13 years to limitless energy... | Page 8 | Vital Football

13 years to limitless energy...

Spursex said:
There is an issue with maximum output i.e. size _ closeness to ground/type of crops etc (some don't do well and yields go down in centrifugal wind sheer) and crops attract birds and birds basically get badly mangled (lots of them!) by wind turbines..Plus on land the output isn't as great and effective financially as they have to be smaller on land because of accumulated intense noise (density of turbines) aesthetics: and lots of other practical reasons like maintenance.

I have long ago invested in a turbines and there are are a lot of hidden costs/reasons for reduced financial behaviour over time.

The new vibrating turbines/poles promise to be far less problematic, but may still be some way off:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022...rating-wind-turbine-is-producing-clean-energy
Click to expand...
Looking at Google maps you can clearly see that the land around the turbines at Delabole wind farm in Cornwall is being used for arable farming. I seem to remember the farm being built around the time I moved to Cornwall which is over 30 years ago. I dare say these turbines are significantly smaller than the newer designs, especially those offshore.
 
Rishi Sunak lifts ban on onshore windfarms in face of Tory rebellion

Decisions will revert to local communities and there will no longer be a requirement for near-unanimous support


By Daniel Martin, Deputy Political Editor 6 December 2022 • 7:20pm


Rishi Sunak has lifted the ban on onshore windfarms in the face of a Tory revolt and said he would consider lower energy bills for communities who support them.
The Prime Minister agreed with rebel MPs that decisions on whether turbines can be erected will revert to local communities, and that there will no longer be a requirement for near-unanimous support.
He backed down after 34 Tory MPs, including Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, signed an amendment in support of onshore wind.
It comes just a day after he scrapped mandatory house-building targets in the face of another backbench rebellion.
Following talks between ministers and rebels on Tuesday, Mr Sunak also agreed that communities which agree to support onshore wind turbines could be rewarded with lower bills.
A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said a consultation would seek views on "developing local partnerships for supportive communities, so that those who wish to host new onshore wind infrastructure can benefit from doing so, such as through lower energy bills".

The moratorium on onshore wind was introduced by David Cameron in 2015. It amounted to an effective ban because just one objection could result in a turbine being turned down as part of the planning process.
It meant that between 2016 and 2020, just 16 new turbines were granted planning permission in the whole of England - a 96 per cent decline on the period between 2011 and 2015.


The new rules will still ensure that new windfarms will only be approved with local consent. But they will no longer require near unanimity in order to proceed, which pro-windfarm MPs say is nearly impossible for any planning application to meet.
'Onshore wind has an important role to play'
Simon Clarke, Michael Gove’s predecessor as levelling up secretary, who laid the rebel amendment, said: "I am delighted that the Government has come forward with what is a really sensible package designed to return decisions about new onshore wind to local communities.
"Poll after poll shows this is what people want to happen. What I and fellow Conservative MPs have said is simply that communities ought to be able to make this decision for themselves, rather than have Whitehall rule it out."
He added: "Onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy bar none and it has an important role to play as part of our future energy mix, alongside oil and gas, offshore wind, solar and nuclear.
"Unlocking its potential will strengthen our domestic energy security and help us to deliver our climate commitments in the fight against climate change."
As part of the deal, ministers will also remove a requirement for potential onshore wind sites to be pre-designated in a local plan, which is currently a unique requirement not asked of any other energy source.
The Government will consult on the fine detail of how this new policy is implemented in a consultation that will run from December 2022 to March 2023.
The National Planning Policy Framework will be updated to reflect the outcome by the end of April 2023.
'Strong environmental protections' to remain
The BEIS spokesman said there would be "strong environmental protections" so that "valued landscapes" such as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and the green belt are protected.
"Decisions on onshore wind sites will continue to be made at a local level as these are best made by local representatives who know their areas best and are democratically accountable to the local community," the spokesman said.
"To deliver a more localist approach, and its commitments in the British Energy Security Strategy, the Government will consult on proposed changes to national planning policy. This follows positive engagement with MPs.
"Under the proposals, planning permission would be dependent on a project being able to demonstrate local support and appropriately address any impacts identified by the local community.
"Local authorities would also have to demonstrate their support for certain areas as being suitable for onshore wind, moving away from rigid requirements for sites to be designated in local plans."
Meanwhile, MPs on the Public Accounts Committee said on Tuesday that the Government would miss its affordable house building target by tens of thousands of homes.
They said that it is expected to deliver 32,000 fewer homes than it promised in its 2016 and 2021 affordable house building programmes.
This comes after Mr Sunak caved in to pressure from Conservative MPs to make annual targets for councils to develop 300,000 new homes a year "advisory" rather than compulsory.
 
