The rush to green energy by spending billions covering much of the countryside with wind turbines would be an expensive blunder, a damning study has found. Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University said the massive programme will cost consumers £120billion by 2020 through higher bills. This is almost ten times more than the £13billion it would cost to generate the same amount of electricity from efficient gas-fired power stations, according to the leading energy and environment economist. Supporters of wind power insist the key benefit is that it allows a huge reduction in CO2 emissions, in line with EU obligations. This is challenged in the study, which suggests the switch to wind will actually deliver only a tiny reduction. --Sean Poulter, Daily Mail, 7 March 2012
The key problems with current policies for wind power are simple. They require a huge commitment of investment resources to a technology that is not very green, in the sense of saving a lot of CO2, but which is certainly very expensive and inflexible. Unless the current Government scales back its commitment to wind power very substantially, its policy will be worse than a mistake, it will be a blunder. –-Gordon Hughes, Why Is Wind Power So Expensive? GWPF Report, March 2012
While the environmental damage caused by onshore wind farms is arousing increasing concern, the cost of wind energy is also a very important topic. Indeed, I believe it has been underresearched, underdiscussed and underdebated. I am immensely unhappy that our intermittent wind power has attracted such monstrous subsidies. I am particularly unhappy because the facts have been hidden from the consumer who will have to pay the bill for this folly. Gordon Hughes's excellent report is a timely contribution to educate policy makers and the wider public about the fatal flaws of Britain's wind obsession. --Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, Foreword to Why Is Wind Power So Expensive?, GWPF Report, March 2012
Is there anyone left in this country who seriously believes that wind power is a viable answer to Britain’s energy crisis? If so, today’s report from an eminent academic at Edinburgh University should make salutary reading. Professor Gordon Hughes finds that by 2020, wind power will cost us almost ten times more than the same amount of energy from efficient gas-fired power stations, with only marginal savings in CO2 emissions. Yet still the Coalition presses blindly on, scarring our countryside with turbines while handing subsidies of £850million to around a dozen rich landowners. How much longer must politicians sacrifice our prosperity for the sake of parading their green credentials? --Daily Mail, 7 March 2012
Congress finally ended decades of tax credits for ethanol in December, a small triumph for taxpayers. Now comes another test as the wind-power industry lobbies for a $7 billion renewal of its production tax credit. Here's a better idea. Kill all energy subsidies—renewable and nonrenewable, starting with the wind tax credit, and use the savings to shave two or three percentage points off America's corporate income tax. Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo has a bill to do so. This would do more to create jobs than attempting to pick energy winners and losers. Mandating that American families and businesses use expensive electricity doesn't create jobs. It destroys them. --Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2012
Europe is facing the threat of a global trade war over its unilateral climate policies. The US House of Representatives has passed a bill, which prohibits American airlines from participating in the EUs’ Emissions Trading Scheme. China too has banned airlines from taking part in the scheme, saying it violates international rules. And India has asked carriers not to give emissions data to the EU. Meanwhile, Russia is considering restricting European flights over Siberia. The world's most powerful nations are not bluffing. Unless the EU reconsiders and allows for an international agreement, these threats are likely to escalate into the first full-blown green trade war. The EU leadership would be well advised to pull back from the brink. --Benny Peiser, Public Service Europe, 1 March 2012
