Environment, Europe, Headlines

RENEWABLES: New Dispute Blows Through Wind Energy

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Mar 1 2005 (IPS) - A new controversy is blowing through generation of wind energy after a German study declared it an expensive option.

It can cost between 54 and 102 dollars to save emission of a tonne of carbon dioxide by using wind energy, says a report released last week by a German government energy agency and two other independent groups.

Germany, which has the world’s largest number of wind farms, would have to spend 1.4 billion dollars to link wind farms to the electricity grid to meet its declared aim of producing 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015, the report says. That would cost the average German home an additional 21 dollars a year.

The report has stirred new controversy in both Germany and Britain. The two countries agreed last November to cooperate on drawing more energy from renewable sources, principally wind.

The partnership has run into some tough opponents.

The Country Guardian, a British group that has opposed wind farms for years claims the new German report validates their objections. “We have been saying for years that wind energy costs three times as much as conventional energy, and damages the landscape,” Ann West from Country Guardian told IPS. “Wind farms are such horrible blots on the landscape.”

Elfam, the largest utilities company in Denmark found in a study that wind farms had not reduced carbon dioxide emissions, she said. The Germany energy giant Eon, she said, had found that wind energy needs to be backed up by conventional energy.

“Wind energy is not just more expensive but it leads to more pollution,” West claimed. She cited a report by the Royal Academy of Engineers in Britain to suggest that a conventional power station produces more carbon dioxide when it is turned down to make room for energy from wind farms, and also when it has to “ramp up” when wind energy is insufficient.

But such claims are strongly disputed by many environmentalists. “The German report makes it clear that there are no technical or economic barriers to Germany producing more energy from wind,” Jim Footner from Greenpeace told IPS. “The report says upgradation of the grid would cost 1.4 billion dollars over ten years, but the grid would have to be upgraded anyway for supply of energy from nuclear plants or those that use fossil fuels.”

Germany spends between 1.6 and 2.4 billion dollars a year just to maintain the electricity grid, Footner said. And it was state support that had linked the grid to the conventional sources, he said.

Critics of wind energy, he said, are not factoring in the cost of conventional sources in terms of their contribution to climate change, or the financial burden of storing nuclear waste.

A report by the National Audit Office says Britain is on track to produce 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010. Wind energy is expected to account for about three-quarters of that.

The cost of generation of wind energy has been steadily coming down, Footner said. “An energy review carried out in 2002 by the British government showed that onshore wind will be the cheapest source of energy by 2020.”

But wind energy has its enemies, he said. “There are very large interests in conventional fossil and nuclear energy that are feeling threatened by the growth of renewables.”

Small and localised sources of energy from renewables will be far more secure than the big plants because of the diversity they offer, he said.

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) drew support from the German report.

“The report by the German government makes clear that Germany intends to further expand its production of wind and renewable power up to 20 percent of their country’s electricity needs by 2015-2020,” it said in a statement. “By 2015 some 35,000 MW of wind power could be operating in Germany, split between on and offshore.”

Wind power is expanding in many countries around the world because “it is the cheapest way of generating new renewable power and therefore the cheapest way of saving a tonne of carbon through new renewable power sources,” BWEA said.