ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY
More than two years ago your letters’ editorial told us that wind power letters would “fill an entire magazine, if not several.” (Cambria, Winter 2002/3). Those letters which you did publish, voiced a howl of protest, with scarcely a dissenter.
What has happened since then is an appalling assault on democracy in Wales. The recent consultation for WAG’s planning advice document on renewable energy, Technical Advice Note 8 (TAN 8) attracted 1700 responses - an unprecedented number for a planning consultation. Almost nine out of ten were objections.
What did WAG do? It adopted TAN 8 with virtually no concession to massive public disapproval. The “advice” is now a presumption in favour of large developments in the extensive Strategic Search Areas throughout Wales. Planning applications for “small” size or community wind ‘farms’ will be favoured anywhere outside designated land such as National Parks.
In response to a letter protesting against adoption of TAN 8, a reply written for WAG Energy Minister, Andrew Davies, dismissed the huge response to the consultation by saying “the consultation exercise statistics do not correlate with the public level of support for wind power”. The Minister justified this by reference to opinion surveys over the past 13 years - before most people had seen even a tiny wind turbine!
TAN 8’s “small” developments have a size limit of 25 MW - bigger than all but a handful of existing windfarms onshore in Wales, so allowing the rush by developers to grab some of this action virtually anywhere. The ‘windrush’ is driven by the gigantic electricity ‘subsidy’ for windpower, taken clandestinely from all electricity consumers to support the Renewables Obligation which has now been identified as twice as large as needed, by the Public Accounts Committee of the Commons.
Out in the countryside distressed property owners and tourism operators facing loss of hard earned cash are told by local planning authorities and councillors that they must not complain, or the tens of thousand pounds’ cost of appeals will be thrown upon the ratepayers each and every time.
A similar situation prevails in the rest of the UK. Environment Minister, Carwyn Jones, dismissed all of this by writing to me: “The fact remains that we have a target to reach by 2010.” Some justice! Some democracy!
Dr John Etherington
Llanhowell
Solfach
Hwlffordd
Sir Benfro
SOUTH EAST
Lyn Jenkins is right to attack the environmental and economic folly of the mid-Wales wind farm project. (Cambria July-August ) He is wrong, however, to continue to assert that such projects would not be allowed in the ‘unspoilt’ (Lyn’s words) South East England. Unspoilt? Has he not heard of the acres of the South East submerged beneath motorway or high speed rail link concrete? Does he not know of John Prescott’s plan to build many thousands of houses in the area?
As for wind farms, the UK’s largest off-shore wind farm has just started operation off the Kent coast, dominating a seascape frequently painted by Turner, and more are planned. If off-shore doesn’t count, the Romney Marsh, as beautiful in its way as mid-Wales, is also threatened.
Are Lyn’s targets the wind farms or ‘the wicked English’? Grumbling about them has been Wales’s true national sport since the days of Gildas.
Take heart, Lyn. The Saxons, never the brightest of folk, are waking up at last to how much they contribute financially to Welsh and Scottish devolution. Thus, independence for Wales and Scotland may come sooner than anyone thinks.
When it does, the mid-Wales wind farms will come into their own, powering the needs of the thousands of Welsh incomers to England who will surely rush back along the English motorways to the old country.
Alan Edwards
Whitstable
Kent
US Windfarms: Letter from Glenn Schleede to the Wall St. Journal
Mr. John J. Fialka
Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, New York 10281
Dear Mr. Fialka:
You owe Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) an apology for the lack of objectivity in your article; Senator is Running Against the Wind, in the June 21, 2005, Wall Street Journal (on the eve of the Senate vote on his bill, Environmentally Responsible Windpower Act’.
It’s clear from your story and the Senate vote that the facts about wind energy have not yet penetrated the Congress, the Bush Administration or the main stream media. Instead, many of you apparently have tacitly accepted the false and misleading information that has been distributed during the past decade by the wind industry and other wind energy advocates.
In fact, the Wind industry and other advocates have greatly overstated the environmental and energy benefits of wind energy, and greatly understated or ignored its adverse economic, environmental, ecological, scenic and property value impacts.
