Category Archives: Uncategorized

NTA Update Feb-Mar 2013

  By rob | February 27, 2013 - 6:33 pm | NTA Update, Uncategorized
1 Comment

What has happened in the 3 months since SPR  halted the Tiree Array?

Also

This contrasts with SSER’s proposed Islay Array, 45 miles south of Tiree, which is on schedule to submit its consent application by end 2013.

SPR stated it halted the Tiree Array “to monitor the industry’s progress, with a view to developing a technical solution that is fit for purpose in dealing with the physical characteristics of this site”

As the  proposed Tiree and Islay Arrays are located in similar very exposed sites, it is odd that Tiree Array is put on hold, yet Islay Array continues to progress towards a consents submission. In the last 3 months there has been no positive development to assist a technical solution. Off- shore wind turbines are designed  to international  classification society requirements  [DNV/BV/GL], to withstand the rigours of anything the North  Atlantic can throw and/ or blow at them! Although recent research in Norway may  suggest otherwise.

This would suggest technical solutions mainly refer to foundation problems.

With regard to foundation design, any ‘technical development’ in the last 3 months has been negative.

Technical:-

(1) There was an initial failure in the installation of a pair of innovative suction bucket foundations at the Dogger Bank Array.

The first one is now installed but the 2nd one has been ferried back to  Harland & Wolff Belfast for unspecified modifications. Failure was due to foundation movement, and interpretation of soil data.

This foundation design is significant element of  the Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator programme, committed to reduce off shore wind costs, from the current approx £175/MWhr, to £100/MWhr, the self-imposed developers target to secure continued Government  subsidy.

(2) BARD Group, a German company at the forefront in developing new offshore energy resources, will cease offshore foundation production ( April 30 2013). This is due to  ‘the  present situation in the offshore wind industry which has for some time suffered from a lack of new orders, due in part to the uncertain political framework conditions”, which is reflected in the German Government’s latest plans for reforming the subsidies on renewable energy. Germany has been the premier nation in offshore wind investment,  and technological development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other technical issues include establishing the energy- generating- efficiency of an Array the size of the proposed Tiree Array (361 sqkm). This research paper is sceptical.

Environmental:-

Offshore wind technical problems may be a consequence of environmental considerations which may be why,SPR in halting Tiree Array offered among its reasons;- ‘ to work alongside other agencies to study the results of initial detailed environmental studies of the project area’ . But why Tiree and not Islay? The contrast between the Tiree and Islay Array is that Tiree is included in Scottish Government’s  ‘Report to the Scottish Parliament on Progress to Identify a Scottish Network of Marine Protected Areas’ .                      ISLAY IS NOT INCLUDED

An MPA does not exclude locating/developing an Array within it, but the associated environmental constraints may render an Array non-viable.

Contributing to environmental considerations,  was the sighting, 3rd week Feb ,of sperm whales in the Minch. This is a first for Scottish waters.

Why travel to Kaikoura in NZ, when you can whale-watch in your own Scottish backyard…provided, of course, an offshore windfarm has not intervened?

 

Cabling/Transmission :-The Tiree-Coll Grid cable connection has broken… again. The underwater Grid cable in Gunna Sound has broken for the 2nd winter running. Last winter,Tiree was running on diesel for five months, and this winter, so far, a month!

SPR acknowledged the cabling/transmission issues of the Tiree Array  in 2012 when discussing cabling/transmission routes through Mull, for the Array. SPR stated their reason to maximize ‘on-land‘ cabling/transmission routes as opposed to ‘under-water’ was because ” …if it is is offshore, it is at risk  of being dredged up and that could mean three months until we fixed it.”

 

Note the mirror calm of the sea..such conditions are very rare around Tiree!

To avoid cable breaks,as in the current break to the Tiree Grid connection, the cable requires to be buried.This dictates that the seabed be ploughed to a depth of 1-3m. Current plough design is for soft seabeds (above), not the  gneiss rock of Tiree. Developing a ‘fit for purpose’ cabling solution for the Tiree Array,will be a major technical and environmental challenge.

