There
is a proposal to plant a wind farm just up the road in the Lot. I would not be
surprised to learn that the Tarn et Garonne is being surveyed for
something similar. It seems that having seen off high-tension power lines a few
years ago; maybe having done away with fracking; and probably getting a local
prison, our quiet corner of France is about to generate a quantity of emotional
energy discussing the pros and cons of wind farms.
These
discussions tend to cover a wide range of related topics like comparative
methods of generation, safety and security of nuclear waste, fossil fuels and
global warming, security of supply of imported fuels, dead birds, noise and being
decapitated by 20m razor sharp blades breaking off in high winds and flying
into densely populated areas. Discussions are not always conducted with the
accuracy and attention to detail that the topic deserves.
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| Elegant generators of clean power... |
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| ...or death-dealing killing machines. |
Somewhere
in all this the wind turbine debate loses focus. This blog is an attempt to try
and find one.
There
seem to be three main thrusts of the debate, aesthetics, environmental issues and
economics. Aesthetics
are, I contend, a personal matter and not subject to anything as grubby as
facts. There is something glorious about
great swathes of countryside untouched by the modern world. But to my
shame I also find something attractive about a railway winding its elegant curves
through the very same countryside, crossing valleys on splendid viaducts and
avoiding hills through cuttings and tunnels. Nor do I find wind turbines as
offensive as pylons or McDonald’s. It’s difficult to argue either side of the
aesthetic debate convincingly when I don’t even agree with myself….
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| It could be worse, but I'm not sure how. |
The
environmental issue is surely a balancing act, after all the whole raison d’être of the things is to save the
environment. The question is whether the environmental benefits are worth the environmental
price. This is a matter which can be put off for a paragraph or two as we may
not even need to go there.
Which
brings us neatly to economics. Do wind turbines make any economic sense? If all
the costs of wind farms can be established, a cost benefit analysis would be quite straightforward. If it is unanimously agreed that wind farms are
not economical the debate can, and will, end there. But if it can be clearly demonstrated
that the things are an economical way to make electricity then the other
aesthetic and environmental considerations come centre stage.
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| Wind Farm or 100% Guaranteed Olympic Sailing Venue? |
Funnily
enough, the cost is probably the easiest element to be objective about, but
after thousands of turbines have been built, there still appears to no general agreement
as to whether they are economically viable.
There are two financial elephants in the room, and they are both asking questions:
1. Are
there more economical ways of generating the same amount of power?
and
2. Who
stands to make how much from the construction of wind farms?
The
questions should not really be posed in that order as the answer to the second affects
the answer to the first. No private company is going to invest in the building
and maintenance of the infrastructure unless it includes an acceptable element
of profit. This will affect the cost of the power produced and thus the overall
economic viability of wind power. If there is not enough profit the things will
not be built by private investors. No government is likely to stump up the cash
on a non-profit basis in today’s economic climate of cutting back on social
spending and generally telling everyone there is no money. Also, sometime
within the timeframe of a wind farm development, there will be an election on
the horizon. So that’s a nationalised wind farm blown out of the water.
The obvious sub-question then is what is an acceptable level of profit for private investors?
This
leads to the question of the financial structures behind the energy companies’
deals with government; or, in local French terms, the government’s deals with
the Department du Lot; or the Lot’s deal with the Cantons where the wind farms
may be built; or the Cantons’ deals with the various Mairies? And the myriad
other possible combinations of financial and political arrangements about which mere
mortals can only speculate. Personally I would not trust most of them to boil
an egg, let alone be transparent about their dealings.
There
is not so much wrong with a bit of profit, but the gaz de schiste issue exposed the principal interests of our local
licensee as raw greed. It also exposed the damage they were prepared to wreak in order to
satisfy their avarice. The jury is still out about the governments motives for
sneakily granting the gaz licenses in
the first place. Whatever, it will take a considerable degree of transparency
to persuade local residents that the same sort of dispicable motives
does not lie behind any wind farm proposal.
