The wind farm industry has been forced to admit that the environmental benefit of wind power in reducing carbon emissions is only half as big as it had previously claimed.(via Planet Gore)
The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has agreed to scale down its calculation for the amount of harmful carbon dioxide emission that can be eliminated by using wind turbines to generate electricity instead of burning fossil fuels such as coal or gas.
The move is a serious setback for the advocates of wind power, as it will be regarded as a concession that twice as many wind turbines as previously calculated will be needed to provide the same degree of reduction in Britain's carbon emissions.
A wind farm industry source admitted: "It's not ideal for us. It's the result of pressure by the anti-wind farm lobby."
For several years the BWEA -- which lobbies on behalf of wind power firms -- claimed that electricity from wind turbines 'displaces' 860 grams of carbon dioxide emission for every kilowatt hour of electricity generated.
However it has now halved that figure to 430 grams, following discussions with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Green News of the Day
According to the Daily Telegraph (U.K.):
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3 comments:
It's the result of pressure...
Telling the truth is a result of pressure? Then give 'em more of it!
And I like the fact that the association characterizes the Advertising Standards Authority as "pressure."
The whole idea of wind farms, outside of certain limited areas (often inhabited by NIMBY pseudo-environmental types) is patently stupid, as is almost all solar.
I've heard of exactly one theoretical wind-power design which struck me as promising -- mainly because it essentially produced its own wind.
Bumped into it about 15-odd years ago in an article in the WSJ (IIRC), and never heard anything about it ever since. Don't know if it was ever identified as actually having any possibility of cost-effectiveneess or not.
And for solar, while we put a few million into Ocean Thermal each year, it's the only solar concept which has ever shown any potential for actually producing more energy than the equipment involved costs to create and operate and dispose of (i.e., total energy cycle, which is the only way to consider such).
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