APRIL 6, 2014 – TURBINE PROTEST AT THEDFORD BOG, ONTARIO
Part One
Part Tw0
Part Three
“Whole community is…one huge wind turbine, industrial area”
harm to wildlife
More Evidence, that the Wind Industry is in it’s Death Throes!
Infigen Signals Its Own Demise – as the RET Review Panel Gets to Work
May 18, 2014 by
Infigen is an all-wind-power-outfit that used to be called Babcock and Brown – which collapsed spectacularly in 2009 – taking $10 billion of investors’ and creditors’ money with it on the way out (see this story). The way things are headed – get set for a replay.
Infigen is bleeding cash (it backed up a $55 million loss in 2011/12 with an $80 million loss, last financial year). It’s been scrambling to get development approvals for all of its projects so they can be flogged off ASAP and the cash used to ward off the receiver. But, in the current climate, its chances of finding buyers are slimmer than a German supermodel.
With the RET Review Panel odds-on favourites to recommend that the mandatory Renewable Energy Target be scrapped altogether, Infigen are in more trouble than Ned Kelly was at Glenrowan. And they know it.
In an extraordinary move, the boys from Infigen have hit the media pleading for mercy – hectoring and attempting to bully the government, in a last ditch effort to save their skins.
STT puts their hysterical language down to the fact that they’re just working their way through the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
In this ABC radio interview Infigen’s Miles “Boy” George appears to be grappling with “anger” (stage 2); while engaging in a curious form of “bargaining” (stage 3); and coming to grips with mounting “depression” (stage 4).
Budget 2014: Clean energy bodies call for compensation as Government cuts green funding
ABC (Radio Australia)
Jake Sturmer, Alex McDonald
16 May 2014
Clean energy industry representatives have slammed federal budget cuts in the sector, calling for compensation if legislation is changed.
The Federal Government has taken the sword to renewable energy, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from various green programs.
“I think it’s a very depressing message for the industry and for the investors in it,” said Miles George, head of the country’s largest renewable energy provider, Infigen.
Among the changes is a decision to spread the Government’s $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (direct action policy) over 10 years rather than four.
Funding for research into carbon capture and storage has also been targeted and will lose $460 million over three years, and a $100 million program to roll out solar energy systems in 25 towns and 100 schools has been slashed to $2.1 million over three years.
Other clean technology programs face a $44.7 million cut.
Last year the Government was promising hefty rebates to help install one million rooftop solar systems at a cost of $500 million. That commitment has also been dumped.
The $2.5 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will also be absorbed by the industry department – saving the budget $1.3 billion.
“If we actually throw away options, a fear for me is that the energy mix that we currently have just gets ossified,” said ARENA chairman Greg Bourne.
“Infrastructure is hospitals, infrastructure is schools, but infrastructure is also the energy system that you have within a country and without the energy system, your overall system begins to grind to a halt.”
Mr Bourne says the current reliance on traditional energy sources is “not fit for purpose in this century”.
The last significant piece of green energy legislation, the Renewable Energy Target (RET), is currently under review.
After investing billions in the sector, Mr George warns any changes would be a breach of faith.
“If the legislation is now to be changed we would expect to be fully compensated,” he said.
“If [they] took the RET away tomorrow … we would lose 40 per cent of our revenue and our Australian business would fail … along with nearly all wind farms and wind farm businesses in Australia.”
Mr George says Infigen has made investments over the past 10 years on the basis of legislation that had “bi-partisan support”.
“If the legislation is now to be changed retrospectively and that has a negative effect on our business, we would expect to be fully compensated,” he said.
“This is the way Australia does it. Australia does not wreck existing legislation without compensation.”
The Environment Minister declined an interview but maintains that tough decisions needed to be made in the current economic climate.
ABC (Radio Australia)
As head barracker for the soon to be extinct ARENA fund – and with the plug about to be pulled on his cushy, highly paid job – we wouldn’t expect to hear anything but panicked twaddle from Greg Bourne. And he doesn’t disappoint.
We just love Greg’s hilarious claim that traditional energy sources are “not fit for purpose in this century”. Now Greg can’t have been paying attention to happenings in Australia’s energy market, at all.
The ONLY energy source that has proven itself “not fit for purpose” is wind power: insanely expensive; delivered at crazy, random intervals; and which has demonstrably failed to reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector, simply because it can never be supplied on-demand (see our posts here and here and here and here and here and here). It’s the last point which is the only possible justification for the enormous stream of subsidies filched from Australian power consumers – but the wind industry and its parasites are yet to produce a shred of credible evidence that wind power has reduced CO2 emissions in the electricity sector.
With such a tenuous grip on the realities of Australia’s energy market, it’s little wonder that Bourne and his beloved ARENA fund have been given the axe. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
And speaking of tenuous grips on reality, we couldn’t help but giggle at Miles George’s claim that Infigen is “the country’s largest renewable energy provider” – which will come as quite a surprise to Snowy Hydro Limited, which operates the Snowy Hydro Scheme.
True it is that Infigen is a “big player” in Australia’s wind industry. Infigen operates 6 wind farms in Australia, with a total installed capacity of 556 MW. That represents about 18% of Australia’s total installed wind power capacity of 3,080 MW. But for Miles to call his little outfit Australia’s largest renewable energy provider is a monstrous stretch.
The Snowy Hydro Scheme was the first major renewable energy producer in Australia – and remains the largest, by a country mile. Infigen’s piddling 556 MW of installed wind farm capacity hardly compares with Snowy Hydro’s 3,950 MW. And even then, that’s to compare a pig’s ear with a silk purse.
The one critical and colossal difference between Infigen’s ageing fleet of giant fans and the Snowy Hydro Scheme, is that the former are lucky to deliver any power at all, on any given day (see our post here); whereas, the latter delivers truly clean, cheap, reliable power – at any time, of any day – and whenever there’s a demand for it.
Not only does young Miles have a deluded view of Infigen’s importance in the renewable energy sector, he clearly hasn’t read the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000.
To reduce or scrap the mandatory RET, the coalition does not need tochange the legislation retrospectively, as Miles moans. The Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act itself makes it clear that the Government can increase or decrease the mandatory target (by any margin it chooses) every two years, at will. For Miles’ benefit, here’s s162 which says:
Periodic reviews of operation of renewable energy legislation
(1) The Climate Change Authority must conduct reviews of the following:
(a) the operation of this Act and the scheme constituted by this Act;
(b) the operation of the regulations;
(c) the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Large-scale Generation Shortfall Charge) Act 2000;
(d) the operation of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) (Small-scale Technology Shortfall Charge) Act 2010;
(e) the diversity of renewable energy access to the scheme constituted by this Act, to be considered with reference to a cost benefit analysis of the environmental and economic impact of that access.
Public consultation
(2) In conducting a review, the Climate Change Authority must make provision for public consultation.
