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My local constituency was going to achieve this honour but unfortunately the local MP Robert Syms (known to be somewhat corrupt) killed the project on utterly b

My local constituency was going to achieve this honour but unfortunately the local MP Robert Syms (known to be somewhat corrupt) killed the project on utterly bullshit grounds (it would barely have affected the view): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm As a contrast, it was also reported today that Hinkley point will be £2.9 billion over budget: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305 luckily for them, they get to charge £92.50 per megawatt hour upon completion - locked in for 10 years. While wind power is costing us £40 per megawatt hour, not guaranteed, and likely to decrease.

Krasnol 7y ago
The "World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019" says that: > even the extended operation of existing reactors is not climate effective as operating costs exceed the costs of competing energy efficiency and new renewable energy options and therefore durably block their implementation. Mycle Schneider concludes: “You can spend a dollar, a euro, a forint or a ruble only once: the climate emergency requires that investment decisions must favor the cheapest and fastest response strategies. The nuclear power option has consistently turned out the most expensive and the slowest.” https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/WNISR2019-Assesses-Climate-Change-and-the-Nuclear-Power-Option.html https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/WNISR2019-Assesses-Climat...
- j9461701 7y ago
  >The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report that explores the global challenges facing the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, a professional anti-nuclear activist, and gives a detailed overview of the global nuclear industry and special analysis on key events and trends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_... Hardly an unbiased source it seems. Regardless, the issues facing nuclear power could be quite easily solved with simple political will. Unlike those of renewable energy, which still do not have economical or technologically feasible solutions to the storage and base load problem. We need only look to France to see the path forward. After the 1973 oil crisis, they resolved never again to be beholden to foreign oil for their grid needs. So they undertook the Messmer Plan, which mass produced a single standardized reactor design in bulk. France converted itself almost entirely over to nuclear power for its base load requirements in just 15 years, with the project coming in under budget and ahead of schedule. Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit. Taking advantage of economy of scale, slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower, using a standardized design to expedite the engineering and approval processes of every individual plant - none of these require some amazing new technology or some new economic system be developed. We could literally start tomorrow, and have the entire first world swapped over to nuclear by the 2030s.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    The recent Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" has an episode on Gates' attempts to build a safe nuclear reactor. It's been blocked by political opposition, not anything technical.
  - Krasnol 7y ago
    > We need only look to France to see the path forward. I hope nobody does that. France is running several overdue reactors, has a history of under-reporting issues, the main electricity generation and distribution company EDF (owned by the state) runs with a net debt of €70 billion and is responsible for the disastrous over budget numbers for Hinkley OP mentioned above. > Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit. Germany sells excess electricity also...It's a flowing market depending on daily prices. The overall price development however showed that it rose in France while it fell in Germany: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/4/40/Change_in_electricity_prices_for_household_consumers_compared_with_previous_year%2C_same_semester%2C_second_half_2018.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/4/... With the continued rise of renewable energy in Germany this development won't stop while France will at some point have to start moving some of their overdue reactors off the grid while new ones are being dropped because of the market situation outlined in the Status Report above: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astrid/france-drops-plans-to-build-sodium-cooled-nuclear-reactor-idUSKCN1VK0MC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri... while the only other new reactor they build Flamanville 3 came up in the news with messed up welding seams...
  - benj111 7y ago
    "slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower" Red tape is there for a reason. Red tape is the rule of law, it's emissions standards, and fines for polluters, employment rights, and safe drinking water. Red tape isn't something to be cast aside to get your own personal pet thing done. I mean, what's the difference between your 'political willpower' and dictatorship?
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      The French approach gets them TGV, Ariane, nuclear power. Surrounding nations rush to add high speed rail after TGV. Meanwhile... The British approach makes it illegal to give government funding for the Channel Tunnel rail link. 12 or 15 years later, another Act is needed and we start bothering with HS1. HS2 and HS3 were allegedly "coming soon" while the Chunnel was being built. Hmm.
Mvandenbergh 7y ago
Offshore wind also has guaranteed strike prices, although as you say much cheaper than HPC. One of the reason HPC strike price is so high is to pay for the guarantee that budget over-runs like this will not have a bill impact. If EDF goes belly-up trying to build it, that's no skin off our noses as bill payers.
