Counter
There is a lot of myths and hype out there when it comes to renewable energy. This article will expose the inadequacies of 'real time' generation of renewable electricity and help explain why investors like RWE are deciding not to throw good money after bad at a wave scheme on the West Coast of Scotland. Others will follow when they, too, realise that they will never see any return on their investments.
A word to the wise. I am fully committed, nay obsessed, with renewable energy as this form of energy is our only hope for our future generations. I am, however, appalled by the poor and crass engineering and design 'solutions' adopted by the renewable energy industry. Sadly, a lot of people put their unwavering trust in these academic or tertiary educated clowns who think nothing of generating just 5% of the available shaft power in a tidal stream generator. These people have had over 35 years to come up with a system that will generate renewable electricity 24 - 7 that does not require any back-up and have failed us all.
Are we going to give these idiots another 35 years to come up with something better than bigger and bigger intermittent generators requiring bigger and bigger amounts of fossil fuels to back them up?
Fortunately, for us all, Gentec WaTS has been invented. This Scottish invention will provide a continuous stream of very cheap electricity into all our homes without burning fossil of bio-fuels to raise steam for our existing thermal power stations. For countries less fortunate a by-product from the generation can be desalinated water.
The Energy Strategy
The UK's Government's Energy Strategy is not based on reducing our dependence on coal towards zero, but to ever so slightly slowing down the rate at which we burn burn coal and gas for generation purposes. There is no evidence that even this meagre strategy is actually working north of the border either because, despite all of Scotland's most beautiful landscapes being littered with ineffective wind turbines, the country's carbon footprint went up by 9% last year (2010).
Long term, this ill-conceived strategy is doomed to failure because we will one day run out of the fossil fuels that currently provide backup for up to 80% of the year. To address the inevitable burning of coal to provide steam some other idiot has come up with Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) where a third of the electricity from a coal fired power station is consumed to capture just 75% of the carbon - the other greenhouse gases do not get captured - another third of the station's output in consumed running the electric pumps to export the carbon into sedimentary strata under the North Sea. The remaining third will go onto the grid. To compensate for losing two thirds of the electricity another two CCS power stations will need to be built. This means that in order to capture just 75% of the carbon from three new power stations we will need to burn three times as much coal than before. Perverse but true.
On top of this CCS nonsense, the strategy needs to spend £billions of taxpayers' money to prop up a plethora of harebrained renewable energy schemes that rely on considerable amounts of fossil fuel derived electricity to provide back up.
The Solution
The UK Government should stop paying subsidies and ROCs to existing and new intermittent renewable energy systems. This will concentrate the minds of these 'renewable subsidy junkies' wonderfully and force them to develop non-intermittent generation systems that do not require any fossil fuels to back them up.
If you agree please sign my e-petition at the link below. If I can get 100,000 signatures the government will be forced to act to save our planet from overheating.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/6580
We do not have any choice in the matter. We may run out of worldwide reserves of fossil fuels by 2040 if the exponential rate of fossil fuel burn rates continue to rise as they have done in recent years. The Government needs to start NOW preparing for the time when there will be nothing left to burn.
Gentec WaTS (international patent pending) is my solution - there may well be others - but if we are going to feed the planet's burgeoning population we must irrigate vast areas of desert in tropical and sub-tropical areas around the world using renewable energy. There will be no coal, oil or gas in just a few decades is we carry on sleepwalking down this dead end path to self-destruction - wake up to the reality - get in touch with your elected representative and make him or her read this - and understand that there will be no second chances for all of our grandchildren including your politician's.