IEA warns against wind power

IHAVE banged on ad infinitum about the foolishness attached to the government’s policy regarding these gross wind turbines. They disfigure the environment and are absolutely useless in providing a reliable base energy source. And they are very expensive.

But no one listens. Those responsible should, if not to me then certainly to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The UK’s Daily Telegraph reports that the IEA has warned Germany that its headlong rush into wind and solar energy and its retreat from nuclear power (it has closed eight nuclear plants) is driving the cost of its electricity “to untenable levels and destroying support for the green agenda”.

The Australia-based Macquarie Group, heavily focused internationally in the energy sector, says the German power system “is structurally broken. There are not enough cables to bring the electricity (from the North Sea wind farms) to the main industrial centres in the Ruhr and Rhine regions, and the patchwork grid cannot cope.”

Germany is Europe’s biggest economy by far. It has a policy, Energiewende, meant to develop renewables to supply 50% of the country’s energy needs by 2030 and 80% by mid-century. But its economy has a vast industrial base, and industry is always energy-hungry.

The country’s environment minister is reported to have said costs could reach €1-trillion by 2039. Taxpayers are now alarmed and German industrialists fear that this undue reliance on wind power might become far too expensive and run the country into an energy crunch.

For all that its people are diligent and hard working, that it produces scores of brilliant engineers and its contribution over many centuries to literature and art has been exceptional, it is a country that sometimes loses its way.

It certainly looks to me as though, on this occasion, they have got their numbers badly wrong. So have we.