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WIND POWER

Capacity increased by 11.3 GW in 2005 to reach a total of 59 GW.

Germany is the world leader, with 31 percent of the world's installed capacity,

followed by Spain, the USA, India and Denmark.

 

The big surprise among the five leaders was the recovery and surge in production in the USA after years of stagnation. Guaranteed production tax credits, valid for a three year period instead of annually have justified the new investment in renewable energy.

 

Growth is expected to continue. As the leaders consolidate and re-power smaller installations with larger turbines, the market is now widening and entering a new phase with many new countries entering the market for renewable energy resources, such as wind.

 

@: http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/news/191901915

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re Wind power report shows facts instead of myths

 

http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/news/191901915

excellent find , i tried to see the origonal report but it is very expensive $1577!!!!

 

the article goes on

 

.....study from the Deutsche-Energie Agentur. ......suggests that while wind power capacity will reach 48 GW by 2020 in Germany, the source is so intermittent and unreliable that it is equivalent to only 2 GW of stable fossil fuel capacity.

and

 

.....because of this variability in wind, back-up fossil fuel plants must be operated at low load to maintain system reliability. There is new evidence that shows that switching base load fossil fuel plants on and off to balance a system produces higher carbon emissions than continuous operation

so existing power stations have to operate at less than optimum efficiency!!!!

result: expensive energy form wind + uneccessarily expensive energy form coal etc

the economics of the lunatic asylum imho!!

 

and concludes

ABS Energy Research's report does not relegate wind power to the dustbin. But it does show how essential proper analysis is to establish what renewable energy can and cannot deliver and how it must be accommodated within a total electricity generation system. Objective analysis is essential. Nearly every one of the points described in the study has been labeled a "myth" by a lobby group

 

source of the report

http://www.absenergyresearch.com/

 

ABS is an independent energy market research company founded in 1990. We specialise in energy market research reports, analysis, databases, forecasts and energy market consulting. Our global energy market research reports cover the electricity, water and waste, gas and renewable energy markets

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surprisingly Old Ned at number watch came to the same conclusion way back in 2003!!!!!!!!! and his advice didnt cost $1577 although it was a bit short on detail

 

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2003%20May.htm#wheeze

Nature notes By Old Ned

(best read with joe grundy or cold comfort farm in mind)

 

I promised to be with you again about muck-spreading time, but I extended me little holiday to help out a widder woman in California. It was there I got me big idea. We bain’t afarming of horganics no more, we’m afarming of WIND. What with that plumbago in me back and old George’s arthuritis, we got fed up with the horganic farming, even though it was a nice little earner. Any way, to cut a long story short, we have rented out our land to a wind farming company and they built these giant windmills on our hill. Wonderful sight they are and you can see them for twenty miles around.

 

Acorst, some people didn’t like it. Old Miss Smallpiece went orf ’er rocker. She sent letters all over the place, then suddenly stopped. Old George and me heard ’er a telling of the vicar when we was sitting by the open window of the pub. “Such an unpleasant young man called at my little cottage yesterday.” She says “He wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He told me if I knew what was good for me I would learn to keep my trap shut.” ’Ow we did larf! We haven’t seen ’er out since.

 

I don’t know what they’m all acomplainin’ about. As Old George says “If them daft taxpayers wants to give us their money for something that don’t work ’alf the time, ’oo are we to deprive them of the pleasure?"

 

Acorst, we won’t be living up there no more. It’s too damned noisy and our cottages ’ad to come down to make way for a couple more windmills. Well, that old thatch ’as bin in my family for over three ’undred years. About time it come down. I got a nice little town ’ouse down in the valley now. Only a tiny bit o’ land, but I soon ’ad that concreted over.

 

Next time I ‘opes to be givin’ you a few tips on ’ow to compost ’eaps of dead birds.

8/5/3

 

and if you want the details of the subsidy system

http://www.nowap.co.uk/page7.html

 

concludes with

1. Onshore wind is very significantly over subsidised. The NAO says that a buyout prince of £15 would be sufficient to support most projects, and thus we can conclude that the subsidy stream is in excess of needs by at least 33%.

2. The Renewables Obligation is a very expensive way to save CO2.

3. The RO is faulty in so far as it does not distinguish between technologies of varying merits.

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  • 3 weeks later...