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  The guarantee is only for 15 years as well, whereas it’s 35 years for nuclear.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  Contractors look at funded reserves like lions look at red meat.
benj111 7y ago
"known to be somewhat corrupt" Based on the expenses scandal??
- pytester 7y ago
  Local property developments. The expenses scandal was a good litmus test of who in parliament was honest and who wasn't though.
  - benj111 7y ago
    I asked because I googled, and the only thing I could see is a wikipedia reference to the expenses scandal. I've just searched again and cant find anything, so have you got any references?
Gabriel_Martin 7y ago
Affected the view of a world heritage site it seems, to be specific. I looked into it expecting it to be a bullshit reason, but apparently 22 million people visit annually. Perhaps it's a valid reason after all.
- pytester 7y ago
  22 million people do indeed visit Jurassic coast but the wind farm would have been invisible from there. Note the weasel wording in the wikipedia article. It was far enough that it would have been faintly visible from Bournemouth beach. I strongly doubt that a few dots on the horizon would have bothered any tourists. This project wasn't killed because of the view. There were other financial (probably carbon based) interests involved.
- rbg246 7y ago
  I'm no expert on the area however, it's not wilderness area, this is the channel coast, the navy has a firing range next to Lulworth Cove and there is a stack of rusting wrecks just off the coastal path... people just don't like the aesthetics for less than rational reasons but each to their own.
  - ascorbic 7y ago
    It's also adjacent to one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and several of the UK's busiest ports. I visit the area often, and while the area is beautiful, the horizon is always full of ships. Some wind turbines will make no difference.
brownbat 7y ago
Wind farm protests about aesthetics mystify me. Driving through central Kansas, the towers are just this stark reminder of how far we've come, and how little we are. You see nothing, nothing, nothing... then BAM! These massive towers generating energy from the winds on the plains, in a state named for the people of the south wind. All of them impossibly tall, the field going on for miles, your mind doesn't even really process how big an individual one is, let alone the scale of the whole farm. They always hit me like a monument. Like that feeling you might get walking into a cathedral with a slow whistle up at the ceiling. It's more than that, though, it's bundled up with a bit of futurism from the new tech, a bit like finishing a piece of utopian sci fi at the same time. There's no accounting for taste, for sure. So maybe some people are just accustomed to the way certain views used to look and don't want any change. Maybe they grew up there and have strong attachments. It's just hard hearing people dismissing beauty as blight, something that could be sublime if they just looked at it a slightly different way.
- youeseh 7y ago
  We see them dotted across the hills when driving through parts of Northern California - they're beautiful!
- beauzero 7y ago
  I think they also give a beautiful perspective to size and distance in Wyoming and Eastern Montana.
- tobmlt 7y ago
  Well said.
- appstorelottery 7y ago
  I worked in wind energy visualisation and attended many community presentations - I've been up-close to these protests. It's not just about aesthetics, concerns range from fear of lowered real-estate value, low frequency health scares, wildlife concerns, shadow flicker and so on. Like you, I think they are beautiful - however at least here in Holland, that is generally not the case. I've seen a Vestas V164 in the flesh at a testing facility in Denmark and it was quite possibly the most incredibly man made object I've ever seen. With a 164 meter rotor diameter, your eyes almost can't work out how to focus on the blades - especially if you're standing directly under it. One moment the blade tip is close to you, and moments later it's 160 meters away. Amazing stuff.
Robotbeat 7y ago
I'm super pro-renewables. The fact is that northern Europe is going to need nuclear to completely decarbonize (which is what is required to meet our goals). Because of the long winters, to do the same with wind/solar will require about 3-5 times as much cost as you might think at first. You need to provide extra capacity to artificially increase effective capacity factor, and then you need about 48 hours of storage. Also possible, but about the same price, is hydrogen for seasonal storage for winter. ...and generally speaking, effectively any carbonfree project being built now needs to be supported. We need everything. Including a lot more off-shore wind.
- davedx 7y ago
  > and then you need about 48 hours of storage I think it's even longer than that, unfortunately... of course, it depends how much over capacity you have, but those cold fronts in N Europe can kill wind speed for weeks on end sometimes IIRC. It is a huge problem for us to solve.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    If everyone has an electric car then, in principle, that battery can be used to keep your house alive for quite a long time. And of course once the battery capacity has declined so that you are no longer satisfied with the car's range you can repurpose the battery for home use to store the output of solar panels on your roof. It's a huge problem in terms of time and finance but not a difficult technological one.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      That's great, but large portions of the population live in apartments in those areas of Europe.
    - pwiecz 7y ago
      I hope very few people will own electric cars in the future (or any car whatsoever). We don't need more cars on the road - we barely can squeeze them on our roads now. We need good, fast, ubiquitous public transport system.
neltnerb 7y ago
And there's mysteriously still no wind farm offshore that might ruin the Kennedy beach house view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind Would have been ~500MW as originally envisioned so still not this big =) Edit: Missed the 137x in the wikipedia article so had the wrong power rating.