Report
(3) The Climate Change Authority must:
(a) give the Minister a report of the review; and
(b) as soon as practicable after giving the report to the Minister, publish the report on the Climate Change Authority’s website.
(4) The Minister must cause copies of a report under subsection (3) to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the review is completed.
First review
(5) The first review under subsection (1) must be completed before the end of 31 December 2012.
Subsequent reviews
(6) Each subsequent review under subsection (1) must be completed within 2 years after the deadline for completion of the previous review.
(7) For the purposes of subsections (4), (5) and (6), a review is completed when the report of the review is given to the Minister under subsection (3).
Recommendations
(8) A report of a review under subsection (1) may set out recommendations to the Commonwealth Government.
(9) In formulating a recommendation that the Commonwealth Government should take particular action, the Climate Change Authority must analyse the costs and benefits of that action.
(10) Subsection (9) does not prevent the Climate Change Authority from taking other matters into account in formulating a recommendation.
(11) A recommendation must not be inconsistent with the objects of this Act.
(12) If a report of a review under subsection (1) sets out one or more recommendations to the Commonwealth Government, the report must set out the Climate Change Authority’s reasons for those recommendations.
Government response to recommendations
(13) If a report of a review under subsection (1) sets out one or more recommendations to the Commonwealth Government:
(a) as soon as practicable after receiving the report, the Minister must cause to be prepared a statement setting out the Commonwealth Government’s response to each of the recommendations; and
(b) within 6 months after receiving the report, the Minister must cause copies of the statement to be tabled in each House of the Parliament.
(14) The Commonwealth Government’s response to the recommendations may have regard to the views of the following:
(a) the Climate Change Authority;
(b) the Regulator;
(c) such other persons as the Minister considers relevant.
Well, that couldn’t be much clearer.
The Act itself provides that reviews of the mandatory RET must take place every two years; taking into account the cost and benefits of any recommendation made, as part of the review. There is nothing in that section to suggest that the government is bound to maintain any particular figure for the mandatory RET; or to accept assertions by the wind industry that the “benefits” of wind power outweigh its “costs”. Indeed, the section is entirely to the contrary.
By reference to that section, the RET Review Panel would be completely within its rights to recommend that the mandatory RET be scrapped in its entirety; simply because the demonstrated and extraordinary costs of wind power (the key beneficiary of the RET) completely outweighs any of its purported benefits.
Moreover, as the wind industry simply cannot provide any credible evidence that wind power satisfies the key objective of the Act – namely, actually reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in the electricity sector (see s3) – then a recommendation to substantially wind back or scrap the RET would not be inconsistent with the objects of the Act (see s162(11) above).
Such a recommendation is absolutely on the cards – and the Coalition is itching to implement it.
The next furphy pitched up by Miles is that there is some sort of “culture of compensation” in Australia; which requires companies benefiting from industry subsidy schemes to be compensated – in full – should that scheme be wound back or scrapped.
This may come as a disappointment to Infigen, but there is no such “culture” in Australia; nor, more importantly, is it the law.
Back in the late 1980s, the Commonwealth government amended tax legislation to provide huge tax benefits for investments in “Managed Investment Schemes”. During the late 1990s and 2000s, the tax change saw a flood of money pour into industrial scale vineyards; timber, olive and almond plantations. The MIS tax breaks were rightly considered amonstrous tax rort that allowed companies running Managed Investment Schemes to make obscene profits upfront at investors’ ultimate expense. In 2007, the government scrapped the tax breaks – a decision which led to enormous corporate collapses of MIS outfits – like Timbercorp andGreat Southern Plantations – with MIS investors collectively losing 100s of $millions. Thousands of MIS investors lost their shirts, but none of them received a cent in compensation from the Commonwealth; nor, quite obviously, did the dozens of MIS companies that went bust. So no evidence of a “culture of compensation” there, Miles.
As to the law, Infigen does not have a contract with the Commonwealth government to supply wind power at guaranteed rates – or in exchange for Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs); it is nothing more than the beneficiary of the mandatory RET and the RECs issued under it.
An outfit called Australian Woollen Mills Pty Ltd took on the Commonwealth chasing “lost” subsidies, taking their case all the way to the High Court.
In 1946, the government announced it would pay a subsidy to manufacturers of wool who purchased and used it for local manufacture, after 30 June 1946. Australian Woollen Mills purchased and used wool for local manufacture between 1946-48; and received some payments under the scheme. The government subsequently stopped its subsidy scheme and Australian Woollen Mills sued the government for the subsidies it claimed it was due.
In 1954, the High Court dismissed Australian Woollen Mills’ claim that the offer to provide subsidies amounted to a contract between it and the government (on the ground that there was no consideration for the “promise” to provide the subsidies); and also concluded that there was no intention on the part of the government to create legal relations. The High Court held that the subsidy scheme was nothing more than a government scheme to promote industry; and, as such, there was no legal basis for Australian Woollen Mills to recover the subsidies promised (but not paid) under the scheme.
And so it is with the mandatory RET/REC scheme. If Infigen are out to overturn a High Court decision – which has been routinely applied for 60 years – we wish them the best of luck. They’ll need it.
Which brings us to our final observation on Infigen’s declaration of surrender.
We think Miles has understated Infigen’s potential losses if the mandatory RET is substantially reduced or scrapped in its entirety, when he talks about a 40% reduction in revenue.
STT thinks that – in the event the mandatory RET is substantially reduced or scrapped outright – Infigen will need to declare itself insolvent, there and then. The retailers with which it has Power Purchase Agreements are hardly likely to consider themselves bound by those agreements; as the Renewable Energy Certificates they receive as part of the deal would instantly collapse in value – and may well become worthless.
As night follows day – faced with mounting losses due to a collapse in the REC price – those retailers will seek to avoid any ongoing obligations to Infigen under those agreements – whether by reference to the terms of their agreements; or under the doctrine of contractual “frustration”. Thatwell-settled doctrine allows a court to release the parties from their obligations to continue to perform a contract where – through no fault of their own – a supervening event renders performance of the contract something fundamentally different from that anticipated by the parties.
So, if Infigen is looking for compensation for “losses” suffered if the RET is scrapped, it’s unlikely to get any joy from a Coalition government facing a voter backlash for bringing an end to the “age of entitlement” in its first budget. And it may end up in a position where its retail customers have torn up their PPAs, leaving it at the mercy of its mounting list of creditors.
Meanwhile – back in the real world – real businesses that employ thousands have hit the RET Review Panel with submissions detailing the real jobs that will inevitably be lost, unless the RET gets the axe now. Here’s The Australian on the risk created by the RET to Australia’s real economy.
Smelter pleading for concessions on Renewable Energy Target
The Australian
Annabel Hepworth, Matthew Denholm
17 May 2014
THE Coalition faces fresh pressure over the Renewable Energy Target as an aluminium smelter warns it could have to sack workers without major changes to the scheme and a key regulator warns that it is hitting consumers with “unnecessary and avoidable” costs.
