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As an ornithologist working in offshore renewables, there is so much complete rubbish in this thread about onshore wind, offshore wind, tidal, and the environmental impacts of all three, that there's too much for me to correct without taking a day off work.
So I won't, and I'll just pick on the post above instead.
chevychase:
A SSSI is generally considered to be important at the national scale. If it was internationally important, it would receive SPA designation. South Stack is, by this definition, not internationally important for seabirds (though the Holy Island SPA is internationally for chough, but they're not impacted by the project you're talking about, given they are a terrestrial species).
The Mersey Estuary SPA on the other hand, which is within the Mersey Estuary (fairly obviously), that you appear to have characterised as not supporting any nature, in fact supports an internationally important assemblage of non-breeding waterbirds. These are closely associated with a further two nearby SPAs supporting similar populations of birds. Probably >100,000 of them each year in total. On that basis, to characterise the Mersey Estuary as not supporting any nature is not correct.
On the Morlais project - the impact assessment work that was done for that project was based on the best available evidence. There are large uncertainties in the predictions made because the evidence base is limited. My understanding is that as a condition of consent there was meant to be an adaptive management plan in place, giving power to regulators to prevent the project from proceeding, and potentially even to remove it, if the operational phase monitoring shows unacceptable impacts to either seabirds or marine mammals. So hopefully this will provide a mechanism for something to be done if the impacts end up being unacceptable.
I don’t think PV is the solution for the UK
Why do people say things like this as if there is one single solution? We will end up with a mix of generation, the same mix that is currently generating up to 70% of our power without direcct carbon emissions in this sunny windy weather. Solar is definitely the best solution for sites that are suited to it, and will be even better when we have cheap perovskite solar cells.
PV clearly does work as even small scale domestic installations pay back. Local generation and use will also allow us to keep our massively under spec grid from burning out sooner. Storage of energy is the biggie and it doesn't have to be all battery although a lot of domestic installations have those now. I saw something recently where they lifting huge concrete blocks into the air when there was excess generation and letting them down again when power was needed.
That's the main benefit of Solar PV I think - you can put it on buildings all over the place for no real downside other than the cost of installation. If you have batteries too you can make houses self sufficient fairly easily too. The government should be paying for this, of course, but you know..
I don’t think PV is the solution for the UK as our geography makes they very inefficient. As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.
If you'll only countenance using high/100% efficient energy sources you're going to be waiting a very while.
30% (or even 10) is better than zero. A roof/field/shed without PV panels is still producing 0Kwh whatever it's annual exposure to sunlight. The only real issue is up front costs and maintenance, after that it's passive leccy generation...
As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.
Capacity or output? Because they mean two very different things.
More guff @squirrelking – the “Nuclear Liabilities Fund” is worth about £4.5bn and gets topped up tiny amounts.
@chevychase umm, no. It was worth £8.3bn at the start of 2009, I can't find up to date numbers but it's pretty safe to say it'll be a fair bit more than that now.
You're also ignoring the fact that it was the UK government that commissioned them in the first place and EDF only bought the stations. Quite why you think anything outside of their part of the fuel route should be their responsibility when it was already established when the stations were bought is beyond me.
I looked into a turbine for my place. Site is excellent for it, we're surrounded by commercial ones, but the cost is high in the UK due to lack of demand and planning likely to fail. In one go I could have taken myself and my neighbours all effectively off grid but instead we'll all have to keep burning logs and gas.
Simple thing is that just about nobody will put stuff on their house if the install cost is mega and the payback period is long. It has to be encouraged, grants, building regs. Or whatever.
As molgrips said, the government needs to be paying (schemes, tax breaks, laws, whatever) but the current clown show can barely join a 10 spot dot to dot let alone do the kind of long term planning and actual investment this sort of national infrastructure change would require.
IMO, the biggest thing we could do is stop all oil and gas support / tax breaks / subsidies alongside a huge programme of efficiency for all consumers. The timeline could be along the lines of our combustion engine bans and the lifespan of any current agreements - but as of tomorrow, all the money going into carbon heavy and polluting fuels would be switched steadily over to creating the efficiency, grid, storage, and generation we need of all kinds.
