The Times, 26^th March 2009

Green energy plans in disarray as wind farm giant slashes investment

Fears for ‘green energy’ after investment is slashed

Britain’s ambition to become a global leader in renewable energy suffered a major setback last night when the world’s biggest investor in wind power said that it was slashing its investment programme.

The announcement comes less than two months after ministers backed a string of huge gas-fired power stations, prompting concern that the Government cannot fulfil its promise of a green energy revolution.

Iberdrola Renewables’ decision to cut its investment in Britain by more than 40 per cent, or £300 million - enough to build a wind farm powering 200,000 homes - is the latest obstacle to Gordon Brown’s target of generating 35 per cent of the country’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Lifting it to that level from the current 5 per cent would cost an estimated £100 billion. But wind energy investments have collapsed as funding dries up in the credit crunch and the price of oil, gas and coal has fallen. Delays obtaining access to the national grid and planning permission have compounded the industry’s woes.

Shell and BP have shelved or pulled out of renewable energy projects, including a £3 billion project for 341 turbines in the Thames Estuary, and questions have been raised over the future of npower’s £2.2 billion Gwint y Mor farm off the Welsh coast.

”We are way off the pace,” Jonathon Porritt, the head of the Sustainable Development Commission, said. “The UK has talked about this for years, but the Government now has very little time to get this together. People just do not consider the UK to be a good place to invest in renewables.” Duncan Ayling, of the British Wind Energy Association, said: “We need strategic leadership from the highest levels . . . We are only going to do this if the Government is brave enough to tackle these problems head on.” He called for the formation of a Cabinet-level sub-committee to lead the industry’s development.

A recently approved gas-fired station in Pembroke will be the largest in Britain, producing 2,000 megawatts, two thirds of the total produced by all of the country’s wind turbines.

Xabier Viteri, chief of Iberdrola Renewables, whose Spanish parent owns ScottishPower, blamed the economic crisis for the move but added that problems in Britain could force his company to consider investing elsewhere.

The latest announcement will come as an embarrassment to Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who this week described opposition to wind farms as “socially unacceptable . . . like not wearing your seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing”.

Peterborough Evening Telegraph, 2nd December, 2008

Wind Turbine’s Deadly Ice Shower

Residents were left fearing for their safety after shards of melting ice fell on homes and gardens from the blades of a giant wind turbine.

For about four hours people in King’s Dyke, Whittlesey, had to take cover as huge lumps - some two feet long - showered them from the 80 metre high tower on Saturday morning.

Resident Peter Randall, whose son’s house lies a stone’s throw away from the turbine, said: “Somebody is going to get killed. There was huge lumps of ice shooting off and landing everywhere.

“No one wants to leave the house because they are frightened and worried about the ice falling.”

Freezing overnight temperatures had caused the ice to form and after frantic calls to Truro-based firm Cornwall Light and Power, which owns the turbine, the £2 million machine was eventually turned off.

This is not the first time the turbine has courted controversy.

Last month The Evening Telegraph revealed how residents had lodged complaints with the environmental health department at Fenland District Council due to alleged noise pollution and had demanded the turbine’s removal.

The huge machine, which measures 80 metres at its hub and 125 metres when one of its three blades is vertical, was put up in August.

A spokesperson for Cornwall Light & Power said: “We received a report of an ice shedding incident near our Whittlesey turbine on Saturday morning and immediately made arrangements for it to be switched off.

“The turbine will remain stopped until we have a clear understanding of what happened and any safety concerns have been fully addressed.

“Cornwall Light & Power is a reputable operator with a proven track record of generating clean electricity safely and we will act quickly to resolve this issue.”

http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/Wind-turbine39s-deadly-ice-shower.4750005.jp?CommentPage=2&CommentPageLength=10#comments

The results of a risk assessment for ice throw from a turbine of hub height 80 m and blade diameter 90m shows that ice could be thrown nearly 700m. The probability of someone getting hit in an urban area such as this seems rather high.

BBC News Report 3rd December 2008

Ice shards rain down from turbine

A giant wind turbine near Peterborough has been switched off after its frozen blades threw off shards of ice - many crashing into nearby homes.

The Cornwall Light and Power 80m (262ft) turbine was put up in August, near an industrial estate and close to homes in King’s Dyke, Whittlesey.

But it was switched off when big chunks of ice started crashing into gardens on Saturday morning.

