Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - Renewables.

Whilst enjoying petrol V8 I do love to see well executed renewable projects. Watching youtoob and came across this article by the Electric Viking around Australia building a massive solar panel farm and it increasing the lives of sheep on the same land.



Also one on the UK Wind Power and North Sea. I learnt a lot today.

Not even remotely accurate I'm afraid.

Throughout its entire life, from mining/extraction of materials, construction, transport, location, and generating life, a wind turbine is responsible for around 5 to 15g CO2 equivalent per kWh generated over its lifespan, making it pretty much the leader in clean energy and offsetting the carbon impact of its production in the first 6 months.

Over a typical 25 year lifespan it produces about 80 times more energy than that needed to build it, operate it, and scrap it at end of life.

Indeed tidal basins are problematic .... I think undersea turbines to harness tidal/current flows have some mileage to be exploited ... some issues with marine life still to be ironed out.

As someone who's lived totally off-grid for the last 35+ years I know the pluses and minuses of renewables painfully well ... I love the independence from bills and the vagaries of pricing ... however, with regards to mass useage the whole storage thing needs sorting ... we have massive works going on in this corner for battery storage ... but even that is only sufficient for flow stabilisation, not supplying cities like Glasgow, Birmingham or London ... whatever the overly optimistic might say, we're a long way from the tech to run our major population centres. Dogmatics might squeal, but we'll need fossil fuels and nuclear for a long time yet.

One thing from the above posts I agree with is the disparity between what's promised and what gets delivered ... there's never the numbers of promised jobs ... the outputs use the most optimistic scenarios to puff up the 'benefits' and there's no holding to accountability when salesmanship meets cold reality .... the sizeable profits drive dubious claims to get planning permission and, as planners don't want their naive decisions examined when the benefits don't appear, they don't push for accountability because that would include examination of their own lack of effective assessment.

Renewables are great, but the dodgy mess of misguided dogma and serious money that swirl round the decision making process needs a strong independent light shone on it.

K