Dark clouds over the solar panels
The Telegraph|June 23, 2013
We all want to help to protect the environment and it would be nice to rely entirely on clean energy sources. But solar energy comes with plenty of problems. Its impact upon the landscape is likely to be significant: the level of solar power that Mr Barker wants would necessitate erecting solar panels of up to 10ft tall across an area more than 100 times the size of London's Olympic Park.
We all want to help to protect the environment and it would be nice to rely entirely on clean energy sources. But solar energy comes with plenty of problems. Its impact upon the landscape is likely to be significant: the level of solar power that Mr Barker wants would necessitate erecting solar panels of up to 10ft tall across an area more than 100 times the size of London's Olympic Park.
Developers currently building solar farms receive a subsidy of up to £85 per MWh of energy produced
Last week we exposed how few jobs the wind-power industry really generates in exchange for its incredible subsidies: 12,000 positions financed by £1.2 billion, amounting to a cost of effectively £100,000 per job. In today's newspaper we identify another green industry that relies heavily on subsidies to work: solar power. Greg Barker, the climate change minister, has said that it is his "ambition" to increase the number of solar farms in Britain (already built or in planning) by an astonishing factor of 10.
We all want to help to protect the environment and it would be nice to rely entirely on clean energy sources. But solar energy …
... more [truncated due to possible copyright]Developers currently building solar farms receive a subsidy of up to £85 per MWh of energy produced
Last week we exposed how few jobs the wind-power industry really generates in exchange for its incredible subsidies: 12,000 positions financed by £1.2 billion, amounting to a cost of effectively £100,000 per job. In today's newspaper we identify another green industry that relies heavily on subsidies to work: solar power. Greg Barker, the climate change minister, has said that it is his "ambition" to increase the number of solar farms in Britain (already built or in planning) by an astonishing factor of 10.
We all want to help to protect the environment and it would be nice to rely entirely on clean energy sources. But solar energy comes with plenty of problems. Its impact upon the landscape is likely to be significant: the level of solar power that Mr Barker wants would necessitate erecting solar panels of up to 10ft tall across an area more than 100 times the size of London's Olympic Park. Moreover, the National Grid has raised concerns that, in the summer months, when this massive number of solar panels would produce far more energy than the consumer uses, it would struggle to cope with the amount of electricity generated. Under the present "balancing mechanism", it may be forced to pay the solar-panel operators to shut them down.
Which brings us to the perennial problem of the hidden costs of going green. Developers currently building solar farms receive a subsidy of up to £85 per MWh (megawatt hours) of energy produced - a figure eventually added to household bills. On that basis, the total expense in subsidies of Mr Barker's plan to produce 20GW of energy from solar by 2020 could be astronomical. Unsightly and pricey: solar has a worrying amount in common with wind.