WWII showed what we can do, but we won't do it because we would probably actually have to make trade offs

. But yes, let us shutdown most of the automobile industry and use that capital to produce things like wind turbines. Restrict auto output to those autos getting at least 45 mpg.

WWII was an obvious crisis that required extraordinary efforts and, in essence, a dictatorial approach to industry that forced them to produce weapons for the war effort. In my view , peak oil and global warming are problems that will dwarf the threats encountered in WWII.

But we will blunder, unprepared, into the coming decades.

Chris / Jerome - do you think this U Turn by Hutton is driven by climate concern or a more acute concern that the UK is fast running out of indigenous energy?

I'm not sure I understand the numbers

When calculating the number of 5MW turbines is it really 6600 i.e. 33000/5.

Why is it you do not have to include the capacity factor and technical availability i.e. 33000/(5*.4*.95). That would mean over 17000 turbines ?

Also is it realistic to assume these are all 5MW turbines - are 5MW off-shore turbines proven yet and would all off-shore sites be suitable for these big turbines ?

33GW-worth of wind turbines installed in the seas around Britain by 2020.

~7000 off shore turbines in 13 years, seems eminently achievable.

There are some 4400 days until 2020. 33GW from 5MW turbines means 6600 or well over one a day.

Hutton will announce at an energy conference in Berlin tomorrow that he wants to see this target raised to 33GW-worth of wind turbines installed in the seas around Britain by 2020.

To get anywhere close to the 80% reduction in C0₂ compared to 1990 levels by 2050 (required to avoid a 2 degree C temperature rise say the IPCC) the world will have to do much more than 20% reduction in primary energy by 2020.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, but only for the UK - the whole world needs to do the same or we fail in the task.

by 2020 ? We are just three weeks from 2008 so BY 2020 means 12 years not 13!

4400 days is correct though. :-) But in reality they won't start installing them for a couple of years or so - so 10 years or 3650 days.

Eminently achievable? The numbers proposed could be a serious uphill task.

Britain’s current range of coal, gas, nuclear and other power stations are capable of generating 75 gigawatts (GW) of electricity. By 2020 most of the nuclear will be gone -close to half the windmills will be replacing that, so no C0₂savings there.

The 33 GW needs to be actual - if it isn't we don't get the 20% to 40% reduction in C0₂ required - the 5 MW windmills only produce full power 38% of the time (3300 hours per year).

http://www.reuk.co.uk/Worlds-Largest-Wind-Turbine-Generator.htm

So, that means we actually need ~90 GW of windmills

that's 18,000 5GW windmills - around 5 of these monsters every day.

That is certainly a 'war footing' porduction rate.

In WW2 all effort was directed to making tanks and aeroplanes etc.

Which parts of what remains of UK manufacturing will be shut down by the government do you suppose?

Hi Cerenkov,

Not for me. I want my electricity through metal wires, and wind turbines and solar generators are fine ways to get it.

Dave

Here's an idea cherkanov, while the rest of us in civilization try to keep a resemblance of the civilization we endure. You and your survivalist bunch, can all create your little sustainable village in the woods or whatever, while the rest of us live our lives the way we want to. We both win. :)

Anyway, great article Jerome, keep up the good work. Best hopes for great alt energy solutions.

Fair point Cherenkov...I will stay with your words, except at the very finish of the paragraph....let's make it a fair game....

"Could one figure out how much energy went into the making of the mining vehicles, the roads, the crushers, the belt movers, the mining itself, the building of railroads, the building of the rail stock, building the smelters, the buildings that house all of this equipment, the roads that transport the parts, the building of the jigs, the tools, the factory, the hand tools which shape the metals and the fiber composites, the cost of the vehicles that transport the parts to the sea, the ships that transport the parts to their assembly points, the cranes, the cement and anchoring bolts, the energy cost of the electrical grid, the cost of the metals in the wires, the cost of mining the metals used in the grid, the cost of the maintenance ships, the cost of their berths, the cost of feeding and housing and transporting and clothing the many, many people who are responsible for the creation of these......coal mines....oil wells.....water oil separation plants, natural gas drills....gas treatment facilities.....pipelines....."