In a submission to the RET review panel headed by businessman Dick Warburton, the NSW IPART says renewable energy has a “relatively high cost” compared with the Coalition’s proposed emissions reduction fund and existing carbon price.
The RET added about $107 to a typical electricity bill in NSW in 2013-14, but “these costs are unnecessary and avoidable if the same amount of emissions reduction can be achieved through less expensive means,” IPART chairman Peter Boxall says in the submission.
It comes as Tasmania’s Bell Bay aluminium smelter warns it will have to sack workers unless trade-exposed manufacturers are granted a full exemption from the imposts of the scheme.
Owners Pacific Aluminium yesterday said the southern hemisphere’s first smelter, in Tasmania’s north, had lost $48m in extra energy costs under the RET since it started in 2001.
Bell Bay Aluminium general manager Ray Mostogl said that Australia’s aluminium industry already faced “unprecedented challenges to its immediate viability” linked to depressed aluminium prices and the high Australian dollar.
The Australian
Bell Bay Aluminium employs close to 500 people; produces around 190,000 tonnes of aluminium annually; and has been at it since 1955.
Dick Warburton and his colleagues on the RET Review Panel are acutely aware of the negative cost impact that the mandatory RET is having on real businesses – like Bell Bay Aluminium and thousands of other energy intensive businesses, including Australia’s manufacturing sector.
There can be no justification for the retention of an insanely expensive and utterly ineffective subsidy scheme, which has done nothing more than prop up profligate, corporate cowboys like Infigen.
The mandatory Renewable Energy Target must go now.
More Liberal Lies….by Kathleen Wynne!
Liberals have learned from their mistakes: Wynne
Thursday, May 15, 2014 4:14:39 EDT PM
Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne gives her prepared remarks during a campaign stop in Walkerton, Ont., on Thursday, May 15, 2014.
Premier Kathleen Wynne may have been in Walkerton Thursday morning to announce her party’s support for the Walkerton Clean Water Centre, but inevitably she was asked about the contentious issues of wind turbines.
Wynne said the wind turbine placement process has improved since she took office.
“There needed to be a change in the way those wind turbines were sited,” she said. “I believe that it’s very important that communities have more input.”
Wynne noted since she was elected Liberal leader, there have been changes regarding the way turbine contracts are finalized.
“Communities must opportunity to have a say and have much more buy-in,” she said.
She also expressed regret for the way the Green Energy Act was implemented.
“If I could roll back the clock and we could have a better process from the beginning, I would do that,” Wynne said. “But I can’t do that. All I can is make sure that, going forward, we have a much better process in place and that communities are consulted.”
Wynne was in Walkerton at the 14th anniversary of the Walkerton E. coli outbreak.
Some opponents of Brockton’s involvement in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s deep geological repository process have raised the spectre of another public health crisis if the municipality is selected.
While nuclear waste management is a federal jurisdiction, Wynne said she believes the same principles of community buy-in apply.
“The issues around nuclear waste . . . they need to be, again, done in consultation with communities and with all the safety precautions in place,” Wynne said.
“It’s another example of us . . . (needing to) consider all the consequences and work with the communities to make the best decisions possible.”
On the subject of nuclear, Wynne also took time to praise Bruce Power.
“We’re in a riding with an exemplary nuclear facility,” she said. “The Bruce workers have demonstrated over and over again what a fine organization they are.”
Speaking from prepared notes, Wynne said the promise by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak to cut 100,000 public sector jobs would be more than double than the government jobs eliminated under the Mike Harris government in the 1990s.
The comparison of Hudak to Harris is similar to the ties drawn by her opponents to former premier Dalton McGuinty`s administration.
“I have been taking responsibility for a government I was part of and I have made changes based on decisions I believe were not the right decisions,” Wynne said. “If you talk about the siting of . . . gas plants or wind turbines, we have changed the rules based on lessons I have taken, my government has taken, from decisions that were made by the previous government.
“We have to learn lessons and governments have to make changes based on those lessons,” Wynne said.
Donald Trump Knows Not to Invest In Wind Turbines or Areas Infested with them!
Donald Trump vows investment if turbines scrapped
Trump, 67, said he was willing to restart work at the £750 million Menie Estate course if Aberdeen City Council chiefs “took the windfarm off the table”.
The US businessman touched down at Aberdeen International Airport yesterday morning before heading off to the links at the Menie Estate in the afternoon.
He was due to fly out to Dubai later to oversee another of his golf projects.
Trump has objected to the proposed 11-turbine development off Aberdeen Bay since it was first put forward in August last year, saying it will ruin the view for people playing on the Aberdeenshire course.
He axed plans for a luxury hotel and a second course at Menie Estate and vowed to never invest in the course again after the Scottish Government rejected his appeal against the turbine plan in February. His legal team are planning a fresh appeal.
He arrived in Ayrshire earlier this week to visit the £35.7 million Turnberry course he purchased last month.
But he said he stands by his decision not to invest any more in his resort at Menie Estate, near Balmedie, unless he wins his wind-turbine fight.
He said: “We far exceeded the promise we made to Scotland.
“We have delivered a very special golf course. People all over the world are talking about it and we are getting record bookings.
“I look forward to continuing the development – as soon as that windfarm is taken off the table.”
Vattenfall, the 75% stakeholder in the windfarm project, is looking to sell its share and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, which holds the remaining stake, last month handed over the running of the project to Aberdeen City Council.
Trump also plans to invest up to #36million in a golf course he has bought in the west of Ireland.
He visited Doonbeg Links, in Co Clare, before travelling to Turnberry.
The American tycoon said yesterday he was “sad” to see Scotland, where his mother was born, being “destroyed”.
He said: “Scotland is a beautiful country, but it has a death wish. Wind turbines are destroying the country.
“The council in Aberdeen should do its people a great favour and abandon this scheme, which is doomed to lose money.”
Wind Turbines are Destroying Scottish Seabirds!
‘Protect Scottish seabirds from deadly wind farms’
Scotland is home to 24 internationally important seabird species. But the latest official figures show at least nine have been in steep decline for the past 18 years.
Now a new report from RSPB Scotland is calling for the Scottish Government to set out seven new Special Protection Areas (SPAs) to safeguard food supplies for threatened birds and reduce the impacts of offshore wind farms.
As the seas are increasingly being utilised for renewable energy developments, conservationists say guidance on sensitive areas is urgently needed to address a “fundamental lack of protection” for species such as the puffin and great skua.
The RSPB is also warning that the Scottish and UK governments risk failing to meet obligations under Scottish and European laws if “urgent action” is not taken to encourage their survival.
Stuart Housden, director of RSPB Scotland, said: “Scotland has a fantastic opportunity to show the world that we value our wildlife and natural environment.