 

O&M BASE;- The Tiree Onshore  Scenario Mapping  Exercise (TOSM) has been and gone.  The Tiree location of such a  base  is  trumpeted by  both Developer and Government  as  the  major constituent of the supposed Community Benefit  package if the Array was to be consented. The TOSM  assessed its value at  £6.6 million per annum GVA, albeit qualified by conceding “that a high proportion… will be spent outwith  Tiree …. but a significant proportion will be captured within Argyll and Bute“. But in January, Argyll and Bute Council announced that BARCALDINE was to be  included  in its  LORN ARC TIF development project  as the  possible O&M base for both Tiree and Islay Arrays.  

Argyll and Bute Council and  HIE were sponsors  of the Tiree Onshore Scenario Mapping  Exercise, so NTA asked them for a clarification. HIE responded with reference to their June 2011 “West Coast Port Cluster ” study.This excluded Tiree from any port development. Otherwise their responses have been confusing and inconclusive.

TOURISM: Scottish Government’s ECONOMY  ENERGY AND TOURISM  COMMITTEE Report had its airing at the Scottish  Parliament  on 21 Feb. It included a sweeping generalisation of minimal negative  impact on tourism at  the  national level. NTA forwarded the montages below to (1) all MSPs, including Alex Salmond, (2) VisitScotland’s   Mike Cantlay  and Malcolm Roughhead (C/man and CEO respectively ) and asked them if they would  pay £1000/week  in the summer, to rent a cottage with this view.

 

And this  phalanx of turbines  lit up at  night :-

N0-one replied!!

Is this the evidence the Committee requires that developments such as Tiree Array  will have a negative impact on local tourism?

 

 

 

 

End Update

 

Why the Minch should be an MPA: Spermwhales off Applecross

  By rob | February 22, 2013 - 10:16 am | Environment, Uncategorized
1 Comment

Sperm whales sighting off Applecross s north-west Scotland ‘extraordinary’

Credit BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-21532214

The sperm whales were first reported by creel fishermen

The sighting of sperm whales off Scotland’s north-west coast in winter has been described as “extraordinary” by research charity Sea Watch.

Creel fishermen working between Loch Torridon and South Rona spotted the deep-diving whales on Monday.

Sea Watch said groups of sperm whales had been seen off Scotland in the summer, but it was unusual for them to be spotted at this time of year.

It said the change could be a sign of warming sea temperatures.

The animals spotted on Monday were initially thought to be humpback whales.

However, they were identified as sperm whales by Nick Davies, who runs Gairloch-based Hebridean Whale Cruises and is involved in a Sea Watch project.

‘More abundant’

Sea Watch director Dr Peter Evans confirmed the sighting from Mr Davies’ photographs.

Dr Evans said: “In past decades, most records of sperm whales in British waters have been of lone adult males around Scotland, mainly off the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

“Increasingly, however, adolescent males have occurred in our waters, sometimes in groups of five to 10 individuals.”

He said the latest sighting was notable not just because it was made in winter, but also because of how close the whales were to shore.

Dr Evans added: “The increased occurrence of winter sightings in Scottish waters could be a reflection of climate change, with their main prey, squid, becoming more abundant locally in recent years, resulting in animals staying through the winter to feed rather than travelling into lower warmer latitudes.”

This sighting ,along with the record sightings of basking sharks during the summer of 2012,  has to raise the game of ALL environmental lobby groups to ensure the Minch, and waters off /around Tiree, are declared an MPA ,in the forthcoming environmental legislation.

Wind farms vs wildlife

  By rob | January 21, 2013 - 3:59 pm | Comment, Environment, Turbines, Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Wind farms vs wildlife

Credit :Clive Hambler Stipendiary Lecturer in Biological and Human Sciences, Tutor in Human Sciences Oxford Univ

Spectator 5 Jan

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8807761/wind-farms-vs-wildlife/

Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.

I’m a lecturer in biological and human sciences at Oxford university. I trained as a zoologist, I’ve worked as an environmental consultant — conducting impact assessments on projects like the Folkestone-to-London rail link — and I now teach ecology and conservation. Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages. The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science.

My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.

Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’

Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms. In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptors including golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle. In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone. Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists.

Nor are many other avian species safe. In North America, for example, proposed wind farms on the Great Lakes would kill large numbers of migratory songbirds. In the Atlantic, seabirds such as the Manx Shearwater are threatened. Offshore wind farms are just as bad as onshore ones, posing a growing threat to seabirds and migratory birds, and reducing habitat availability for marine birds (such as common scoter and eider ducks).

 

‘Uh-oh.’

