Euan Mearns’ Letter To The P&J
By Paul Homewood
Euan Mearns has had another letter published his local newspaper.
It appears that there is real opposition growing in the Highlands against wind farms.
I have pasted the letter at the bottom as well, for easy reading:
Renewable infrastructure and not climate change is destroying Scotland’s landscape
Sir,- In response to the article published by the Director of Communications at Scottish Renewables on 7th October.
The article claimed that climate change was the greatest threat to our landscape. I enjoy walking in the Scottish hills and glens and can see no evidence for the change to the landscape claimed by the author. What is all too visible, especially in NE Scotland, are wind turbines everywhere. Turning to our pastoral landscape the most notable change are bright yellow fields of rape in the Spring. Actual impacts of climate change on our landscape are elusive to find while measures deployed to combat climate change are everywhere, and are not pretty.
In 2022, the UK was responsible for 1% of global fossil fuel derived CO2 emissions (BP review, one of the gold standards for global energy data). We can assume that Scotland accounted for about 10% of the UK total, in other words we account for 0.1% of the global total (that is one thousandth). It is wrong to argue that eliminating this tiny amount is going to make any difference to global climate, let alone to suggest that we are engaged in a fight to save the global climate. This kind of groundless scaremongering is evidently harming the mental health of our children. Only the OECD are engaged in this virtue signalling crusade. Most of the rest of the world (China, India, Russia and the Middle East) are going to carry on as before, gaining competitive advantage over the OECD for every year that passes.
It is claimed that wind power is cheap and reliable. If so, then let us get rid of all the subsidies and support mechanisms – feed in tariffs, contracts for difference and constraint payments. It is absurd that we should pay companies to not produce when the wind blows too hard. The claim of “cheap” is also disingenuous since the way electricity costs are calculated are performed on a steeply sloping playing field. It may be the case that the cost of a megawatt hour for wind is lower than the equivalent for gas. But this ignores all the ancillary costs of providing a stable and secure supply and the transmission lines required to deliver wind power to its distant market. It does happen that the wind blows nowhere across the whole of western Europe, from the UK to Sweden, Germany and Spain. At these times it is necessary to fall back on backup, normally provided by natural gas. It therefore becomes necessary to maintain a whole fleet of combined cycle gas turbines, enough to power the whole country, for occasional use. This includes maintaining the whole gas production and import infrastructure – pipelines and liquefied natural gas trains etc. The cost of this support mechanism is rarely reported, it seems likely that it will be huge. To claim that wind is reliable is a fantasy. If it were reliable then we would not need the vast support mechanism outlined above.
“The network was designed for fossil fuels a century ago”. This is also untrue. The Scottish grid probably came into being around 1900. Then, coal fired power generation took place in cities causing horrific pollution. The clean air act of 1956 resulted in a transformation with large power stations with tall chimneys like Longannet (1973 to 2016) being moved to rural areas, but still close to population centres to minimise transmission costs and losses. In the 1950s we saw the development of hydroelectric power that was the beginning of power stations and new grid everywhere. Hydroelectric power is infinitely superior to wind and solar, but has still caused immense environmental harm.
The nuclear age dawned in Scotland with the first reactor at Dounreay in 1955. This was followed by Chapelcross in 1959 and Hunterston A in 1964. The GW scale Hunterston B came in 1976 and Torness in 1988. All of these events led to grid extensions, but again, with the exception of the experimental breeder reactor at Dounreay, all were built close to population centres to minimise transmission costs and losses.
The article in question calls for 11GW of onshore wind and 20GW of offshore wind. Peak electricity demand in Scotland is likely to be around 5 GW. This is an estimate since the deployment of large amounts of unmetered wind and solar obscures what is actually going on. Given that we already have about 1GW of hydro and 1.2 GW of nuclear, the deficit is around 3.8 GW of unmet demand. Why do we need 31GW of wind to cover this? The honest answer is likely to be to line the pockets of unscrupulous developers. Wind developers and politicians need to come clean on where all this surplus electricity will be used. The likely answer will be the midlands of England requiring about 25 Beauly to Denny scale power lines, each, hundreds of miles long. Where are they going to go, what is this going to cost and who is going to pay for it? Turning Scotland into a vast power station to enable England to reach silly CO2 reduction targets does not seem like a good idea whether you sit on the Unionist or Nationalist side of the debate.
Dr Euan Mearns
Aberdeen
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I think that Beauly-Denny cost around £800 million when completed in 2015, about 2.5 times the original estimate. 25 of those with 15-20 years inflation is going to cost a fair bit, might even make HS2 look cheap!