No definite numbers but 10,000 to 100,000 birds are estimated to be killed by wind turbines.
To put that into context....55 million birds are killed by domestic cats per year. So should we ban cats ?

A study in Norway showed that by painting one turbine blade black, bird deaths were reduced by 70 %.
 
US scientists make huge breakthrough in fusion energy



A major breakthrough in the search for clean energy has been made by US government scientists at a laboratory in California, it has been reported.
A fusion reaction, carried out at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced more energy than was absorbed by the fuel to create it.
It represents a major milestone in the drive to wean the US and other major economies from carbon-producing fossil fuels which scientists regard as the main driver of climate change.
The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has intensified the need for alternative energy.
Earlier this year the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included nearly $370bn in new subsidies for low-carbon energy.
On taking office, Mr Biden pledged that his administration would be a global leader in the race to develop green technology.
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Pictured is the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Credit: Corbis Historical
The US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm and under-secretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby are due to announce the breakthrough on Tuesday.
In August last year, the Livermore laboratory announced the results of a reaction which released 1.3 megajoules of energy, about five times the 250 kilojoules that were absorbed by the capsule.


The reaction is produced by bombarding a minute blob of plasma with light from 192 lasers at the laboratory’s $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, which was initially created to test nuclear weapons by simulating explosions.
Ms Hruby hailed the results at the time.
“These extraordinary results from NIF (National Ignition Facility) advance the science that NNSA (National Nuclear Safety Administration) depends on to modernise our nuclear weapons and production," she said.
“It also offers potential new avenues of research into alternative energy sources that could aid economic development and help fight climate change."
However, that fell short of the 1.9-megajoule target set by the NIF.
That threshold was breached in recent weeks by scientists at Livermore, the Financial Times reported.
It is understood the latest laser reaction produced 2.5 megajoules of energy. The results of the fusion experiment are still being analysed.
Such was the power produced in the fusion experiment that some of the diagnostic equipment was damaged.
The laboratory has remained cautious, beyond describing the experiment as successful.
“Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility,” it said.
“However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time.
“That analysis is in process, so publishing the information . . . before that process is complete would be inaccurate.”
Fusion reactions produce neither carbon nor long-lived, radioactive waste - effectively reaching the holy grail in energy production.
It also enables vast amounts of energy to be produced from very little hydrogen fuel.
The technique of inertial confinement fusion dates back to the 1970s and simply put aims to harness the power found in nuclear weapons to produce energy.
Fusion energy has bipartisan support in Washington.
Earlier this year Democratic congressman Don Beyer, who started the Fusion Energy Caucus, stressed the technology was different from that used to produce power at Fukushima and Chernobyl.
“Fusion is the Holy Grail of climate change and decarbonised future,” he told a White House summit.
“Perhaps even more profoundly, fusion has the potential to lift more citizens of the world out of poverty than any idea since fire.”
 
