If I may rudely contradict you in part: there are planning enquiries for nukes, and my (late) uncle was for example chief counsel for the CEGB for Sizewell B, etc.

Now it’s not at all the same sort of beast as local planning I’m sure, but there is some tiresome, slow and expensive scrutiny.

But on the third hand, you get one of those per GW for a nuke rather than per (handful of) MW for small wind.

Rgds

Damon

Rgds

Damon

The first is that the planning process for wind energy just doesn’t work. The planning decisions for all other forms of generation are made by the government and not by local councils -there’s very good reason for that – local councillors and the local planning process are unable to properly reflect the necessary balance between national need and local issues.

Wind is the only generating technology [of any scale] that is decided through the local planning process, the process that otherwise gets used to decide house extensions and similar small local issues. Wind energy finds itself in this unique position by accident. Something called the section 36 process captures all planning applications for generators above 50 MW and gives the decision to the government.

Nuclear, coal, oil and gas generators just don’t exist below 50 MW so section 36 catches them successfully, but 50 MW is a big wind farm – the exception rather than the rule. So wind energy is alone in this planning idiosyncrasy. When did the public ever get a say on nukes and the like? Never.

The second thing that I would highlight, based on 15 years of putting wind energy applications into the local planning process, is that there is nothing Democratic about that process at all. The decisions that local councils eventually make, if they make one at all, very rarely, if ever, reflect the opinions and feelings of the majority of local people. Ask any planner and and they will tell you that they only hear from people that are unhappy about something. The silent majority has no voice or representation in the local planning process. Its the loudest voices that are heard and hold sway in this process. If you’ve seen it at close hand it’s hard to imagine a process less democratic than the one that wind energy finds itself in.

Coming on to the subject of the NIMBY stick (nice turn of phrase BTW) – I agree with you; simply being concerned about what happens in your backyard does not make you an NIMBY. What’s required to make that a fair description of someone is a degree of selfishness even hypocrisy. I use the term to refer to people that want to enjoy the benefits of the modern world, roads, supermarkets, airports and power on demand of course – but are not willing to shoulder their part of the impact. Until recently for example, most of the UK’s generators have been ‘up north’ – along comes wind energy and suddenly people ‘down south’ who’ve been happy to have power and happy for others to live with the impact of that – find themselves being asked to shoulder their share of the burden. And they don’t want to, for all sorts of cooked up reasons.

With regards offshore you say ‘so what if it costs more, power companies should build them anyway’ – do you want to pay twice as much for your energy? I doubt very much that you do – that’s what offshore costs, twice as much as onshore – that’s the impact of what you’re suggesting. it’s not just a ‘few quid more’.

You say that wind turbines are more efficient offshore, this is not true. I think you mean they produce more power, something we refer to as having a bigger capacity factor – and in theory they do, perhaps 30% greater than onshore. But in practice it’s not being delivered because of the problems of accessing wind turbines offshore when they are broken. Weather restrictions and the like mean that capacity factors for offshore so far have been equal at best (and worse in some cases) than typical onshore turbines. Not a great result for double the cost.

I honestly don’t think that turbines ruin the land, as you say; and the vast (silent) majority in this country feels the same way. In the last 20 years every single opinion poll into wind energy, no matter where it’s been conducted nor who conducted by (or when) – both before and after a wind farm is built – shows that roughly 8 out of 10 of us support the idea of wind energy in our backyards and 1 is opposed.
The other 1 doesn’t know. That’s the most amazing consistency.

Groups, for, against and neutral to wind energy have all had a go and they all get the same result (roughly).

Cheers.

I always find you posts interesting but i also always find the way you undermine democracy difficult to understand.

The planning system is democracy in action. It’s not perfect but allows local people to have their views heard on issues that will have an impact on them. And before the NIMBY stick comes out, for people to care about the place they live doesn’t make them NIMBY’s it makes them interested and passionate about their local environment.

I take the point the climate change is a global concern but if this is the case why are wind energy companies quibling about costs. So what if it is more expensive to build turbines off shore, if that is where they are most efficient and if we genuine believe that this is the only technology that can take us away from fossil fuels fill the seas with them…swallow the higher costs safe in the knowledge that you have saved the world and also saved the beuatiful countryside throughout the globe. It isn’t fair to blame democracy for delays or cancelled projects when it seems to me cash, or the old short arms and deep pockets routine, is the main stumbling block. Lets not ruin the land for the sake of a few quid, thats how we got into this mess in the first place.

I wasn’t sure how best to show you this link so I picked a post that seemed relevant.

As you are in the wind energy business I thought you might be interested in this, or probably already know about it.

It is a wind wing which claims to be more efficient than a propeller.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1883/

But I’m no expert, just a curious individual
Hope it’s of some interest.

Thanks,
James
=-)

Thanks for the comment. I just thought I would let you know that Dale pretty much answered your question in his post today. Essentially – we think the answer is no unfortunately.

Jeff

Rgds

Damon

Ecotricity could def do so much more if this changed. But would be always be a minnow, indeed are we a minnow now? I bumped into an interesting statistic the other day, Powergen (or E.on as they now are) have 200MW of wind energy in the UK – and some 6 million plus customers. Ecotricity has 50 MW of wind energy, around one quarter of what Powergen has, with just 35,000 customers – less than 1% of their customer base. We may be small but I think our impact is in the same league even now. In England where we focus our efforts we have over 12% of the total (onshore) wind energy capacity. Cheers.

Which means the great majority of French electricity will be fossil free with their 70% nuclear generation. I guess they will be the first country grid to face the problem of having to cope with fluctuating peak requirements with systems built for base load (nuclear) and opportunistic (wind). It will be interesting to see what proportion of fast firing fossil they will need to maintain guaranteed supply through the peaks of demand and the lows of wind. Also a demonstration that nuclear and wind do not have to be foes – but that’s another discussion.

You are right to say I included on & offshore wind. But it isn’t consents (or even detail consents) that’s stopping the majors building is either. The Shell decision was because of rising costs. And rising costs are directly attributable to short supply of turbines.

It doesn’t matter about consents if you can’t get the turbines. Increased prices will encourage more investment in the industry but that will take a long time unless governments/industry can together create an a rapid increase in production. We have 5 or 6 major manufacturers. Amazingly none British with our history of powering stuff with propellers and some of the best wind tunnels, aerodynamicists and aerospace industries.

I wonder if some EU/HMG support in this area would be better at delivering turbines faster at lower cost enabling the consented backlog to disappear

I use and root for ecotricity and know onshore planning system is YOUR major showstopper and needs to get sorted. Being sorted would allow ecotricity to grow exponentially. Even so it will still be a minnow against the majors. And I’m not convinced we would see the same step change there. Indeed your spend comparisons would tend to suggest that right now.

Its just strange that EDF can do so much in France and so little here …