The lights may
go out sooner than we thought
Sunday Telegraph 24
April 2011
New figures show the lights
may go out sooner than we thought
Our coal-fired power stations are
closer to extinction than predicted, and wind power stubbornly refuses
to fill the gap, says Christopher Booker.
Kingsnorth power station may
be
out of service by 2013 Photo: GETTY
By Christopher Booker
60 Comments
Figures published last week reveal
that the moment when Britain’s lights start going out may be much
closer than previously predicted. Thanks in part to the hammering they
took in the abnormal cold of last winter, six large coal-fired power
stations which supply a fifth of Britain’s average electricity needs
have now used up more than half of the 20,000 running hours they are
each allowed under the EU’s Large Combustion Plants directive. When
they reach that limit they will have to shut down.
Furthermore, in two years’ time,
the Government’s new “carbon tax” will make them £600 million a year
more expensive to run. Their mainly German owners will therefore want
to use up as many of those hours as possible before a charge of £16 for
every ton of CO2 they emit comes into force in 2013.
Industry sources are suggesting
that the six plants, including Kingsnorth, Ferrybridge, Didcot A and
Tilbury, may close two years earlier than the forecast date of 2015.
Ever since the Blair government’s disastrous 2003 Energy White Paper,
which in effect turned its back on replacing coal-fired and nuclear
power stations in favour of renewable energy, it has been clear that we
would eventually face a 40 per cent shortfall in our electricity
supplies.
Yet nothing better brings home the
utter folly of our politicians’ infatuation with wind power than the
fact that three of the huge coal-fired power plants we must soon lose
each provide nearly twice as much electricity as all our 3,000 wind
turbines put together.
During those freezing, windless
weeks last winter, when we were often using up to 60 gigawatts of
power, 40 per cent of it from coal, the contribution of all those
windmills was so minuscule that several times it appeared as 0 per
cent.
Even in last week’s hot
weather,
it was still so derisory that more than once we were having to import
four times as much power from France – made by the nuclear reactors
which our own politicians dislike almost as much as the coal-fired
plants they don’t want to see replaced. Truly there is madness here.