I’ve heard it suggested that birds will soon adapt to avoid turbine blades. But your ability to learn something when you’ve been whacked on the head by an object travelling at 200 mph is limited. And besides, this comes from a complete misconception of how long it takes species to evolve. Birds have been flying, unimpeded, through the skies for millions of years. They’re hardly going to alter their habits in a few months. You hear similar nonsense from environmentalists about so-called habitat ‘mitigation’. There has been talk, for example, during proposals to build a Severn barrage, that all the waders displaced by the destruction of the mud flats can have their inter-tidal habitat replaced elsewhere. It may be what developers and governments want to hear, but recreating such habitats would take centuries not years — even if space were available. The birds wouldn’t move on somewhere else. They’d just starve to death.

Loss of habitat is the single biggest cause of species extinction. Wind farms not only reduce habitat size but create ‘population sinks’ — zones which attract animals and then kill them. My colleague Mark Duchamp suggests birds are lured in because they see the turbines as perching sites and also because wind towers (because of the grass variations underneath) seem to attract more prey. The turbines also attract bats, whose wholesale destruction poses an ever more serious conservation concern.

Bats are what is known as K-selected species: they reproduce very slowly, live a long time and are easy to wipe out. Having evolved with few predators — flying at night helps — bats did very well with this strategy until the modern world. This is why they are so heavily protected by so many conventions and regulations: the biggest threats to their survival are made by us.

And the worst threat of all right now is wind turbines. A recent study in Germany by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research showed that bats killed by German turbines may have come from places 1,000 or more miles away. This would suggest that German turbines — which an earlier study claims kill more than 200,000 bats a year — may be depressing populations across the entire northeastern portion of Europe. Some studies in the US have put the death toll as high as 70 bats per installed megawatt per year: with 40,000 MW of turbines currently installed in the US and Canada. This would give an annual death toll of up to three -million.

Why is the public not more aware of this carnage? First, because the wind industry (with the shameful complicity of some ornithological organisations) has gone to great trouble to cover it up — to the extent of burying the corpses of victims. Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries. Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.

The second edition of Clive Hambler’s Conservation (Cambridge University Press) is out now.

Spectator Debate:-Scotland’s Energy Policy is just Hot Air

  By rob | September 20, 2012 - 9:47 am | Comment, Report, Uncategorized
1 Comment

Scotland’s Energy Policy is just Hot Air:

This motion was debated at the Spectator Debate, held in Edinburgh Tues 19th Sept.

The vote was of greater significance. Before the debate commenced the Chair asked the attendees to vote,and then re-taken on conclusion of the debate.

Before:-                      66 For / 36 Against/74 Don’t Knows.

After:-                     126 For/ 50 Against/ O Don’t knows.

The vote transference of the ” Dont knows ” is most significant.

This transference occurred  , not withstanding the pre-eminance of the contribution from two leading vocal supporters of Scotland’s  current energy policy namely; Niall Stuart, CEO Scottish Renewables and Prof Stuart Haszeldine:  Scottish Power Professor of Carbon Capture & Storage Edinburgh University.

The discrepancy in numbers was attendees  arriving after debate had commenced.
For the motion:
Andrew Montford, Writer, editor Bishop Hill Climate Change blog for climate change
Struan Stevenson, Scottish Conservative MEP
Donald Trump, by video Chairman and President of the Trump Organisation
Against the Motion :
Niall Stuart, CEO Scottish Renewables
Prof Stuart Haszeldine:  Scottish Power Professor of Carbon Capture & Storage Edin University

Stephen Bayley :D esign and cultural critic, once described as ‘the second most intelligent man in Britain’.

Comments from Attendees included:-

Worthwhile debate…drew attention to this crucial issue – it helped to have the debate on Holyrood’s doorstep.
Over-riding frustration when listening to debate of this kind is the endless presentation of “facts” that not only contradict each other, but have dubious provenance.