@ehrob - fair point about the liverpool estuary. It was a flippant comment. The zone under consideration stretches from West Kirby to Formby (IIRC) so that'd be quite an impact wouldn't it. And given humanity's form I personally have doubts environment would halt progress on the project. Money counts. On that:
On the Morlais project – the impact assessment work that was done for that project was based on the best available evidence. There are large uncertainties in the predictions made because the evidence base is limited. My understanding is that as a condition of consent there was meant to be an adaptive management plan in place, giving power to regulators to prevent the project from proceeding, and potentially even to remove it, if the operational phase monitoring shows unacceptable impacts to either seabirds or marine mammals. So hopefully this will provide a mechanism for something to be done if the impacts end up being unacceptable.
There's not a chance that we'd pull the plug on an operational profit-making power source, no matter what "plans" we put in place to show regulators have teeth. Not. A. Chance.
You only have to look at the complete failure of regulatory action (and wholesale government funding cuts to the agencies that data-gather which would enable regulators to act on an evidence base) across the board in Blighty that has lead to, to pluck a few examples that immediately come to mind - wholesale sewage discharge and farming leaching nutrients into our rivers meaning there is literally no river in the UK that isn't subject to long-term decline, or, mind-bogglingly, a 70% decline in animal populations in just 50 years.
So, for South Stack - it's a SSSI, if we notice that it's killing seabirds we "might" pull the plug? No we won't! We'll go through years of continual monitoring, "mitigation", claim and counter claim. Given humans have already killed 70% of animals since 1970 where's the precautionary principle here?
We don't need to do it! We could just not take that risk with our already-depleted seabird population. We can spin up some more offshore wind turbines, quickly, cheaply, easily and know there's no impact. In fact, they can be a net positive to the fish population if we build in a way that creates reef space.
I ditched the environment as a career in the 90's when it became very clear that only strong government action would improve our lot - and I didn't want to waste my life howling at the moon whilst the environment burns around me, with me helpless to make a difference. That decision has been borne out.
My o/h has spent 25 years in a field that governs exactly this sort of environmental field at a governance level for a massive multinational construction company, doing roads/rail/ports/wind - many in the UK. She oversees the development of these "adaptive management plans". And they're not worth the paper they're written on. They're there to satisfy the minimum requirement of government regulation - nothing more.
"Adaptive management plans" are not there to protect nature. They're there to protect the companies from getting sued. "We met what was required under regulation with our 'adaptive management plan'". - So the fundamental problem is the government legislation is too weak to protect nature - because mitigation under an effective management plan would be too expensive, making these sorts of schemes unprofitable.
By your own admission the South Stack impact assessment is based on a limited evidence base. So, in my opinion, we should use the precautionary principle and NOT do it - especially given humanity's disastrous effect on nature in the last 50 years - and instead put a new wind farm in. It would be cheaper, faster to construct, it's proven and working technology, and it doesn't risk mashing up more animals and all the other downsides - potential or not.
Given the context it's a joke of a project. It's grant-chasing idiocy and profiteering. Nothing more.
As an ornithologist working in offshore renewables, there is so much complete rubbish in this thread about onshore wind, offshore wind, tidal, and the environmental impacts of all three, that there’s too much for me to correct without taking a day off work.
I enjoyed this opening paragraph and the rest of the post.
I enjoyed this opening paragraph and the rest of the post.
Makes you feel warm and fuzzy does it?
Doesn't address the fundamental issues IMO:
1) That "adaptive management plans" is an assumption that there will be impact.
2) That adaptive management plans are a legal protection for businesses, not protections for the environment
3) That adaptive management plans are only as good as the regulations that underpin the statutory requirements - statutory requirements that have overseen a collapse in animal life in the UK
4) "Limited evidence" - so we're experimenting on a SSSI.
You can do surveys, sure. But if the legal underpinning is worthless, then the outcomes can be devastating.
And we have a cheaper, faster to produce, proven technology that has no environmental impact we could bung in the sea, at scale, a bit further offshore.
And we have a cheaper, faster to produce, proven technology that has no environmental impact
No environmental impact?
To all intents and purposes offshore wind has the least environmental impact of any energy generating tech we can currently deploy.
