Community Investment opportunity at Slyers Lane
Slyers Lane proposed Wind Turbine project and Broadview Energy are offering local residents within the area, great opportunities to invest in the Wind Turbine project. This new form of Community engagement is a wonderful chance for people to invest in their home area with long- term advantages over leaving money in bank savings accounts.
Equally the project will realise a community fund for spending on local projects that should be agreed by the people for the people.
I stress this point because whilst you argue yes or no to the project the real opportunity for you to have a real say in what’s going to happen passes you by. Councils, “do good`s” and the like will take over how the community funding is spent. This doesn’t mean it will all be wrong but my point is be a part of the process, engage now with the issues and decide for yourselves what is the right decision to be made.
Dorset Energized can help you with detailed questions and answers about Wind Energy, totally free from any vested interest. If there are any other points that nag away at your mind then raise them under comments and let’s see if we can get a factual response from people with experience who know what they are talking about.
Listen to all the arguments, ignore signs saying one thing or the other, it’s the future for us, our kids and their children that we are talking about right now.
Is Vince Adams authorised by the Financial Services Authority to comment on the “long term advantages over leaving money in bank accounts”?
I read a comment from Michael Byrne asking what my qualifications were for me to be able to comment on the investment opportunities that can happen with the Slyer’s Lane Wind Turbine project.
First I do not profess to be a financial expert but have had 40 years creating and running a highly successful Company.
Second this gives me a background where I can see an opportunity to both benefit and do good and I think more people should begin to explore the facts.
Three I have become Chairman of an Industrial Provident Society in the Blackmore Vale where we hope to benefit local people and create solar, hydro and even Wind Turbine projects for local communities and the environment. This has done a great deal to increase my knowledge and opened my eyes to how we can tackle some of the problems of the environment, energy costs for us all, pollution and drive forward new technology for the benefit of all.
Finally I am only doing my best to point out the opportunities and it inherent for anyone wishing to go further to carefully understand the offer and make their own final decisions.
I really hope that my points help Michael to understand my position and we want people with all the professional expertise and disciplines to join us and improve everything we do.
Vince, thanks for your explanation but at the end of the day you are not qualified nor authorised to give investment advice however well intentioned it may be and I would urge caution for any would be investor especially when these industrial monstrosities would not exist were it not for taxpayer funded subsidies. In other words taking from often poor taxpayers in heating poverty to further the wealth of people who can afford investments. Surely its bad enough to feed the greed of the landowners and developers without trying to spread the greed to others.
On shore wind is one of the least subsidized forms of electricity generation on offer at the moment. The strike price, length of contracts and government funded promises on decommissioning and waste disposal mean that Hinkley Point C is much more expensive than onshore wind. We are still paying out billions for the environmental and human costs of coal mining and that’s even before we try to factor in any externalized costs to the wider environment. We have repeatedly spent huge amounts on military operations in areas affected by oil politics. None of this really matters however because climate change means that business as usual is not an option whatever the cost. We have to do something different and all the new and alternative technologies need some form of subsidy to get them off the ground. Currently onshore wind is the cheapest of them that can generate significant output and so, if you are really bothered about the poor taxpayer and the consumer in fuel poverty, you should be a strong supporter of onshore wind!
By the way my claim to know what I am talking about is the fact that I have spent the last two years doing an MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Engineering in which I have thus far achieved good to excellent results in every module assessment.
Great. 2 years experience and an expert then.
Well I do regard a relevant post graduate qualification from a well recognized UK university as giving some authority to my comments. Does Mr Byrne now propose to undermine our world renowned higher education system that brings in millions of pounds of foreign student fees and research funding as well as our emerging renewables industry? I notice in all these criticisms he doesn’t favour us with any outline of his reason to claim to be the font of all knowledge on the matter. Perhaps he would like to read the Regen SW progress report that includes the statement:
“This year onshore wind has installed 23 MW and we predict with approved schemes and known sites this level of deployment could be maintained to 2020. However, the Conservative Party proposals to stop onshore wind put this at risk – and, by stopping the cheapest technology, would inevitably increase the cost of energy.”
The main message is that overall the SW is doing well in comparison with other regions but failing to stay on course for the 2020 targets. Dorset is failing to do its share and the major reason for that is that it is not installing any of the cheapest form of renewable energy ie onshore wind. Thus the report contradicts at least 1 of Mr Byrne’s unsupported assertions – ie that onshore wind puts unnecessary burdens on tax payers and consumers.
