UK: Scientists agree placing wind farms on peatland is 'disastrous'

[phantom power]

BUILDING wind turbines on Scotland's precious peatland could be catastrophic for the environment, according to a Scottish MEP.

Following a seminar given by key scientists at the European Parliament in Brussels, Struan Stevenson, MEP, is calling for action to stop any further building on peatland.

(...)

There are 980 wind-farm proposals in place across Europe, of which 187 would be built on peatland. Some are gigantic wind farms, such as that proposed for on Lewis.

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Scientists-agree-placing--.3990531.jp

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. The idea of ANYTHING drying out on Scotland's peat bogs is ludicrous

The ground can't dry out when it's raining so much. And the wind turbines won't work for long there either. They'll rust up before long and stop working and eventually will be swallowed up in the peat bogs for space aliens to discover in a future archeological dig.

:P

[ladjf]

2. The larger turbines are up to 300 feet above the ground with

RPM's of about 300. The devices are rate for about 22 years and considering the initial expense will most likely be overhauled about 4 or 5 times per century. Not likely to become a junk problem.

Further, large turbines are spaced rather widely. It's difficult to imagine that somehow, slow turning blades, 300 ' high are going to dry out the bogs.

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. Beleive me, as a Scotsman born and bred, there's not going to be a drying problem

This is a red herring. Someone doesn't want these windmills for some other reason. I'm thinking either Whisky distillers (they use peaty water to give whisky its taste) or perhaps some other hydro, coal or nuclear power concerns are behind the opposition.

[losthills]

4. Noooooo........

Not the whiskey!!

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. There's no "e" in Scotch Whisky

Although I can't say the same for your municipal water supply. :P

[losthills]

9. Wow, you're right...

I just looked in the cupboard.

Are you going to confiscate my bottle of Dahlwinnie?

[Cronus Protagonist]

10. Nah, enjoy :P

Try some Laphroiag next :P

[GliderGuider]

11. Mmmmm, a whisky sub-thread

Lagavulin 16, The King of the malts. Macallan 25, his Queen. The princes: Laphroaig, Talisker, Highland Park, Ardbeg, Aberlour Abunadh, Glenfarclas...

Oh hell, they're all good - every last reekin' one of them.

[pscot]

13. Last time I fell off the wagon

'twas the Laphroig that was the cause of it. It has a siren call.

[NNadir]

12. Wind is not now, never was, and never will be an alternative to nuclear or coal.

It is, in fact, a toy that has very low reliability and very poor capacity utilization.

A nuclear plant that ran with the same capacity utilization as a wind plant would be regarded as a failure.

That is, in fact, why wind is a failure. It has never produced an exajoule of energy in a calendar year, and even if it does - which is very unlikely given that wind energy has been the subject of useless wishful thinking talk for most of 3 decades with little result - most of the "savings" will be swallowed up by spinning reserve.

Wind power for the most part is nothing more than an excuse for keeping the dangerous natural gas fueled power plants running.

There is NOT ONE country in the world that has phased out dangerous fossil fuels because of wind capacity, NOT ONE.

There is NOT ONE country on the planet that intends to phase out dangerous fossil fuels because of wind power.

Why? Because it's unreliable and doesn't work very well. All of the world's wind capacity has not been able to keep up with the increase in dangerous fossil fuel waste.

In fact, the real winners of the "wind will save us" stupidity is the coal business. It is interesting to note though that countries that have backed themselves into coal hell with wind and solar fantasies - read Germany - are going to be in a world of hurt once they find out there isn't going to be diesel for the ships that are supposed to haul the coal.

There is NOT ONE country on the planet that can solve the problem of dangerous fossil fuel waste through the use of wind power.

As it happens there are only a few countries that produce electricity almost solely with any type of renewable energy. Norway used to be such a country, but it is building dangerous natural gas plants as fast as it can, because the country is inhabited by dumb fundie anti-nukes.

The only other countries that I can think of that supply most of their power from renewable energy are Costa Rica and Iceland. Both have significant geothermal capacity as well as hydroelectricity.

There are zero countries that produce the majority of their power from wind. There never will be such countries either.