Don't hold renewables to a standard that the petroleum/coal industry have never been held to.
RC

The implication here is that all this stuff is constructed for the wind industry. I suspect that the economic justification was primarily for the automotive industry. Grain, iron, coal and cars are probably the biggest users of the railway, for example, not the occasional turbine tower.

I don't dispute that the world might be a better place if we wore hemp clothes and lived in straw bale houses, I just can't see a) convincing many Wall Street investment brokers of this or b) what to do with the infrastructure we now have.

Lots of good thoughts Cherenkov. I think we are working on the maintenance of the existing electrical grid through industrially supplied renewable (big money for huge projects) which come from FF supplied factories. So no it is not a cradle to grave renewable process and never will be. If we manage to build enough of this in time and to block all other factories, such as for autos, we could possible maintain a suitable lifestyle for some time with what we build before all the FF is gone. However when it is gone then we will be limited to what we get fom the renewables and have to repair them and replace them with the resources they give.

Given the trends over time I suspect the existing population, in say 50-60 years will let it go too long, depending on this massively built out renewable infrastructure (built by the current generations for them and us due to our great fears). We have similarly let our roads, bridges, schools, water and sewage lines, gas pipelines, in short everything decay. The finances currently to renew this infrastructure hardly exist and the population is graying fast and everyone is in debt. So to get a massive new infrasturcture based on renewables all debts will be forgiven and pension plans scratched and everyone will have to go on basic welfare and help in the factories building windmills and tear up roads to get at sewage pipes instead of chatting on mobile phones while flying or driving or playing nintendo DS and fix bridges and schools. Day one of the new economy. Everyone will learn to do permaculture garden. After the massive switchover is accomplished and rationing is discoontinued (mid 1950s in Britain by the way) ca. 2030s due to self sufficiency then people will get lazy and greedy and neglect maintaence of the wind mills and sewage pipes and start wasting again as the old conservative geysers die off who were obseessed with renewables and permaculture and the young liberals come promising free everything to everyone (New society LBJ types). If we are successful population will stabilize however in the rich north of the globe although India and China and Africa could definitely suffer rapid catastrophic reductions through lack of basic resources such as water and soil and fertilizer. The immediate problem in this round is to avoid massive and immediate Dieoff in our lifetimes through drastic measures. I suspect the next time around the population will hopefully be rather smaller, having gotten used to the ZPG (Zero poulation growth) and ZEG(zero economic growth) paradigm drummed incessantly into them by their fathers, and the adjustment next time(ca. in 2080s) will be towards a non-grid system(sewage and pipelines and electrical grids, etc.) as without FFs to buildout or repair the huge renewables(like pyramids or colosseum) they will go back to earlier more primitive forms of energy production or just to a totally decentralized natural energy sytem plus some smaller local industrial renewable systems. Your solution, Chrerenkov is probably 150-200 years out after we just don't have much left at all to get by on and the populationis back to the level of 1700-1800.

This sceanrio is of course barring massive catastrophic change due to climate change or similar (e.g. nuclear war) or just plain stupidity on the part of politicians to truly ignore everything and not at least attempt to make renewables work.

I think a transtion with a massive drawdown of FFs is the only way we will go because that is what is in the people's heads in terms of current ideology. They do not nor can they at current population levels and standards of living be expected to choose effective middle ages or stone age living standards just so that theycan preserve existing FF reserves for thousands of years for all posterity, just in case something is needed sometime. This would be too forward looking and prescient.

Is there some way to calculate all of the embodied energy in one of these windmills?

Vestas provided calculations that it took less than a year for a wind turbine to cover the energy required to build it. Obviously, they are not partial in this, but their calculation still gives a good idea of the excellent EROEI of wind power.

See their various studies from this page.

- there are quite a few stakeholders. Fishermen, shipping lanes, navy areas, and a bewildering number of underground pipelines, telecom cables, natural reserves and more... All have to be consulted and tamed. It's not always easier, but the projects are bigger, so the effort is less costly on a per-MW basis

- feed-in tariffs are set by law and are an obligation for the local utility/network which offtakes the power (and which can pass this on to consumers, naturally). This has no direct impact on market prices as these volumes do not go into the traded market (other than, as mentioned above, if lots of wind power is supplied, then net demand for other sources will be lower and prices correspondingly lower)

Costs used to be going down nicely, but have trended up again in the past two years - just like in all industrial sectors. Cost of metals, other commodities, cranes and vessels, and the fact that this is a suppliers' market, have pushed prices up significantly - although probably less than in other power-generation sectors.

