 2012. This province is too expensive for utilities and the taxes are too high.
No, Lev, he doesn’t have more up there. Remember that this senile old dolt is still the head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and a serious devotee of the global warming cult. He’s also a big Malthusian, famously stating at a speech 20 years ago that he wished to be reincarnated as a lethal virus to kill off the surplus population.
He’s just as bonkers as his son. Notice that neither of these degenerate Royals allow any turbines on their land. It’s something that “the little people” have to suffer.
Ron, it’s a good point, but to date there’s no requirement on decommissioning for any wind turbines. That’s why they are simply abandoned, and that’s what Ontario’s fate will be when the subsidies for our wind machines run out or are terminated. The ability of a landowner to demand such from a large company is limited to say the least. And the Ontario government is compliant. In the Green Energy Act, it suspended municipal zoning laws.
GreenNeck, refurbished nuclear power plants are still some of the cheapest sources of electricity available. Yes, it may cost a billion or two per reactor refurbished, but each one produces about 4.5 TWh of electricity annually. Given that a refurbishment is good for about 20 years, that’s cheap power.
You also have to remember that in Ontario, most of the refurbishment is being done by a private company, Bruce Power. They’re investing their own money in this project in return for a guaranteed bulk electricity price of about 5.6 cents/kWh.
try to attract private sector investment
Common sense says that if there were money to be made, the private sector would already have invested in it.
Funny how when financial pressures start to mount, and even the Queenie and her herd of “occupiers” feel the pinch, even the Duke of Diddly starts to go against his “Dumbo” sons pet SCAMS. The only ones worthy of any respect in that family is the Queen and her 2 grandsons, those are cool dudes who I’m hoping don’t get sucked into SCAMs.
Greenneck says: “Just look at all the tax breaks for oil exploration.”
Your ignorance is showing again Greeneck. The Oil industry gets a “tax break” on the billions they spend to build major plants in order to recover the costs of the private money they risk. Breaks like all other industries receive, so there is nothing “special” about them at all. And the Energy sector pays massive taxes.
Look at one small example. Nearly all, if not all, the oil and gass royalties pulled in by the Alberta Government each year are sent to the Feds who turn around and give the equivalent amount to Quebec as part of the national vote buying scheme, er, I mean transfer payments. Over $250 billion in the last 45 years or so has been siphoned from Alberta “directly” into corrupt Quebec. In addition, the Energy Companies pay billions in taxes each year. Their employees pay billions in taxes each year. And the companies and people in the service and support industry pay billions in taxes each year. PLUS, the cost at the pump is comprised of, yes, more taxes!
The Green energy sector however not only gets the same tax breaks, they get tax dollars to subsidize their useless business models. They get to FORCE people to buy their product due to Government regulations. They pay squat in taxes because they take massive losses each year, and then their political friends bend the taxpayers over to subsidize their uselessness. It is a disgusting scam, run by disgusting people.
If you are GREEN then it is time to come clean and admit that the whole movement is a fraud.
Hide the decline!!!
Well, the windmill booms keep right on rolling down highway 54 past my doorstep out here in Flyover Ontario, near where the soon to be abandoned Port Dover windfarm is still a-building.
Thanks Ontario PC party. Way to lose that election.
Scar:
You could google it yourself, just one example:
http://www.torontosun.com/money/2010/12/27/16683561.html
Markon:
I never said subsidies are a bad thing. In the case of the oil sands, this helped develop new technologies over the years to make extraction more profitable. If we can find a way to store electricity, then wind mills will become profitable too.
Agreed with you we are not there, and the current scheme is indeed a fraud.
James Hansen is doing very well financially by ” doing good. ” These payments to Hansen do not pass the smell test, and is just a slightly more sophisticated form of ” honest graft”.
GreenNeck
Nice website but it doesn’t identify one of the so called subsidies. It just says there are $2.84 billion of them. I am somewhat familiar with the subject so feel free to be as technical as possible.
Greenneck;For Gods sake use your head for more than a hat rack.Storing electricity means humungous batteries,the size of small cities.What environmental agency would approve of them and like any other battery it needs to be charged initially and where does the extra electricity come from? Wind turbines at 25 cents a kilowatt?Also,when there is no wind,and the batteries are run down,the first thing that all electricty generated will be used for is to CHARGE THE FRIGGING BATTERIES! I know,I lived with that system.
Generally speaking the subsidies mentioned in the International Institute for Sustainable Development consist of:
Accelerated write-offs
Tax credits
Royalty reductions
Research and technology subsidies
First any supposed subsidies are a small fraction of royalties and other taxes.
Secondly the report was prepared in 2010. What was unusual about the 2 years before 2010? We were in recession and accelerated write offs and reduced royalties were done to stimulate the economy. I simply do not consider reduced taxes as a subsidy.
Research and development money is provided to all industries and is hardly unique. The agricultural area gets a crapload of research money.
If you want to know what subsidies really look like, see the federal grants to the auto companies. They actually write big checks.
Spike: I live off-grid and know exactly what you talk about. I did not refer to any existing technology, they are indeed inadequate. I am thinking about the future. Fossil fuels will not be with us forever. In about a hundred years our world will be powered by something else. That may look far but there are people born today who’ll still be around then.
GreenNeck
Accelerated depreciation of exploration and development costs are not a subsidy but a tax deferral. The larger deduction against income in the near term leaves less or no deduction available from those same assets in the future to write off against the income stream created by their use.
If “tax breaks” are considered subsidies, name one idustry or organization or individual that isn’t “subsidized”. This is a premise of statism – that surplus property you have acquired via free exchange of goods and services that isn’t taxed away by the state is some kind of gift from the state.
There is a serious technical problem that the Green energy nitwits are missing: Wind and Solar enery were originally designed to be battery-based, and none of these new systems are battery-based which is why they don’t function. In other words they are great for little projects — powering a barn, a shed, a garage, or maybe a small house.
Ask those of us “Green Hippies” who actually experimented with and built wind-powered systems 30 years ago, long before the brain-dead Left decided to adopt it for ideological reasons — to destroy “evil capitalist oil”. Ask an old missionary from Africa or Latin America and they will explain the technical reasons why wind and solar cannot be used on a large industrialized scale or be the main source of power on the grid to replace conventional sources.
It’s a specific technical problem, not an ideological one — here’s a hint: For predictable reliable power you would need BATTERIES the size of the CN tower for wind/solar to function properly and power just a small City, much less an entire region!
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I’m expecting a cheque in the mail from both the Ontario and B.C. Governments for saving taxpayers millions of dollars…I’m quite quite serious, if I see the McGuinty government taxpayer thieving “Green technicians” abandon their white elephant and start experimenting with more modest battery-based wind/solar, then I’m sueing these Al Gore nitmits for $millions for plagiarism.
(c)copyright, ricardo
GreenNeck: why are you worrying about the future?
Do you think that only this generation has the intelligence required to solve the problem?
Fossil fuels won’t be with us forever. Well, I grew up in a coal-heated house and now no one does so why not let the future take care of itself?
The Bible tells us that in the end days, knowledge will increase. There is evidence that God’s revelations are ongoing so I prefer to live with the assurance that knowledge will be revealed as it is required.
You have no idea what the next twenty-five years have in store for us let alone the next hundred.
Relax.
Can you name a single current problem we have that was identified a hundred years ago – much less solved?
cgh @ 3:07, well said.
GreenNeck
The New York Times is the pinacle of objective, informed, unbiased information?
….NOT!