Strictly for the birds
SPECTACULARLY POOR RETURNS
Newly released numbers from Germany, collected and analysed
over several years, show what disappointed investors have long surmised:
around half of wind parks are doing so poorly, investors will be lucky
to get their initial investment back after the 20 years.
By John Ward: Investments in renewable energy that were supposed to deliver annual
returns of up to 20% have been averaging around 2.25%. German renewable
energy firm Prokon is in fact insolvent, and fears are mounting that
Merkel’s green energy promise will never be able to meet expectations.
In courts around the country, complaints are mounting from wind park
investors who haven’t received a dividend disbursement in years, or
whose parks went belly up.
While the results are predictable (poor generation levels and high
maintenance costs have been a fact of wind-power for decades) they are a
triumph for those observers who said Merkel must be mad to promise
ditching nuclear in favour of Green. And they leave Britain’s massive
investment in wind turbines looking very sick indeed.
In Ireland too, wind power is a central plank of energy policy: but a
rural revolt, with local protest groups uniting through social media,
is out to stop it. The Green claim is that Ireland will export power to
Britain, but here too experts ridicule the objective. Turbines up to
180m (590ft) tall – half the height of the Empire State Building – are
cropping up as part of a drive to meet EU green energy targets and
generate 40% of Ireland’s electricity from wind.
More than 100 opposition groups have sprung up
against new wind farms – all in rural areas – claiming the turbines
will ruin the landscape, with noise and shadows blighting homes nearby.
But reality is, it seems, finally setting in: wind power simply isn’t
commercially viable.
We’ve got so much of it in Britain thanks to the clueless
environmentalism of Ed Miliband. Researchers in Scotland have found a
way to burn our abundance of coal almost pollution free…but the
Government has abandoned it. Owen Paterson is investing in even more
offshore wind power – the worst commercial model of the lot. And whose
targets are we trying to reach? Why, those of the EU. Naturally.
Professional politicians these people might be, but in every other walk of life they are rank amateurs.
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