Until this summer's crisis, this was to a large extent balanced by increasingly aggressive financing costs. Now financing costs are no longer improving, and may recede a bit (I hope!)

I think vertical axis windmills have showed some promise on the efficiency side:

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/vertical_axis_wind_turbines.htm
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Vertical_Axis_Wind_Turbines

However it remains to be seen how these scale up to larger sizes / installations / higher winds. AFAIK, so far they've been discarded as a solution due to aforementioned reasons.

The VTT study referred above is at:

Design and operation of power systems with large amounts of wind power - State-of-the-art report
http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/workingpapers/2007/W82.pdf

Wind's marginal cost is effectively zero: what gives you another kWh is more wind, no other input is needed.

If you take a more medium term approach, then wind's marginal cost is that of recurrent operations and maintenance, something in the order of 0.2-0.4c/kWh. For actual cost, you then need to add unscheduled maintenance (another couple tenth of cents/kWh) and debt service (3-5c/kWh) - then you can add the profit requirement for an all-in cost.

(All these are onshore. You can double (or more) the operating costs, and multiply financing costs by 1.5-2 to get rough numbers for offshore.

Boats will be used for off-shore maintenance, not helicopters.

Some wind farms are equipped to be serviced by helicopters, and this may be useful for wind farms that are very far from the shore, but this will alwyas be a very limited solution, for two reasons:

- helicopter drops on wind turbines require pretty much the same kind of weather as boat landings, so they do not really increase the windomw for interventions (excet, as noted above, for faraway farms where the time to come from shore may matter);

- loads that can be carried by helicopters to wind turbines are quire limited (300kg IIRC), which also limits the scope of intervnetions that can be made.

This is a subject I have been following for a while as well. Part of me doesn't want to try and divert attention to the excellent progress in terms of wind, but it is also worthy of discussion.

I guess my own gut reaction is that solar (esp CSP solar) is further behind the technological curve, and thus they aren't quite ready for a massive build-out yet.

I did note something in the news recently about Algeria planning an undersea cable to bring solar power to Germany:

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/45347/story.htm

which seems relevant in a way.

Don't be silly.. The clear aim of the UK Govt is to encourage everyone else to develop these technologies so we can buy what we want from them when we want it. Their chums in the City have told them they're not going to invest in new technologies whilst they're having so much fun playing with private equity and hedge funds.

They are of course also making a bundle out of carbon trading. Something around 1bn Euros in commission so far. The banks and other financial institutions aren't going to give up that easy money.

Give them the choice:

a) No electricity;

b) Windmills.

Wind energy vs. scenery is the tough nut to crack. My North Carolina has the potential to be the Saudi Arabia of the SE US when it comes to wind energy, in between our mountains and offshore. Unfortunately, both locations are also big tourism destinations. We all know that there is going to be a lot less tourism in the future, but we're all way ahead of the pack in realizing that right now. Unfortunately, right now is when we need to be starting to put these in.

From my perspective, a smarter strategy for areas like our WNC mountains would be to negotiate for some sort of long-term compensation for the presumed losses to the tourism industry caused by the spoiling of viewsheds in exchange for permitting the WTs. As this compensation would likely be computed on an assumption that tourism traffic would otherwise remain unchanged or increase, that would end up being a pretty good deal for our local economy if tourism actually did decrease. Note that doing this (internalizing ALL the externalities -- something that should be done but rarely is in the energy business) would raise the cost of wind energy. Of course, if all the externalities were internalized for all other forms of energy as well, then wind would be very competitive.

One thought that comes to mind as far as the mountains are concerned: We do have an occasional cell, broadcast, or microwave tower up on the ridgelines (best location for wind), so is there any possibility of using wind generator towers to also mount communications or broadcast antennas, or would the wind turbine generate too much interference? I am thinking that if the two could co-exist, then it might be possible to put in WTs at those existing tower location as a first step -- the "camel's nose under the tent" tactic.