Cornwall Light and Power said it was investigating the incident.

Local resident Peter Randall said: “They (supporters of the turbine plan) said this will never happen, then we get shelled with ice.”

Turbine expert John Stoneman, of Cambridgeshire Environmental Wildlife Protection, expressed concern at the incident.

“The blades revolve at 200mph and those ice shards become projectiles. They would certainly kill someone if they hit someone,” he said.

Cornwall Light and Power said the firm has started an investigation into the incident.

A spokesman said the turbine should have worked at temperatures as low as -20C and the company wants to find out what caused the ice to form and what went wrong.

The turbine was put up in August near an an industrial estate and close to houses in Whittlesey.

This BBC report and a video clip can be seen at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7763816.stm

The Guardian Thursday September 4 2008

Spinning to destruction

Wind power may be one of the cleaner, greener energy sources available, but turbine and blade failures point to dangers that were not anticipated, says Michael Connellan

See the article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/04/energy.engineering

From the Western Morning News, 13 August 2008

Senior figures from wind energy firms have been working at the heart of government advising ministers on the potential health impacts of turbines, the WMN has learned.The government was last night accused of “doing unprecedented and highly questionable favours” for the wind industry amid growing concern about the “clear conflict of interest”.

Staff from power firms are known to be working in the Department for Business, Enterprise and regulatory Reform (BERR) which is responsible for energy supplies and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) charged with tackling climate change.

Questions have also been raised about a move to limit the power of people living near new wind farms to sue operators for negative health impacts caused by noise.

This is an extract from the full article which can be seen at
http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/livingcornwall/Wind-energy-staff-act-Government-advisers/article-265196-detail/article.html

From The Sunday Times, 13 January, 2008

This has been my perfect week

Jeremy Clarkson

A couple of weeks ago, plans for a wonderful new coal-fired power station in Kent were given the green light and I was very pleased.

This will reduce our dependency on Vladimir’s gas and Osama’s oil and, as a bonus, new technology being developed to burn the coal more efficiently will be exported to China and exchanged for plastic novelty items to make our lives a little brighter.

It’s all just too excellent for words, but of course galloping into the limelight came a small army of communists and hippies who were waving their arms around and saying that coal was the fuel of Satan and that when the new power station opened, small people like Richard Hammond would immediately be drowned by a rampaging tidal swell.

They argued with much gusto that if Britain was to stand any chance of meeting Mr Prescott’s Kyoto climate change targets then we must build power stations that produced no carbon emissions at all. ……………….

…………So what about wind turbines? Nope. They don’t work either. Quite apart from their unmatched ability to mince baby ospreys and keep everyone within 15 miles awake with their mournful humming, they don’t provide enough juice to power a Rampant Rabbit.

Denmark has built 6,000 wind turbines and it’s said that together they can produce enough electricity to meet 19% of the country’s (frankly minuscule) needs.

But since they came on line not a single one of Denmark’s normal power stations has been decommissioned. They are all running at full capacity because, while the wind turbines are theoretically capable of meeting nearly a fifth of the country’s demands, they produce nothing at all when the wind drops.

And since nobody can predict when that might be, the normal power stations have to be kept on line all the time. It’s been a disaster, which brings us back to nuclear power: the only solution if you want to maintain our standard of living and cut carbon emissions.

Not only is the energy clean but there are other advantages too. The new power plants will be privately run, which means you can buy shares in them and you won’t lose a penny. Because when things are going well you’ll get a dividend, and when they’re not going well you won’t care because you’ll be covered in sulphurous sores and blood will be spurting from where your eyes used to be.

Better still, to make sure things don’t go badly a vast army of health and safety officers will be employed to ensure the concrete is thick enough and visiting schoolchildren are not allowed to press any of the buttons. This means the high-vis Nazis will have no time left to stop policemen climbing ladders.

What’s more, because so many countries are going nuclear, Iran for instance, there is bound to be a global shortage of sufficiently well qualified atomic engineers. This means wages will rise, and that will cause schoolchildren to stop aiming for stardom in Heat magazine or a 2:1 in media studies and start concentrating a bit more in physics and maths.

Best of all, though, when all of our power is being generated by neutrons quietly crashing into one another, Greenpeace will have to leave us alone and go back to unpicking dolphins from Chinamen’s fishing nets.

See the whole article at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article3176456.ece

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