Enjoyable debate. The speakers all did well and none were dull and all had clearly put in effort. Niall Stuart spent too much time attacking the other speakers and not enough time developing his own case. It was as if he expected to have the audience on side and was unprepared to work to make his case …. Prof Haszeldine was lacking in much substance. What he had to say was said in the first few sentences after which it petered out into bland assertions. Andrew Monford tried  to pack an awful lot of detail into a very short speech
Trump amused
As did Stephen Bayley,when he said  “Everyone hated the Eiffel tower when it was built and yes wind turbines are horrible but one day people will view them like they view Stonehenge” …..to which a wit in the audience added; ” yes …high on drugs chanting as they stare at the sun!!”
Alex Salmond was invited to speak, but declined.  A pity really, because I was anxious to ask the panel how much confidence they had in AS’s policies bearing in mind his pronouncement a few years ago that it was his ambition ”for Scotland to take its place in the arc of Northern European prosperity, with Iceland to the North and Ireland to the South”.  On reflection, maybe he is sticking to this ambition and his energy policy will ensure that we get there!
++

Scottish Government's Public Engagement

  By rob | September 12, 2012 - 8:45 am | Uncategorized
Leave a comment

NTA is not  buying into Scottish politics per se, but the articles refered to below  sum up SG’s public engagement to most matters raised by  NTA.

namely to:-

(1) ignore

(2) obfuscate

(3) blame England or incomers .

The unfortunate reference to ‘incomers ‘ was made by a SNP  MSP to the

ECONOMY, ENERGY AND TOURISM COMMITTEE’s Renewable Energy Targets Inquiry

NTA took exception to his unfortunate remarks . After a somewhat tetchy dialogue he agreed to drop his use of the somewhat offensive expression’ incomer‘ ,and adopt instead the expression ‘new islanders’ or ‘new highlanders’  as appropriate.

I have in several public forums ( appols the spell-check did not have a classical education and refuses to spell the plural of ‘forum’ correctly !!)  stated my perception that SG’s responses have become increasingly strident and doctrinaire. These commentators would appear to share my perception.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9533614/Jim-Sillars-SNP-a-totalitarian-and-intellectually-dumb-party.html

http://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/articles.html?read_full=11625&article=www.thinkscotland.org

++

The reality is that, to date , SG Govt has had an armchair ride,with regard to its Renewables Policy.

Developers consequently have luxuriated in this armchair ride, but with emergent effective opposition embracing (1) fiscal (2) economic (3) technical (4) environmental issues, both SG and Developers first line of defense would appear to “shout down” rather than engage the issues with this emergent opposition .

Protecting Tiree’s Marine Habitat

  By rob | September 7, 2012 - 8:26 am | Uncategorized
1 Comment

Whales and Dolphins of Scotland need your help!

This is an imperative input to current Scottish Government’s consultation into MPA’s

WDCS has circulated the foll

++

We need to convince the Scottish Government to include whales and dolphins in the protected areas that they are creating in Scottish seas.

We have had an incredible response so far with over 13,000 supporters signing our petition – if you are among that number – thank you!

The Government is due to provide its formal advice to Scottish Parliament in December, and there is still a very real chance that areas of sea, that are vital to whales and dolphins, may be left out of the protected zones.

Please act now, before it is too late .

Watch our campaign video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COsFJbKo1Ds&feature=player_embedded

sign our petition.

https://secure2.wdcs.org/protect/critical_habitat/mpa_petition.php

Thank you for your support.

++

Not only does NTA ask all supporters to sign this petition , but anyone who is committed to securing Scotland ,and Tiree’s, marine habitat

Offshore Wind Farms will leave Scotland feeling Blue

  By rob | August 24, 2012 - 7:41 am | Environment, Government Policy, Uncategorized
Leave a comment

This article in THINK SCOTLAND was written by  Ben Acheson, Parliamentary Assistant to Struan Stevenson MEP at the European Parliament in Brussels. NTA, in April 2012 , addressed a EU seminar , chaired by Struan Stevenson ,on Off-Shore -Blue carbon issues.

Think Scotland has invited  NTA submit a follow-up article

All at Sea: offshore wind farms will leave Scotland feeling blue

by Ben Acheson

 

SIXTY-THREE individual policy initiatives are employed by the UK and Scottish Governments to address the energy and climate change agenda. Mother Green and her hysteria machine successfully convinced policymakers that the unbridled deployment of renewable technologies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Only wind power could be rolled-out fast enough to even attempt to meet emissions reduction targets, so there are now 322 operational wind farms in the UK with another 44 under construction, 276 consented and 320 in the planning process. Over half of these wind farms are strewn across Scotland.

