Across the European Union, 43.7% of all new electricity generation last year came from wind power.
According to the European Wind Energy Association it is the fastest-growing new source of electricity in the bloc — ahead of coal and gas. Germany is the front runner in wind power generation, with Sweden and France not too far behind.
“Europe is at a turning point for investment in renewables and particularly wind,” according to the chief executive of the EWEA. “Ploughing financial capital into the industries of old in Europe is beginning to look unwise.”
This year in the US, the Department of Energy released a report called Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States, which found that wind could economically provide 35% of the country’s electricity by 2050.
“Wind power could help America combat climate change by avoiding more than 12.3 billion tons of carbon pollution cumulatively by 2050, equivalent to avoiding one-third of global annual carbon emissions,” the report states.
And in Australia? We are planning to reduce — that’s R E D U C E, for the dullards among you — the amount of renewable energy that it’s economically viable to produce.
Why? Because those wind turbine thingies are really ugly. Don’t you reckon?
I’m in favour of shifting Australia’s electricity generation away from coal.
But I take issue with one point I your editorial. The words “economically viable” shouldn’t be there. The renewables industry needs regulation, the RET and penalties on other forms of power generation in order to survive.
I say let him go. Do it loudly and do it often. I saw the footage of Abbott yesterday saying all that stuff, and it was enough to convince me that he is now officially on some other planet. The stupidity and hubris on display was just breathtaking.
If he’s allowed to keep doing it, I’m hopeful that many other people will become convinced as well.
Read that again: 35% is the maximum that wind can contribute to a grid. (CSIRO had said 40% for Oz, but it is still a maximum). The rest has to be gas, much of it the fast-responding but inefficient open-cycle turbines.
But gas must go. As the IPCC calculated and the G7 Meeting agreed, we must totally decarbonise by the time our ankle-biters are oldies. To do that, we have to halve our emissions every 15 years, and be under momentum for the next halving every time we check.
We next more in the replacement energy mix than wind and solar.
But I take issue with one point I your editorial. The words “economically viable” shouldn’t be there. The renewables industry needs regulation, the RET and penalties on other forms of power generation in order to survive.
Or, if you want to flip your argument on it’s head, unlike wind, conventional coal and oil generation require the externalization of many of their costs in order to be affordable.
Take away the subsidies provided by government, charge effective prices for the fuel, the degradation of the environment, cost of pollution and site remediation and solar or wind start to look pretty good.
Danger @4
You beat me too it
Apparently subsidies and hidden costs don’t count for established industries