… and we as L O C A L contractors for various varied services didn’t even get a Look-in. so much for local investment ….. all for folks from the South or shares in the Brown Envelope industry.
Can the argument be any plainer than this?
…well, yes. It was a good exposition of the problem but, I’m afraid, probably too long and – would you believe – too technical for some, including politicians. We can appreciate here on this blog but I wonder how many readers of the newspaper will.
Quite right Harry. Problem is that it is beyond the comprehension of many MPs and/or the subject is being filtered out by their ‘interns’ and/or the MPs cannot be bothered to concern themselves with issues that the popular media until recently find convenient to attribute to cranks or obsessives. See the outcome of The Voice vote in Aus. where big business, media personalities and the government have failed to their utter disappointment. We might now hope for the same regarding the lobby for unreliable green power.
Probably in percentage terms more than read the national press. But since the P&J circulation is pretty small that doesn’t amount to many.
However if local media are prepared to give a hearing to this point of view the nationals will pay attention at least to an extent. There is not much to be gained by being on the “wrong” side of your readership.
When I was in Aberdeen in the mid 60s the P&J held considerably more sway with the local population than the publications based in Manchester and Fleet Street. It was recognised as being faithful to local market considerations rather than the fashions south of Stonehaven. Boosted, no doubt, by the apocryphal headline following the sinking of the Titanic; “Local Man Lost at Sea”.
If simple arithmetic is beyond comprehension then we really are led by donkeys.
I still can’t decide whether most, if not all, of our politicians are too thick or too lazy to read and understand the problems with wind power that are simply and clearly stated in this letter.
I have a list of 10 Tory politicians that I send these articles to. They are selected for potentially being smart. One is an electrical engineer and another degree in maths. But so far I have just received two rather vacuous replies. This week I intend to visit a local MSP (member Scottish Parliament) mainly to find out if these emails get past their gate keepers.
Hi Euan! I have to say that whenever I write to my MP I always get a reply from one of his assistants. Quite often from the one who happens to be – allegedly – a card-carrying Greenie. IOW, all I get is nonsense.
Harry, the first time I wrote to my MP (Labour) about the Net Zero nonsense I received a reply within a couple of hours, so realised it was a ‘one I’ve prepared earlier’ standard response more or less saying the science is settled. I emailed back to this effect and I received a reply after about a week which did seem to be a more personal response. Euan says he wrote to 10 Tory politicians. Maybe it is different in Scotland, but as far as I know we can only write to our own MP.
I too have written to my MP about this subject, many years ago. She’s a qualified doctor of the medical type, so likely to have a high level of intelligence.
I pointed out that the current level of wind power, was producing SFA power, with coal producing some 15% (IIRC) of our demand & what would be replacing this when all coal power was closed.
I got a boilerplate reply about CfD auctions & our international obligations.
I further responded to say that this didn’t answer my question & received a reply that she’d ask the Secretary of State.
That was the last I heard.
You don’t get 21 gigawatt hours of electricity per 21 gigawatts of wind capacity. You get more like a third of it, and then you need more wind to produce power to be stored for use in calm periods, except we haven’t worked out how to do that yet.
If you were to suggest building a power station with the same delivery envelope of wind you wouldn’t get out of the ground.
Absolutely. Have a look at the National Grid FES 2023, which suggests (in the consumer transformation scenario) the 54 TwH from offshore wind in 2022 is miraculously going to become 514 TwH by 2050!
I wasn’t aware the the coal fired power stations in the cities caused ‘horrific polution’.
Born in 1945, I lived in a typical cotton town, about 5-6 thousand households all burning coal in an open fire. The mills with their high chimneys were blamed for the blackened buildings and bad air quality, but I now think that the domestic fires were the real cause. The clean air act changed all that. Imagine what it must have been like in Manchester, the heart of the cotton trade.
Not sure about the pollution from the power stations, bad it may have been, I never saw one as a kid. Nowadays we can burn coal and remove most if not all of the undesirable products of combustion.
