It's Not Inexpensive Being Green

Just in case you're spending the final days before Christmas pondering whether wind energy offers a good alternative to good ol' oil, coal and gas, a British Web site has the answer in a neat little table.

In sum, four wind stations cost from 75 million to 2.7 billion pounds to build, and generate electricity at a cost of 2.57 to 8.11 pounds per watt.

Conventional power is much cheaper. A nuclear plant cost 2 million pounds to build and generates electricity for 1.67 pounds per watt. A coal/CO2 plant generates power at the same amount per watt but cost half as much to build. The cheapest power, not at all suprisingly, came from the cheapest plant, a gas plant that cost just 350 million pounds to build, and cranks out watts at 0.58 pounds.

Here's all that data and more in a table:

STATION	Type	Price	Rated Power	Capacity Factor	Available Power	Source of info	Price per watt
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
Hadyard Hill	Wind	£85M	100MW	.33	33MW	BWEA	£2.57
Solway Firth (proposed)	Wind	£375M	180MW	.33	60MW	BBC	£5.41
Scroby Sands	Wind	£75M	60MW	.33	20MW	BBC	£3.75
Whitstable	Wind	£2700M	1000MW	.33	333MW	Business Week	£8.11

For comparison:

Olkiluoto 3, Finland	Nuclear	£2000M	1600MW	.75	1200MW	BBC	£1.67
Severn Power	Gas	£350M	800MW	.75	600MW	BBC	£0.58
Kingsnorth (proposed)	Coal	£1000M	1600MW	.75	1200MW	E.On	£0.83
Killingholme (proposed)	Coal / CO2 storage	£1000M	800MW	.75	600MW	BBC	£1.67

Jon at Greenie Watch points out that the costs don't accurately reflect the true cost of wind power: Every wind station has to have a conventional plant behind it so there's power when the wind isn't blowing -- doubling the capital cost of the plant.

Back in about '76 I bought a book called "Earth, Energy and Everyone" that showed how alternative energy could supply all our needs by 1990 -- without burning a lump of coal or drop of oil.

That didn't work out too well, because of what the wind farm figures above show: Environmentalism works great for rich people, but not so well for others.

Related Tags: Environmentalism, Wind power