I would like to thank Mr Byme for his comments that have encouraged a debate on these pages and would urge others of like mind to also make their comments on this site. As a supporter of large wind turbines, I believe we need to answer in detail the concerns their detractors have.
I would like a response to this personal opinion please. I believe that however well intentioned, the misery inflicted on a large proportion of the local population by the siting of these huge turbines and the desecration of our precious countryside cannot be justified by the small amounts of intermittent electricity that they produce. The Slyers Lane proposal is for 6 turbines producing at best 12 to 18 MW in total. This compared with a conventional power station producing 1000 MW plus.
Thanks
An individual’s opinion of having to look at a turbine is subjective. It may be hard for Michael to understand but some of us in the “local population” would actually like to see turbines, even from our garden or bedroom window. We don’t consider it “desecration” or consider the landscape must remain the same. The landscape always changes over time. In Dorset it is entirely man made. Generations of farmers have been guardians of the landscape and farmers still are. I’ve noticed that objectors are usually relitavely recent residents of Dorset without a genuine connection to the land other than viewing it with picture post card eyes.
All electricity generation is intermittent, even nuclear. What matters is how much is generated in the course of a year. 18 MW of wind turbine with 25% capacity factor amounts to around 40,000 MWh/yr which is equivalent to around 8200 West Dorset households (DECC 2011 data)Considering Dorchester has 8996 households you cannot descibe the generation from Slyers lane as “small amounts” How would you feel about a proposal to site a 1000 MW gas or nuclear power station at the Slyers lane site or anywhere else around Dorchester? How do you think anyone living near one feels. We all use electricity. We shouldn’r expect others to shoulder all the burden of the electricity into our homes that we now see as a right.
Keith, thank you for your answer but in terms of an industrial activity 12 to 18 MW is extremely small compared to a 1000MW gas or nuclear power station. On these figures you would need to have between 333 and 500 turbines or between 55 and 83 “small” windfarms to produce 1000MW which is plain daft. It must surely be better to have just one power station sited in a suitable location than that many turbines which by their very nature must be in prominent positions and upsetting and dividing that many communities?
No, it’s not hard at all for me to understand that some people like to see these turbines; I spoken to some. Equally, you must accept that some of us think they are contraptions from hell. The point I was making in my last post is that some people will suffer misery if these things are built and it’s simply not worth it for the small output. I’m sure that the misery endured by some of the population if they are built will far exceed the misery of like minded people like you if they are not. I have no objections to living near a conventional gas or nuclear power station if it was to be appropriately sited. But I would object to one on the Slyers Lane site for the same reasons I object to the turbines; that it is not a suitable place for an industrial building.
I have lived in Dorset for 16 years. Is that enough and how is that relevant anyway? I still care for where I live even if you don’t.
Obviously much of the disagreement in the last couple of posts comes down to personal opinion. However, there are several very important issues I would point to. Firstly Mr Byrne doesn’t say overtly which sort of large centralized generation he favours (he does imply gas and nuclear at one point). Coal is the dirtiest around and would be very expensive to add CCS to. It would also require either the reopening of uneconomic coal mines in this country or the import of large amounts of foreign coal which is wasteful and although cheap at the moment, the price is depressed by relatively short term effects associated with the Americans dumping coal to support their mines after the sudden switch to fracking gas.
Nuclear (our government’s favourite)still hasn’t answered the questions regarding fail safe (which Chernobyl and Fukushima have proved it is not), waste storage/disposal and decommissioning. If we factor these back in to the costings rather than hiding them through government subsidies such at the £120Bn earmarked to decommissioning through the NDA, nuclear becomes one of the most expensive options not a cheap one as sometimes claimed. What’s more, were we to suffer a Chernobyl type accident in our small country we could see a significant fraction of it rendered uninhabitable including a big chunk of the SW if it was Hinkley Point. Proponents ask rhetorically “What are the chances of a Chernobyl happening here?” hoping that we will assume the answer “very little” but if you actually think about the answer then you realize that “quite high really” is closer to the mark because there are not that many nuclear power stations in the world and therefore 2 major accidents and half a dozen or so near misses is, in truth, a statistically significant worry.
Large scale combined cycle gas turbine generation is a risky approach because the international price of gas is so volatile. Europe currently has a large number of CCGT gas plants in mothballs because gas prices are high and coal prices are low and the volatility makes business planning over the lifetime of a centralized generation plant risky. This in turn means that banks will probably ask high interest rates for loan capital pushing up costs or necessitating government subsidy.
