21.05.2020 Offshore energy? At what cost to the consumer?

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 Thursday 21st 58-69F, bright overcast. Variable sunshine offered in parallel forecasts. A walk to the lanes in warm sunshine. The warbler birdsong from the hedgerows for company. Traffic sparse with long quiet intervals at first. Busier later. It is a bank holiday. The oil seed rape flowers are going over to seed. The intense colour is already going out of the fields.

Late climate news: The Danish government is to build two offshore "energy islands" to house wind farms. The plan is for 2GW installations to start with. Growing to 10GW over time. Cables will run to Norway and Poland to share excess energy. Now just imagine how many millions of lorry journeys that is going to cost just for the landfill to build the islands. The Carbon Footprint from the construction alone would take years to neutralise.

There has been growing resistance to Danish onshore wind turbines. With complaints of infrasonic [VLF] noise and flicker from the blades when they are blocking the low sun. Many neighbours of wind turbines claim they cannot sell their properties because of these problems. There is nothing in it for the turbine neighbours except loss of freedom. They don't get an automatic income. Unlike the farmer who rents the turbine footprint and access roads on his land.

There were plans to replace older, existing turbines with huge, modern examples. However they are said to have even more antisocial problems [than the smaller ones] due to their sheer scale. Wing tips are already approaching the speed of sound. With blade circles hundreds of meters in diameter, the flickering shadow arc grows far larger in the cooler months or when the sun is low.

Offshore turbines are far more expensive to erect and maintain. Probably making them less attractive to tax-free, offshore investors/money launderers hoping to profit from them.

The news was greeted with skepticism and disappointment by Danish climate experts. "Like a kid wishing for a Lego set for Christmas and getting a hand knitted jumper instead."

My better reading of "hand knitted pullover plus the Lego set" would be solar panels on every domestic and private business roof. Cut out the middle empire builders man and put people back in direct <cough> charge of their own energy production and consumption.

This could expand the need for paid and taxable work. Just as we descend into mass unemployment from the robot/AI takeover of most jobs. Let's look at democratizing energy production instead:

What if you don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of staff wages and salaries to pay? Nor the 17 "green" taxes and huge bills for rolling maintenance work of countless properties as well as the electricity network. Then there is the vast fleet of vehicles and the dividends to pay to tax free, offshore investors. Plus the tens of millions in directors' salaries and their expense accounts on top of every consumer's, quarterly bill.

Would taking the <cough> power away from present energy monopolies really lose jobs or would it improve efficiency? You can retrain these workers to set up domestic solar panels, low voltage heat pumps and rewire the home for domestic 12V equipment.

Get rid of the need for all those costly and wasteful, domestic inverters so typical of solar systems. Which monopoly, mains supply equipment demands. Not to mention the literally vast number of plug-in mains power supplies sitting there 365x24 for every single piece of domestic equipment. This is already low voltage anyway but demands a mains plug? Why not make everything low voltage to efficiently match the source? Add mass but parallel domestic storage as soon as it becomes sufficiently and efficiently affordable. Electric commuter cars and scooters can help out in the meantime.

There is also the security aspect. Bringing down completely unprotected, rural pylons carrying the nation's vital VHV cables is absolute child's play. Compare that to attacking an infinitely parallel, domestic, solar energy system.

Big projects may grab news headlines but costs are always 3-4 times the original estimates. Energy poverty is not an efficient means of keeping CO2 production artificially low. Making electricity too expensive for most people is not democratic socialism. It is energy dictatorship.

Insulating real people's homes and providing for private energy production is democratizing energy usage. It leads directly to climate change reduction efficiency. Supporting abusive monopolies and spending vast fortunes on mega-projects, just to make news headlines, is the empty propaganda of the existing, energy dictatorship!

Will they build these "energy islands" using borrowed, Chinese "dirty" capital and by abusing forced, North Korean labour? Will a large fraction of the interest payments and profits go directly to propping up two foul, genocidal and corrupt dictatorships?

Afternoon update. 14.30[CET] Suddenly, after weeks with clear skies, we are seeing vapour trails from airliners. From zero to four at the same time! We could even hear them above the absent traffic!

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