John Webley: The Conservatives should embrace nuclear, not wind

John Webley is a retired Morgan Stanley Managing Director and is currently leading a campaign against wind turbines in rural Kent.

If the Conservatives come to power in the coming months they will inherit the consequences of Labour’s totally discredited energy policy. There has been a complete failure by the Government to ensure that the country has security of supply and it is now finally being recognised that their misguided focus on unachievable renewable energy strategies will result in energy shortfalls in the years to come. Even bullying wind fanatics such as Ed Miliband have finally smelt the coffee and are desperately attempting to plug the gaps with a long overdue expansion of nuclear capacity.

It is a matter of great concern that, within just a few months of the election, the Conservative party does not appear to have an energy policy that will address these fundamental problems and there is no evidence that the maths has been done to ensure that the lights will not go out under the Conservatives as well.

The energy policy paper on the party website, written in 2007, is entitled Power to the people, the decentralised energy revolution. This paper is lamentably short on detail. It consists of many laudable objectives but sets out a view of the world through green-tinted spectacles and there is no overall quantification of how supply will meet demand.

The second paper entitled The Low Carbon Economy again fails to provide a quantified analysis of the anticipated demand and the energy mix required to address it. Without the numbers we have no clear idea of exactly what is being proposed or whether it is credible.

To add to the increasing sense of alarm,  Zac Goldsmith, who still allows himself to be described as “one of David Cameron's closest advisers on the environment”, was quoted in the Guardian this week as saying “If the party sticks to its existing policy, it would never allow the building of a new nuclear power station.” For the party to allow exceptionally foolish statements such as this to be made to national newspapers by a “close adviser” is worrying in the extreme.

John Webley is a retired Morgan Stanley Managing Director and is currently leading a campaign against wind turbines in rural Kent.

If the Conservatives come to power in the coming months they will inherit the consequences of Labour’s totally discredited energy policy. There has been a complete failure by the Government to ensure that the country has security of supply and it is now finally being recognised that their misguided focus on unachievable renewable energy strategies will result in energy shortfalls in the years to come. Even bullying wind fanatics such as Ed Miliband have finally smelt the coffee and are desperately attempting to plug the gaps with a long overdue expansion of nuclear capacity.

It is a matter of great concern that, within just a few months of the election, the Conservative party does not appear to have an energy policy that will address these fundamental problems and there is no evidence that the maths has been done to ensure that the lights will not go out under the Conservatives as well.

The energy policy paper on the party website, written in 2007, is entitled Power to the people, the decentralised energy revolution. This paper is lamentably short on detail. It consists of many laudable objectives but sets out a view of the world through green-tinted spectacles and there is no overall quantification of how supply will meet demand.

The second paper entitled The Low Carbon Economy again fails to provide a quantified analysis of the anticipated demand and the energy mix required to address it. Without the numbers we have no clear idea of exactly what is being proposed or whether it is credible.

To add to the increasing sense of alarm,  Zac Goldsmith, who still allows himself to be described as “one of David Cameron's closest advisers on the environment”, was quoted in the Guardian this week as saying “If the party sticks to its existing policy, it would never allow the building of a new nuclear power station.” For the party to allow exceptionally foolish statements such as this to be made to national newspapers by a “close adviser” is worrying in the extreme.

John Webley: The lights would indeed go out under Labour

John Webley is a retired Morgan Stanley Managing Director and is currently leading a campaign against wind turbines in rural Kent.

National Grid has just published its consultation document “Operating the Electricity Networks in 2020” and large sections of the report deal with the problems of managing increasing electricity generation from onshore and offshore turbines.

The wind industry, and the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) in particular, have successfully managed to distract attention from a quite extraordinary admission in the document which deserves urgent attention by the Conservatives.

Although many of us have been pointing out for some time that the periods of total wind collapse across the whole UK are far more frequent than previously admitted, this has never been publicly acknowledged. Worse than that, the BWEA has been responsible for totally misleading information. In their June 2008 submission to the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Economic Affairs, during the committee’s review of “The Economics of Renewable Energy”, the BWEA stated that:

 “Additional costs are attributable to the relatively low “capacity credit” that wind power has: this factor reflects how much wind power can be expected to contribute when demand for electricity is at a peak, and this is 20-30% of the nameplate capacity of the wind generators.”

Given that a generous estimate of average annual output from wind turbines is only 30% of nameplate capacity this statement is clearly patent nonsense since it implies that average output is nearly always maintained. It was nevertheless offered up as a contribution to an important debate.

John Webley: The economic insanity of the government's renewable energy strategy

John Webley, a retired Morgan Stanley Managing Director, is currently leading a campaign against wind turbines in rural Kent. He has been shocked by what he has learned about the wind industry and alarmed by the failure of many politicians to really understand the full implications.

As politicians begin to return to work from the summer break it is time to raise an issue of fundamental importance for the future well-being of the country.

The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy document is out for consultation until 26 September. This is the document that proposes that Britain’s renewable energy targets for electricity generation will be largely met by 3,000 offshore wind turbines and a further 4,000 onshore turbines.

The Government is also in the process of establishing the new subsidy support structure to encourage investment in renewable energy, particularly, wind turbines. The Government’s main support mechanism for the generation of renewable electricity consists of Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) which are issued to those who invest in and generate renewable electricity, but the cost of this support is borne directly by the consumer.

At no point has the full cost of the proposed wind strategy been fully and simply explained to the public and at no point has the public been told what alternatives there might be. The wind industry, green lobbyists and the EU have done a brilliant job of leading the Government (and, it has to be said, the Tories) down a path that not only makes absolutely no economic sense but is the height of irresponsibility. The numbers involved are so shocking it is difficult, at first sight, to believe them.