WOEBOT said:
No I spent the last month researching them cos I was seriously considering setting one up!
Big up. Insofar as I understand it, you need big money to get in the game and while there are subsidies available it's a slog to get them. Nevertheless there's a perception that wind power is subsidy-driven rather than being viable on its own -- a charge which is bound to be justifiable in some instances, because subsidies are never 100% efficient.
WOEBOT said:
The bottom line however is that if you buy four farms in Scotland, slog through the extremely lengthy and expensive approval process to put wind-generators up you'll be lucky if you get permission for one of them. This directly to me from the man who the Scotsman ring up for quotes.
Yes, the opposiition to wind farms is a powerful lobby and, Ingham aside, will become more and more popular. Just as (some) country dwellers objected to "their" land being inundated so hydro electric power could provide electricity for cities, so they will object when land is taken up with windmills -- and more pertinently, the vast power lines that need to go to and from the windmills. In other words I don't write off all opponents of wind power as being in the pay of the nuclear lobby -- even if most of the anti-wind groups are.
For me the big underlying issue is about technology adoption curves and research funding. Wind power technology is going through a phase of exponential growth in its generative efficiency. In other words, it's so immature even modest technical advances are having a big effect. Right now it's
possible to argue that the net energy investment in wind power is negative -- i.e. the energy costs of making the technology outweigh the energy savings from generation. But that's largely because wind (and wave) have been chronically underfunded compared to nuclear, whose subsidies, R&D and capital investment have been mind-bogglingly vast. If that money were to be diverted to wind and wave, we'd have excellent sustainable power generation in 15 years.
But it would be a brave government that made that bet.
BTW Matt, piss-taking aside, I thought you were a nuclear fan?