Fortunately, during the past 3 years, citizen-led groups in the US and other countries where wind farms have been proposed or built have learned the facts about wind energy. Progress is being made in bringing those facts to the public but it’s clear from your story that there is much work to be done. The key, documented facts are as follows:
1. Tax avoidance “not environmental and energy benefits“has become the primary motivation for building wind farms. One expert recently pointed out that two-thirds of the economic value of wind projects comes from tax benefits. [1] FPL Group, parent of FPL Energy, LLC (largest owner of wind farms in the US) apparently paid no income tax in 2002 or 2003, despite reporting over $2 billion in profits, [2] due heavily to wind farm tax benefits.
2. Huge windmills “often taller than the US Capitol -- produce very little electricity. If all the 12,000+ windmills (totalling 6,740 megawatts) now scattered across thousands of acres in 30 states in the US averaged a capacity factor of 25%, they would produce 14,760,600,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually. [3] That may sound like a lot of electricity, but its equal to ¾ of 1% of the electricity produced in the US in 2003 (1,970,300,000,000 kWh).
You referred to TVs wind farm. If TVs 18 wind turbines, with capacity of 28,800 kW achieve a 30% capacity factor, they will produce 75,686,400 kWh of electricity annually. That would be equal to 05/100 of 1% of the 155,000,000,000 kWh of electricity produced by TVA during 2004
3. Electricity from wind turbines has less real value than electricity from reliable generating units. Wind turbines detract from electric system reliability, because the output is intermittent, highly volatile and largely unpredictable. No matter how many windmills are built in the US, enough reliable, dispatchable generating capacity will have to be built to satisfy peak demands for electricity. Electricity from windmills cannot be counted on to be available when electricity demand is highest. Wind turbines are most likely to produce at night and in winter months when wind is strongest. In most areas of the US, electricity demand is highest during hot summer afternoons when wind is least likely to be available.
4. The true cost of electricity from wind energy is much higher than wind advocates admit. Advocates ignore the huge costs of subsidies and fail to acknowledge that reliable generating units must be kept available and running to balance and back up the intermittent, volatile output from wind turbines so that electricity always will be available when required by electric customers. They also fail to acknowledge that electricity from wind uses transmission capacity inefficiently, adding to the true cost of electricity from wind.
5. Claims of environmental benefits of wind energy are exaggerated. They tend to ignore the fact that backup generating units must be immediately available and running at less than their peak efficiency or in spinning reserve mode, and that backup units continue to emit while in these modes. Also, the generation that may be offset may not be powered by fossil fuels. Further, under cap and trade programs, credits for sulphur dioxide or nitrogen oxides emissions that are displaced by wind could be sold to other emitters, with NO reduction in those emissions.
6. Wind farms have significant adverse environmental, scenic and property value impacts that wind advocates like to ignore. Citizens in various states (and other countries) where wind farms have been constructed have become painfully aware that “ in addition to the high true cost of the electricity -- wind farms impair environmental, ecological, scenic and property values. Among the adverse impacts are noise, bird kills, interference with bird migration paths and animal habitat, destruction of scenic mountain vistas and ecological rarities, distracting blade flicker and aircraft warning lights, and lowering the value of properties located near the huge structures.
7. Wind farm produce few local economic benefits, which are overwhelmed by the higher costs imposed on electric customers through their monthly bills. This is particularly true when the wind farm owner and/or owner of the land lives elsewhere or spends the income from the wind farm elsewhere.
8. Wind energy has NOT been the great success in other countries that the wind industry and other wind advocates often claim. A growing body of literature describes problems and huge costs resulting from wind energy in Denmark and Germany. [4] Both countries have residential electricity prices that are among the highest in the world, thanks in part to wind energy subsidies. Opposition to wind turbines is also growing in the UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Further, claims that wind energy will make significant contributions toward meeting European countries Kyoto goals have been discredited. [5]
Your claim (parroting the wind industry), that wind power is a giant, growing about 25% each year would serve well as an example in the classic book, How to Lie with Statistics. (A percent of increase looks large when starting from a tiny base.) According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), wind provided about 1/10 of 1% of US energy in 2002 and EIA forecasts that wind will provide 27/100 of 1% of US energy by 2025. [6]
Please do not be misled about the alleged benefits of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). If you analyze the impact of state RPS will find that they are an insidious device that would enrich a few renewable energy producers at the expense of many ordinary electric customers.
