Onshore Wind Turbines
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and David Tredinnick(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
Thank you for clarifying that for me, Mr Bayley. This is my first Adjournment debate and I had no idea what the rules were. Over the next few minutes I will try to explain why I think that the Government need to change their position on onshore wind—I will obviously speak for slightly longer than the eight or nine minutes on which I was planning, but perhaps Members who would like to intervene can help out.
I have a number of questions about that area of policy. The current official Government figure for carbon displacement by wind power assumes that wind power can replace conventional generation at 100% efficiency. That is clearly unrealistic in view of the technical challenges of incorporating an intermittent and highly variable power source into a strictly managed supply system. Reports from Denmark and Germany suggest that the carbon costs of absorbing wind power into the grid are substantial. I assume that that is also true for the UK.
A substantial proportion of electrical power demand is continuous—the base load. The balance is required to respond to demand that fluctuates in many ways, including seasonally, instantaneously, or even at the end of an England game—or, if it was last night’s game, not at all. There is no effective or economic way of storing energy on a large scale. Therefore, we have a number of conundrums. The key responsibility of the grid is to ensure that the demand for power is met at all times. That is achieved by ensuring the availability of capacity when needed, and avoiding the generation of unusable power.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
I assure hon. Members that I have approached my hon. Friend in person and sought his leave to speak. As he gets into his speech, does he agree that one of the most inefficient uses of wind power, and the most damaging to the local environment, happens when there are one or two isolated wind turbines that are close to urban conurbations, as is proposed at Desford in my Leicestershire constituency? Does he agree that a suitable solution would be to have a fixed distance between habitations and those wind turbines?