My gut feeling is that the technical challenge of spotting low level attack aircraft despite the presence of wind turbines is less than technical challenge of providing a few tens of GW of indigenous, low-CO2 energy. Once-upon-a-time the UK had the best radar scientists/engineers in the world, surely a few wind turbines don’t represent such a problem?

the UK Ministry of Defence, which has opposed most, if not all, planning applications on the grounds that the turbines would obscure radar monitoring for low level attack aircraft.

hahahahhahahah

Whilst true - this really is an enormous joke by the MOD. Who exactly is it that is wanting to launch a surprise attack on the UK using low flying jets - the Americans? - they already have air bases all over the UK. What about the Germans? I'm sure we would get some sense of warning.

Its time for the MOD to take a broader view of UK national security and to balance the risks of civil unrest stemming from energy decline and energy poverty against the mythical boggie man hurtling across the N Sea 50 ft above the waves.

Why not just put some radar arrays offshore as well, just beyond the WTs? That would actually extend their range, which would be a good thing.

In answer to one of my own questions, I suspect there is a success story buried in this chart in that the decline in FF consumption in Denmark since the 1996 peak may be attributed to wind power and other conservation policies. Population trends and per capita comparisons with other countries needs to be done to complete the picture.

The main thing to understand is that wind power does not reduce the number of gas MW (capacity) by much (only 1MW per 4MW of wind, or less), but it does reduce the number of gas MWh (actual output) significantly (almost one for one). So you still need lots of gas-fired plants, but they don't run as much, which is what matters for carbon emissions, as emissions are proportional to output, NOT to capacity.

So:

- integrating wind into the network requires minor tweaking until it reaches 20% of net production, and more substantial, but easily understood, investment to get to 40%. Until we actually reach these levels (which we are NOWHERE NEAR DOING YET), it is profoundly dangerous to scare deciders off with talk of "highly unreliable" wind;

- stabilising the network with large scale wind power will ultimately require a quite sizable fleet of gas-fired plants that are used only part of the time. I fail to see where the problem is. Many gas-fired plants are built only for peak demand, some functioning - profitably - as little as 3-5% of the time. I expect that many of the existing, partly or wholly amortised, fleet of gas fired plants could see their life extended at very little cost for a very long time and be used only as backup for the mainly wind powered network. MW of gas-fired plants do not emit carbon, only actual MWh do.

- if, in the meantime, we work on storage capacity and other balancing mechanisms, I expect that we'll manage to bring in a lot more wind than we think is now possible. As I mentioned earlier, the French network perator has markedly warmed up to wind in the past year or so, as it sees that it causes fewer problems than it feared, and helps grid stability in other respects (voltage and reactive power, for instance.

UKERC published a report on the impact of intermittency on the grid last year.
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/ResearchProgrammes/TechnologyandPolicyAssessment/...

Clif;
If your blanket opposition to Solar has brought with it a defiance to wind as well, then I might suggest to you that outside of electrical generation, wind, with sails unfurled, will have the growing potential to be moving a lot of goods for us again.. it is also pumping water and doing other work directly.

I still haven't heard your argument against electric-rail freight, electric trolleys, buses as a way for the grid to move much of our food and our butts around.

While it's not the most efficient way to do it, if Mainers get a hiccup in their NG or #2oil supply, do you think that there won't be yet another run on space heaters at the Hardware stores? Already, we have folks leaving their ovens on and open around here, running their hair dryers for a little heat.. My mom has this really cute 'faux woodstove' space heater for her upstairs weaving room, complete with a flickering light show..

What do you mean 'We don't need Electric Power' ? Maine just had an energy watch last weekend due to NG supplies, while a cold snap had the electric baseboards all humming overtime..

Developing Solar power (in its MANY forms, esp incl Solar Heating) IS risk management. It can be broadly distributed, from the utility scale down to the household scale, down to portable radios, flashlights, tool batteries. And people who have added solar will frequently be more conscious of their energy use, not more sanguine about it, and will do extra to buckle down on the watts that they are still paying to 'import' into their homes.

Yes we have to conserve, we have to rethink our power usage in every corner of our lives and see where there is waste, or where we can do something manually that we have been habituated into plugging in.

