The UK ruling elite's dreams of leading the world to a net zero future suffered another setback today when Swedish energy company Vattenfall announced work on the Norfolk Boreas offshore wind farm is to be suspended indefinitely. The reasons given are spiralling costs, uncertainty in supply lines and the economic reality that despite all the propaganda about 'wind power is free' over the past few years, offshore wind farms are hideously expensive to operate as well as being enormously damaging to the marine environment.
As this blog has always said, if you pick a fight with nature, nature will always win. Thus it should be no surprise that one of the UK’s largest offshore wind farm projects to date has has run aground, ironically partly due to lack of wind because 2023 has so far been notable for a high number of windless or low wind days, but also due to the rocketing costs of raw materials needed to make wind turbines costs. The fact that China and Russia control most sources of these vital raw materials should also be no surprise.
Swedish energy group, Vattenfall, has been forced to halt construction and planning work on its 1.4GW Norfolk Boreas site off England's east coast, following a 40% increase in budgeted costs. Clearly, “going green” isn’t the path to instant riches and ongoing prosperity the government's propagandists would have you believe.
Anna Borg, Vattenfall’s CEO wrote in a statement released today:
“What we see today, it simply doesn’t make sense to continue this project.”
https://www.ft.com/content/f9d0f4f9-6d95-44a9-924b-d88627fd6485
This news blows a huge hole in the UK government's the commitment to increasing its offshore wind capacity 300 per cent by 2030 in order to push forward the total decarbonisation of the electricity system. It also hihlights the truth of another claim by independent commentators that has been dismissed as a 'conspiracy theory' by mainstream media and academics, that the cost efficiency and reliability of these 'renewable energy' projects remain questionable.
For over 20 years the UK government has been promoting the wonders of wind power projects to meet its unrealistic net-zero targets, apparently oblivious to the reality that we cannot control the wind and when there is insufficient movement of air (i.e. below 12 mph) a wind turbine is not going to generate a single watt of electricity. However nature is biting back, and with costs
spiraling out of control, the flight from fossil fuels looks as if it is struggling against into a
headwinds.
This latest fiasco forged by the government's scientific advisers stands as a testament to the impracticality of impulsively jumping on the renewable energy bandwagon while shouting "We're following the science," without first thoroughly investigating the practical limitations of technologies that look great on paper, in mathematical models, or under controlled conditions in the laboratory.
The now
defunct, if we are honest, Norfolk Boreas offshore wind farm was intended to be the flagship of the country’s
major offshore wind projects. Its aim was to provide low cost electricity to 1.5 million homes with
up to 140 turbines. Now the developers have acknowledged that projects with
low locked-in electricity prices have turned uneconomical due to these
escalating costs and disruptions.
In February this year our Daily Stirrer publication reported
that Vattenfall, along with Denmark’s Ørsted and other wind farm
developers, were seeking tax breaks or subsidies as a remedy to their
fiscal woes which had been created by governments pandering to extremist pressure groups and prematurely closing gas, coal and nuclear power plants, capping wells and abandoning mines on the strength of assurances from mathematical modellers that wind power could supply all the energy needs of the world's fifth largest economy. Perhaps now the twin mirage of “cheap” renewable energy and the infallibility of science are revealed to have been nothing but a smoke and mirrors stunt, perhaps vote seeking politicians and rent - seeking science journalists may have to acknowledge the economic reality that has been hidden behind the curtain.
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