Its not surprising that the environmental group that you talked to were shocked by Senator Alexanders proposed Windpower Act. Such groups may be even more shocked once they grasp the fact that the wind industry has greatly overstated the environmental benefits of wind energy and grossly understated the environmental, ecological, and scenic costs.
They will be less shocked once they understand the impact of proposed wind farms on, for example, the ecologically unique Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas, the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, or the scenic Kittitas Valley in Washington and the mountain ridges in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia..
Mr. Fialka, I urge you to take advantage of the growing body of information that provides truths about wind energy. Do not rely on misinformation from wind industry lobbyists.
Perhaps critically important for readers of the Wall Street Journal are the facts that as a direct result of unwise federal and state tax breaks and other subsidies for wind energy:
• Hundreds of millions of dollars are being transferred annually to wind farm owners from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers and electric customers; and
• Billions of capital investment dollars are being wasted on wind energy projects that produce very little electricity -- and the electricity that is produced is low in value.
I’m attaching a paper, Misplaced State Government Faith in Wind Energy, that will give you a start in understanding the truths about wind energy.
Rather than implying that Senator Alexander is naive or conflicted, you should have commend him for being among the first in the Washington establishment to grasp the facts about wind energy.
Sincerely,
Glenn.R.Schleede
[1] Presentation on December 15, 2004, by Mr. Ed Feo to the Renewable Energy Resources Committee of the American Bar Association: http://www.abanet.org/environ/committees/renewableenergy/teleconarchives/121504/
[2] Citizens for Tax Justice, September 22, 2004, 68 pp. http://www.ctj.org/corpfed04an.pdf.
[3] That is, 6,740,000 x.8,760 hours x 25%.
[4] See, for example: (1) Nordel’s Grid Group, Non Dispatchable Production in the Nordel System, May 2000, (2) Sharman, Hugh (Hals, Denmark), Letter to Financial Times (London), May 24, 2005, explaining that electric customers in Denmark get about 4% of their electricity from wind, not the 20% often claimed, and (3) E.ON Netz, Wind Report 2004. http://www.eon- netz.com/frameset_reloader_homepage.phtml?top=Ressources /frame_head_eng.jsp&bottom=frameset_english/energy_eng/ene_windenergy_eng/ene_windenergy_eng.jsp
[5] Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Oxford Energy Comment, February 2005,CO2 emissions Reduction: Time for a Reality Check, p.3.
[6] US Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2005, tables A2 and A17.
Warm embrace or shackle of steel ?
The furore over wind-farms in Wales, which this magazine has been following, is once more on the boil. In early October the giant offshore windfarm at Scarweather Sands near Porthcawl got a definitive go-ahead from the Welsh Assembly, despite spirited opposition from local groups. And plans for on-shore windfarms continue to raise profound concerns amongst lovers of the Welsh countryside: on September 24th. the South Wales Evening Post carried the dramatic headline - "SHOCK AT RING OF STEEL TO CIRCLE THE CITY"- referring to the recently unveiled plans which - according to the newspaper - raised the spectre of a Swansea valley totally ringed by wind turbines.
But wind turbines are not the only controversial energy topic in Wales at the moment. Arousing perhaps less widespread debate have been the plans to bring liquefied natural gas (LNG) into two new reception terminals in Milford Haven - plans which would make Wales an "energy corridor" for a significant proportion of the UK's future energy supplies. Not since the days of King Coal has Wales potentially played such an important role in the UK's energy balance. Wales's new energy bonanza will not create the levels of employment that the coal industry once did, but could have profound impact on our environment. Welsh people are justified in asking whether this is a price they should be prepared to pay.