Krasnol 7y ago

The "World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019" says that: > even the extended operation of existing reactors is not climate effective as operating costs exceed the costs of competing energy efficiency and new renewable energy options and therefore durably block their implementation. Mycle Schneider concludes: “You can spend a dollar, a euro, a forint or a ruble only once: the climate emergency requires that investment decisions must favor the cheapest and fastest response strategies. The nuclear power option has consistently turned out the most expensive and the slowest.” https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/WNISR2019-Assesses-Climate-Change-and-the-Nuclear-Power-Option.html https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/WNISR2019-Assesses-Climat...

j9461701 7y ago
>The World Nuclear Industry Status Report is a yearly report that explores the global challenges facing the nuclear power industry. It is produced by Mycle Schneider, a professional anti-nuclear activist, and gives a detailed overview of the global nuclear industry and special analysis on key events and trends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Nuclear_Industry_Status_... Hardly an unbiased source it seems. Regardless, the issues facing nuclear power could be quite easily solved with simple political will. Unlike those of renewable energy, which still do not have economical or technologically feasible solutions to the storage and base load problem. We need only look to France to see the path forward. After the 1973 oil crisis, they resolved never again to be beholden to foreign oil for their grid needs. So they undertook the Messmer Plan, which mass produced a single standardized reactor design in bulk. France converted itself almost entirely over to nuclear power for its base load requirements in just 15 years, with the project coming in under budget and ahead of schedule. Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit. Taking advantage of economy of scale, slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower, using a standardized design to expedite the engineering and approval processes of every individual plant - none of these require some amazing new technology or some new economic system be developed. We could literally start tomorrow, and have the entire first world swapped over to nuclear by the 2030s.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  The recent Netflix documentary "Inside Bill's Brain" has an episode on Gates' attempts to build a safe nuclear reactor. It's been blocked by political opposition, not anything technical.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  > We need only look to France to see the path forward. I hope nobody does that. France is running several overdue reactors, has a history of under-reporting issues, the main electricity generation and distribution company EDF (owned by the state) runs with a net debt of €70 billion and is responsible for the disastrous over budget numbers for Hinkley OP mentioned above. > Now France has so much electricity it sells excess to Germany for profit. Germany sells excess electricity also...It's a flowing market depending on daily prices. The overall price development however showed that it rose in France while it fell in Germany: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/4/40/Change_in_electricity_prices_for_household_consumers_compared_with_previous_year%2C_same_semester%2C_second_half_2018.png https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/4/... With the continued rise of renewable energy in Germany this development won't stop while France will at some point have to start moving some of their overdue reactors off the grid while new ones are being dropped because of the market situation outlined in the Status Report above: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astrid/france-drops-plans-to-build-sodium-cooled-nuclear-reactor-idUSKCN1VK0MC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-astri... while the only other new reactor they build Flamanville 3 came up in the news with messed up welding seams...
- benj111 7y ago
  "slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower" Red tape is there for a reason. Red tape is the rule of law, it's emissions standards, and fines for polluters, employment rights, and safe drinking water. Red tape isn't something to be cast aside to get your own personal pet thing done. I mean, what's the difference between your 'political willpower' and dictatorship?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    The French approach gets them TGV, Ariane, nuclear power. Surrounding nations rush to add high speed rail after TGV. Meanwhile... The British approach makes it illegal to give government funding for the Channel Tunnel rail link. 12 or 15 years later, another Act is needed and we start bothering with HS1. HS2 and HS3 were allegedly "coming soon" while the Chunnel was being built. Hmm.

Mvandenbergh 7y ago

Offshore wind also has guaranteed strike prices, although as you say much cheaper than HPC. One of the reason HPC strike price is so high is to pay for the guarantee that budget over-runs like this will not have a bill impact. If EDF goes belly-up trying to build it, that's no skin off our noses as bill payers.

Brakenshire 7y ago
The guarantee is only for 15 years as well, whereas it’s 35 years for nuclear.
killjoywashere 7y ago
Contractors look at funded reserves like lions look at red meat.

benj111 7y ago

"known to be somewhat corrupt" Based on the expenses scandal??

pytester 7y ago
Local property developments. The expenses scandal was a good litmus test of who in parliament was honest and who wasn't though.
- benj111 7y ago
  I asked because I googled, and the only thing I could see is a wikipedia reference to the expenses scandal. I've just searched again and cant find anything, so have you got any references?