I enjoyed this opening paragraph
I thought it was a tad rude.
I felt the point could have been made using more diplomatic prose.
The one thing I have learnt on STW is that whatever the subject there is always someone who has greater expertise.
But if only people at the top of their game commented there would be very little to discuss, on a forum which exists solely to exchange ideas.
Makes you feel warm and fuzzy does it?
Not really - I didn't understand most of it. I thought it quite zippily and snippily summarised the problem about being an expert in something about which people talk an immense about of bollocks online.
But the real galaxy brain moment is when you realise that we are all bollocks-talkers about most things. 🤯
it quite zippily and snippily summarised the problem about being an expert in something about which people talk an immense about of bollocks online.
Yup, I can totally relate to ehrob, it's quite frustrating when self appointed experts in here start spouting off and digging down despite either having zero expertise in the field or their most recent experiences being old enough to drink in the US.
Makes you feel warm and fuzzy does it?
Nah, just gave me a laugh that someone else called you out on the same page for talking utter nonsense.
@squirrelking:
just gave me a laugh that someone else called you out on the same page for talking utter nonsense.
Didn't call me out - called this whole thread out. I stand comfortably by what I've said. My o/h has been in the same field for 20 years now - her role is governance of the environmental side of design and bid and monitoring oversight processes for marine and ports across the UK and Ireland for a big multinational. Multiple wind farms/Mersey Gateway, the potential mersey barrage, stuff in the Severn estuary etc. etc - it's her job to manage the environmental SMEs. So yeah, an ornithologist who admits to having "limited data" can't really rule out environmental impacts other than "we don't reckon".
Whereas I'm interested in this at a governance level - and given our form (70% of all animals in the last 50 years is a pretty big data point), it's clear we don't govern build projects well because there's a pathetic legislative base.
stumpyjon
Full Member
I don’t think PV is the solution for the UK as our geography makes they very inefficient. As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.Not relevant,
Sadly it is because NGs models aren't clever enough to recognise the constraints so an X MW solar farm blocks out the same capacity in the grid even though it will on average only produce ~X/10 MW annually with both a daily and seasonal profile that could be modelled to reflect more closely the production. It is (in part) this that is hamstringing bringing on line new schemes as NG say no capacity when actually there is in real life.
That and zombie schemes, there is 200GW approved but not developed capacity sitting on the grid models which is why there is now a ~15 year wait for connections in some areas.
To all intents and purposes offshore wind has the least environmental impact of any energy generating tech we can currently deploy
It's not zero, which is what you claimed.
Yours
Ransos
Renewable energy developer.
@chevychase Get your wife to explain to you why it's not a trivial point. I'm sure she'll speak slowly if you ask.
That's 3 now, can we manage another before page 4? Ooh exciting!
@chevychase Get your wife to explain to you why it’s not a trivial point. I’m sure she’ll speak slowly if you ask.
I’m glad I’d just finished my beer, my iPad and half the floor and my coffee table would have needed mopping off with a towel! 🤣
Get your wife to explain to you why it’s not a trivial point. I’m sure she’ll speak slowly if you ask.
It's the lowest impact energy generation we have, you've clearly tacitly agreed on that, right?
Therefore, whatever impacts there are (and I've happily conceded there are (obviously) impacts), don't really matter in the grand scheme of "what are we going to do". Because we've no lower-impact technologies to roll-out then we're going to roll-out loads of wind. Period.
Of course, we'll build the industries required for recycling end-of-life turbines and their parts, and the connective infrastructure etc. etc. We'll (eventually) lower the carbon footprint of shipping and construction.
The average payback time for windfarms (for carbon footprint) is 3-5 months. And after that we benefit from the cheapest electricity we can produce, and we're not poisoning our kids with noxious gases and particulate emissions.
So yes - I point you back up the thread - you're "technically" correct, but compared to other technologies - yes - it's trivial.
Show me the data that stacks up against any other generation technology that proves otherwise.
See, this is the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge tells you something is best so go all in, wisdom tells you that going all in leaves you open to failure.
Diversity of supply is the name of the game, it's the entire tenet of renewable engineering.