Dumb fundies have been selling this snake oil for decades and, in fact, all they have done is succeeded in pushing the concentration of CO₂ - dangerous fossil fuel waste - in the atmosphere to 400 ppm.

[losthills]

14. We certainly don't see nuclear power replacing coal.

Now or ever.

The big boys, Cheney and Halliburton invest in both with equal vigor. Continuing to to misrepresent nuclear power as an alternative to coal is dishonest and is holding us back from real and workable solutions. Renewables are the only way out of this mess and rational minds understand that.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. So France is figment of Cheney's imagination? I had no idea. nt

[losthills]

16. Thanks. You have no idea. Thanks for your (uncharacteristic)

honesty....

Did you try some of that Scotch? (Alas, it tends to wear off in the morning....)

[losthills]

17. No idea at all.

http://www.oilism.com/oil/2008/03/25/france-and-italy-is-nuclear-power-the-way-for-energy-independence/

"However, it is also clear that nuclear energy cannot satisfy all energy needs of a country. So, even though France has nuclear power, the country still has to import coal and hydrocarbons (natural gas and oil derived fuels) whose prices are not influenced by the presence of atomic power. So in 2005 the energy imports bill for France and Italy was nearly the same, 37,5 G€ for France and 38,5 for Italy. "

"In the end, we see that complete independence in energy production with nuclear power was not reached by France, nor Italy could hope to reach it by revamping its old nuclear program at this point. To reach the French level of nuclear energy production, Italy would have to build almost 20 GWe of nuclear power, spend over 40 G€ and this would take some 10-20 years. Doing so, Italy couldn't hope to become independent from hydrocarbon imports since we see that France couldn't do that, either, despite all her nuclear reactors. "

Well, there you have it-- France is still a net importer of coal and natural gas. The easily obtainable uranium is running out, and they would have been far better off had they invested their resources in developing renewables-- as they will have to do to make it through the coming years.

[Dead_Parrot]

18. Ah, right.

So coal, which produced 51% of France's energy in 1950 and about 1% in 2006, hasn't been replaced because we're suddenly talking about oil and gas as well.

That was one fast goalpost. I nearly didn't keep up.

Why yes, the French do indeed have cars although I note they also have long-distance electric trains, which is presumably one of the reasons why they have lower CO₂ emissions, and spend less on energy imports, than Italy even though they have millions more people in a much larger country.

That the Italians scrapped their nuclear program and now have to buy electricity from France from probably helps as well, of course.

[losthills]

19. I know you can read. So why continue to make a fool of yourself?

[kristopher]

5. Stevenson is overstating considerably

Dr. Holden's work, (the scientist Stevenson uses as his reference) is on peatlands. He has published a good body of literature on how disturbance of peat by things such as roads, drains, ditches - the infrastructure of a wind farm - interferes with the hydrology of blanket bog. He says that changes to the hydrology alters carbon cycling. His presentation in Brussels dealt with that and emphasized the point that according to earlier studies, the effect extends "quite some distance away from the feature itself". He was saying that in developing the needed infrastructure for windfarms these wider impacts "should certainly be included in windfarm environmental impact assessments". He is very concerned that peat affected by drying due to the changes in the way water flows does not revert to peat once water flow is restored because the chemical and physical structure are altered.

He writes that caution needs to be exercised since "the open moorland landscapes are ideal for windfarms as they are windy, but they also contain important and sensitive peatland habitats."

The science presented at the seminar contended that insufficient consideration of the effects on the peatlands is a fact of the present evaluations when the many windfarms proposed there are put through their environmental impact assessments.

Since there is nothing in this position that unilaterally states development of wind on the moors would be a disaster, it would seem the hyperbole is Stevenson's.

[phantom power]

6. I wouldn't rule out sublimated nimby-ism.

[kristopher]

8. I think it is a legitimate concern.

That's the purpose of the EIA. A careful review of the hydrology of a sensitive area is certainly in line. With awareness of an issue like this the response is often mitigation instead of project rejection.

The coal lobby is the stiffest opposition faced by wind in the UK. About 3 years ago they ended subsidies for domestic coal production and gave the money to wind development; and the miners have been screaming ever since. I don't know for a fact that applies to Stevenson, but it has been a consistent pattern.