One thing more reliable than wind power...is the abuse it gets

Simon Bullock

31 August 2012

Yesterday, IPPR put out a report, arguing that wind power is an effective way of reducing carbon emissions, and that it is a secure and reliable source of electricity. Valuable stuff - it convincingly dispels some hoary old myths about wind.

But one thing that is more reliable than wind power is that any report which comes down in favour of it will get immediately savaged, whatever its content. And so of course, IPPR got attacked within minutes. On Twitter @guidofawkes accused the authors of "wonk-whoring". More abuse followed through the day, summarised by author @RegPlatt: "a lot of very colourful twitter mentions I've got today. and not one identifying a technical inaccuracy."

Today, the Twitter debate moved onto wind's costs. It's right that we look at what's the most cost-effective way of meeting climate change goals.

@mark_lynas was first in, saying: "Colin McInnes calculates [wind] CO2 cost/tonne of £130". Mark got this from Colin McInnes' blog,  which concludes "the [ippr] report demonstrates that large-scale wind is an expensive and awkward means of displacing carbon - it cuts into gas rather than coal."

But this is just not right.

The IPPR report deliberately assumes (not "demonstrates") that wind displaces gas not coal. This is a very cautious assumption, as it also says that it is much more likely that wind would displace coal - which has far higher carbon emissions than gas. If so, two things:

First, the amount of carbon saved would be "over 12 million tonnes", not 5.5 million tonnes (which would more than halve the £130 figure).

Second, Mr McInnes' contention that "displacing coal in an acceptable way will require more nuclear and gas" is wrong.

Mr McInnes also says that the Renewables Obligation payments for wind "extract...£700million" from the UK economy. But it's not extracted, it's paid from one energy company to another. If he's going to use language like 'extracted', why not apply it to the net billions the UK spends on buying oil and gas from Norway, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia each year. Wind will score pretty highly against fossil-fuels on 'extraction' then.

He also compares his (inflated) cost of carbon with the UK carbon floor price - but what's the reason why this comparison is valid? The two policies do different jobs. The meaningful comparison would be the levelised generation cost of wind against other technologies capable of helping us meet carbon targets. And yes, wind has in the past been expensive, but costs have fallen fast. Onshore wind's levelised cost is on a par with nuclear says the Committee on Climate Change, and that's before nuclear's hidden subsidies are taken into account.

So good on IPPR for showing that wind power is an effective technology. The debate will hopefully move on, and probably onto costs.  Costs will be a central issue in the Energy Bill this autumn, a focus for Friends of the Earth's Clean British Energy campaign.  Renewables and energy efficiency is in our view the best course for a safe, clean, affordable electricity system: getting the right policy support in this Bill is critical.

But cost is likely to be an even-more tricksy area. Getting to the bottom of these complexities will test twitter's 140 characters to the limit...