Offshore wind farms and subsidies

[Dave2002]

I seriously wonder about the recently announced [BBC R4 News today] proposal to alter the balance of subsidies to onshore wind farms compared with offshore wind farms. I have for a while been in favour of so called "green energy" developments, yet offshore wind farms are already known to be expensive to construct and maintain. Any wind farm, either on or off shore, is likely to be unreliable because of the vagaries of the wind, but off shore wind turbines are very much more likely to be hard to operate and maintain because of the harsher environment.

We might find that in a decade or two that money spent on these projects has been a waste of time and resources, and it would have been better and more cost effective to build nuclear power stations. There are certainly potential benefits in reducing the burning of fossil fuels, and using energy in a profligate way, but developing off shore wind farms may not be a sensible way of achieving these goals.

[french frank]

Is it a populist measure on the grounds that 'people don't like' on-shore wind farms spoiling their views?

[Think I've deleted the duplicate, Dave2002 - not sure what the problem was]

[Dave2002]

Is it a populist measure on the grounds that 'people don't like' on-shore wind farms spoiling their views?

[Think I've deleted the duplicate, Dave2002 - not sure what the problem was]

Either that, or members of HMG have friends with ships and other gear ready to grab a quick buck in the sea environment. This way they can say they're still trying to be "green" while appeasing those who don't like on-shore wind farms. I suppose in the longer term they could admit that it's all a waste of time, and divert the money back into nuclear, which perhaps they should be doing right now. There is probably a case for at least one more nuclear power station to be planned and built with the same or shorter time scale as the recently announced one for Hinkley Point, though hopefully with better finances.

If wind could be made to work, either on-shore or off-shore, then I would be in favour of it, and if there's simply a small matter of getting the developments and management right, then it could be worth persevering for a while. After all, there are still people chasing after nuclear fusion, and they claim that they are now getting close to getting more energy out than energy in - sometimes things do turn around. PV should be starting to turn around in some countries, but it's still rather negative in the UK. The panel costs and installation costs have to be lower for PV to make much of a difference here. Solar thermal could be quite a good investment, though would not remove the need for power stations or gas supplies, but it would reduce the need to burn gas. It would not be a gas (or other fuel replacement), but could reduce fuel consumption by 30%, perhaps more, depending on lifestyles.

The pattern of some developments goes like this: Fail, Fail, Fail,Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail,Fail, Fail, Fail ... SUCCESS!
I'm not sure if video phones are an example, but for many years the telecoms industry tried to make them work. Now Skype and smartphones have changed the way people use phones - it's only taken 50 years or more. It's possible that wind power and PV power generation will eventually become successful, but there are many problems still to be solved. Some are technical, while some are social and to do with attitudes and adoption of systems. Electric cars are a relevant current example.

Re duplicate post - I think Firefox seems to lock up sometimes with vBulletin - and then it's difficult to know whether there's been a post or not. Normally I just delete duplicate posts, but I gather that's not possible in this area of the forum.