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Ik heb reeds vaak aandacht geschonken aan hoe de duurzaamheidsadepten ons een rad voor de ogen draaien. Zie bijvoorbeeld de bijdrage van Hugo Matthijssen: ‘Nationale Ombudsman tikt EZ op de vingers wegens desinformatie over elektrisch rijden’. Maar het kwaad is endemisch – ook in de ons omringende landen.

De ‘Mail on Line’ publiceerde onlangs weer een paar krasse staaltjes van dit verschijnsel.

Onder de titel, ‘The dirty secret of Britain’s power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there’s no wind for turbines – and other insane but true eco-scandals’, schreef James Delingpole:

Thousands of dirty diesel generators are being secretly prepared all over Britain to provide emergency back-up to prevent the National Grid collapsing when wind power fails. And under the hugely costly scheme, the National Grid is set to pay up to 12 times the normal wholesale market rate for the electricity they generate.

One of the main beneficiaries of the stopgap plan is the Government itself, which stands to make hundreds of millions of pounds by leasing out the capacity of the generators in public-sector property including NHS hospitals, prisons, military bases, police and fire headquarters, schools and council offices.

But the losers will be consumers who can expect yet further hikes in their electricity bills in the name of ‘combating climate change’.

The scheme is expected to cost £1 billion a year by 2015, adding five per cent to energy bills. ….

Wind now constitutes about ten per cent of Britain’s energy mix. Under current Government targets, the plan is to increase this to 25 per cent by 2020. ..

However, some experts, such as economist Professor Gordon Hughes in a report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, warn that such a high proportion of renewables is unsustainable, because of the dramatic ebbs and flows of power being supplied in the grid.

Last year, Professor Hughes estimated the cost of creating this wind capacity by 2020 to be £124  billion. To produce the same amount of energy from gas would cost just £13  billion. …

Currently the wholesale price for electricity is around £50 per megawatt hour (MWh) but diesel-generator owners will be paid £600 per MWh. …

Any benefits of the supposedly ‘clean’ energy produced by wind turbines are likely to be more than offset by the dirty and inefficient energy produced by their essential diesel back-up.

En wat zijn de ervaringen in Duitsland?

In Germany, where the renewables sector is significantly more developed (it has 31GW of wind energy – compared to the UK’s 8GW), the green experiment has been little short of disastrous.

Sudden fluctuations in Germany’s power grid caused by the ebb and flow of wind have led to serious industrial damage.  According to the Association of German Industrial Energy Companies, the number of short interruptions in the grid has increased by 29 per cent in the past three years, with some of the association’s  members reporting damage running into hundreds of thousands  of euros as a result of unexpected stoppages.

In 2006, when wind farms were few and far between, engineers in eastern Germany running coal, gas and nuclear power plants took action to stabilize the grid roughly 80 times a year.

Today, as the amount of electricity generated by the region’s 8,000  wind turbines rises and falls by the hour, engineers have to intervene every second day in order to maintain network stability. Neighbouring Czechs and Poles are so fed up with the instability that they are on the verge of blocking the disruptive wind-produced electricity from their power lines.

De gezondheidsrisico’s van wind energie zijn jarenlang genegeerd.

How wind industry buried the devastating evidence of turbine noise for 25 years…

Wind turbines can be dangerous for human health – and the industry has known it for more than 25 years. A newly rediscovered report,prepared in 1987 for the US Department of Energy, showed that inaudible infrasound produced by the generators can cause problems for local residents, which become worse over time. People living near wind farms have complained of problems such as nausea, headaches and insomnia – so-called Wind Turbine Syndrome. The 1987 evidence contradicts the claims of advocates for the wind industry that symptoms are all in the mind.

Until recently, trade body RenewableUK claimed: ‘In over 25 years, no member of the public has been harmed by the normal operation of wind farms.’ It further stated that claims wind farms emit ‘infrasound and cause associated health problems’ were ‘unscientific’. But the 1987 report, led by N.D.Kelley from the Solar Energy Research Institute in Colorado, found ‘impulsive infrasound’ caused health problems and recommended noise curbs on turbines.

However the industry code of practice specifically excludes infrasonic frequencies. The report lends weight to claims of campaigners such as Australia’s Dr Sarah Laurie, who claims a concerted industry cover-up.

De cijfers die over de omvang van de groene economie worden gepubliceerd zijn een veelvoud van de werkelijkheid.

Official Government figures on the size of the green economy are totally bogus … The figures, issued by the Department for Business and Skills, are said to show that the environmental sector was worth a staggering £122 billion last year, making it the fastest-growing part of the economy, writes David Rose.

Ministers have repeatedly used the figures to justify crippling energy taxes and subsidies for wind farms. They claim the figures show that these policies will open the way to a booming future of ‘green jobs’ and low-carbon prosperity. But documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the true value of the green economy is actually between only £16.8  billion and £27.9 billion, depending on exactly how the term ‘green economy’ is defined. In other words, the official figures exaggerate the scale of the sector by up to 700 per cent. …

Business Secretary Vince Cable has cited the bogus figures to back his case for a new Green Investment Bank, claiming they prove that ‘green sectors have outperformed the wider economy’.

Lees verder hier.

Tja, zo gaan die dingen. De claims van de ‘duurzamen’ zijn niet te vertrouwen. Het gaat helaas niet om incidenten, maar om een diepgeworteld structureel verschijnsel.

Voor mijn eerdere bijdragen over klimaat en aanverwante zaken zie hierhier, hier, hier en hier.