” I wasn’t aware the the coal fired power stations in the cities caused ‘horrific polution’. ”
Modern coal-fired isn’t much dirtier than modern gas-fired. An example being “Isogo” in Japan
Powermag article from 2010:
https://www.powermag.com/top-plantisogo-thermal-power-station-unit-2-yokohama-japan/
“Isogo ranks as the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the world in terms of emissions intensity, with levels comparable to those from a natural gas–fired combined-cycle plant”
For the UK, coal also has two advantages over gas :
Stockpiling
“Non-hostile” suppliers
Would be interesting to read an update on Isogo
North Jutland Power Station Units 3, close to my home in Aalborg, North Denmark is described by Wiki as “entering service in 1998, having a maximum production capacity of 411 MW and a maximum heat production capacity of 490 MJ/s. It was the first power plant in Denmark with a SNOX-system for exhaust cleaning.
(Actually, I believe it is the only functioning SNOX flue gas cleaner in the World. But it is ferociously effective at cleaning the flue gas, turning the SO2 into sulfuric acid and hugely reducing NOx)
In CHP mode, it is up to 90% efficient. When no heat is being delivered its fuel (coal) efficiency is 48%.
But because the chimney discharges only CO2 (as well as H20), this wonderfully clean, efficient and dispatchable powe station, only 25 years old, is scheduled to close by 2028!
Madness!
“Madness!”
Agreed. Reliable and cost-effective generation sacrificed for a belief.
OK you could be right. I just remember seeing old B&W pictures of cities with loads of smoking coal stacks. There were a large number of small power stations but of course also other industries using coal and all those coal fires It is the case however that all of this was closed down and moved out of town. Battersea power station in London is a good example. This is where the Chinese are right now.
I worked in the big MoT office building next to the massive old Bankside power station in Southwark, London in 1969-73 and my desk and papers used to get an overnight shower of soot particles. When conditions were right the chimney smoke came right past the window!
I went to school in Manchester and there were a number of ‘pea-soupers’ even into the 1960s like the ones described as happening in the London area. Without being too graphic, blackened handkerchiefs and a cough were the norm in those conditions. I remember one occasion when a visiting sports team travelled 2 hours by coach only to find the school and the local area enveloped in ‘smog’ and the event cancelled.
One small advantage was being sent home from school early as the buses and traffic generally were only moving at a crawl in the low visibility.
Britain’s enlarged fleet of offshore wind capacity will perform similarly to this generation pattern from our existing 14,000MW of metered capacity:
Note how steeply the falls & rises that need balancing by dispatchables, are.
Is there a link for the source of this graph?
Looks like it could be this:
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/what-we-do/asset-map/#tab-2
Even more dramatic than the picture above!
Marvellous summary (though, as commented above, too long for feeble minds to read through, let alone take on board). However, I shall copy it to all my alarmist friends. It might make them even more alarmed, of course, as they will still believe that something must be done and this will tell them that nothing can be done!
Meanwhile, I think I spot an elementary maths error:
“Peak electricity demand in Scotland is likely to be around 5 GW. This is an estimate since the deployment of large amounts of unmetered wind and solar obscures what is actually going on. Given that we already have about 1GW of hydro and 1.2 GW of nuclear, the deficit is around 3.8 GW of unmet demand.”
Shouldn’t that be 2.8 GW?
It was read by at least one SNP politician, Fergus Ewing had an article published yesterday where he cites the figure of 1 thousandth. He is at the sensible end of the SNP spectrum but was none the less promoting CCS.
Euan, many thanks for your response. All of my friends are successful, intelligent people who are, typically, retired. But, they have children and grandchildren who have been indoctrinated with the global warming view. There are many strands explaining why they find it so acceptable. Do you have views about how those of us who want to moderate those views (many of which have the greater human benefit at their core) can turn this energy for change to good use? You address the “delivery” part of the equation in explaining why we cannot achieve “Net Zero”, but we need arguments to demonstrate that we do not need to.
Terry, I have in fact written a lengthy piece on the history of energy and Man that has been published widely but I keep it in my back pocket for local consumption because I want to keep local outlets on board. It is basically an affront that Greta and her cohorts complain about what they have inherited. I was 22 years old before I first set foot on a plane. When I was a student the glass of water by my bed once froze, we were so poor and energy poor. Life expectancy has marched upwards. The younger generation need to understand they are huge hypocrites, and what they wish for is death at 40 and violence on the streets.
In public I try to focus on consequences of energy policy. Very dodgy to go out and claim there is no Climate Emergency, even although this is true. I reckon that >>90% of those proclaiming climate emergency are unable to explain the physics of the CO2 greenhouse. I think I understand 90% of the physics, and keep that in my back pocket to attack those who produce the climate emergency argument to reinforce their insane energy policies.
Hosts of youngsters may well grow up in abject poverty and blame this on the climate emergency without realising that it was the response to the fake emergency that was to blame. I realise this is not very helpful.
