Independent energy experts have concluded that if the UK meets it's renewable energy targets more than two million households will be pushed into fuel poverty in the UK. The same panel advised that investment in simple domestic,industrial and local government energy conservation could dwarf wind power output and drastically reduce the number of families living in or about to fall into fuel poverty.
The news is bound to lead to question over the government's policy of using wind power to meet its target to generate around a third of its electricity from renewables by 2020.
Critics of the state's renewable energy policy such as writer Christopher Brooker was highly critical of the Thanet development which was developed utilising mainly non UK firms and labour. He stated.. 'Over the coming years we will be giving the wind farm's Swedish owners a total of £1.2 billion in subsidies. That same sum, invested now in a single nuclear power station, could yield a staggering 13 times more electricity, with much greater reliability.'
The Swedish company which developed the world's biggest offshore wind farm,Vattenfall, confirmed that the development will provide just 21 permanent jobs...about the same number of jobs as an average high street branch of Macdonalds! On the basis of the subsidies Vattenfall are receiving each job is effectively costing UK taxpayers £3m per job per year.
Energy companies involved in wind power production receive colossal subsidies through the system of Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs), paid for by all UK householders through electricity bills. Electricity supply companies are obliged to buy offshore wind energy at three times its normal price, so that each megawatt hour of electricity receives a 200 per cent subsidy of £100.
This means that the 75MW produced on average by Thanet will receive subsidies of £60 million a year, on top of the £30-40 million cost of the electricity itself. This is guaranteed for the turbines' estimated working life of 20 years, which means that the total subsidy over the next two decades will be some £1.2 billion.
Great news for shareholders of the multi-national energy corporations and it's allies in Greenpeace/Friends of the Earth....not so good news for low income families about to fall into fuel poverty and the natural environment.
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→Revealed...winners and losers in the UK's rush to wind
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→https://national-grid-news.blogspot.com/2010/09/revealedwinners-and-losers-in-uk-rush.html
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