Green Whitewash

Dear Sir

The Labour Government plans to spend £8.3bn over the next five years setting up GB Energy, to make Britain a ‘clean energy superpower‘, cut the average household’s energy bills by £300 a year and boost the economy. Our energy bills are the highest in Europe because of the lack of a coherent energy policy for decades. Sir Keir Starmer recently visited Brechfa in Wales, which with its surrounding 3 windfarms was responsible for the chopping down of 1.9 million trees. Forests have been lost with the plethora of windfarm sites across Wales, but other statistics are hidden. New windfarms planned across Wales will feature turbine blades reaching an incredible 820 feet into the sky, the highest inland in the world, needing massive pylons across the country. Starmer and First Minister Eluned Morgan saw inside one of the turbines, which are up to 100m tall, after a technician stopped it for safety reasons. The PM said ‘They’re bigger than you think.’ Yet those destined to be built across Wales are 250m high! (For comparison, the Blackpool Tower is 120m, 380ft and the Eiffel Tower 300m, 984ft. The tallest spire in Britain, at Salisbury Cathedral is 123m, 404ft, half the height of the new Welsh wind turbines. Britain’s tallest building, London’s Shard, is 310m, 1020ft.) Scores of these 250m monsters, planned for sites across Wales, will wreck tourism as well as kill tens of thousands of birds and bats and millions of insects.

On its website, GB Energy states that it will provide ‘real energy security from foreign dictators‘, presumably Russia and its allies. Because of the intermittent nature of sun and wind, we already often rely for 25% of our energy via interconnectors from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark. (Please see gridwatch.co.uk on the net for our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly energy sources and begin to worry). In a very cold spell, this surplus energy from Europe will not be available.

Regarding Starmer’s desire for energy security, India has known coal reserves of 378 billion tonnes, and production is rising at 5.5% a year, currently running at 997 million tonnes. 88% of coal is used by the power sector, driven by the government goal of prioritising energy security. Whatever little Wales or greater England does regarding clean energy, it will not make a gnat’s worth of difference to global emissions. China has financed new coal plants across twenty countries in Asia and Africa. It currently consumes more than half the world’s coal, burning 4.710 billion tonnes in 2023 alone. It has by far the largest amount of proposed coal capacity, with nearly 97 gigawatts under construction and another 163 gigawatts in planning – on top of China’s existing 1,100 gigawatts, according to GEM. In 2021, following widespread power shortages, China’s leadership repeatedly emphasised the importance of ensuring energy security – a country’s ability to secure sufficient and affordable energy supplies without interruption. It therefore began approving many huge new coal plants across the nation. Our PM needs to understand that green, or renewable energy (however one terms that intermittent power source), can never give energy security, even with continuing massive subsidies. And neither will it affect global climate.

Another 8% of UK ‘renewable’ energy comes from the most non-green plant in Europe, biomass from Drax in Yorkshire. Biomass owes its ‘green’ classification to the EU, not understanding the nature of forests being chopped down in the Americas, the wood formed into pellets, and then transported across the Atlantic, with their burning producing carbon emissions.  Drax is the largest single point source of CO2 in the UK, the third highest in the EU, and the fourth highest emitter of PM10 (particulate matter of 10 micrometres and smaller) air pollution of all EU power stations. The CO2 output per KWh of energy of wood-burning power stations is roughly 1.5 times that of coal burning and three times that of using natural gas. According to Friends of the Earth, by 2027 Drax would have received around £10 billion from the government to produce electricity, based on subsidies agreed years ago. ‘If it was asked now, the government would turn it down, because the electricity it produces is almost twice as expensive as wind or solar.’ In 2021 a complaint was made to the OECD, reported in the Financial Times: ‘The complaint alleges that Drax’s statements wrongly portray woody biomass as a carbon neutral form of energy. Forest Litigation contends that burning woody biomass emits more carbon pollution per megawatt hour than burning coal, and that it takes years for the felled trees used to make pellets to regrow and capture the equivalent amount of carbon.’ A 2018 study estimated it would take 40 to 100 years or more for forests to recapture the carbon emissions from burning the wood pellets, if ever, which makes a mockery of Drax’s ‘carbon-neutral’ status. Sometimes a third of our electricity needs come from Drax and interconnectors from Europe.

Nuclear power stations are ending their life-spans, and we have lost the expertise to design new ones. I worked on building Dungeness B nuclear ‘farm’ and Aberthaw B coal ‘farm’, and we have plenty of gas in the North Sea. Building more clean gas power stations – or shall we call them ‘farms’ or ‘energy parks’ to please opponents? – is the only answer to Britain’s energy shortages and assured future blackouts. Winter blackouts will kill far, far more people than anyone apart from medical statisticians will realise. Because of our net carbon policies, attempting to be a world leader, our electricity bills are already the highest in Europe. The answer to Britain’s energy shortages and to ensure energy security is to divert funding away from green follies that all require continuing subsidies from the taxpayer, whereby only overseas manufacturers and ‘farm’ owners benefit.

Terry Breverton