“Unfortunately, this is not the case when it comes to our iconic seabirds, species for which Scotland in particular has a special responsibility to protect.”
He said the seven areas are just “a first step” in creating a full network needed to satisfy the requirements of EU and Scottish legislation.
“With numerous proposed wind farm developments ‘queuing up’ in the areas that overlap key feeding sites for birds, we cannot wait any longer,” he added.
The most dramatic declines have hit the arctic skua, arctic tern and black-legged kittiwake, which have seen numbers plummet by as much as 80 per cent in recent years. Experts fear the arctic skua may disappear from the UK within a decade.
Other species of concern include the northern gannet, European shag, common guillemot and European storm petrel.
Evidence shows changes in oceanography are affecting the food “web”, causing a scarcity of prey that impacts on breeding success.
But the survival of vulnerable populations can also be threatened by badly sited marine renewable schemes and invasive alien species, according to the report.
It suggests setting out protected areas at sea can boost their chances of survival.
The recommended areas were first identified in 2012 by the government’s statutory advisors, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, and are considered vital feeding areas used by many tens of thousands of Scotland’s four million seabirds.
The government has already laid down 33 SPA colony extension sites, but experts say most of the critical areas where breeding species feed at sea remain unprotected.
The report recommends the SPAs should include colony extensions and offshore feeding areas, as both are essential for the birds to thrive.
“Without protection of these areas, breeding colonies designated as terrestrial SPAs and Sites for Special Scientific Interest risk being little more than safe places to starve, and leave seabirds unprotected through the majority of their lifecycle,” the report states.
But a spokesman insisted the Scottish Government is committed to safeguarding the nation’s seabirds.
He said: “We are confident that completion of marine SPA designations will deliver adequate site protection for seabirds.
“We recently consulted on 33 Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas (MPA) proposals, which will provide valuable protection for our marine environment, including seabirds, in 2013.
“Six of these would include national protection for black guillemot in the marine environment, while several of the other MPA proposals include protection for habitats or species such as sand eels that support seabirds.”
The initial SPAs include sandbanks off the Firth of Forth, an area of the Pentland Firth and the sea north of St Kilda, but RSPB Scotland is set to propose further sites in coming months.
Final decisions on the MPA proposals are expected later this year.
The Faux-Green Thieves, use the Environment Fears to Extort Money!
Environmental shakedown through bastardized application of science, policy, and education
Disgruntled ex-federal employees found a way to bilk taxpayers out of millions of dollars using the flawed Endangered Species Act
Over a 3-year period, 2009-2012, Department of Justice data show American taxpayers footed the bill for more than $53 million in so-called environmental groups’ legal fees—and the actual number could be much higher. The real motivation behind the Endangered Species Act (ESA) litigation, perhaps, could have more to do with vengeance and penance than with a real desire to protect flora and fauna.
On May 7, I spoke at the Four Corners Oil and Gas Conference in Farmington, New Mexico. During the two-day event, I sat in on many of the other sessions and had conversations with dozens of attendees. I left the event with the distinct impression that the current implementation of the ESA is a major impediment to the economic growth, tax revenue, and job creation that comes with oil-and-gas development. I have written on ESA issues many times, most recently I wrote about the lesser prairie chicken’s proposed “threatened” listing (which the Fish and Wildlife Service [FWS] listed on March 27) and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s lawsuit against the federal government over the “sue and settle” tactics of FWS and the Department of the Interior.
While at the conference, I received an email announcing that FWS has asked a federal court for a 6-month delay in making a final determination on whether to list the Gunnison sage grouse as an endangered species—moving the decision past the November elections. Up for re-election, Senator Mark Udall(D-CO) “cheered” the extension request. The E & E report states: Colorado elected leaders “fear the listing could have significant economic impacts.”
Kent Holsinger, a Colorado attorney specializing in lands, wildlife, and water, posited: “Senator Udall is among those lauding the move—perhaps because a listing decision would affect his fate in the U.S. Senate. Gunnison sage grouse populations are stable, if not on the increase. In addition, myriad state, local and private conservation efforts have been put into place over the last decade. Those efforts, and the Gunnison sage grouse, are at risk if the FWS pursues listing.”
The report continues: “WildEarth Guardians is not opposing the latest extension after Fish and Wildlife agreed to some extensive new mitigation measures that will be made in the interim, including increasing buffer zones around sage grouse breeding grounds, called leks, and deferring coal, oil and gas leasing, said Erik Molvar, a wildlife biologist with WildEarth Guardians.” It goes on to say: “But the Center for Biological Diversity, which is a party to the settlement agreements with WildEarth Guardians, said the latest extension is a bad move for the grouse, which it says has needed ESA protections for years.”
Two important items to notice in the Gunnison sage grouse story. One, the power the environmental groups wield. Two, part of appeasing the environmental groups involves “deferring coal, oil and gas leasing.”
It is widely known that these groups despise fossil fuels. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) brags about its use of lawsuits to block development—but it is not just oil and gas they block, it is virtually all human activity.
In researching for this week’s column, I have talked to people from a variety of industry and conservation efforts. The conversations started because I read something they’d written about CBD. Whether I was talking to someone interested in protecting big horn sheep, a fishing enthusiast, or an attorney representing ranching or extractive industries, CBD seems to be a thorn in their side. All made comments similar to what Amos Eno, who has been involved in conservation for more than 40 years, told me: “CBD doesn’t care about the critters. They are creating a listing pipeline and then making money off of it.” Environmental writer Ted Williams, in a piece on wolves,called CBD: “perennial plaintiffs.”
New Mexico rancher Stephen Wilmeth directed me to a CBD profile he had written. In it he addressed how the CBD’s efforts targeted livestock grazing and sought “the removal of cattle from hundreds of miles of streams.” Wilmeth states: “CBD has elevated sue and settle tactics, injunctions, new species listings, and bad press surrounding legal action to a modern art form. Consent decrees more often than not result in closed door sessions with concessions or demands made on agency policy formulation.”
In a posting on the Society for Bighorn Sheep website titled: Legal tactics directly from the Center for Biological Diversity, board member Gary Thomas states: “The Center ranks people second. By their accounting, all human endeavors, agriculture, clean water, energy, development, recreation, materials extraction, and all human access to any space, are subordinate to the habitat requirements of all the world’s obscure animals and plants. But these selfish people don’t care about any person, plant, or animal. The Center collects obscure and unstudied species for a single purpose, specifically for use in their own genre of lawsuits. They measure their successes not by quality of life for man nor beast, but by counting wins in court like notches in the handle of a gun.”
You’d expect someone like me, an energy advocate, to dis the CBD—and I have (CBD is not too fond of me)—but how did it get such a broad-based collection of negativity from within the environmental community?