Groupthink – the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group, resulting typically in unchallenged, poor-quality decision-making – unquestionably drove the rush for wind and blinded by planet-saving romanticism, the environmental lobby became the mouthpiece of the wind industry. It conjures memories of Lenin, who branded Western socialists as ‘useful idiots’ when their blind ideology aided the realpolitik aims of the Soviet Union. Even politicians were duped. Opposing wind farms was ‘socially unacceptable’ according to former Climate Change Minister, now Labour Leader, Ed Miliband. Thus, the majority kept silent as green scaremongering prophesised impending doom unless we gave way to thousands of turbines.

Nevertheless, as turbines multiply, objectors are less frequently discounted as out-of-touch aesthetes, sentimentalists and nimbyists. Leading Scottish scientists have lambasted turbines built in forested areas and on deep peatland, which stores 55kg of carbon per cubic metre – three times as much as tropical rainforest. Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, Whitelee Wind Farm, was not only built on the deep peatland of Eaglesham Moor, south of Glasgow, but the Forestry Commission revealed that over 1,500 acres of forest were felled to facilitate the project. The irreparable damage caused to natural carbon sinks means that more CO2 was released into the atmosphere than would ever be saved by turbines.

Despite the huge outlay on turbines, DEFRA reported that the UK’s carbon footprint in 2009 was actually 20% greater than in 1990 and the Global Warming Policy Foundation found that a temperature rise would be postponed by a mere 66 hours by 2100 despite costing £120 billion per year in wind power investment. This damning evidence has caused many observers to predict the imminent end of the wind farm scam.

Wind energy has not, however, been completely consigned to the Gerald Ratner book of botched businesses. Developers are now industrialising our fragile marine environment with bigger, more expensive turbines that will supposedly harvest this ‘free’ resource more efficiently whilst appeasing interfering nimbyists and luddites. In reality, bigger turbines will only mean bigger environmental impacts.

Offshore wind is often overlooked, if not completely forgotten by anti-wind campaigners. Just 1,371 offshore turbines are grid connected in Europe, spread across fifty-three wind farms in ten countries, producing just 0.4% of the EU’s total annual electricity consumption. Scottish waters are yet to house any major offshore wind farms but the development of offshore wind in Scotland is set to expand rapidly as the Government strives to meet renewable energy commitments.

At a European Wind Energy Association conference in Amsterdam last November, the Energy, Enterprise and Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing announced that 15 areas of Scottish waters have been identified for development of offshore wind farms. Nowhere is safe. North Berwick, the Firth of Forth, the Moray Firth, Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles and Ayrshire coastlines will all be transformed into vast electricity factories. Apart from the visual impacts, the financial implications for Scottish households and the destruction of many local fishing industries, the plans have worrying consequences for the marine environment.

The term ‘blue carbon’ is relatively unheard-of but its environmental importance is unrivalled. Blue carbon stores are the peatlands of the sea – natural carbon sinks that absorb and store millions of tonnes of carbon.

Every day, 22 million metric tonnes of CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. An estimated 55% of all carbon in the atmosphere which becomes sequestered in natural systems is cycled into our seas. Blue carbon ecosystems, which include seagrass meadows, kelp forests, saltmarshes and mangrove swamps, store up to 70% of the carbon permanently stored in the marine realm and Scottish waters are home to over 20% of all seagrass meadows in north-west Europe.

Despite their importance, around 2-7% of global blue carbon sinks are lost annually. The rate of loss can be four times that of rainforests. Building massive turbines near such resources will only exacerbate the damage and release huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. The pro-wind lobby will maintain that most UK seagrass meadows grow in depths of 0-5 metres and therefore they won’t be affected by offshore turbines. But shallow water wind farms already exist in the UK – Gunfleet Sands, Kentish Flats and Scroby Sands wind farms all have turbines in depths ranging from 0-11m – in fact seagrass and kelp can grow in depths of up to 20 metres. In any case, the issue is that turbines can impact these ecosystems even if they are not built directly on top of them.

When excavating the seabed for the foundations necessary for turbines to stay upright in stormy seas, huge amounts of sediment will be introduced into the water column. Larger sediment will be deposited close to the turbines, smothering all life and creating a ‘dead-spot’ around the development. Finer sediment will be easily transported by unpredictable waves and currents and deposited elsewhere, often in shallow inshore waters. Ill-informed environmentalists claim that new, safe habitats will be created for marine species. But arguing that installing turbines in a stable ecosystem will increase the populations of living organisms is scandalous misinformation, akin to arguing that installing large industrial turbines in the middle of a pristine forest will somehow increase populations of birds and badgers!

