Britain's richest energy companies want homeowners to subsidise billions of pounds worth of gas-powered stations that will stand idle for most of the time. Talks have taken place between the Government, Centrica, owner of British Gas, and other energy companies on incentives to build the power stations needed as back-ups for the wind farms now being built around the country. It is understood 17 gas-fired plants worth about £10 billion will be needed by 2020. The Energy Department has been warned that without this massive back-up for the new generation of heavily subsidised giant wind farms, the lights could go out when the wind dies down. --Tom McGhie, This is Money, 24 June 2011
We will thus be landed in the ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on "spinning reserve", 24 hours a day, just to make up for the fundamental problem of wind turbines. I'm afraid we are in the hands of very dangerous children, upon whose deranged wishful thinking a large part of our country's future depends. --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 3 July 2011
The UK’s carbon price ‘top up’ will encourage utilities to raise electricity prices, increasing their profits by £7 billion ($11 billion), according to a report by investment bank Credit Suisse. - Environmental Finance, 28 June 2011
In the next decade the government is offering approximately £35bn of subsidy to renewable generators, reaching £6bn a year in 2020, with the whole scheme costing up £100bn in subsidy alone from 2002 to 2030. With this sort of money on the table investors and developers are feverish with excitement. The question is whether consumers will be willing or able to shoulder such cost premiums. --John Constable, Renewable Energy Foundation, 3 July 2011
One of the reasons the Green movement is failing to attract support is that it has too much cultural baggage and is too ideologically rigid. Any reconsideration of the orthodox position — even for the sake of the environment — is seen as a betrayal. Politically speaking, the Green Party is trapped in the irrelevance of the Far Left. --Mark Lynas, Daily Mail, 4 July 2011