Best,
Bob

So since I'm now taking over that job, how much will my cut be?

Ayres et al. disagree, and cite increasing electrification as one of the driving forces enabling economic growth in the 20th century.

Electric power is not going to produce food

Food production takes up a few percent of oil&gas use, so there's no threat to it in the near term, and no reason not to use electric combines in the long term.

and move food and everything else

Electrified rail is 2-3x more efficient than fossil rail, and 10x more efficient than trucks.

nor will it heat the homes in the U.S.

Heat pumps are 3x more efficient, even in Canadian winters.

nor will it provide fertilizer

Electrolysis.

Not to mention that fertilizer uses only 3-4% of natural gas production and is highly portable, so it's mere scaremongering to be concerned about that in the short or medium term.

we don't have time and capital to develop a solar economy

An assertion for which you offer zero evidence.

Given how most of your other assertions are well-known to be wrong - each one of the above rebuttals has been provided multiple times previously, with multiple supporting links from multiple people - you can't be expecting anyone to take that kind of wild, unsupported assertion seriously.

As the Peak Oil induced recession begins in 2008

If it doesn't - and the odds are it won't - will you be honest enough to admit it and to learn from your mistake? Or will you keep insisting that the end is nigh...this time for real?

Baseless fear-mongering doesn't help anyone.

very good question.

some ideas related to this can be found in this PDF.

Edit: link address update

Five words: "Vibration very bad for bearings"

AC generators pretty much run at one speed. I'd imagine you'd need pretty complicated gearing to allow for a large turbine speed variance.

The larger the diameter of the blades, the higher the low end of the wind before any energy can be extracted. But the higher the high end too. They also draw more energy the larger the blades at any given wind speed.

I too wondered about why only 3 blades? Many turbo prop aircraft have 4 or even 6 blades. What about counter roatating blades like the Russian Bear aircraft had to help balance?

Surely there is research on this, but would be interesting to see the science of it.

The one thing that has never been talked about is the consequences of harnesing all this wind. Will we get to the point of WT having their own issues with changing local weather patterns? I suspect not as we won't make it to there.

Richard Wakefield

Over on this side of the pond, politicians believe that asking (or even daring to mention conservation/using less) is political suicide. The last president who asked (in a pretty limited way) was Jimmy Carter, and his unpopularity lead to Reagan. Common political wisdom is that conservation had a lot to do with that. It was more likely that the apparent ineptness of the handling of the Iranian hostage crisis had more to do with it. But no politician wants to risk his career testing this assumption. IMO over here, we have to be really careful how we promote conservation lest a political backlash cause much harm.

"Insulation done as in Germany externally and made to look asif the insulation were real bricks was not known to me but perhaps available."

Galaticsurfer:
Please contact me at jkutz(at)kutzwald(dot)com.
I have a pressing need to find out more about the externally applied insulation that looks like bricks.

I live in an old farm house (in the northern Midwest USA) with clay tile structural walls with brick facing on the outside and lathe/plaster on the inside - And NO insulation & no way I have found to insulate inside the walls (clay tiles run some vertical and some horizontal). I have thought of spraying urethane foam covered by (something) but it would look like heck. Almost sprayed last summer, but couldn't bring myself to destroy the beautiful brick exterior look.

Thanks in advance for any information you might be able to supply me.

110 MW are planned for PEI.

Alan

purely from wind condition POV, where are the best places to harness the energy?

UK energy policy is a muddled as ever and I suspect the real policy will be to hope the problem goes away. I would like to see the Government support wave energy which I beleive has the only real long term potential of delivering anything near total energy requirements for the UK. The recent pelemis trials are promising and at a potential yield of 30MW / 100gwh - PA per km2 it is easy to see the potential of large scale deployment in the western approaches, irish sea, North Sea, and North West Scotland.

As for the intermittancy of renewables demand management would appear to be a major part of the answer. In the 1990's I believe the national grid ran trials using radio transmitters to energise 'economy 7' type circuits in domestic properties during lulls in the grid.

I assume long term replacement for gas heating will be heat pumps. GSHP along with water heating appears to be one way of managing supply flutuation. Additionally at a commercial level there are a range of processes that can utlise electric in such a way. Refrigerators, gas compressors, heating.