Ted Williams told me: “Environmentalists who are paying attention are not happy with CBD.” He has written the most comprehensive exposé on CBD that can be found—for which he was threatened with a lawsuit. Without Williams’ work, one has to resort to bits and pieces off the internet to put together CBD’s modus operandi—but there is plenty to choose from!
One of the most interesting ones to catch my eye was a part of the post on SheepSociety.com. There, Thomas points out the fact that the three founders of CBD are ex-Forest Service workers. He states: “To donors, their motives appear altruistic. To the informed, they look more like a 20-year quest for revenge for their firing.”
I am fairly well acquainted with CBD, but Thomas’ accusation was new to me—though it fit what I knew. (One of the very first pieces I ever wrote, when I originally got into this work seven plus years ago, was on the one and only legal victory ever won against CBD. Arizona rancher Jim Chiltonwon a defamation suit against CBD with a $600,000 settlement. Nearly everyone I talked to as a part of my research for this story mentioned Chilton’s name with reverence.
I dug around and found an interesting story from Backpacker magazine that gave credence to Thomas’ claim. The February 2003 issue features a multi-page profile on Kieran Suckling, co-founder and executive director. Addressing the three founders, who were working for the Forest Service, Backpacker reports: “All three of them were frustrated by their agencies’ inaction.” The story 
goes on to explain how the threesome “hatched a plan” to petition the Forest Service and force it to list the spotted owl.
Then, I found a 2009 profile on Suckling in High Country News (HCN). It quotes Suckling describing how the roots of his full-time activism started while working for the Forest Service doing spotted owl surveys: “We had signed contracts saying we wouldn’t divulge owl locations, but we went the next day to the Silver City Daily Press, with a map that told our story. We were fired within seconds. That was the start of us becoming full-time activists.”
These snippets help explain Suckling’s animosity toward the Forest Service and other government agencies. CBD is gleeful over its results. It has sued government agencies hundreds of times and has won the majority of the cases—though many never go to court and are settled in a backroom deal (hence the term: “sue and settle”). Thomas writes: “They are extremely proud to report that single-handedly they deplete the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s entire annual budget, approximately $5 million, for endangered species listings year after year by forcing them to use their limited funds defending lawsuits instead of their intended purpose.”
The HCN piece describes Suckling’s approach to getting what he wants—which he explains in theNew Yorker, as “a new order in which plants and animals are part of the polity”: “The Forest Service needs our agreement to get back to work, and we are in the position of being able to powerfully negotiate the terms of releasing the injunction. … They [federal employees] feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed—and they are. So they become much more willing to play by our rules and at least get something done. Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect of environmental campaigning.”
“In CBD speak,” adds Wilmeth, “the suggestion of playing by the rules equates to its rules of manipulating positive outcomes for its mission.”
Putting the pieces together, it does appear, as Thomas asserts, that Suckling is on a 20+ year “quest for revenge” for being fired—vengeance that American taxpayers are funding.
Suckling is an interesting character. The Backpacker story cites his ex-wife, who said the following: “He’s not tethered on a daily basis to the same things you and I are tethered to.”
Tierra Curry is another name that comes up frequently in CBD coverage. CBD’s staff section of the website lists her as “senior scientist” and says she “focuses on the listing and recovery of endangered species.” As Warner Todd Huston reports: “Curry has an odd profile for an activist. She once claimed to have enjoyed dynamiting creek beds in rural Kentucky and taking perverse pleasure at sending fish and aquatic animals flying onto dry land and certain death. Now Curry spends her time filing petitions to ‘save’ some of the same animals she once enjoyed killing.”
Perhaps Curry’s frenetic listing efforts are her way of doing penance for her childhood penchant of killing critters.
The role vengeance and penance may play in CBD’s shakedown of the American public is just a hypothesis based on facts. But the dollars paid out are very real.
In an April 8, 2014, hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources, fifth-generation rancher and attorney specializing in environmental litigation, Karen Budd-Falen talked about the need for ESA reform, as four different House bills propose: “Public information regarding payment of attorney’s fees for ESA litigation is equally difficult to access.” Addressing HR 4316—which requires a report on attorney’s fees and costs for ESA related litigation—she says: “It should not be a radical notion for the public to know how much is being paid by the federal government and to whom the check is written.”
As she reports in her testimony, Budd-Falen’s staff did an analysis of the 276-page spreadsheet run released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) listing litigation summaries in cases defended by the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Wildlife Section. She explains: “The spreadsheets are titled ‘Endangered Species Defensive Cases Active at some point during FY09-FY12 (through April 2012).’ Although the DOJ release itself contained no analysis, my legal staff calculated the following statistics.”
Budd-Falen then shows how she came up with the nearly $53 million figure of taxpayer money paid out over an approximate 3-year period. However, she then shows how her own Freedom of Information Act requests have proven “that the DOJ does not keep an accurate account of the cases it defends”—making the actual dollar figure much higher.
Budd-Falen has stated: “We believe when the curtain is raised we’ll be talking about radical environmental groups bilking the taxpayer for hundreds of millions of dollars, allegedly for ‘reimbursement for attorney fees.’”
Budd-Falen’s research shows that for groups like CBD—who sue on process not on substance—it really is about the money.
Eno believes that for the CBD, it isn’t about the critters: “CBD endangers the endangered species program on multiple fronts.
* First, their petitions and listing suits use up significant financial and personnel resources of both Office of Endangered Species and solicitors office in DOI. This means less funding and personnel devoted to species recovery.
* Second, CBD suits antagonize and jeopardize recovery programs of cooperating federal land management agencies, particularly USFS and BLM.
* Third, their suits have hampered forest and grassland management thereby inviting forest fires which endanger both human and wildlife (sage grouse) communities throughout the west.
* Fourth, CBD suits antagonize, alienate and create financial hardship for affected private land owners, thereby reducing both public support and initiatives and active assistance for listed species recovery.”
Despite numerous attempts, the ESA has not had any major revisions in more than 25 years. TheWall Street Journal states: “The ESA’s mixed record on wildlife restoration and its impact on business have made the law vulnerable to critics.” Groups like CBD have twisted the intent of the law. Reform is now essential—not just to save taxpayer dollars, but to put the focus back on actually saving the species rather than, as Wilmeth calls it: “the bastardized application of science, policy, and education.”
Even the Aussies Know, That Hudak is the Way to GO!!!! Yaaayyyy!!!!
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative’s Leader Tim Hudak – Didn’t Drink the Kool-Aid
May 15, 2014 by
Jim Jones was a charismatic cult leader with a colourful past who – amid allegations that he’d been physically, emotionally, and sexually abusing his acolytes at his San Francisco compound – fled the US and set up a new camp at “Jonestown”, Guyana. Close to 1,000 of his “disciples” followed him South – lured by socialist utopian promises of a “new dawn” for all those who believed in him – putting the “blind” into “blind faith”.
