 The Liberal party seems to be running the Coalition, and it seems to be as committed to reckless waste of vast amounts of taxpayers' money as Gordon Brown was before the nation booted him out of Downing Street. |
Politics and Reality E. Davey, the Liberal Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, believes that he has won a great victory by preserving 90% of the subsidy paid to The geniuses at the DECC have given a legal undertaking to the European Union that Britain will generate 32% of its electricity from "renewables" by 2020, and the Climate Change Act (2008) obliges Britain to cut carbon emissions by 80% within 40 years, even though that will involve shutting down most of British industry. The DECC is also legally obliged to make sure that the country has sufficient electricity generation capacity to "keep the lights on". The DECC would have us believe that its policies can deliver 32% of the nation's electricity requirements as "renewables" by 2020. In 2010, 3,000 wind turbines produced 2.6% of the country's electricity. To get to 32% by 2020, the government would have to build 32,000 giant wind turbines. Unfortunately, the industry cannot supply them at a rate of around 4,000 per year, and Gordon Brown's reckless spending means that, even if the turbines could be erected, then the country could not afford to pay the subsidies demanded by the industry and the Liberals. So much for the "hundreds of thousands of green jobs" which Davey and his predecessor, C. Huhne, promised us. The DECC also has a Gas Generation Strategy, as it sees gas as an important contributor to the country's electricity supply rather than just a source of back-up for when the wind doesn't blow, or it blows too much, and all the turbines in the world are useless. But the plan to cut carbon emissions by 80% will be blown right out of the water by using gas as a fuel. The DECC appears to be relying on the arrival of Carbon Capture Technology, which will suck up all the carbon dioxide generated by power stations and industrial processes, and hide it away in the vast, empty caverns from which North Sea oil has been extracted. But CCT is just pie in the sky, a technology which is not even on the drawing board, never mind in development. It is as likely to be available to save the world from the Great Global Warming Swindle as aliens arriving with a giant hosepipe and a matter transmitter, and offering to pay us a fortune for our "surplus" carbon dioxide. And what about shale gas? The DECC, apparently, would prefer not to know about a source of readily available gas, which halved the price of gas in the United States over a period of 5 years. Billions of tons of methane, which is pure enough to be piped straight to domestic customers, are there under the north of England and parts of Scotland. No subsidies required, thousands of jobs from its exploitation, and it emits only 37% of the carbon dioxide emitted by coal- and oil-fired power stations. Electricity from gas is available 24-hours-per day at one-quarter the cost of electricity from a wind turbine – which produces power just 27-10% of the time, on average. Wind turbines have a working life of 20 years; one-half that of a gas-fuelled power station. So why all the delusions of "green" power from windmills? If the Liberals have the smallest contact with the real world, they know that they are heading for the same fate as the dinosaurs and Gordon Brown at the next general election. Could it be that, like Brown, they are quite content to leave behind a nation in ruins as a monument to their extinction?
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