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Friday 30 April 2010

Lincolnshire Eco Twaddle




I was very amused by the large figures quoted for Lincolnshire Co2 savings of 70,000 tonnes, equivalent to the removal of 21000 cars, as was published in Lincs-Today.

Perhaps we need to get some perspective about this though. 70,000 tonnes sound like an awful lot of CO2 but in fact it is not.

Given that all of the UK's 30,000,000 cars only produce about 0.28% of all man made CO2 one can see that 21000 cars would only represent a saving of about 0.07% of 0.28% of man made CO2 or only 0.0196%.

At about 380ppm we are still at the very low end of historic co2 when the planet was very lush, green and vibrant, at about 4 times that quantity.

It seems that the anti human lobby are still trying to bamboozle us with these apparently high numbers when in fact nothing can be further from the truth.

Now what is the cost to Lincolnshire people for all this nonsense and who is making money from these figures as a result?

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Wednesday 21 April 2010

Windmills? 'a big waste'


Windmills: Bigger waste than eHealth
Posted: October 01, 2009, 1:06 AM by NP Editor
Wind reduces CO2 emissions at a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne — one of the most expensive plans in the world

By Michael Trebilcock

O

ntarians take note. A detailed new Danish study shatters most of the myths that the Danish-based wind turbine industry has been propagating in Canada and around the world as to the virtues of wind power. The study, Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark by the Centre for Policy Studies in Copenhagen, strongly reinforces reservations that I have noted in previous op-eds in this newspaper.

While proponents of wind power like to claim that almost 20% of Danish electricity is generated by wind power, in fact over the last five years wind power has accounted for only about 9% of domestic electricity consumption. The other 11% or so — generated when the wind was blowing in the middle of the night or at other times that power was unneeded in Denmark — was exported to Norway and Sweden at spot prices that were substantially lower (often zero) than the subsidized prices guaranteed to Danish wind turbine operators. Meanwhile, when the wind wasn’t blowing in conformity with Danish needs, Denmark needed to import balancing power from Norway and Sweden, typically at substantially higher costs.

The main attraction in wind is the elimination of CO2 emissions. To the extent that wind power reduces CO2 emissions in Denmark, this comes as a subsidy cost of about $124 per tonne of CO2 — one of the most expensive CO2 reduction strategies in the world.

In order to keep industry competitive, the Danish government protects industry at the expense of consumers. Electricity to industry is hardly taxed at all, making for an outsized disparity between what householders and industry pay for their electricity — Danish householders pay 2.5 times more than Danish industry. Even before taxes, the average consumer price for wind-generated electricity is 50% higher than that from fossil fuel generated electricity.

Based on the total subsidies to the Danish wind industry, the average subsidy for the 28,000 workers employed in this sector equals US$9,000 to US$14,000 per year per job. However, this average subsidy does not reflect the actual cost of the additional job creation. In most cases, creating a job in the wind sector has only moved that job from another sector and not resulted in any additional job creation. A very optimistic ball park estimate of real net jobs created is around 10% of the total wind power work force, or 2,800 jobs. In this case, the actual subsidy for each additional job created is US$90,000 to US$140,000.

The Danish study finds that the energy technology sector in Denmark from 1999 to 2006 underperformed the broader manufacturing sector in Denmark by an average of 13% in terms of value added, reducing Danish GDP by approximately $270-million compared to what it would have been if the wind sector workforce was employed elsewhere. The Danish Economic Council concluded in a report in 2006: “The wind power expansion in the 1990s is an example of a policy that was unprofitable from society’s point of view, even taking the economic advantages that the wind business enjoyed into consideration.” The Centre for Policy Studies study concludes: “Denmark needs a proper debate and a thorough reappraisal of the technologies that need to be invented, developed, and costed before forcing the country into a venture that shows a high risk of turning into an economic black hole.”

Partly mesmerized by Danish wind industry propaganda, the Ontario government has embarked upon a similar exercise in economic and environmental folly. When the full costs of this misadventure are revealed — billions of dollars over the next 20years — the province’s recent financial scandals at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission and eHealth will seem trivial in comparison. This is the real political scandal in Ontario, upon which we should all be focusing our attention.

Financial Post
Michael Trebilcock is Professor of Law and Economics, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and a director of Energy Probe Research Foundation.

Monday 5 April 2010

This costly invention.


Now don't forget that we could save many lives with this money. So the climate change taliban are killing people now.

Christopher Booker
London Telegraph
April 4, 2010

One of the best-kept secrets of British politics – although it is there for all to see on a Government website – is the cost of what is by far the most expensive piece of legislation ever put through Parliament. Every year between now and 2050, acccording to Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), the Climate Change Act is to cost us all up to £18.3 billion – £760 for every household in the country – as we reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent.
Last Thursday – with northern Britain again under piles of global warming – another tranche of regulations came into force, as this measure begins to take effect. New road tax rules mean that to put a larger, more CO2 -emitting car on the road will now cost £950. New “feed-in” subsidies for small-scale “renewables” mean that the installers of solar panels will be paid up to eight times the going rate for their miserable amount of electricity to be fed into the grid, with the overall bill for this scheme estimated eventually to be billions a year.
Not the least bizarre of the Government’s strategies, however, is Decc’s new Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme, requiring up to 30,000 of our largest energy users, such as ministries, councils, universities, hospitals, supermarket chains (and even “monasteries and nunneries”), to pay to register with the Environment Agency. Some 5,000 of them, using more than “6,000 megawatt hours” of electricity each year (equivalent to the needs of 1,250 homes), will then have to carry out a cumbersome audit of their carbon footprint, using “three different metrics”, in order to pay £12 for each ton of CO2 they emit – at a total initial cost estimated at £1.4 billion a year. This will eventually be contributed by all of us, either through taxes or, for instance, whenever we visit Tesco.