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/tops...x?ID=BD4A254879

 

23 August 2006 Energy not quite as free as the wind by Oliver Marc Hartwich

 

 

CAPE Town has, with much fanfare, just embraced wind power, that green panacea of sustainable and clean energy. But we are most unlikely to hear of its cost, its inefficiency and, indeed, its damage to the environment. We will hear that wind power helps curb our greenhouse-gas emissions, makes the country less dependent on fossil fuels and energy imports and — the icing on the cake — also creates jobs. Surely this is the solution to many of the world’s biggest problems? To see if these alleged benefits actually stand up to closer scrutiny, let us look at a country held up as a shining example: Germany. ....................

 

article then discusses the evolution of the german subsidy system (curenltly guaranteed price of €0,091/kWh for wind farms, a good three times the German average production cost of electricity of €0,025 to €0,03.)

and proceeds to knock down the usual well known myths and finishes with

 

................The German experience does not prove that wind energy can never be viable, but it does show that state interference with the market can create enormous economic and ecological distortions.

 

 

If wind energy really is the energy of the future it must prove itself in the market without state subsidies, but this has not yet happened anywhere.

 

Cape Town is asking for a voluntary levy of 25c/kWh from businesses, and is relying on sponsorship and soft loans. In the end, these extra costs come down to levies on taxpayers and consumers

 

 

Looks like more over priced wind electricity for SA and germany

Whats so bad about coal?????

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if conventional energy prices keep rising,

we will be very glad to have "expensive" windpower

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  • 3 months later...

Anyone heard much about this guy?

 

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/...2523876,00.html

 

Not quite sure as to what he's achieving, how he's doing it, etc.. Is this the way we are going?

 

"Undaunted, he came up with a bold solution. “I decided that the only way to make the venture work was to cut out the middle man and reach the end user directly."

How exactly does he do that? How does he bypass our electricity provider? (take npower as an example) Plus, to reach the end user directly he can't bypass the national grid.

I've only just scanned this article, to apologies if it's obvious.

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How exactly does he do that? How does he bypass our electricity provider? (take npower as an example)

 

Plus, to reach the end user directly he can't bypass the national grid.

I've only just scanned this article, to apologies if it's obvious.

 

From my limited understanding after reading the article, he's not by-passing the National Grid.

 

He's still using the National Grid as a means of distribution only, the same way a telephone company uses BT's network or Arriva trains use the Railway network's lines.

 

Just that he doesn't sell the electricity to the National Grid, instead sells it to the customer, distributing it to them over the National grid's network and delivering it as power to the end user. The same way that E-on or N-Power do.

 

Here's the website if people are interested, I haven't read it yet, so i could be utterly and totally kerwrong, but have a look for yourself.

 

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/

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This thread has covered the pros and cons of wind power. The basc problem is in the presentation to a public that has lost touch with energy realities. I'd like to present my "take" on why this is. This loss of contact with energy reality is the fatal weakness of

all industrialised societies as we approach Peak Oil.

 

After WW2, the standard of living of working class people in Europe was not really dramatically better than in the Soviet Empire. On both sides, the workers toiled in dirty, dangerous jobs and looked up at a superior class that enjoyed motor cars, international travel and owned big houses. The exception was North America, where life in 1945 was already pretty close to what it is today in Europe. This is because the USA discovered immense domestic oil fields in the 1920s, prompting Henry Ford to pioneer cheap, mass-produced cars. US mass production had a major influence in the Allied side winning the war (Germany did not introduce mass production until about 1943).

 

So the obvious collective interest of TPTB in Western Europe was to emulate the high material living standards of the US to "prove" that capitalist democracy was better than Soviet Communism. As it happens, had the realities of the latter been better known in the West, there would not have been such a sense of competition! But anyway, the years 1945-73 were devoted to the West striving to provide its people with reliable and cheap electricity, cheap motor cars and motorways to drive them o and cheap fuel to put in them. The amasing waste of life in road accidents was ignored - one of the most fascinating sociological factors of the Cold War. Anyway, the rest is history and TPTB in the West did create what amounts to a protected, childish playpen for their populations. Modern consumer societies are completely saled off from the realities of survival that have dogged humanity for most of history. We do not have to worry about this year's harvest, because it is not remotely likely we are going to starve to death this winter (or rather, next spring, the traditional season of starvation). The industrialised populations have been cossetted by cheap energy delivered via reliable utilities for so long that they have lost any sense of danger. They have become the classic "dodos".

 

This is why wind power can't be understood by the general population. Wind turbines look impressive and they get a lot of authenticity from the "green" movement. Few people enquire into the realities of their operation because too few people are conditioned to enquire into the realities that sustain their safe little lives. Most people do not have a clue where their petrol comes from or how it gets to them, or their bread, or their water or their electricity. They are as clueless as laboratory animals.