It
always seemed sensible to me that the best way to make a robust case is to
argue it with more fact than emotion. Arguing a case with a modicum of emotion can
lend your position a degree of passion and conviction, but relying on it exclusively, and
refusing to look at the maths will do little to convert the heathen. Therefore,
surely, the best debating ground is one where established fact, seasoned with ideological fervour to taste, can be used – and I reckon this has to be the
economic case.
As
mentioned above, the problem that seems to causes the log jam is an inability
to establish the true cost of wind farm generated power, and thus their
economic viability, especially compared with the alternatives.
I
may not be able to deconstruct the financial deals, and will happily leave that to others
better versed in these disciplines. But I should be able to understand the underlying
practicalities and apply some comparative logic to decide if wind generated
power is an economical option. Indeed we all should be able to have this
discussion based on facts rather than the vague and unsubstantiated opinion
which seems to have dominated the debates I have heard so far. If wind power can be
economical then we can all move onto the other aspects such as aesthetics and
the environment. If not we can just move on to the next item on the agenda of
life.
And
guess what? I have a proposal for establishing some facts – not all the facts, granted, but we have
to start somewhere. Read a book. Jane Austen tells a good tale but is a
little out of touch with modern-day energy supply and demand. JK Rowling is
guaranteed to get a massive readership but is unlikely to thrive in an
atmosphere where magic is considered close to cheating. Jeffery Deaver is
clever but a brain-chillingly dull read. [That’s enough. _ Ed.]
The
book I propose as required reading is David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy Without
the Hot Air.
It is a dispassionate attempt to discover if it would be possible to
maintain an acceptable lifestyle based on renewable energy. It does this by reducing the options to meaningful numbers, rather than vague,
emotive adjectives - and it does it in plain
English.
Probably the most attractive aspect of the book is that it
applies a common unit to the various ways we generate and consume power. The ‘power
per person, per day’ unit makes it easy to visualise the output of various generation
sources and our power usage at a human scale - and more importantly it
allows us to compare alternatives. Among other things it
allows us to make a direct comparison between different methods of generating
power.
More importantly it allows us to do what our American cousins insist on calling 'cool stuff', like comparing the power used by a phone
charger left plugged in when we are not using it, and running a car. It turns out that
the energy used in leaving the charger plugged in and unused for a year is the equivalent
to running your car for a second. This may support your view that chargers should
not be left on when not in use or confirm your view that the energy saved is so
small your efforts would be better employed elsewhere. Even with the admitted
inaccuracies (type of phone charger, size of car, travelling or idling, petrol
or diesel etc.) it is probably the nearest we are going to get to a 'fact' to
argue that particular case. A ‘fact’ of this sort, one that we can all relate
to, can change the conversation from the cul-de-sac of dogma to the open road
of imagination, in this case ways to knock the odd second of car use, which must be a step in the right direction.
I
am aware that promoting a single treatise on an important topic can be
dangerous. We have all witnessed the results of obsessed bigots who wave their
chosen tome as justification of their fallacious arguments. It is possible to
place too much faith in a single source be it a holy tract, political
manifesto, diet book or Wikipedia. But try as I might (and I have tried)
I cannot find a bad review of this book. The nearest I found was a specialist
who argued some of the minutiae of his specialism. And even he said that his
were “minor comments.” adding “On the whole, this book is an impressive
intellectual achievement.” There may be some really bad reviews but I can’t
find any.
Go
on, read it, I dare you. It may not agree with your preconceptions, but then
again it might. And it will give you some facts to argue with.
Or,
if you prefer to cuddle up with a real book it is available from all good book
stores (and Amazon)
So, that's some of the facts sorted, all I have to do now is decide what I
think about the aesthetics of wind turbines, if there is a more efficient way
of slicing a goose…
…and the proposal for a Tesco superstore in the
Grotte de Roland.
