May 9, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in Climate change |

With oil right up in price, and with bio-fuels proving so controversial, the case for exploring alternative forms of energy is obvious – and at face value, few must seem more appealing than wind power.  Yet actually, wind power is a hugely controversial topic – and now its very viability is coming under threat, thanks to the soaring price of commodities.

The world’s biggest wind farm is under threat.   Shell recently pulled out of the development, and although BWEA, the trade association for the UK wind and marine renewables industry, has tried to shrug off the Shell move, recently saying, “We expect to see a great deal of industry interest in taking over Shell’s share in the London Array,” the doubts just won’t go away.  

But now a new blow has been dealt, this time by Centrica.

Speaking to the BBC, Sarwjit Sambhi, Centrica’s director of power generation and renewables, said, “The economics at the moment make the returns marginal.”   

The Government has laid down this ambitious target for the development of wind farms generating 33 gigawatts through offshore wind farms by 2020.    It’s a great idea, but it was obvious from the off that there were very real practical barriers to achieving this target.

And if you attempt to build the world’s biggest wind farm, then clearly your efforts will have a big impact on supply.   The turbines have to be built, and the UK’s main suppliers are the Danish firm Vestas, and Siemens of Germany – both have bulging order books.

And thanks to the surging price of steel, the cost of building wind farms is soaring.    Recently Mr Sambhi told the Telegraph that the cost of building the wind farm had doubled to £80bn, and separately told the BBC, “The worrying trend is that if the manufacturing costs continue to increase, then I think that the wind target is under threat.”

One of the tragedies with wind farms is the controversy they create.

You hear a list as long as your arm of things that are wrong with them: they kill birds, interfere with radar, and are unreliable – but the real problem with wind energy is that most people just don’t want the turbines near them.

The most common criticism of the turbines is that they only generate power when it is windy and that, therefore, as they are unreliable, we still have to ensure they are backed up by carbon-expensive means of generating power, such as gas plants.

But that is true only up to a point.

By spreading wind farms across the UK, the unreliability factor is reduced.  Sure, the wind can suddenly drop, but not everywhere in Britain, all at once.

Besides, says BWEA, no form of generating power is 100 per cent reliable. It says other threats to the system far outweigh the variability of wind.  For example, it cites “failure of the cross-Channel link”. Apparently, the UK is connected to France by two 1000MW circuits which periodically fail. Loss of one circuit occurs more frequently than the loss of both, but neither occurrence causes any significant upset to system operations.

But what you need to bear in mind is that wind power can never generate all of the UK’s needs – the general feeling seems to be that around 20 per cent is viable.

As for the rising costs of commodities making these wind farms unviable – well this is a legitimate problem, and one that creates major difficulties in the short-term.  But remember, this is newish technology, manufacturers are finding new and more efficient methods of generating electricity by wind.

The key is investment, and as long as the investment is there, a way will be found, because wind is something that will never stop blowing, especially in breezy Blighty.