Shale Gas

A good article by David Rose in the Daily Mail here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2053686/UK-shale-gas-Coal-industry-tatters-gas-running-alternative.html?ITO=1490

This is a quote from the article, about a shale gas plant costing £500 million, at Hoo St Werburgh in Kent, that will produce 1000MW, enough to power a quarter of the homes in London. It is compared to the 217 turbines of the London Array, the world's biggest offshore wind farm.

"Covering 90 square miles, this too will have the capacity to generate 1GW (one billion watts). The turbines’ construction has been priced at £2 billion, four times as much as the Kentish gas plant, although this does not include the cost – perhaps a further £500 million – of connecting them to the National Grid, via 300 miles of undersea high-voltage cables.

Without the labyrinthine system of ‘green’ taxes and Government subsidies known as the Renewables Obligation, which is already adding an estimated £100 to the cost of every British household’s electricity bill, and an average 20 per cent to the charges paid by businesses, the wind farm could never be built, because it would be hopelessly uneconomic.

As well as being more expensive, the turbines will not last nearly as long: about 20 years, half the time of the gas-fired power station. A gas plant, moreover, will produce electricity 24 hours day; the turbines won’t. British windmills can be expected to generate power only 27 per cent of the time. That figure falls to just ten per cent in the calm conditions of a bitter Arctic high, such as that which covered the entire UK, causing record low temperatures, for several weeks last December."

The poverty of Britain's energy debate

Fraser Nelson

A must read:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7318578/the-poverty-of-britains-energy-debate.thtml

Here is how it starts:

"How big does Shale have to get before our policymakers wake up to its implications? There is an Energy Summit in No.10 today where Chris Huhne wants to focus on the need “to help consumers save money on their gas and electricity bills”. A preview interview on the Today programme underlined the dire situation. First, Huhne was not asked about how his own green regulations have massively contributed to the problem. Then, the managing director of British Gas was invited on to say that “unless someone discovers huge amounts of gas and imports it into the UK…”. And, bafflingly, no-one mentioned the small fact that one of BG’s rivals recently discovered 200 trillion cubic feet of gas near Blackpool. As Matt Ridley says in this week’s Spectator, that’s enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it doesn’t even need importing."

Do read the article, including the quotes from Matt Ridley's article as well.



It isn't just our policy makers, though, what about the BBC? On Friday they had Will Self "In praise of wind turbines" on Sunday Countryfile, which was about as biased as it could possibly be in favour of wind, and the Today Programme was no better.

Energy crisis postponed?

From today's Daily Telegraph...