Gabriel_Martin 7y ago

Affected the view of a world heritage site it seems, to be specific. I looked into it expecting it to be a bullshit reason, but apparently 22 million people visit annually. Perhaps it's a valid reason after all.

pytester 7y ago
22 million people do indeed visit Jurassic coast but the wind farm would have been invisible from there. Note the weasel wording in the wikipedia article. It was far enough that it would have been faintly visible from Bournemouth beach. I strongly doubt that a few dots on the horizon would have bothered any tourists. This project wasn't killed because of the view. There were other financial (probably carbon based) interests involved.
rbg246 7y ago
I'm no expert on the area however, it's not wilderness area, this is the channel coast, the navy has a firing range next to Lulworth Cove and there is a stack of rusting wrecks just off the coastal path... people just don't like the aesthetics for less than rational reasons but each to their own.
- ascorbic 7y ago
  It's also adjacent to one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and several of the UK's busiest ports. I visit the area often, and while the area is beautiful, the horizon is always full of ships. Some wind turbines will make no difference.

brownbat 7y ago

Wind farm protests about aesthetics mystify me. Driving through central Kansas, the towers are just this stark reminder of how far we've come, and how little we are. You see nothing, nothing, nothing... then BAM! These massive towers generating energy from the winds on the plains, in a state named for the people of the south wind. All of them impossibly tall, the field going on for miles, your mind doesn't even really process how big an individual one is, let alone the scale of the whole farm. They always hit me like a monument. Like that feeling you might get walking into a cathedral with a slow whistle up at the ceiling. It's more than that, though, it's bundled up with a bit of futurism from the new tech, a bit like finishing a piece of utopian sci fi at the same time. There's no accounting for taste, for sure. So maybe some people are just accustomed to the way certain views used to look and don't want any change. Maybe they grew up there and have strong attachments. It's just hard hearing people dismissing beauty as blight, something that could be sublime if they just looked at it a slightly different way.

youeseh 7y ago
We see them dotted across the hills when driving through parts of Northern California - they're beautiful!
beauzero 7y ago
I think they also give a beautiful perspective to size and distance in Wyoming and Eastern Montana.
tobmlt 7y ago
Well said.
appstorelottery 7y ago
I worked in wind energy visualisation and attended many community presentations - I've been up-close to these protests. It's not just about aesthetics, concerns range from fear of lowered real-estate value, low frequency health scares, wildlife concerns, shadow flicker and so on. Like you, I think they are beautiful - however at least here in Holland, that is generally not the case. I've seen a Vestas V164 in the flesh at a testing facility in Denmark and it was quite possibly the most incredibly man made object I've ever seen. With a 164 meter rotor diameter, your eyes almost can't work out how to focus on the blades - especially if you're standing directly under it. One moment the blade tip is close to you, and moments later it's 160 meters away. Amazing stuff.

Robotbeat 7y ago

I'm super pro-renewables. The fact is that northern Europe is going to need nuclear to completely decarbonize (which is what is required to meet our goals). Because of the long winters, to do the same with wind/solar will require about 3-5 times as much cost as you might think at first. You need to provide extra capacity to artificially increase effective capacity factor, and then you need about 48 hours of storage. Also possible, but about the same price, is hydrogen for seasonal storage for winter. ...and generally speaking, effectively any carbonfree project being built now needs to be supported. We need everything. Including a lot more off-shore wind.

davedx 7y ago
> and then you need about 48 hours of storage I think it's even longer than that, unfortunately... of course, it depends how much over capacity you have, but those cold fronts in N Europe can kill wind speed for weeks on end sometimes IIRC. It is a huge problem for us to solve.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  If everyone has an electric car then, in principle, that battery can be used to keep your house alive for quite a long time. And of course once the battery capacity has declined so that you are no longer satisfied with the car's range you can repurpose the battery for home use to store the output of solar panels on your roof. It's a huge problem in terms of time and finance but not a difficult technological one.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    That's great, but large portions of the population live in apartments in those areas of Europe.
  - pwiecz 7y ago
    I hope very few people will own electric cars in the future (or any car whatsoever). We don't need more cars on the road - we barely can squeeze them on our roads now. We need good, fast, ubiquitous public transport system.

neltnerb 7y ago

And there's mysteriously still no wind farm offshore that might ruin the Kennedy beach house view. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind Would have been ~500MW as originally envisioned so still not this big =) Edit: Missed the 137x in the wikipedia article so had the wrong power rating.