Jones’s cult status started early – his mum, Lynetta claimed that she’d given birth to the Messiah. He was an avid Communist and fancied himself a preacher in the league of his heroes, Billy Graham and Oral Roberts. Jones never lacked self-belief – telling worshipers he was the reincarnation of Mahatma Gandhi; as well as Jesus of Nazareth, Gotama Buddha and Vladimir Lenin: a lineup of alter-egos that most preachers would find hard to top.
In November 1978, Jim Jones encouraged his faithful band of followers to gulp down gallons of sickly-sweet, grape-flavoured Kool-Aid. Problem was, it was cordial with a “kick” – 910 of his devoted followers (including 303 children) perished from cyanide poisoning. Oops! So much for “blind faith”.
Since then, “drinking the Kool-Aid” has been a figure of speech used by Americans to cover any person or group holding an unquestioned belief, argument, or philosophy without critical examination; and also covers anyone knowingly going along with a doomed or dangerous idea because of peer pressure. Hmm, sound strangely familiar?
Well, around the globe many of our political betters have already “drunk the Kool-Aid”.
Lured by ridiculous promises of “free” energy and tens of thousands of wonderful, new “green” jobs, politicians of all hues have willingly entered economic suicide pacts – by signing up to completely unsustainable wind power policies – in Spain, Germany, the UK, the US, Australia and Canada, to name a few.
In Canada, however, there is at least one politician who obviously didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.
Tim Hudak heads up the Progressive Conservative party – which, unlike Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals – has made the obvious connection between Ontario’s giant fan roll-out and spiralling power prices.
Hudak has also rumbled the fact that – not only did Ontario’s wind rush fail to produce the promised “green” employment bonanza – but that the wind-power-driven escalation in power costs has killed thousands of jobs in the real economy.
Wynne’s Liberals were early Kool-Aid consumers – committing Ontario to fork out for wind power subsidies, which are among the most ludicrously generous on earth.
In the lead up to Ontario’s upcoming election Hudak is going head-to-head with Wynne and has slammed the economy-killing energy policies dreamed up by her Liberals.
Hudak is all set to take the axe to wind power subsidies – in an effort to bring spiralling power prices under control and to return Ontario to a position of economic competitiveness.
Here’s the Toronto Sun on Hudak’s plan to restore some economic sanity to Ontario’s energy policy.
Hudak will end wind, solar fiasco
Toronto Sun
13 May 2014
It’s amazing only one leader in the Ontario election campaign – the Progressive Conservative’s Tim Hudak – has promised to end the subsidization of inefficient, unreliable and expensive wind and solar power.
This is an obvious way to save taxpayers and hydro ratepayers billions of dollars in future costs.
Premier Kathleen Wynne can’t make that promise because to do so would be to admit the Liberals’ naive infatuation with green energy has been a financial disaster, as the non-partisan Auditor General of Ontario concluded in 2011.
The auditor general said the Liberals blundered into green energy with no business plan and no economic research, ignoring the advice of their own experts and costing taxpayers and electricity consumers billions of added dollars on their hydro bills for decades to come.
The auditor general not only found Liberal claims their Green Energy Act would create 50,000 jobs between 2009 and 2012 were nonsense, but that experience around the world has shown so-called green energy destroys more jobs than it creates because it inevitably leads to higher electricity prices.
As for NDP leader Andrea Horwath – who says she’ll rescind in 2016 the Liberals’ 2010 decision to add the 8% provincial sales tax to hydro bills – she propped up the Liberals as they were signing more and more wind and solar deals, literally throwing more and more public money down a black hole.
Incredibly, Wynne is promising to keep doing this if she’s elected, which is utter madness.
Hudak is the only leader of the three major parties telling the truth, noting he can’t break existing contracts the Liberals have already signed with wind and solar energy developers.
But he can stop throwing good money after bad.
Hudak is also promising to return local autonomy to municipalities so they can decide if they want wind turbines and solar panels in their communities, instead of having them rammed down their throats by the Liberals through their dictatorial Green Energy Act.
As for Liberals’ claim they replaced coal power with wind, it’s utter nonsense.
The Liberals replaced coal with nuclear power and natural gas.
Wind and solar are just another multi-billion-dollar Liberal boondoggle, to go along with their eHealth, Ornge and cancelled gas plants scandals and financial disasters.
Toronto Sun
Energy policy based on nothing more than “blind faith” was always bound to end in tears; as the Toronto Sun’s editor put it in the piece above:
[T]he Liberals blundered into green energy with no business plan and no economic research, ignoring the advice of their own experts and costing taxpayers and electricity consumers billions …
Australians needn’t consider themselves any smarter than the Canadians, on that score.
Our Federal Government signed us up to the mandatory Renewable Energy Target in 2001 without any economic research – let alone a proper cost/benefit analysis of a policy which perversely favours insanely expensive, intermittent and unreliable wind power. That process will be undertaken for the very first time in 2014 – as part of the RET Review. Better late than never, as they say.
Fortune has, however, smiled on Australia – it is, after all, the “Lucky Country” – because the RET Review panel is made up of people who clearly didn’t drink the Kool-Aid (see our posts here and here).
From what we hear emanating from Canberra, STT predicts the imminent demise of Australia’s now beleaguered, bitter and angry Wind Power Cult – and a return to energy market sanity in the very near future.
The Faux-Green Renewables Scam is Dripping with Outrageous subsidies!!
Big Green’s untold billions
Mainstream media don’t know Big Green has deeper pockets than Big Oil
The “Kill Keystone XL” crowd isn’t little David up against a Big Oil Goliath. As usual, conventional wisdom isn’t wisdom when the mainstream media ask all the wrong questions with commensurate answers.
Behemoth Big Green outstrips Big Oil in expendable revenue by orders of magnitude — if you know how to follow the money.
The mainstream media don’t know how. Like most liberals, their staffs are afflicted with what 20th century futurist Herman Kahn called “Educated Incapacity” — the learned inability to understand or even perceive a problem, much less a solution.
They’ve been taught to be blind, unable to see Big Green as having more disposable money than Big Oil, so they don’t look into it.
They would never discover that the American Petroleum Institute’s IRS Form 990 for the most recent year showed $237.9 million in assets while the Natural Resources Defense Council reported $241.8 million.
Nor would they discover who started the anti-Keystone campaign in the first place. It was the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund (established in 1940). The fund’s program is elaborated in a 2008 PowerPoint presentation called “The Tar Sands Campaign” by program officer Michael Northrop, who set up coordination and funding for a dozen environmental and anti-corporate attack groups to use the strategy, “raise the negatives, raise the costs, slow down and stop infrastructure, and stop pipelines.” Tom Steyer’s $100 million solo act is naive underclass nouveau cheap by comparison.