Renewable energy developers are again manipulating green groupthink to industrialise our coastlines with turbines. But the accelerated transformation of our seascapes into vast, rusting electricity factories is a philosophy of fools. Arguing that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action may sound convincing at first, but protecting our natural carbon stores – peatlands, forests and blue carbon sinks – is priceless.

Even in the unlikely event that climate change targets are achieved with wind power, it will be a Pyrrhic victory. The Government gambled with onshore wind energy and we lost. They should not attempt to pick winners. We must find what is right for Scotland and until then, a greener future must be built on the strong foundations of energy conservation and energy efficiency.

Oscar Wilde famously said that ‘experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing’. Scotland has experienced the unrelenting imposition of wind power and it most certainly did not come for nothing. But renewable energy companies are the only ones who learnt from the onshore wind experiment. They learnt that vast sums of money can be acquired if the lucrative subsidy regimes are harvested before the anti-wind intelligencia is mobilised. They also recognised that the sound carries twice as far when someone else blows your horn and they are happy to sit by whilst misguided environmentalists fight their corner.

Green groupthink must never conquer common-sense. Where is the value in destroying some of our most important and fragile ecosystems in order to build wind turbines that will struggle to last 20 years? The lesson for everyone is that the green lobby does not have the monopoly on environmental protection. You do not need a Greenpeace membership card to care for the environment. No single person owns the environment. Each and every one of us has a duty to protect it because we do not inherit the land, or seas, from our ancestors; we merely borrow them from our children.
Ben Acheson is a Parliamentary Assistant to Struan Stevenson MEP at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Subsidy regime: UK Govt's Decision

  By rob | July 25, 2012 - 11:34 pm | Uncategorized
1 Comment

Renewables Obligation Banding Review(25 July 2012)

UK Govt statement in full below

NTA Comment;:- This is not the earth- shaking announcement that both media, and politicians, had been leading us to expect. Suggestions of coalition break-up and /or a shoot out between the DECC and the Treasury have proven to be no more than a phoney war. The announcement is mainly in line with the DECC recommendations of last Qtr 2011. These were then put into that nebulous Govt process;- ‘Consultation’ .

Re the proposed Tiree Array:- Off shore subsidy levels are only set till 2017. With SPR indicating their final investment decision (assuming consent ) will not be made till 2017, there is every possibility that the proposed Array may face uncertainty of subsidy reduction ,in view of UK govt statement that  “its ultimate aim is for renewables to become competitive without the need for subsidy” .

Among the most significant policy statements are :-

Future support levels

It is not the Government’s policy to support renewables at any price. Our ultimate aim is for renewables to become competitive without the need for subsidy.

Onshore; will  be under a de-facto rolling review,with possibility that the existing  subsidy level may be reduced further.

Gas : A big UK push into Gas .

++++

DECC full statement:-

Today my department is publishing the Government’s decision on the levels of financial support that will be available through the Renewables Obligation (RO) for large-scale renewable electricity generators from 2013-17. This follows a comprehensive, rigorous and evidence-based review of RO subsidies carried out over the last 18 months. We received nearly 4,000 consultation responses and substantial amounts of new evidence from a wide range of stakeholders as part of a public consultation process. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who submitted formal responses or took part in the review in other ways.

The UK needs a strong renewable energy sector. Renewable energy generation is a crucially important low carbon technology with a central role to play in helping us reach our carbon emission reduction goals. It is also essential to our economic growth and energy security. It reduces our reliance on imported fossil fuels, helps keep the lights on and our energy bills down. We have some of the best renewable resources anywhere in the world, and the Government is absolutely determined that the UK will retain its reputation as one of the best places to invest in renewables. We have also legally committed to ensure that 15 per cent of our energy will come from renewable sources by 2020.

Investment

Since 2002, the RO has been the mainstay of support for large-scale renewable electricity industry. It has helped to bring about a five-fold increase in renewable electricity generation, from 1.8 per cent of total electricity generation in 2002 to 9.7 per cent by the end of 2011. By the end of the first quarter of this year, renewable electricity capacity totalled 13GW, which is a 36 per cent increase on the same time last year. Since April 2011 alone, industry has announced over £11.3bn of investment in the renewables sector, potentially supporting around 22,000 jobs up and down the country, contributing to the Coalition Government’s objective to rebalance the economy and support economic growth. The changes in RO support levels that we are setting out today recognise the key role of renewables in the UK’s future and will maintain that momentum.

