Have we the energy for all this?

On one of the recent bank holidays we decided to take a drive up into the Pennines, do some walking and find some good countryside restaurants. What did strike me was the number of enormous wind turbines we passed. It would be difficult to miss them, dotted on hilltops all over the place.

Then I saw a fellow from the green brigade on television exhorting the government to spend 3%, around £4 billion, of our gross domestic product (GDP) achieving reduction of carbon emissions, and a few bells started ringing on this tricky subject.

It is reported that the UK Government is expecting to spend a huge £3 billion, around 2.2% of UK GDP, every year until 2100 to achieve an absolute maximum global temperature reduction of 0.0019oc, which is less than 2 thousandths of a degree centigrade. I hope this sounds like a good deal to you, because I don’t get it.

Our Government has set a target for reducing CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050. As one of the measures to meet that objective it is proposing to achieve 10% of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2010, and 20% by 2020. This requires a radical change in the way energy is generated and one consequence is the growth and development of farms and wind turbines on our beautiful hillsides.

Now if it was working then we probably wouldn’t mind so much, but in 2010 Britain had managed to generate just 6.5% of its electricity from renewable sources. The cost of this paltry figure was a £5 billion spend on wind farm subsidies and the dismissal of any local objections to the monstrous wind turbines. These figures of failure were published at the Renewable Energy Foundation and I could find no comment on the subject from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Spain produces 16% of its energy through wind and solar power, but this figure will fall dramatically as they can no longer afford the giant subsidy needed to support it.

We are spending billions to achieve our 35% target for renewables. The Chinese don’t care, they are building two new coal fired power stations every week adding huge amounts of carbon to the world atmosphere. India follows closely behind them in the brand new pollution race.

The UK smart money seems to be on new generation nuclear power stations, which need to be built quickly or the existing stock will soon reach their sell-by date, close down, and leave a power vacuum that wind generation will never fill.

Everyone had a fright after the severe nuclear situation in Japan that followed the earthquake and resulting tsunami. Germany and Italy have accelerated plans to close their nuclear power plants.

This seems a bit of an overreaction. I don’t think we will ever be in danger of a tsunami and modern nuclear generation technology, design and safety has come a very long way since Queen Elizabeth II opened the first nuclear power station in Cumbria in 1956.

One thing is for sure; the price of power and your electricity will be less than it is now.