Mainstream reporters appear not to be aware of the component parts that comprise Big Green: environmentalist membership groups, nonprofit law firms, nonprofit real estate trusts (The Nature Conservancy alone holds $6 billion in assets), wealthy foundations giving prescriptive grants, and agenda-making cartels such as the 200-plus member Environmental Grantmakers Association. They each play a major socio-political role.
Invisible fact: the environmental movement is a mature, highly developed network with top leadership stewarding a vast institutional memory, a fiercely loyal cadre of competent social and political operatives, and millions of high-demographic members ready to be mobilized as needed.
That membership base is a built-in free public relations machine responsive to the push of a social media button sending politically powerful “educational” alerts that don’t show up on election reports.
Big Oil doesn’t have that, but has to pay for lobbyists, public relations firms and support groups that do show up on reports.
You don’t need expert skills to connect the dots linking Keystone XL to Alberta’s oil sands to climate change to Big Green.
On the other hand, you do need detailed knowledge to parse Big Green into its constituent parts. I spoke with CFACT senior policy analyst Paul Driessen, who said, “U.S. environmental activist groups are a $13-billion-a-year industry — and they’re all about PR and mobilizing the troops.
“Their climate change campaign alone has well over a billion dollars annually, and high-profile battles against drilling, fracking, oil sands and Keystone get a big chunk of that, as demonstrated by the Rockefeller assault.”
Driessen then identified the most-neglected of all money sources in Big Green: “The liberal foundations that give targeted grants to Big Green operations have well over $100 billion at their disposal.”
That figure is confirmed in the Foundation Center database of the Top 100 Foundations. But how much actually gets to environmental groups? The Giving USA Institute’s annual reports show $80,427,810,000 (more than $80 billion) in giving to environmental recipients from 2000 to 2012.
I checked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and found $147.3 million in assets while environmental donor Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation posted $5.2 billion.
Driessen pointed out another unperceived sector of Big Green: government donors. “Under President Obama, government agencies have poured tens of millions into nonprofit groups for anti-hydrocarbon campaigns.”
Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman adds, “The federal government is currently spending $2.6 billion [per year] on climate change research (and only those who support the “carbon dioxide is a pollutant/major greenhouse gas’ receive funding).”
This web of ideological soul-mates, like all movements, has its share of turf wars and dissension in the ranks, but, as disclosed on conference tapes I obtained, it shares a visceral hatred of capitalism, a worshipful trust that nature knows best, and a callous belief that humans are not natural but the nemesis of all that is natural.
Lawyer Christopher Manes wrote “Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization.” Manes now practices tax litigation from his law office in Palm Springs, Calif., which he has not yet unmade.
The legal branch of Big Green is varied. Earthjustice, (formerly Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) raked in $133.8 million in the past five years – comparable to many similar law organizations. Highly litigative attack groups receiving federal settlements are numerous and thriving, such as the Center for Biological Diversity ($29.2 million in the past five years).
It’s not unusual for heirs of big money to dream of unmaking the source of their wealth: Laura Rockefeller Chasin of the Rockefeller Family Fund once said, “It’s very hard to get rid of the money is a way that does more good than harm. One of the ways is to subsidize people who are trying to change the system and get rid of people like us.”
The money reported to the Federal Election Commission is barely the beginning of what’s really happening. It doesn’t show you Big Green’s mobilized boots on the ground, the zooming Twitter tweets, the fevered protesters, the Facebook fanatics or the celebrities preaching carbon modesty from the lounges of their private jets.
When self-righteous victims of Educated Incapacity insist that Big Oil outspends the poor little greenies, keep in mind the mountains of IRS Form 990s filed by thousands of groups, land trusts, lawyer outfits, foundations, and agenda-makers, just waiting for America to wake up and smell Big Green’s untold hundreds of billions.
____________
This article originally appeared in The Washington Examiner
– See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2014/05/14/big-greens-untold-billions/#sthash.u6BIT3H8.dpuf
Tim Hudak Promises to End Wind Scam…..other parties will continue to rob us!
D’Amato: To understand Ontario’s election,
take a careful look at your hydro bill
SEE MOREarticles from this author
It’s so easy to get sidetracked by the distractions.
Ontario Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne goes for a morning jog in Kitchener’s Victoria Park, leaving a reporter out of breath as he tries to follow. Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak gets kicked off a Toronto subway when he tries to make an announcement, because his team didn’t get permission.
These events grab the headlines because they’re anecdotes, easy to tell. But they have nothing to do with what a political party will or won’t do for you if it wins.
On the other hand, if you look at your hydro bill, and what each party will do about it, it tells you something significant about each of them.
The cost of electricity is a key issue. Ontario’s electricity rates have soared and are now among the highest in North America.
In part, this is because of the Liberal government’s “green energy” plan that offers subsidies to those that put up wind turbines and solar panels, then sell the power back to the power grid.
Expensive electricity is stressful. There’s evidence that it’s forcing manufacturing employers out of the province. Last week, Don Walker, CEO of auto parts giant Magna International, said: “I doubt we’ll add any more plants in Ontario” in part because of electricity costs.
Full platforms have not been released by the parties yet. But here’s what each has said so far about your hydro bill:
Greens: Conservation is their focus. They’d require utilities to provide grants and “affordable” loans for people to make their homes more energy efficient.
Liberals: Their latest announcement was billed as good news for consumers, but when you check the details, it isn’t.
Their plan is to relieve consumers of the debt retirement charge from the old Ontario Hydro (nearly $8 on my last household bill of $177 over two months).
That sounds helpful, until you realize that the “clean energy benefit,” which gives customers a 10-per-cent break on the bill ($19.35 in my case), is also being eliminated. And there’ll be a 90-cents-a-month hike for most homes to subsidize low-income customers. Total impact: I’m paying $13.15 more every two months, and that’s before the cost of electricity goes up again.
New Democrats: Piecemeal policy. There’s very little so far. Leader Andrea Horwath announced Monday that she will “take the HST” off hydro bills “to put money back into the budgets of middle-class families.” Further down in the press release, it’s revealed that actually it’s only the “provincial portion” of the HST that would come off. On my bill, that’s $13.70 in savings over a two-month period.
Conservatives: Shock therapy: The plan is to bring electricity prices down, and therefore keep industrial employers here, by ending those Liberal subsidies for wind and solar costs, cutting the hydro bureaucracy (Hudak says there are 11,000 people making more than $100,000 a year) and buying cheap energy from the United States and Quebec.
This election boils down to a choice: Do you like things the way they are, or do you want big changes?
The Conservatives offer radical change. The Liberals offer their record over the past 11 years. The New Democrats offer tweaks on the Liberal program. And those basic distinctions are true of a lot more issues than just your electricity bill.
Wind Power is Not What they Said it Would Be!! It’s useless!