The Government’s decision provides certainty for developers and will ensure continuity of support as we transition towards the new Contracts for Difference to be introduced as part of our Electricity Market Reforms. It will help unlock generation and network capital investments worth around £20-25 billion in today’s prices in the period 2013-17, and deliver the kind of sustainable, long term growth and green jobs that we need to get the economy moving again.

Future support levels

It is not the Government’s policy to support renewables at any price. Our ultimate aim is for renewables to become competitive without the need for subsidy. Today’s package sends a strong signal to industry that we expect this to happen over time. To get this moving in the right direction, we are reducing support where it can be done while bringing on the deployment that we need from key technologies, such as offshore and onshore wind, to achieve our aims.

The level of support for offshore wind will be set at 2 ROCs/MWh in 2014-15, reducing to 1.9 ROCs in 2015-16 and to 1.8 ROCs 2016-17. This is consistent with our consultation proposals, and reflects our expectation that the costs of offshore wind will fall as mass deployment takes place and industry innovates. We are already working closely with key representatives from industry to reduce costs. The UK has some of the best offshore wind resources in the world and these will be key to the UK meeting its low carbon objectives. The new support levels will ensure that the UK remains its position as the leading location in the world for offshore wind deployment.

We can confirm that the level of support for onshore wind for the Banding Review period will be reduced to 0.9 ROCs, guaranteed until at least March 2014. However, we will undertake a call for evidence, starting in September and reporting in early 2013, which will re-assess onshore wind industry costs. If findings of the call for evidence identify a significant change in generation costs, the Government will initiate an immediate review of onshore wind ROC levels, with any new support arrangements for onshore wind taking effect from April 2014. Given the importance of maintaining investor confidence there will be full grandfathering and grace periods for projects already committed. As part of the call for evidence, we will examine how communities can have more of a say over and receive greater economic benefit from hosting onshore wind farms.

At the same time we are providing appropriate support for innovative technologies that can play a long term role in our energy future, such as energy from wave and tidal stream technologies and innovative processes for generating electricity from waste, such as Advanced Conversion Technologies.

The support levels we are announcing will keep us on track to meet our legally binding 2020 renewable target, delivering around 79TWh of renewable electricity each year by 2016-17. The detailed changes are set out in the Government Response to the consultation, copies of which are available in the Library and on DECC’s website.

Bill impacts

The RO is paid for by consumers through their energy bills. For that reason, delivering the best possible deal for consumers has been at the heart of the RO banding review. In considering the final shape of the banding package, we have focused on the need to balance cost-effectiveness with the range of objectives that the RO must deliver. As we have sought to take account of the need to contribute to long-term energy security, to keep us on track to meet our carbon reduction objectives for the coming decades and act to drive investment in the UK renewable energy sector, this package reduces the lifetime subsidy cost of the Renewables Obligation per MWh of renewable electricity generated, by 11 per cent compared to current bands.

These proposals cost around £900mn less than implementing the consultation bands while driving a similar level of deployment. So, delivering more clean power at less cost to consumers. They will also will cut the cost of consumers’ energy bills by £6 next year and £5 in 2014/15 compared to the current subsidy regime, a total of £11 across the remainder of this Parliament. There will be a modest increase in bills of around £3 by the end of the banding review period as greater levels of generation come forward.

Further consultations

There are a small number of areas where we need to consult and re-engage with industry and wider stakeholders to ensure we have precisely the right evidence to fully implement our proposals. We will be consulting again shortly on the level of subsidy for large-scale solar PV generation. Analysis of the new evidence gathered as part of the separate comprehensive review of the Feed-in-Tariff scheme suggests that RO support rates should be set significantly lower than was proposed in the consultation. Because such a reduction in support would represent a significant departure from the consultation proposals and would be based largely on new evidence which was not published until the RO consultation had closed, we consider that it is appropriate to re-consult on this issue.

The consultation evidence also revealed greater interest in biomass generation. We will be consulting soon on a monitoring and review process for biomass co-firing and conversions to ensure effective cost control, and on a supplier cap for dedicated biomass generation.

Subject to Parliamentary and State Aid approval, the new subsidy levels will come into effect on 1 April 2013.