The decision to go ahead with the construction of the 108 MW Scarweather Sands project, which will see the building of 30 turbines around 3.5 miles offshore in Swansea Bay near Porthcawl, was controversial, and came after a public enquiry was held last November following which the enquiry's inspector came out against the scheme, saying that "The visual impact of a wmdfarm in the specific location of this proposal would be so prominent when viewed from Porthcawl and its immediate area that I consider that the harmful effects of this view are sufficient to outweigh the benefits of this particular proposal."
But the Welsh Assembly's planning decision committee disagreed with the inspector's findings, and his conclusions were heavily criticised by environmental groups who support wind power. Following the Assembly's decision, and to the distress of local opponents, work now seems free to start later this year on the £120 million plan which the promoters say could generate enough power to meet the average electricity needs of 82,000 homes - a city the size of Swansea.
The Scarweather Sands decision comes at a time when plans for UK wind farm construction are building up unprecedented momentum. This year some 474 MW of wind-powered capacity will be constructed in the
UK, against 103 MW last year and 88 MW in 2002. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) predicts that a further 1,000 MW will be constructed over the next two years. Marcus Rand, the Chief Executive of the BWEA has said that "2003 was the year of consents: 2004 will be the year of build."
Conscious of the fact that a large part of the opposition to wind farms is because of their visual impact, the wind lobby has recently launched a campaign entitled Embrace the Revolution which will host an exhibition of photographs of wind farms at the London Eye aimed at convincing the sceptical of the beauty of wind turbines.
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But wind farms are not the only issue that is bringing energy policy into the spotlight in Wales. Plans have been announced for the construction of two separate terminals at Milford Haven for the importation of liquefied natural gas (LNG). These are heavyweight projects in energy terms. The first, going under the name of Dragon LNG -will be able to import up to 4.4 million tonnes of LNG a year. The second, even bigger, terminal will have a capacity of 7.7 million tonnes a year. The LNG would come in tankers from plants in the Middle East, Africa or Asia. Currently the UK does not import LNG, but as North Sea gas supplies run down, it -will increasingly become an importer of gas.
The quantities of energy which the two LNG terminals would import dwarf the scale of the wind farm outputs being considered for Wales. Even the smaller of the two will bring in enough gas to produce around 33 TWh/year of electricity: for comparison, the Welsh Assembly Government's target for total renewable energy production is only 4 TWh in 2010 and 7 TWh in 2020. And it seems that there are early-stage plans to build new gas-fired power stations in Wales that would use LNG from the Milford terminals and export electricity to England.
But although the press has welcomed the economic boost to the principality that the new LNG terminals would bring, there is mounting opposition on environmental grounds. Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth strongly oppose the new terminals for two main reasons. Firstly, that such installations could pose a danger to the local community and, secondly, that, unlike wind turbines, gas-fired power plants emit carbon dioxide, thus contributing to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
The gas industry, however, counters that LNG is comparatively clean and safe, compared with, say, the oil products that having been passing in and out of Milford Haven for years. LNG is transported and stored at very low temperatures (-161 degrees Centigrade), is not under pressure, evaporates without a residue if there is a spillage and tends to burn quietly if ignited. Proponents also point out that Japan, for example, has relied on LNG for the entirety of its gas supplies for more than 30 years without major incident.
As for greenhouse gases, the industry says that gas produces significantly less carbon dioxide when used to make electricity than does coal, for example. But the arguments of the LNG proponents are unlikely to fully reassure local residents, and will not convince pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace.
The potentially deleterious effects of energy projects - be they wind power or LNG terminals - on the local environment are easy to see, as is the big picture of the attempt to stem global warming and UK's declining gas reserves. There is, however, a third dimension, which is the benefit to Wales itself from hosting such schemes. Referring to the Scarweather decision, Julian Rosser, director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said that it would help Wales to "welcome new industries which will create jobs while protecting the environment."
Let us hope that this is a balance that can be achieved.
David Drury
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Created on 2004-11-25 20:26:10 by admin
Updated on 2005-10-17 15:23:05 by admin
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