Wind-power does almost nothing to cut emissions of CO2 because its output is so unpredictable. This makes its fossil-fuel backup highly inefficient and tends to offset the savings as it makes. New Labour’s ‘Renewables Obligations’ subsidy schemes do not oblige electricity suppliers to measure cuts in CO2 emissions. If anyone tried, the game would be up.
While our critics simply ignore this argument, it recently received a welcome boost. VoS News found on the internet a presentation by a senior manager at Elsam, Western Denmark's biggest electricity generator. Made at a Copenhagen energy conference in May, it lists what it calls ‘challenges’ for the Danish energy system. Two of these translate as follows:
- The forced development of wind turbines in Denmark raises the demand for subsidy in øre/kWh;
- The increased development of wind turbines does not reduce Danish CO2 emissions.
The argument is simple. Denmark, unable to absorb most of its wind output, exports over 80 per cent of it. By definition, this does not cut Danish emissions.
Much of it goes to Scandinavian suppliers (with six per cent losses en route) to replace genuinely clean hydro power or Swedish nuclear. So it doesn’t cut emissions there either. Whilst Danish wind-power generators are heavily subsidised, buyers from other countries pay the going rate and sometimes even charge for taking it.
Buying electricity at giveaway prices allows generators to turn their hydro off, save water – and wait for the wind to drop so that they can sell the hydro at better prices. To Denmark, even.
It’s high time to scotch the myth that 20 per cent of Danish electricity consumption comes from wind power . It doesn’t. West Denmark generates the equivalent of about 20 per cent of its consumption from wind power – and tries to find someone else, somewhere else, to buy it.