 

The fact that we are falling gradually back onto ancient sources of power like wind, waves, solar, biofuels and so forth is the deeply ominous evidence that our expectation of living forever in a playpen is being reclaimed by reality - a very harsh reality. That very harsh reality is that for most of history energy has been expensive and unreliable and there has never been enough of it to prevent recurrent starvation. There is nothing "wrong" with wind turbines; they just are what they are. Rainfall is intermittent and unreliable, but we put up with it because we never got as far as turning the sky into a reliable utility (imagine how boring life would be had we done so!). Wind turbines are useful and we will need a lot more of them. We will probably have to accept lower standards of reliability of our electricity after Peak Oil, and this may lead to restlessness by the Fatted Masses.

 

Note that wind power works best in cooperation with hydro power. Danish wind power pumps Norwegian water uphill and then when the wind dies the hydro feeds back into Denmark. That is a particular arrangement that works well. Maybe the Chinese will develop a similar idea with their great hydro resources.

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I'm going to wander OT here, so apologies in advance.

 

This public disconnect is apparent in many areas.

 

As Malco touches on, (good post, BTW), food production and packaging means I don't have to worry about slaughtering my own animals to survive, though a film like 'Babe' might occasionally tug on the heartstrings and remind people where pork chops actually come from.

 

The £1 item of clothing from Primark, or a DVD player that's cheaper than the DVD it's playing must be exploiting someone down the line somewhere. Fair enough, that's market forces at work, but I wonder how many people see past the price tag and question why. I remember my mother darning socks and patching clothes. It's cheaper in time and effort to replace than repair many goods - at least for the time being.

 

These examples are dependent on sufficient resources and ultimately, of course on energy for production, manufacture, transport, etc.

 

While many people may be ignorant or unquestioning, I suspect there is an element of 'Doublethink' in acknowledging these issues, whilst at the same time thinking or hoping that there won't actually be any personal consequences - like knowing smoking is dangerous but carrying on regardless. And of course a stupefied and unquestioning populace are much easier to control and govern - Juvenal's 'bread and circuses' are still as true today as they were in 1AD.

 

TLM

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  • 2 months later...

an odd place to find criticism of greenieness!!!

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_s...vironmentm.html

A profitable environment

There's one reason why big business is keen on wind energy in the Catskill mountains: lucrative tax breaks.

Mark Seddon March 19, 2007

concludes

..............No, the real reason that Goldman Sachs and other big mecantile financiers are backing the giant windmills are good old-fashioned tax breaks. The US government permits a triple depreciation for tax purposes on wind turbines, and those with enough capital can invest in tax shelters that use these depreciations to remove the tax on profits for other ventures..........................Maybe, when it comes to some of the solutions offered by well-intentioned environmentalists, it would be wise to examine the motivation of some of the lobbyists who profess to support them. It's still not too late for the Catskill Mountains.

or perhaps he's being greener than green?

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  • 1 month later...

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20060331_wind.pdf

a good discussion of why windiness is a bad idea; complete with numbers and references

p14-15 highlights a serious drawback that many greenies are unaware of

 

Wind Farms Provide Negligible Useful Electricity

Abstract

Wind farms (i.e. local assemblies of wind turbines) for power generation can only provide negligible useful electricity to grid supply systems. Because they provide intermittent only power, they merely displace thermal power stations onto standby mode while the thermal power stations wait for the wind to change. Wind farms make no significant reduction to pollution because thermal power stations continue using their fuel and producing their emissions while operating in standby mode. The large scale use of wind farms requires upgrading of an electricity grid, more complex grid management, and operation of additional thermal power stations to protect against power cuts in time of supply failure. These effects increase the cost of electricity supplied by the grid in addition to the capital, maintenance and operating costs of the wind farms themselves. Also, wind farms cause significant environmental damage. These severe environmental costs may be worth suffering if wind farms actually provided cheap, clean, useful electricity......................................more

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am not changing subject here but I need some tech info.

 

Questions.

 

1. Why is it that when the wind is very strong the wind turbine gets turned off.

 

2. Is there any benefit to using the turbine to generate DC for hydrolysis to create a liquid fuel or for pumping water back behind a damn for the generation of electricity later.

 

 

My understanding is not high but I need to start somewhere.

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  • 6 months later...

Interesting article. if the claims in the independant for wind energy for 2020 are to be believed then theres a lot to be done.

 

http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_a...icle3236068.ece.

 

Front page spread..........read the internet version for yourselves.

