This is why I cringe whenever politicians – especially Republicans – tout wind as a cheap, viable alternative energy source.
No wonder the stimulus didn’t work.
The Blaze reports:
Civitas, an independent think tank, recently published a report by British economist Ruth Lea — director of the manufacturing renewal project at Civitas and an economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group – that concludes the expense of wind farms and need for backup energy makes harvesting wind “inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting emissions.”
According to the U.K.’s Climate Change Act, signed in 2008, greenhouse gas emission goals set a 20 percent reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and an 80 percent cut by 2050. Such drastic reductions fundamentally change the way many businesses operate and require adoption of renewable energy or carbon-cutting technology. Since generation of electricity alone accounted for nearly a third of the U.K.’s CO2 emissions in 2010, according to the report, this is clearly an area where the government is seeking to make improvements.
The Telegraph reports that the U.K. plans to build as many as 32,000 wind turbines in the next two decades. This initiative is part of a goal set by EU’s Renewables Directive to have 15 percent of the energy produced in the U.K. come from renewables by 2020.
—