Gas

The Government has today also announced the introduction of a £500m field allowance for large shallow-water gas fields, to secure investment in marginal gas fields in the UK Continental Shelf.

Gas is currently the most important primary fuel in the UK, powering industrial processes, domestic and commercial heating and electricity generation. It is a lower carbon fuel relative to the current mix and will play an increasingly important and evolving role in helping the UK move towards a low-carbon future as coal power stations are closed.

We see gas continuing to play an important part in the energy mix well into and beyond 2030, while meeting our carbon budgets. Through the 2020s, and beyond if gas proves cheap, we expect it to continue to play a key role ensuring that we have sufficient capacity both to meet everyday demand and complementing an increasing amount of relatively intermittent and inflexible generation. We do not expect the role of gas to be restricted to providing back up to renewables, and in the longer term we see an important role for gas with CCS. The Gas Generation Strategy that we will publish in the Autumn will set out in more detail the role that gas generation will play and what Government will do to enable this.

We are committed to making the best use of UK energy reserves, including the proper development of unconventional gas subject to the appropriate safeguards being in place. This will help ensure that the UK gas market continues to play a key role as an important European gas hub which in turn promotes diversity of gas supply to the UK and Europe. We are committed to ensuring that if gas prices fall UK families and businesses will be able to benefit from lower bills. To meet these demands, we also need investment in UK gas supply infrastructure, including pipelines and potentially more storage, to ensure increased flexibility to respond to greater demand variability. We will be providing more detail on how we will ensure that investment in the development of our gas reserves, gas infrastructure, and gas generation plant takes place in the autumn.

What is the “acceptable kill rate” of the Great Northern Diver for Scottish Government to consent the proposed Tiree Array?

  By rob | July 8, 2012 - 3:10 pm | Uncategorized
2 Comments

Wind farm scrapped over fears for birds

Which  begets the obvious Q? . What  is the “acceptable “ kill rate for the Great  Northern Diver, and other species , for Scottish  Government to consent the proposed Tiree Array?

It was interesting how the media reported this the shelving of the proposed  Docking Shoal wind farm

The Guardian reported it as;- “  £10m wasted on the £1.5bn wind power project that could have powered 400,000 homes “  and  continued in similar vein with “ three and a half years of planning, have been wasted on the 540 megawatt Docking Shoal offshore wind farm.  In reporting it   “has been rejected by the government because it might kill 90 small birds a year “ suggests the Guardian ,of all papers may have been ridiculing the decision .

Centrica echoed the Guardian by  stating “It appears to come down to 94 sandwich terns,” said a spokesman for Centrica, the parent group of British Gas which proposed the scheme.

The RSPB admitted it had opposed the Docking Shoal wind farm but said it supported the other schemes in the area. “We want to see renewable projects projects developed because we recognise that climate change will have a greater impact on wildlife [than wind turbines]. But three farms ( Docking Shoal /Race bank / Dudgeon  ) would have been an unacceptable risk.

However, while it was given consent to proceed with its Race Bank wind farm, which will generate up to 580MW, plans for another 540MW farm called Docking Shoal were rejected because it would kill too many Sandwich terns, a protected species of bird.

But we now seem to be moving environmental protection into the realm of “ acceptable  kill rate “  with  Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, deeming  a total annual death toll of 94 Sandwich terns killed by wind farms in the area was “acceptable”

The combined proposed output of these 3 Norfolk offshore  windfarms  totaled 1720 MW, ie slightly less than the proposed Tiree Array(1800 MW)  , and cover a comparable area.

The RSPB states that the proposed Tiree Array is  situated within an area known to be important for seabirds and migratory bird species. This includes species listed on Annex 1 of the EU Birds Directive and therefore subject to ‘special conservation measures’.

Many of the bird species utilising or passing through the Tiree Array area may be associated with designated sites nearby, eg corncrake and Greenland white-fronted geese associated with Special Protected Areas on Tiree may pass through the area on migration, and species such as gannet, associated with more distant designated sites such as the Ailsa Craig Special Protected Area, may feed in the area.

For great northern divers, the area could be of international importance, and the site is likely to become protected as a marine Special Protection Area for this species.

So it begets the obvious Q? . What  is the “acceptable “ kill rate for the Great  Northern Diver, and other species , for Scottish  Government to consent the proposed Tiree Array?