 

Also curious where the investment opportunities could be?

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Interesting article. if the claims in the independant for wind energy for 2020 are to be believed then theres a lot to be done.

 

http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_a...icle3236068.ece.

 

Front page spread..........read the internet version for yourselves.

 

Also curious where the investment opportunities could be?

 

 

Indeed. Whilst this thread presents some forceful arguements against the use of wind, it must be clear to one and all that commercial viability and environmental impact are secondary to political will. Surely on an investment forum, we should concern ourselves with the opportunities presented by current policy, rather than trying to sway that policy.

 

Given all three parties back this scheme we must ask ourselves:

 

1 ) who will be the principal engineers?

2 ) who will be the subcontractors?

3 ) which systems will they choose?

4 ) where are the greatest opportunities?

5 ) what will be the source of finances?

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  • 1 month later...

too many political aspects to this one, i fear not to mention reliability

oh well another windmill self destruscts, this one in sweden - a vestas v52 0.85MW model! justas well noone was in the way

http://www.helagotland.se/nyheter/artikel....ticleid=3113356

Vingen flög 40 meter

Ett flera ton tungt rotorblad lossnade från vindkraftverk

-Det här får bara inte hända. Folk går med hundar i det här området!

Det säger Hardy Pettersson i Näs. Han bor mindre än en kilometer från den åker där ett rotorblad lossnade från ett vindkraftverk i fredags morse.

Det flera ton tunga rotorbladet skapade en meterdjup krater vid nedslaget...................more

 

....."To us it is serious. But to the windmill industry in general it is very serious, says Hans Ljungstrom from Vestasvind Svenska AB........

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and what do we find? fewer farms are being built due to planning delays

also they are adding £60 pa to he average electricity bill

http://tpa.typepad.com/research/2008/02/the-human-cost.html

February 04, 2008

The human cost of wind power vanity projects

Today the Financial Times reports on the poor performance of the Renewables Obligation in encouraging wind farms:..................more

the comment at the end is priceless!

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To me the choice is between wind electricity and no electricity at all. What all these sites fail to state is what happens when we run out of Gas, Coal and even Nuclear, all of which are finite resources?

 

I would accept that for now it is more expensive, but we are seriously running out of gas, seriously quickly.

 

The thing is if we could ramp up wind turbines country and offshore wide, which would replace Gas then that would eventually reduce the price of Gas.

 

I read on theoildrum.com that the EROEI of wind is less than currently starting oil and gas projects. And my Vestas wind has done pretty well so far thank you. As for one wind turbine failing - how many people have been killed from sulphur and other pollution and mining for Coal????

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congratulations on vesta alex; however i feel that you take a view which is too bleak . yes these thhings will all become less readily availabel as time passes but you neglect the ability of people to find an ingenious way out of a tight spot.

uranium - people have only recently started looking for uranium after a 50 years absence,

thorium - is more common than uranium and provides fissile material; only a few experimental reactores have been made

breeder reactors - use waste products from existing reactors

 

to replace england's current generation with wind generation would reqire about 50% of the land area to be carpeted with generators and wwe would still need gas/coal/nuclear backup for wen the wind doesnt blow eg a "blocking high " over the uk

 

why are windy breakdowns important? it puts up the insurance cost for breakdown and 3rd party liability making tei electricity more expensive + down time costs etc

http://www.spiegel.de/international/german...,500902,00.html

......insurers, who raced into the new market in the 1990s, wind power is now considered a risky sector. Industry giant Allianz was faced with around a thousand damage claims in 2006 alone.....

 

and on the political front

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=77739

Wind energy's future uncertain as Senate discards tax credit

by Leena Krishnaswamy Feb 07, 2008

The wind industry suffered a setback Thursday after the U.S.

Senate passed an economic-stimulus bill but left out

language that would have restored Federal Production Tax Credits (PTC) for renewable energy providers, due to expire at the end of the year.................more

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  • 4 weeks later...

oh dear, more bad windiness news

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/27/di...rating_turbine/

http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2008/02/video...d_turbine_i.php

Disintegrating wind turbine caught on camera

Spectacular Danish brake failure By Lester Haines 27th February 2008

YouTubers have been enjoying some spectacular footage of the disintegration of a Danish wind turbine which ended up a bit broken after its brakes failed................

apparently there were two that faiiled last week!!!

 

and we also hear of power cuts in texas due to no wind!