” but we need arguments to demonstrate that we do not need to. ”
There is no proof that humans are responsible for dangerous climate change.
I estimate that the total UK cost of net zero to date is c£700 billion, that money could fix a lot of problems in the UK.
An excellent read, which will undoubtedly be ignored by those responsible for all the climate catastrophe hysteria. Are they so ignorant or venal to admit their unreliables strategy is a pipe dream?
Great to see Euan Mearns pop up! His old blog is sorely missed.
+1
me too!
Hello old friends, The blog was a huge amount of work and I am quite happy and motivated doing what I am doing right now. It a rather different approach and these articles are reaching a global audience thanks to the likes of Paul and the CO2 Coalition. I don’t have to worry about following comments and exterminating Green Trolls. I spend a few hundred a year keeping the site up, and will never say never.
Like Paul’s blog, the comments section on your blog also produced informative and illuminating contributions from fellow readers. 👍
Succinctly put, Dr Mearns. If I can use this as an excuse, the letter says:
“… the ancillary costs of providing a stable and secure supply …”
Something has had me wondering for the last couple of days. Since Thursday night gas generation has been 3 to 4GW, nuclear another 4.3GW and the sum of coal, Drax, hydro and pumped storage 3.5GW at best. To feed a demand of between 20 and 30GW. So much less than 50% of electricity at times coming from spinning things capable of ensuring the frequency remains stable.
A couple of years ago (?) wind was edging up to 50% of demand when it all went pear shaped and there were blackouts everywhere. What’s changed, and what’s that costing us? Less than blackouts I suppose, but…
One thing that puzzles me is that UK peak demand used to be ~50 GW. I know this is reduced by unmetered wind and solar, but surely not by that amount. We have a bit of energy efficiency. And of course super high price. Perhaps UK PLC is simply closing down? Hugh?
UK peak demand used to be ~50 GW Just as you rightly point out, have said that many’s a time years ago too…. I mean, what DO we need so much power for now? NO Steel, Fertiliser, Manufacturing, ( huh – not even the Call centres we once had.) Makes you wonder when you take away the consumption for EVs and Lighting and personal Phones, what is the consumption being used for ?
Well, it’s not yet the depths of winter, though it felt like it today, and it’s the weekend – so I guess we’ll see 40GW+ demand soon. You’ve looked at DUKES23 no doubt. They reckon demand has dropped since 2000 by 17% for commercial use and 19% for domestic and industrial. The peak was 2004 though.
“The record low domestic consumption reflects consumers reducing their consumption in response to higher prices, along with record high temperatures reducing demand.”
Make of that what you will – we’re either better off because it’s warmer outside or we’re pulling on more jumpers to save money.
Fat fingers ‘s’ is me
Keep up the good work, it is very much appreciated.
“Turning to our pastoral landscape the most notable change are bright yellow fields of rape in the Spring. ”
The first time a saw such a field (in Idaho, about 40 years ago), I was greatly impressed. Not long after, and just a few miles away, ridges became invaded by the Yellow Star-thistle, a species of (nasty) thorny plant native to the Mediterranean Basin region. Both are bright yellow additions to the landscape, and both, apparently, native to Europe.
Non-native invasive species are a real problem. The bright yellow fields of rape an irritation for a few weeks in the Spring. But never mentioned is all the ammonium nitrate fertiliser that goes to make that bio-fuel. Last year I climbed a local hill called Birnam Hill for the first time with splendid views of a famous mountain called Schiehallion, spoiled by two vast hill top wind farms. That really pissed me off.
Wind & solar are the stupidest form of intermittent electricity generation, ever
The Dr says it in a nutshell! A similar scenario is being repeated all around the western world who I fear will be left looking like the fools they are!
Euan,
I am glad to see you are fighting your corner. There is not much I can add to your arguments. Just keep up the good work.You got a mention over at POB, which seems to me to be little more than a talking shop for academics trying to preserve their income, from climate change. You are absolutely right in you estimation of most people’s understanding of carbon dioxide.I work in the petrochemical business (45 years) and I am always amused when some loudmouth attacks me for working in petrochemicals. When I ask them how they clean their teeth that usually shuts them up. There is nothing worse than a lefty loud mouthed student trying to study for some useless degree.
Like you I grew up in the 50-60’s. There was no central heating or double glazing. Ice on the windows in the morning.
PS. We met a number of times. Once at the EI and the oil depletion conferences in Brussels, Vienna and Edinburgh.