Friday, 5 July 2013

Renewable future...?

or not. This story about the Biomass plants that were never to be is quite interesting. The spin the Guardian puts on the that it is a good thing that the plant at Tilbury is being shut because biomass is not very eco-friendly is hilarious. Evil people burning imported pellets, say NO TO THE USA!

It's a great scoop. Also, oddly true, maybe there is a reason after all that power stations have burnt coal for over a century and not wood that is only used for small domestic heating?



Luckily with have the 1000 Megawatt London Array being finished this week too. So that should supply much of London, on the odd occasion that we have a windy day. Anyone know how we can tack the output daily of this gargantuan farrago?



9 comments:

Sackerson said...

"gargantuan farrago" - is that a stab at Googlewhacking?

Electro-Kevin said...

Wind turbines are krap whatever way you spin it.

Nick Drew said...

the whole biomass thing is very interesting - one tends to think of 'renewables' as wind + solar but if you look at how the EU as a whole plans to meet its aggregate 'renewables targets', around 50% will be biomass

and of course what one might term 'genuine greens' (poor suckers) have realised that much of biomass causes worse pollution of all kinds than burning gas or gasoline - plus devastating forests / at the expense of food production / etc etc

andrew said...

I would suggest column inches in the guardian...

Sackerson said...

Coal is biomass. A bit old, true, but still biomass.

Blue Eyes said...

Biomass would be fine if the sources were sustainable. Oh, and if they didn't pollute so much.

England ran out of wood a few years ago, if I recall my history lessons.

How do I know this and the continent-wide policy-makers do not?!

Budgie said...

True, evil people burning wood pellets from the USA. Also hilarious as you say - the greenies at the Grauniad have egg on their collective face. Mind you, the last I heard Drax was still being converted to burn USA wood.

And all this because of the CAGW hoax based on demonising CO2. But you can follow the demise of CAGW on Bishop Hill. Even the BBC had the Met Office admitting that the "greenhouse" "heat" is "missing" (for the last 15 years anyway).

The MO claimed the missing heat has "probably" gone into the deep ocean. Yet since the heat was never recorded passing through the top layer of the seas (the temperature of which we do measure), the MO has become (even more of) a laughing stock.

Then there is the recent paper by Briffa et al (warmists all), with a reworking of temperature data series which is remarkably similar to Steve McIntyre's work of thee years ago (denounced at the time by warmists). Lo and behold, the hockey stick shape has gone.

You can see the faint beginnings of government back-pedalling on CAGW with reduced subsidies to "renewables", more local say in planning, and an excruciatingly slow dash (more an amble really) for shale gas.

ivan said...

I don't know about tracking that particular farce but http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ tracks all of it and also allows the download of the underlying data so it might be in there.

At the moment10:30 7/7/2013 the combined wind output for the UK is 0.28 GW.

rwendland said...

I wonder if this is a play for some govt investment guarantees, or a more lucratibe Contract for Difference? "blamed a lack of investment capacity ..." sounds like it might be. ND is right the CfD policy makes the whole process more political; the old Renewables Obligation system was predictable many years into the future, making future planning much easier.