At the Kyoto climate change conference, Tony Blair committed the UK to generating 30% of its energy needs from renewable energy sources by 2020. To encourage the mad dash to green energy, the Labour Government created huge subsidies to electricity generators. With the subsidies, wind farms can recover their investment costs in 10 years. Without the subsidies, it would on average take 20 years to cover the costs.
However, new figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation show how ruinously expensive it is to generate electricity by wind power.
The UK’s largest onshore wind farm with 140 turbines only operates at an average of 20% of capacity (the so called “load factor”).
The figures showed that out of 300 onshore wind farms, only six operated at more than 40% capacity. 79% of Britain’s wind farms are operating at less than 30% of capacity.
By contrast, the load factor of nuclear power stations in 2010 was 59.4%. Gas powered plants operated at a load factor of 60.6% and coal-fired plants at 40.9%.
The Renewable Energy Foundation said “The consumer is paying to make these winds farms artificially viable.”
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