This covers the problems with the centralized plant itself but, unlike wind all these technologies require sourcing and supply of fuel and disposal of residues which are often not so centralized. Dorset is a prime fracking area so CCGT generation plant will increase the likelihood of many villages in Dorset having to cope with dispersed drill rigs and well heads. Sellafield is literally overflowing with the waste from just the nuclear plant we have. New facilities will need to be built and Dorset, with its chalk geology low population density, access to sea transport and history of involvement with the nuclear industry (Winfrith)could well be a prime candidate for nuclear waste processing and storage.
As I said at the start much of what Mr Byrne says is purely a question of personal opinion but I would suggest that his use of words like “misery” and “contraptions from Hell” is so over the top as to undermine respect for his opinion and not backed up by the vast majority of people’s experiences living in places like Cornwall where they are doing their bit towards renewable energy capacity building and still have a wonderful place to live in without inflicting all the downsides on someone else. The small minority who are having difficulty might be argued to have more reason to blame the misinformation of the anti campaigns than wind turbines or any other renewable energy technology as discussed in another posting on this site.
Finally, the elephant in the room always remains climate change. Although other technologies may develop and overtake onshore wind, this technology is at present the cleanest, safest, cheapest form of genuinely low carbon electricity generation. the two downsides are visual impact and, as Mr Byrne points out, the fact that we need lots of them. Not impossibly large numbers as far as the technology and economics are concerned but enough to mean that most people who have a location suited to them will have to share their good fortune with a small number of turbines in farms like Slyers Lane or Blandford Hill. I do not accept (my personal opinion)that this is such a terrible imposition. I would much rather have that than a nuclear facility or a gas facility near me (and there would need to be many of them if you include the ancillary sites discussed above). Although Mr Bryne states otherwise I doubt he would find many who share his opinion amongst those whose community is earmarked for fracking or nuclear expansion and frankly I suspect that he would change his mind if his area was nominated for one of these alternatives and its no good hiding behind the “inappropriate location” cop out – there will be people who argue that any location is inappropriate and frankly sites next to Dorchester or alongside major roads like the A352/A37/A35 don’t really have such a strong case for special dispensation as rural idylls even though they are very nice now and more importantly would still be very nice with a small number of turbines added. The other point about this is that one of the many advantages of wind turbines is that decommissioning is so easy compared especially with cleaning up after coal or nuclear and so, if better technology does come through in the next 20 years (lifetime of a turbine),then they can be removed and the land returned to a state indistinguishable from what it was before the turbines were built. He talks about our misery if turbines are not built. I feel frustration that progress is not being made but no misery. However there is already misery for many (such as those whose houses have been flood damaged for months and are now almost unsalable in Somerset or the families who have actually had people killed by extreme weather conditions) and similar misery around the corner for millions if runaway climate change kicks in and once more I come back to the opinion (albeit now backed up by more and more respected analyses) that onshore wind is the cheapest and cleanest form of low carbon electricity and an indispensable cornerstone of a mixed technology sustainable economy for the 21st Century.
Thanks Michael for continuing with what is probably one of the most important debates of our time.
Use of the word misery indicates a pampered existence to date. Loss of a loved one or a job causes misery not the imposition of a changed view of a landscape. You are forgetting that 1000 MW power stations are either nuclear – taking 15 years to be very expensively built by the French or the Chinese – or they are fueled by fossil fuels that are fast running out and becoming more expensive. 11% of the electricity can be lost down the grid from a large distant power station to remote Dorset.
The point of wind turbines is that they use the natural resource we have in Dorset delivering low and stable cost electricity efficiently to adjacent consumers with no ongoing fuel costs.
When I moved to North Dorset from Bournemouth 25 years ago, my new neighbours made it clear any opinion I might have regarding expansion of an agricultural contractor to the back of our property would be disregarded. Fair enough because local jobs related to the main activity in the area were needed. There probably are people who don’t think 16 years is long enough a residency to have a valid opinion on major local infrastructural change unless you have had a significant role in the local economy.
At a recent event where wind turbines were debated two speakers mentioned desecration of Hardy’s Dorset. On the off chance that they read this I’d like to say that anyone who want to live in Hardy’s Dorset should stop driving their car, stop using electricity and revert to horse and cart and smelly polluting coal fires. Then they should try convincing the rest of Dorset to do the same. Obviously people would think they are mad. It also seems mad not to embrace modern methods of electricity generation.