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNew...=22&sp=true

Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency Feb 27, 2008

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A drop in wind generation late on Tuesday, coupled with colder weather, triggered an electric emergency that caused the Texas grid operator to cut service............

thanks to numberwatch for spotting this.......think i'll pop out and buy some candles

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2008%20February.htm#starts

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  • 1 month later...

sound s like ambrose has found a pair of rose tinted specs? or too much sangria?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...7/ccwind107.xml

Spain's gain from wind power is plain to see

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Oviedo, northern Spain 08/04/2008

Windmills pay. On a breezy Saturday at the end of March, Aeolian Parks scattered across the hill-top ridges and off-shore sandbanks of Spain produced 40.8pc of the country's electricity needs - 9,862 megawatts to be precise.....................more

 

what he forgets is 1) they only generate 30% of the time so the rest of the time they rely on normal power stations and when they are generating you still have to have the bakup ticking over uneconomically 2) there is no mentiion of capital or operating subsidy 3) no mention of upgading trhe grid to cope with these new power surges which no doubt recieved a eu subsidy provided by us 4) no mention of decomiisionig provisiions. No wonder eon is coy about the economics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dr north jprovides a rebuttal

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/04/q...of-subsidy.html

A question of subsidy

An utterly mad piece comes from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph today.

Usually our favourite economic commentator (well, mine), he has been in Oviedo, northern Spain, writing an unashamed "puff" for the wind industry......................more

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  • 3 weeks later...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e2a5b99c-16ea-11...?nclick_check=1

Shell pulls out of key wind power project

By Fiona Harvey and Rebecca Bream in London April 30 2008 23:39

Plans for a massive expansion of offshore wind power generation were in disarray on Wednesday night after Shell pulled out of the UK’s flagship project.

The London Array was to be the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, with 341 turbines in the Thames Estuary capable of generating 1,000 megawatts of power ................more

but of course it will only generate 300mw on an annualised basis

also cost escalattion has been alarming - from £1b in 03 to 2.5b today

so the capital cost will be £8.3m per mw (which will not include decommisioning costs)

the article omits to mention how much subsidy the taxpayer will provide

http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

has a graph showing capital costs of generating power in 2003

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  • 5 weeks later...
WIND POWER

Capacity increased by 11.3 GW in 2005 to reach a total of 59 GW.

Germany is the world leader, with 31 percent of the world's installed capacity,

followed by Spain, the USA, India and Denmark.

 

The big surprise among the five leaders was the recovery and surge in production in the USA after years of stagnation. Guaranteed production tax credits, valid for a three year period instead of annually have justified the new investment in renewable energy.

 

Growth is expected to continue. As the leaders consolidate and re-power smaller installations with larger turbines, the market is now widening and entering a new phase with many new countries entering the market for renewable energy resources, such as wind.

 

@: http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/news/191901915

 

NORWAY: May 27, 2008

 

OSLO - Norway could become "Europe's battery" by developing huge sea-based wind parks costing up to $44 billion by 2025, Norway's Oil and Energy Minister said on Monday.

 

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cf...48504/story.htm

 

 

 

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T. Boone Pickens on his wind farm investments

 

Pickens Calls Speculation a `Scapegoat' for Oil Prices June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of BP Capital LLC, talks with Bloomberg's Mike Schneider from Houston about his investment in wind power, the impact of speculation and demand on oil prices and Microsoft Corp.'s efforts to buy Yahoo! Inc. (Source: Bloomberg)

 

(video)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/av/

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  • 1 month later...
WIND POWER

Capacity increased by 11.3 GW in 2005 to reach a total of 59 GW.

Germany is the world leader, with 31 percent of the world's installed capacity,

 

@: http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/news/191901915

 

Germany continues to lead the way.

 

http://www.thelocal.de/12917/20080706/

 

Tiefensee told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the wind farms would be

built in the Baltic and North seas and said some 2,000 windmills should soon be producing 11,000 megawatts of electricity.

 

The government is aiming to obtain "25,000 megawatts of energy from wind farms by 2030", Tiefensee said.

 

"The rise in the oil price has made this all the more pressing and the interest from investors shows that it is economically viable," he added.

 

The first wind farm will go up off Borkum island in the North Sea later this year, the paper said.

 

 

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hmm..................2000 windmills at £60m each is £120b, and have they booked teh jack up barges? and have they upgraded the grid ? and hve they built the gas/ coal backup capacity?

of couse not, these are "minor details " and havent been costed yet!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7206780.stm

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/06/m...ss-exposed.html

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/05/wages-of-green.html

oh well, i suppose trhe greenies will be pleased with all this hot air!

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