A Place to Stand

Jim Mather defends the SNP's position on not building new conventional power plants by saying "by 2008, Scotland was producing 11% of its consumption from wind" & implicitly more now.

His own government's figures available on Scottish Energy Study: Volume 1: Energy in Scotland: Supply and Demand figure 21 indeed show "renewables" make up 11% of Scottish electricity generation. However what this omits is that this is all renewables undifferentiated & that for decades hydro power has made up 10% of our power.

Certainly rain has not ceased thus much of the 11% he claims must still be hydro power, probably 10% of it. I hope next year the government will give figures in more detail but in any case 1% is not enough to keep the lights on when Holyrood has voted unanimously to close 42% of CO2 generating power within 10 years. Combined with the nuclear closure that is half of all electricity. 1% of power produced by windmillery does not inspire confidence that it can replace 50% within 10 years & suggests Rupert Soames is, if anything, being optimistic when he says we face blackouts if we are not "pouring concrete" for practical plants "within 2 years."

Just 1% also seems a poor return for spending £1 bn a year subsidising "renewables." That would be enough, through our tax varying powers, to cut every body's income tax by 3p - or at least it would have been had the SNP not decided, while claiming their failure to improve the economy was because they need "more powers", to give away the real power we have but which it has been feart to use.

renewables obligation costs of £37 per MW-hour have already led to a bill of more than £200m per year for consumers.

However, this pales in comparison to the cost of the much larger 11GW of offshore wind to be installed in Scottish waters, as advocated by Mr Mather and others. The offshore wind deployment will require £30bn of capital and up to £57bn in renewable obligation payments over the 20-year design life of the plant. For the best part of £90bn, we will receive only 20 years of fluctuating electrical energy.

For a fraction of the cost of offshore wind, we could secure a compact, carbon-free nuclear base load capacity with a useful 60-year design life. Assessments of full life-cycle costs by professional engineers clearly demonstrate that nuclear (6-8p per kW-hour) is significantly cheaper than coal with carbon capture (10-16p per kW-hour), and vastly cheaper than offshore wind (15-21p per kW-hour) and can be comparable with low carbon gas (6-11p per kW-hour).

...greater reliance on importing power from elsewhere to cover our erratic supply situation. Most likely, much of this will come from the increased nuclear capability that more rational administrations are now planning.

Labels: Government parasitism, letters, nuclear

// posted by neil craig @ 11:22 am