The sinister truth about bird-killing wind ‘farms’
The Tory party must have a death wish now that it has fallen back in love with onshore wind turbines

Matt Ridley 7 December 2022 • 7:00am
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Birds of prey, including golden eagles, are threatened by the worldwide growth of wind farms Credit: PAVEL MIKHEYEV/REUTERS

The Tory party’s move to fall back in love with wind energy, despite its manifest disadvantages of cost, unreliability and inefficient use of land, is a death wish. They will soon rediscover just how unpopular wind “farms” (who thought up that euphemism for these open-air power stations, incidentally?) are with voters in rural constituencies. Opinion polls now persuade them that years of pro-wind propaganda have changed the public’s mind. I would not bet on it: these things may be popular in north London, but not in northern England.
Northumberland, where I live, thinly populated and windy, is especially blighted, being a big net exporter of electricity on windy days. A passionate, cross-party coalition of politicians from the county formed in the House of Lords – including a bishop – to object to the expansive vistas of the Cheviots and Bamburgh Castle being ruined by squadrons of spinning fans. I’ve rarely been involved in something so popular.
The objections are not just Nimbyism. Though few people enjoy having their view spoiled by structures that stand up to four times as tall as Nelson’s column, or the flicker their shadows cause on sunny days and the hum of their blades, the impact on nature is horrible.


The BBC, in one of its poorly named “comedy” slots, last week mocked people who complain that wind factories kill birds. Cats kill more birds than wind turbines, the programme said. Er, when was the last time your cat came home with a golden eagle, a bearded vulture or a red throated diver? Wind turbines, unlike cats, single out large, soaring, rare birds.
A rare lammergeier or bearded vulture released in Spain as part of a conservation project recently strayed to the Netherlands and met its end at a wind factory. All over the world, the largest and rarest eagles and vultures are dying in significant numbers as a result of turbines: in Australia, wedge-tailed eagles; in South Africa, Verreaux’s eagles; in Norway, sea eagles; in California, golden eagles.
One study found that, at a single windy spot in California, Altamont Pass, wind turbines were killing over 1,000 birds of prey per year, including more than 60 golden eagles. These are probably underestimates: there is no obligation on wind firms to count the birds they kill and they avoid doing so. It is left to volunteer conservationists to try to find the evidence.
Given that large birds of prey live at low densities, these deaths are vastly more significant to the bird populations in question than cat kills are to chaffinches and robins. A single wind power station in Spain, with just 32 turbines, has killed a vulture every three days since it began operating two years ago. The total Spanish population of griffon, cinereous, bearded and Egyptian vultures is in the low thousands.
Earlier this year, in a rare exception to a blanket exemption from prosecution granted by the Obama administration, a wind energy company in America was convicted by the federal government of breaking the law by killing at least 136 golden and bald eagles. On the Norwegian island of Smola, the number of sea eagle territories fell from 13 to five after the construction of a 68-turbine wind power station. Local extinction is a real possibility for these species. In India, the impact of wind turbines on birds of prey is so big that it reduced predatory attacks on ordinary birds by three quarters.
Even if eagles don’t die, they may be affected. Satellite tags attached to golden eagles released in the Monadhliath mountains in Scotland show the birds carefully avoiding the areas around wind factories. So they have less habitat and smaller populations.
This appears to be true of other birds, too: golden plover have been shown to avoid nesting near wind turbines, probably for the same reason they avoid nesting near trees, which can harbour predators. It’s similar at sea. Red-throated divers avoid offshore wind factories in the North Sea.
Then there is the impact on bats. North American studies estimate up to a million bats a year are killed by turbines. A German study concluded that each turbine kills an astonishing 70 bats in two months. You or I would be prosecuted for this.
The silence of most conservation charities on this topic is deafening: that wind firms subsidise such charities is presumably just a coincidence. Organisations that make a huge fuss if a farmer or a gamekeeper is even suspected of shooting a hawk shrug at the wind industry’s vastly greater slaughter. The RSPB’s former conservation director, Martin Harper, says the evidence shows “appropriately located wind farms have negligible impacts” on bird populations.
True, it’s possible to site wind turbines away from migration routes, and even to stop them spinning when tagged eagles approach, or during nights when bats are likely to be active. But this would lower the output of electricity, making them ever less economic.
Must we destroy this planet to save it?
 
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