Wind Power: Buying a Dog, but getting Sold a Pup
May 14, 2014 by
How many times have we believed the salesman’s pitch – got home and unwrapped our purchase – only to be disappointed when we discover that we’d spent our hard earned cash on a complete lemon?
Ending up with a frisky and inexperienced pup, when we’ve shelled out for a well-trained dog is always disappointing. Wind power brings with it precisely the same kind of disappointment.
You see, its proponents market it as a perfect substitute for on-demand power generation sources – like nuclear, coal, gas and hydro. However, wind power can’t be called a “substitute” for, well, anything.
The myth that wind farms provide (or are capable of providing) meaningful and consistent power output on-demand – provided there are hundreds of giant fans connected to the same grid and spread over large distances – was totally busted in yesterday’s post.
Now it seems that Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond – trading on precisely the same myth – is dressing up the Scottish wind power “Pup” so he can peddle it as the kind of Collie any Highland herder would be proud to call their own.
Here’s the Scottish Energy News with the latest on Salmond’s wind power hard-sell.
The Difficulty of Making Money from Wind Generated Electricity
Scottish Energy News
Jack W. Ponton (FREng, FIChemE)
12 May 2014
Although he has not recently described Scotland as “the Saudi Arabia of renewables”, First Minister Alex Salmond and other supporters of his wind energy policies are still claiming that it is possible for us to make money selling renewable energy to the rest of the world, as Saudi Arabia does with its oil.
Any comparison with Saudi Arabia is self-evidently silly. That country produces about 10 million barrels of oil per day. In energy terms this means that their energy output is at a rate equivalent to about 25kw per head of population. Meeting the SNP’s target of “100% electricity from renewables” would require an installed wind capacity of about 13.5GW, effectively 3.7GW because of wind variability, equivalent to about 0.7kW per head.
More significant than scale, however, is the fundamental difference between oil or gas and wind generated electricity. To sell something profitably, it must be possible to deliver it to customers when and where they require it.
Once an oil or gas well has started operating, production can be increased or decreased to meet changes in demand. Oil and gas are conveniently transported across continents in pipelines, and supertankers can carry up to half a million tonnes. Oil can be easily stored until required – the US keeps a strategic petroleum reserve of about 700 million barrels.
In contrast, wind generated electricity is only available when the wind is blowing.
It is expensive to transport; the controversial Beauly-Denny link will have a small fraction of the energy carrying capacity of a supertanker – at, incidentally, about four times the price. Electricity is also extremely difficult and expensive to store. The only practical means of storing large quantities is by pumped storage, for which there are four sites in the UK with a combined capacity equivalent to just 18,000 barrels of oil.
It is crucial to understand just who actually makes money from oil and how do they do it. There are two ways in which a country can make money from such a natural resource.
In principle, the most profitable should be to set up its own oil company. This is what Norway has done, giving it a GDP which is the highest for any “real economy” country in Europe.
Alternatively, governments can sell licences to private companies and charge them taxes or royalties on what they extract. This is what the UK has done with North Sea oil.
In terms of electricity, the UK has sold off its state-owned generators and so would have to adopt the licence and tax model to profit from renewable electricity. So has it auctioned licences to build wind farms and charged the companies royalties?
Quite on the contrary – the consumer is paying subsidies to renewable energy operators through Feed in Tariffs and Renewable Obligation Certificates!
It is not at all clear that a country, as opposed to company, can make money out of electricity unless the state owns the electricity company. While a number of countries are successful exporters of electricity, they all have particular characteristics which do not apply to Scotland.
For a start, their electricity is cheap to produce; it is usually hydro, but in the case of France it is nuclear. French nuclear reactors have been much cheaper than those built in the UK and France has the cheapest electricity in Europe.
UK renewable electricity is guaranteed a price at least twice the current wholesale market rate. If overseas customers do not choose to pay this premium, and it’s hard to see why the would, then our electricity exports would in effect have to be subsidised by the taxpayer.
Then their generation tends to be a controllable resource. Hydro is the most flexible form of generation and so can be sold when export demand is high attracting a high price. French nuclear is less flexible, but unlike wind it is controllable. France also has substantial hydro capacity.
Importantly, they also tend to have a choice of customers. Norway sells its cheaply produced hydro to Sweden, Denmark and Germany, France to Germany, Benelux and the UK.
None of these conditions apply to Scotland. Our wind generated surplus will be expensive, uncontrollable, saleable only to England and any profits will go to private companies – mostly owned by German and Spanish shareholders or the French government.
Denmark, with more than 20% of its capacity in wind, has the most expensive electricity in Europe. At times of surplus wind it is sold at the bottom of the market to Germany (whose own wind generation will be peaking as well) Sweden (which has plenty nuclear and hydro capacity of its own) and to Norway. On the other hand when the wind is not blowing and Denmark’s demand is high, they must buy in electricity at a premium price.
Norway is a major electricity exporter, having several times as much hydro capacity as it actually needs. It uses this for energy intensive industries such as aluminium smelting. Norway is happy to obtain nearly free extra power at the Danish taxpayer and consumer’s expense. This also makes a nonsense of the idea that we might build a link to Norway to sell them electricity at a profit.
The other great hope of renewable energy enthusiasts is that Scotland can build an industry to support wind power generation and sell expertise to the rest of the world. Alas, we are about 20 years too late to cash in on onshore wind power. That market is dominated by manufacturers in Germany, Denmark and the US.
The billions which Scotland has “invested” in wind turbines have mostly gone to these countries. What is spent locally is the relatively small proportion of the total cost in low-tech engineering and construction.
But what about the forthcoming boom in “marine energy” where we can hope to be leaders in the field?
Marine energy, in the form of offshore wind turbines, is now almost as well established a technology as onshore wind. And it is dominated by the same countries and companies as onshore. All the existing offshore wind is in a relatively benign environment like the southern North Sea. There is no particular difficulty in putting turbines in such locations (though there appear to be problems in maintenance) and there are plenty of suitable sites available, such as the Baltic and the Mediterranean.
It would be quite another matter to put turbines in a more demanding environment such as exists off most coasts of Scotland. In fact, no one has yet done this. Indeed, two companies, SSE and Olsen have recently pulled out of major offshore projects.
But even if we do manage to build a major wind power facility in deep and stormy waters, who else is going to want to do the same when there are less difficult sites?
The SNP’s regular boast that Scotland has so much of Europe’s marine energy potential is double edged – it also means that Scotland is itself most of the market for the relevant technology, and in the case of the most challenging and expensive, perhaps the only market.
Professor Jack Ponton is a member of the Scientific Alliance Scotland.
Scottish Energy News
Electricity is one commodity where its consumption is instantaneous, such that any serious contender looking to supply it simply has to guarantee households and businesses that it will be available “on-demand”. And that’s something that wind power cannot and will never be able to do.
To peddle it as anything but a “power-generation-pup” is to simply take power punters for a ride.
"Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising... 